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From Jonah Goldberg’s Goldberg File on National Review Online:

I got to thinking about all of this while dealing with the readers of my syndicated column who insisted that I must be some kind of Nazi because I think terrorist agents of foreign powers should not be accorded due process. I can totally understand how people can disagree with me. What I’m at a loss to understand is their granite-like conviction that if we deprive Jose Padilla of his right to trial by jury, we’ll become a totalitarian regime. Sure, I can see how it might bring us a teensy-weensy bit closer to a less free society. But the distance between us and the Third Reich or the Soviet Union is hundreds of miles and we are arguing over inches.
Those with literary minds see this movement of inches as foreshadowing a movement of miles. The problem is that life doesn’t move like a novel or screenplay. Think about all the hysteria that surrounded the presidential ambitions of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. Perfectly sensible people fretted that these men might become dictators or tyrants. Now, I may have problems with both men, but that’s slander against Buchanan and Perot ? and more importantly, it’s slander against America. If Perot or Buchanan tried to declare martial law for illegitimate reasons, the American system would snap them in two. Officers would resign; governors would refuse to cooperate. Congress would impeach. Hell, we impeached Clinton ? do you honestly think we wouldn’t impeach a would-be Hitler?
A better example: Think of all the hysteria over Richard Nixon. Amid all the endless commentary about Watergate and Nixon’s “imperial” abuses of power, people keep forgetting to mention that Nixon resigned, peaceably. No soldiers left their barracks and no Nixon-defenders said they should. This country doesn’t have it in it to become a dictatorship, because the American people will not be dictated to. This may reflect a bit of wishful thinking, and too much faith in the inherent goodness of the American people, on my part. But it’s still a lot more rational than those who think this country would roll over for a Hitler in a heartbeat.

True.