Today, many Democrats are going to vote to kill more of our children in uniform. Many, but not enough, will take principled stands against that vote. But according to David Sirota, we may not know which is truly which. Those who voted for capitulation can go out and bloviate how against Bush's policies they are, secure in the knowledge that their vote will remain secret.
Today is the defacto recognition of George W. Bush as dictator of the United States of America.
You don't become a dictator by seizing power; you become a dictator by others not taking it back.
The rest of America was on the Democrats' side; but by not representing the will of the people, they have awarded George W. Bush the closest thing to an official recognition and sanction of his authoritarian executive office.
And the recipe for dictatorship is startlingly simple: never back down. Because your opponents in the end will never take that last step to remove you, even when they have the tools.
What a fine coda to this democracy we have, when the adults we elected to wrest the country from the tantrums of a delinquent, expected him to become well-behaved just by virtue of the fact of their existence, back down and give up when they discover that gee, it's hard work.