We've got to take a step back and consider a few things about where the national debate is leading us. There is a certain ugly vein that runs through our collective unconscious. America is different, but not immune to the fears and social ills that fed the horrors of the last century. This sentiment needs to be exposed and called by its name.
"...a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." (Anatomy of Fascism, Robert O. Paxton, p 218)
Sound familiar?
How about these:
"...a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition" (Merriam Webster's definition of fascism)
"A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism." (American Heritage Dictionary)
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