Fascism always needs an enemy. Some scary group that is going to destroy us all, so we must do everything in our power to stop it. If that means sacrificing all our rights, then that's what it takes. Just look at our country and how many rights we have lost. The first amendment right to free speech and protest. Now it's only ok in "free speech zones". Not in the zone, you get arrested. Bye bye 4th amendment. Someone from out of the country calls you, no warrant needed for the gov't to eavesdrop. Habeas corpus has been suspended. If Bush's plan was a police state, he's achieving it in a brilliant way. By doing it a little step at a time, most americans don't notice the slow motion loss of our rights. Anyone that cries out about an impending police state, is described as a loony left wing moon bat. Just remember, it can't happen here, right?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/01/20010129-3.html

"The Attorney General, the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall each establish within their respective departments a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (Center). Each executive department Center shall be supervised by a Director, appointed by the department head in consultation with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives."

Instapundit's reaction to all that was that it didn't go far enough, because it didn't include enough government departments, and, specifically, it should have also included THE PENTAGON:

http://www.instapundit.com/oldarchives/2001_09_09_instapundit_archive.html

TONY JUDT says that Free Agent Nation has come to warfare:

In the twentieth century, war was made on civilians. In the twenty-first century, war will be made by civilians. It will be the definitive "faith-based initiative," requiring neither guns, tanks, ships, planes, nor missiles. Like other faith-based initiatives it will bypass the conventional state. [...]

I'm not sure he's right. But let's say he is. Perhaps we should respond in kind, by privatizing our response [...] As long as we're thinking "new economy," there's no reason to limit its benefits to the other guys.
- - Glenn Reynolds

Instapundit's idea that the U.S. should outsource national defense to religious crusaders wasn't a new idea in 2001, of course:

http://juancole.com/2005/08/fisking-war-on-terror-once-upon-time.html

[...] Reagan increased the budget for support of the radical Muslim Mujahidin conducting terrorism against the Afghanistan government to half a billion dollars a year.

One fifth of the money, which the CIA mostly turned over to Pakistani military intelligence to distribute, went to Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, a violent extremist who as a youth used to throw acid on the faces of unveiled girls in Afghanistan.

Not content with creating a vast terrorist network to harass the Soviets, Reagan then pressured the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to match US contributions. He had earlier imposed on Fahd to give money to the Contras in Nicaragua, some of which was used to create rightwing death squads. (Reagan liked to sidestep Congress in creating private terrorist organizations for his foreign policy purposes, which he branded "freedom fighters," giving terrorists the idea that it was all right to inflict vast damage on civilians in order to achieve their goals).

Fahd was a timid man and resisted Reagan's instructions briefly, but finally gave in to enormous US pressure.

[...] In 1998, al-Qaeda and al-Jihad al-Islami, two small terrorist groups established in Afghanistan as a result of the Reagan jihad, declared war on the United States and Israel (the "Zionists and Crusaders"). After attacks by al-Qaeda cells on US embassies in East Africa and on the USS Cole, nineteen of them ultimately used jet planes to attack the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

[...] The American Right, having created the Mujahideen and having mightily contributed to the creation of al-Qaeda, abruptly announced that there was something deeply wrong with Islam, that it kept producing terrorists.

- - Juan Cole

If America had a million oil fields but not much of a military, and the Muslims had the strongest army, then we may be in danger of attack and occupation.

And then the republican party would give birth to something that makes Al-Qaida look like tiddly-winks.

I'm all for free speech and this is certainly one of the most open and well-informed political forums I know of, BUT,

I'm really against killing people. I don't want us killing them. And I certainly don't want them killing us.

But hey, that's just me.

If what you said is intended as satire, I guess I just didn't get it.

It's a good thing no one paid any attention to that nonsense in Herr Hitler's best seller Mein Kampf about "reuniting" with Austria, "taking back" the Sudetenland, destroying the rest of Czechoslovakia, invading Poland, defeating France and England, and annhilating Russia.

Otherwise, we may have had a big war involving lots and lots of countries.

Oh! Wait a minute...

"I call on my friends on the Left –- straight or gay -– to help defend that real source of liberalism the Enlightenment, because if we lose and fall under religious law..."

He's right you know - the values of the Enlightenment, upon which our country are based, are under threat from religious fundamentalists. We all need to keep our guard up against the creeping encroachment of magical thinking in the public discourse.

As it happens, American values is much more threatened by the religious orthodoxies of Christianity, than of Islam. It is not Islamic fundamentalists fighting in this country against gay rights, or womens rights, or freedom and independence of the press - it is Christian fundamentalists.

I'm not familiar with the Roger Simon's other works, so I hesitate a little to defend him, but on this one point he has a message that should resonate with secularists of all stripes. In this politically polarized time, it helps to bear in mind that a simple delimitation of liberal and conservative doesn't cover the scope of human viewpoint, and that there are many conservatives who believe deeply in the values on which this nation was founded. We should try to not to get so distracted by what we differ on, that we forget what we have in common. Don't forget - divided we fall.