What to say about Naomi Wolf?

This post should register a 9.2 on the Ryan Freakout Meter, so hang on. And before anyone goes postal, read the whole post and think about it for a minute before loading the nine 16 inch Navy rifled battleship guns and unleashing the broadsides.

I have not purchased or read Naomi Wolf's "The End of America," and on principle I will not spend money on it because I never paid for any of Ann Coulter's books, nor Newt Gingrich's, you get the picture. But I have listened and watched to several Naomi interviews and took these notes.

According to Naomi, all despots wanting to close an open society generally follow the same ten steps. Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, pick your 20th century despot and you get the picture, so says Naomi. So, they are:

1) Invoke a terrifying internal/external threat.
2) Create a prison system outside the rule of law where torture takes place.
3) Create a paramilitary force.
4) Create a surveillance apparatus aimed at ordinary citizens.
5) Arbitrarily detain and release citizens.
6) Target individuals of opposition.
7) Infiltrate opposition groups.
8) Restrict the press.
9) Recast opposition and dissent as treason.
10) Subvert rule of law.

Naomi then identifies all of the above save the last point against the Bush Administration.

Now, I'm the first one of the Bund to brush this off as inflammatory rhetoric, but I like it for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's historical. The girl did her homework, she backs each point up in her verbal arguments and there's no subjectivity to the discussion. This point happened in 1931, this point is happening now. This point happened in 1929 Italy, this point happened in 2003 America. (Google End of America and you'll see the interviews. My note taking wasn't that copious, so either take my work or check it out yourself.) Number two, it's intelligent. Here is opposition that doesn't say, "Don't do this because Bush did it," it's opposition because it says and makes a valid argument, "Don't do this because it's unconstitutional and here's why." Number three, it gives me hope for a rebirth of the Democratic Party. If the Democrats want to use a plank of Executive Branch moderation, that's something truly conservative. If the Democrats want to attack the global threat of terrorism not as a war but as a crime, that's an alternative position, not an anti-Bush position. An original perspective. (And think about it. Viewing global terrorism as a crime and not a war, Great Britain has been doing that for three quarters of a century and doing reasonably well. We could learn something from that thought process. But that's for another thread.)

So now that we're peaking on the Ryan Freakout Meter, let me get to what I DON'T like about this argument.

It can be used for no less than three different time frames in American History.

I'll use two in depth and hint at several more.

Abraham Lincoln used all ten steps, including martial law and the suspension of habius corpus. (The Constitution does specifically state the writ of habius corpus can be suspended in times of invasion or imminent threat. Not bad mouthing Lincoln here.) FDR suspended habius corpus as well, but still only went to nine on the Naomi bad meter. You can point out several instances where both Nixon and Wilson crossed several points on the Naomi list, and maybe you get the point.

Worth considering. Running out of time on this post, I'll write more this evening.