I'm not opposed to the idea of martial law, under very narrowly-defined and very extreme circumstances. It's significant that martial law has never been declared in our history, despite times as perilous as a civil war and two world wars. There have been some specific restrictions and abridgement of civil liberties during times of genuine war...and maybe it's the talk of martial law during a time of conceptual war--the war on terror--that's part of what's unnerving.

Martial law is only a theoretical possibility, of course, and not really the point of this thread. We've been debating Neiwart's essay about the remarkable level of violence and agression in conservative rhetoric these days. One way to look at my raising the question of martial law, or more generally, greater power in the hands of conservatives, is that I'm asking whether it matters that the Right is frothing at the mouth. Maybe it doesn't matter, and maybe we can all just ignore them. Of course, one thing that keeps pissing off the Right is the feeling that nobody's paying any attention to their beliefs. People who feel that they've been ignored for too long tend to go a little overboard when they finally get some power in their hands.