"They are going by the same playbook of nazi Germany and other fascist regimes. "
http://www.amazon.com/End-America-Letter-Warning-Patriot/review/product/1933392797/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
This is a simple, clear, and deeply alarming book.
Ms. Wolf looks to recent history to derive ten techniques that underpin dictatorships and police states. These are the basic ingredients that tyrants throughout the 20th century used to seize and keep control of their countries.
The ingredients are familiar and not surprising--frighten people by invoking an external and internal threat, establish secret prisons, set up a paramilitary force answerable only to the leader, place ordinary citizens under surveillance, add to the fear with arbitrary arrests and detentions, target actual and potential opponents, restrict the press, cast reporters and whistleblowers as spies and critics as traitors, and, in the end, substitute rule by decree for the rule of law.
Ms. Wolf systematically documents how far down this dangerous road the Bush administration, abetted by a rubber-stamp Congress, has pushed our nation.
We are not closing down Guantanamo, we're increasing its capacity. Blackwater and other paramilitary forces have free rein in Iraq, and, shockingly, contracts are in place for them to play an increasing role within the U.S. A new law is in place to remove control of the National Guard from the states and place it under federal control. Every newspaper reader is aware that the government has given itself the right to spy on ordinary citizens in a variety of ways, and continues to push for more. Through its policy of "special renditions" the government has "disappeared" a number of citizens of other countries, sending them to be interrogated and tortured in CIA-run "black sites" scattered around the world. Here at home, tens of thousands of citizens are on the Transportation Security Administration's secret watch list and are subject to repeated detention and searches when they try to fly. Many of these are people who have done nothing more than be active in groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union or other organizations that the Bush administration finds bothersome. The precipitous removal of Dan Rather is just one of many examples of increasing intimidation of the press. Congressmen and Senators have been accused by administration members of endangering our troops and the nation when they try to exercise their Constitutional oversight and legislative roles. Bush has issued an inordinate number of "signing documents" through which he claims the right to ignore or selectively enforce legislation passed by Congress. Fundamental rights such as habeas corpus--the right not to be arrested and detained without due cause and due process--are under attack.
Ms. Wolf makes and documents the case that the liberty that we cherish, and which has made American great, is under threat. She adds urgency to her plea by pointing out that while it often takes years for a would-be tyrant to put these ten ingredients into place, once they are there, once citizens become aware that voicing an opinion can lose them their job or get them arrested, once they know that their phone calls and emails are not secure, that groups they belong to are infiltrated by informers, that ordinary people can be arrested and held without due process, that agents of the government can do whatever they want with impunity, the final slide into a full-fledged police state can happen quickly.
It's up to each citizen to decide how far down this path our nation has been bullied, and whether or not to heed Ms. Wolf's call for action to stop the slide toward arbitrary rule. But at the very least, every citizen needs to know what is going on. Reading this book is a good place to start.
Wolf calls on both liberals and conservatives, on everyone who loves America and what America has always stood for, to take note and take action, before it's too late.
It's a call that deserves every patriot's urgent attention.
