@Curmudgeon,
Curmudgeon;40864 wrote:What answer are you looking for? An agreement with you that these things have been done by our government?
Certainly in some ways these things have been done, but if you consider that they were the methods used by Communists in the past and thus all all wrong, you must relize that Communism has generally failed.
When we enact laws that LOOK like those tenets of Communism, we have gone through our own democratic processes to arrive there, and if enough voters register and vote to change things , they CAN be changed here in America, unlike in places that were taken in by Communism. They only got changed in some of those places by counter-revolutions and/or a rebirth of national conscience after the Communists had failed in their efforts to dominate.
I suggest that Bush and Co. have taken this country to the precipice of communism, moreso than any other others....shades of the KGB: surveillance, suspending habeas corpus, torture...disregard of the public will...failing to consult Congress...the list goes on and on...and where is the outrage from the Republicans? They have not only been complicit, they have encouraged such wrongdoings. Look at what Mitch McConnell's office has been accused of doing, as far as that S-Chip controversy :
Democrats and their cries for social reform and responsibility are a far cry from the days of LBJ and Nixon...Bill Clinton's shift to the right changed the DNC....Dems are asking for 'bare bones", compared to the orgy of spending by the military...hell, if just a fraction of the money spent by lobbyists, wining, dining, and wheeling and dealing, were spent on improving poverty, nutrition, food safety, and healthcare...we'd be better off than we are.