After studying how once-democratic nations slide into fascism, writer Naomi Wolf came to a horrifying conclusion: in the last five years, the United States has taken all of the steps that have historically led to the end of republican government. Wolf issued a call to patriotic dissent in her 2007 book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to A Young Patriot. A sample chapter is available here (.pdf).

You can get the gist of her argument by watching this video:

Wolf's meticulously-constructed argument deserves serious consideration. She describes what she calls a "fascist shift" in our country --

"an antidemocratic ideology that uses the threat of violence against the individual to subdue the institutions of civil society so that they in turn can be subordinated to the power of the state."

Wolf's evidence includes the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which allows persons designated enemy combatants to be denied fundamental rights of due process. The kicker is that the President of the United States now has the legal authority to designate anyone an "enemy combatant" -- no probable cause required. The use of interrogation methods widely considered to be torture is further evidence. [Just yesterday, Wolf argued in the Huffington Post that senior Bush administration officials such as Secretary of State Condolezza Rice are, in fact, sex criminals because they sexual humiliation as an interrogation method.]

Bloggers are paying attention. Here's supergirl, who calls it a "must read:"

It’s pretty thorough, and all and all fairly cautious for a book that is essentially a warning and rallying call to try and save our democracy in this country.

Jackie Scheeler heard Wolf's lecture and reported:

[H]er talk begins with an apology and a joke about bringing us valium. then she launches into it, and for the next forty minutes i was riveted. and furious. and scared shitless.

On July 4, 2003, my second day as a blogger, I relayed my own concerns about troubling trends in the news industry that uncomfortably echoed the demise of the free press in Nazi Germany. Oron Hale's 1964 study, The Captive Press Inside the Third Reich, identified several trends that made the German press ripe for cooptation:

1. increased concentration of media ownership,
2. the increased ownership of news organizations by non-news
conglomerates,
3. management decisions that compromised news values in
favor of profits,
4. the blurring of advertising and editorial content,
5. an increased preocuppation with news as entertainment, including an
editorial emphasis on sensationalism, celebrity reporting and lurid
scandals.

These preconditions aided the Nazis in several ways. The increased concentration of ownership meant that there were relatively few industry leaders with whom the Nazis had to treat. Their involvement in other industries gave the Nazis multiple levers of influence and encouraged self-censorship. This in turn encouraged the sensationalism and pseudo-news that came to dominate the news pages. The Nazis fed this demand with a steady supply of tabloid-type tales that demonized Jews and other regime scapegoats while valorizing the "Aryan" heroes and heroines who would restore honor to the Fatherland. It is not difficult to understand how these circumstances contributed to the constriction of public discourse and to tolerance for the brutal treatment of people deemed unacceptable or injurious to the nation.

What do you think Americans can do to ensure the protection of our democracy?