By the time the Reign of Terror ended, France had grown so used to an iron hand and a secretive, militaristic government that Napolean could easily pick up the pieces and impose another dictatorship. People had forgotten what freedom was. Patriotism had become a tool for social control, rather than social justice, and civil liberties were a thing of the past.
So how different are we today? The issue isn’t Iraq, the Patriot Act, or Bush. The issue is freedom: if we want it, we’d better let go of fear, the ultimate Weapon of Mass Distraction. We’d better confront the hysteria-inducing tactics asking us to equate freedom with corporate pork for defense contractors. We’d better think twice about tossing aside fundamental constitutional rights in the so-called pursuit of liberty. Because if we don’t, what’s coming next could be even worse.
This is so stupid that my circuits overloaded when I went to comment. Fill in your own.