Fascism By Any Other Name

Russ Feingold is carrying out his Congressional oversight responsibilities by calling on Congress to censure Bush for his illegal wiretapping program. Frist responds by showing us what the GOP thinks of dissent:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You’re saying that censure resolution weakens America abroad?
FRIST: Yes. Well, I think it does because [... blah blah blah Terror blah blah 9/11 blah blah "Unprecedented" blah blah snip]. So the signal that it sends that there is in any way a lack of support for our Commander in Chief ... is wrong.

So he thinks in a Democratic society that it is unacceptable that there are people who disagree with the President "in any way".

Fascism: a political philosophy that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader.

Is that a fair description of Frist's worldview? Well, there are two key words here. The first is "autocratic":

Autocrat: one who has undisputed influence or power.

That's what Frist objects to: that someone can dispute with the President. The second key word is "dictatorial":

Dictator: a person granted absolute emergency power.

And this is what Frist is defending: the President's power to forego the law of the land due to our newly persistent state of emergency.

So we have a President who is on record defending his right to break the law, facing censure from the Congress and the lowest approval ratings of his presidency. Doesn't it make you wonder what he must have up his sleeve when you read things like this?:

...He has become so inured to outside criticism that he increasingly tunes it out. There is no sense of crisis.

I shudder to think.