'The Creeping Putinization of American Life'

Matthew Yglesias: Threats

Big Media Matt makes an excellent point in his blog today. Since September 11, I've struggled to make the same point without much success.

One of the goals of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is to destroy our way of life by convincing us that Liberty is the enemy. People in this administration including the Pres, Vice Pres and John Ashcroft were quick to seize on our fears and exploit them for their own benefit.

But what is most upsetting is that so many of us were so poorly educated that we were willing to let them take our liberty from us.

This is why this election is so important.

Here is the key paragraph from Matt:

the creeping Putinization of American life (the Sinclair incident, the threatening letter to Rock The Vote, the specter of the top official in the House of Representatives making totally baseless charges of criminal conduct against a major financier of the political opposition [shades of Mikhail Khodorovsky], the increasing evidence that the 'terror alert' system is nothing more than a political prop, the 'torture memo' asserting that the president is above the law, the imposition of rigid discipline on the congress, the abuse of the conference committee procedure, the ability of the administration to lie to congress without penalty, the exclusion of non-supporters from Bush's public appearances, etc.)

Go read Matt's blog post.