Our political and economic decline took place by way of a corporate drive for massive deregulation, the repeal of antitrust laws, and the country's radical transformation from a manufacturing economy to an economy of consumption. Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized the danger this posed. He sent a message to Congress as long ago as April 29,1938, titled "Recommendations to the Congress to Curb Monopolies and the Concentration of Economic Power." In it he wrote:
Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of (corporate) power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism -- ownership of Government by a group or any controlling private power. Neither is Democracy safe if its business system cannot provide employment, and produce and distribute goods in such a way, as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.
The corporate state, the security state, and the imminent birth of fascism in America
As the pressure mounts, as this despair and impoverishment reach into larger and larger segments of the populace, the mechanisms of corporate and government control are being bolstered to deal with the coming civil unrest and instability. The emergence of the corporate state always means the emergence of the security state. This is why the Bush White House pushed through the Patriot Act (as well as its renewal), the suspension of habeas corpus, the practice of "extraordinary rendition," the practice of warrantless wiretapping on American citizens, and the refusal to ensure free and fair elections with verifiable ballot-counting. It is all part of a package. It comes together. The real motive behind these measures is not to fight terrorism or to bolster national security. It is to be able, when and if the time is right, to seize and maintain a fascist-like control of our government and society.
Hints of our brave new world seeped out when the director of national intelligence, retired admiral Dennis Blair, testified in February and March 2009 before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He warned that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security. It could trigger, he said, a return to the "violent extremism" of the 1920s and '30s. "The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications," Blair told the Senate:
The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression. Of course all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.
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