Re; "times change".
No kidding!
Re: "...hyping what the Admin is doing as some evil conspiracy as many on the extreme left or right have done is MORE dangerous."
Don't believe it is an 'evil conspiracy', LOL! Nor have I EVER 'hyped' it as such.
You are trivializing the problem by making such a reference.
It's *just human nature* for power to seek ever more power. And wars *always* provide such an opportunity for the Executive to become ever more unassailable. It's NATURAL... and also one of the things our founders feared the MOST, and worked to avert with their reliance upon a structural balance of powers in government. (Although many of them believed that Democracy would be lost to the Authoritarian impulse MUCH SOONER!)
They DID NOT want to trust that SMART, HONEST, HUMBLE people with proper respect for our hard-earned liberties, and deep understanding of HISTORY and HUMAN NATURE would *always* be the sort who would hold powerful offices in America.... That is why they turned to STRUCTURAL SAFEGUARDS --- to limit the damage that 'mere humans' could do to Liberty.
Once lost, it is generally forever gone.
Believe this explains the impulse to Authoritarian 'solutions' for temporary national problems. (Although modern technology has given it BREADTH and POWER unimaginable to our early founders):
"Timid men... prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous seas of liberty." --- Thomas Jefferson
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." --- Edmund Burke
"The greatest threats to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." --- Justice Brandeis
"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad...." --- James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798.
Now, as to WHAT I believe....
"Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction." --- Ronald Reagan
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --- Benjamin Franklin
"When the people fear the government, you have TYRANNY, when the government fears the people, you have FREEDOM" --- Thomas Jefferson
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