All Hail The Mighty Ruler

When Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (ret.) in a recent speech mentioned dictatorship, a bell went off with me. It seemed I had been running into that word a lot lately. So I Googled and cut and pasted. These are some heavy hitters who warn of impending loss of freedom and liberty. Maybe its time we started paying more attention.

Sandra Day O' Connor
[A]ttacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms.”

"I, said O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into
dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

Dean Hartwell - political scientist and the author of Truth Matters: How the Voters Can Take Back Their Nation.

I would suggest impeachment but the Republicans control the House and the charges would never get out of the Judiciary Committee. I would also suggest we plan to vote the Democrats back into control of the House and the Senate in 2006. But that assumes the vote won’t be rigged.

We are the victims of a conspiracy brought about by our government. If this were happening in any other nation, we would call it a dictatorship or a “banana republic.” The least we can do is to tell ourselves the truth. Only then can we seek the freedom we deserve.

Ted Rall - Columnist

Creeping militarism leapt into full view with Bush’s October 4 request to Congress to repeal the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the military in domestic policing except for the purpose of quelling a revolution.

Citing the theoretical possibility that Asian avian flu, now only transmittable from bird to human, could mutate into a human-to-human form, Bush said: "If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And who best to be able to effect a quarantine? One option is the use of a military that’s able to plan and move. I think it’s an important debate for Congress to have."

But what if military dictatorship could be proven a more efficient form of government than old-fashioned democracy? What if a standing army could do what a bunch of namby-pamby bureaucrats can’t? Would it be worth it?

That’s the choice George W. Bush is asking Congress, and thus us, to make.

The fact that he hasn’t been impeached for daring to ask it highlights the dictatorial tendencies of those who share his contempt for personal liberty.

Paul Craig Roberts - Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

America is headed for a soft dictatorship by the end of Bush’s second term. Whether any American has civil rights will be decided by the discretionary power of federal officials. The public in general will tolerate the soft dictatorship as its discretionary powers will mainly be felt by those few who challenge it.

The congressional elections this coming November are the last chance for for Americans to reaffirm the separation of powers that is the basis of their civil liberties. Unless the voters correct their mistake of putting both the executive and legislative branches in the hands of the same party and deliver the House or the Senate to the Democrats, there is nothing on the domestic scene to stand in the way of more power, and less accountability, being accumulated in the executive [dictatorship].

Someone from Bush's own camp.

Republican Congressman Ron Paul has gone on record with his prediction that the impeachment of George W. Bush is right around the corner but warned that in the meantime the US was slipping perilously close to a dictatorship.

Gore Vidal -author of more than twenty novels and five plays.

And now here we are planning new wars, ongoing wars in the Middle East. And so as he [Bush] comes with his State of the Union, which he is going to justify eavesdropping without judicial warrants on anybody in the United States that he wants to listen in on. This is what we call dictatorship. Dictatorship. Dictatorship. And it is time that we objected. Don't say wait ‘til the next election and do it through that. We can't trust the elections, thanks to Diebold and S&S and all the electronic devices which are being flogged across the country to make sure that elections can be so rigged that the villains will stay in power.

Truth is, I could go on indefinitely (over 16 million hits). Are these the tinfoil hat crowd? Nope. I would say some of the other 16 million articles might fall in that category because they think Bush is out to be dictator of the world. Pretty tall order even for him to shoot for, but dictator at home is very doable.

Please follow the links. There is much more and many intelligent arguments to make these cases. In particular, I found a huge number of sites that link to or reproduce Paul Craig Roberts' article.

[all emphasis mine]

[Update sort of] Welcome all Digby fans. Love to see you.