[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by joblack

So we don´t have to talk about if some new law is legal - the point is if it takes away our freedom it´s not a good law and should be removed.

The question is how that gets done. Just out of curiosity, how often do laws get repealed in your country?

And Mr. RickyMaveety, Hitler came legally to power - don´t forget that (and please don´t nitpick with your detailed boring 'knowledge').

First, Ricky is she, not he.

Second, knowledge is never boring. It's either relevant to the discussion or not.

Yes, Hitler came to power legally. You can blame him on stupidity by the Allies, who insisted on imposing terms after WWI intended to not merely end the war, but to humiliate and impose a crushing burden on Germany. Hitler told Germans what they wanted to hear: that they were a great people brought low by the sins and treachery of others, and that he could lead them to glory. (I've wondered on occasion how things might have been had the Allies been less concerned with revenge, and more involved with assisting Germany to become a stable and prosperous democratic state that wouldn't be interested in trying to conquer their neighbors.)

How enthusiastic many of his supporters might have been had they fully understood where he was coming from and planned to go was another matter.

But you can't really draw parallels comparing Hitler and Bush, because the surrounding circumstances are too different. Hitler came to power in a unique set of circumstances. His country had been defeated in a major war, and the sort of checks and balances that might have prevented it were largely absent. Also, Germany was a far more homogeneous society, with a population mostly ethnic Germans, who saw themselves as an oppressed group.

Bush came to power in his second term in a disputed election. He's a "Lame Duck" president, due to be replaced in the next election. I'd call it even money at the moment whether Obama or McCain will be the next President, but it doesn't matter. It won't be Bush.

If he wanted to subvert the democratic process and make himself dictator, he should have already tried to do so.

I'll be one of those cheering when he leaves office, and pushing hard to get some of his more wit-wanted attempts at "security" reversed. But I was never terribly worried the US would become a police state. There are too many checks and balances built in to our political system intended to prevent that. The people who founded the country and wrote the Constitution were well aware of the dangers, as many of the original immigrants came here to escape repression.

There has been a political pendulum in the US for many years. It swings one way, and then another. In the '60s, it swung toward liberalism. More recently, it's been swinging to the conservative end. But it is a pendulum, and continues to swing.
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Dennis