Tom, Tom, Tom...doesn't that tunnel vision ever get the least claustrophobic?

Opposition to creeping fascism is like preventive maintenance: The only way you know it's working is the indirect evidence of a lack of problems. Just like evaluating preventive maintenance, to judge the effectiveness of opposition to fascism, it's necessary to play what-if and gauge the risk had there been no opposition.

It's not a hallucination that a fringe element on the far Right isn't shy about its admiration of fascism. It's not a hallucination that a larger number of Wingers are uncomfortable with democracy and freedom, and believe that we have just too damn much of both. Witness the oft-repeated lament that the "wrong" people are "allowed" to vote (two null concepts to anybody who understands democracy), and the wistful desire for some "standard" for voting that ensures only the "right" people get to vote. Witness the constant drumbeat of calls for regulation of social matters, starting with private sexuality and reproduction, and the declaration that America is a "Christian nation" and should be governed as such. Witness the desire to transform America into a one-party state, that "permanent Republican majority". Witness the similarity of the belief that life is a jungle and only the strong survive and prosper and rule, due to their inherent moral superiority; with the belief of certain fascists that they're genetically and racially superior and thus deserve to rule.

Witness the historical fact that under Conservative rule in America, liberty has never expanded, and it has often contracted. Witness George W. nibbling away at the Constitution under cover of war.

It's safe to say that had there not been continual opposition to creeping fascism in America, we'd be a lot further down that road than we are today. It's safe to say that without the public outcry against Bush's attacks on the Constitution, he'd have gone a lot further.

I can safely predict that you'll respond with a laundry list of symmetrical points about the Left. I remember once when you were defending Joseph McCarthy you pointed out that we had caught a handful of actual Soviet spies, so McCarthy wasn't completely wrong, just exaggerating and lying for political gain. Sauce for the goose, gander, etc.: The existence of extreme views in American politics isn't a hallucination, and it's our historical balance between Left and Right that's damped out both sets of extremes and kept us on a roughly middle course. Pushback is part of the system of chex-n-balances; without it we'd be in deep(er) doodoo. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, no matter your personal ideology.