Snark Attack

Conformist: How dare you disagree? What gives you the right to talk like that?

Independent: To start with, the First Amendment to the U.S.Constitution. More to the point, it doesn't give me that right, but guarantees a right I already have.

Believing takes over thinking.

   There is more danger to individual rights and freedom from the radical right than from the loopy left.
   Demagogues and ideologues insist on conformity to their views and ban dissent.
   Some examples are Germany under Hitler and Nazism, Italy under Mussolini and Fascism, Spain under Franco and his dictatorship, Argentina under Peron and his military.
   "It can't happen here," you say? To the contrary, it can, and very nearly did -- at least twice. In the 1930s, when a cabal of rightwing corporatists plotted to seize the White House and oust FDR; and again in the 1950s, under the influence of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the widespread -- sometimes irrational -- fear of Communists behind every tree. 
   Schoolchildren were being taught to beware of Communists. The "Commie Menace" was an article of faith, not to be questioned. Anyone who disagreed with the Establishment Truth was labeled a Commie and shunned.
   At the same time, Richard M. Nixon was an active member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, blackballing everyone from musicians and screenwriters to community activists and politicians. Later, there was President Nixon's "enemies list" and the Watergate conspiracy. And all along, there was J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, tracking and stalking anyone who dared to question the way things were or his idea of the way things should be.

   "It Can't Happen Here," you say? Read the 1935 book of the same name, by Sinclair Lewis. Or "The Plot to Seize the White House," a factual account of the 1933 plutocrat conspiracy, written by Jules Archer and published in 1973. Or "The Plots Against the President," by Sally Denton and published in January 2012.

   And remember that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.