The slow erosion of liberty

It can happen here.

I was talking to my friend Jim Chapdelaine yesterday and he noted that the Bush administration has stripped American citizens of liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, but they've done so in such small increments as to avoid notice by the average citizen.

Unfortunately, the average citizen is more consumed with Angelina, American Idol and Michael Vicks than they are with an obscure regulation which allows the President to seize all your assets if he declares you as an enemy sympathizer.

Just another executive order that flies under the radar so most Americans don't realize that the President is pickpocketing their liberty for the sake of fighting "terror."

Well, I'm afraid all right. But I fear the loss of liberty more than I fear terror.

Watching this President and his staff and advisors strip away our freedoms, beginning on 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, makes me suspicious of what comes next. And I'm not the only one.

The Bush psychological profile is chilling.

I wonder if we'll look back ten years from now, just as we look back at photographs of glaciers that were once there, and are now gone, and wonder what it was like when we were a freedom-loving country.

Impeachment, even at its most disruptive, seems like the only way to stop a presidency careening out of control.