“How does a free country become a tyranny..”
Good question, isn’t it?
A better question, given human history, might be how does a free country happen at all?
That said...
Quite often it was because the population demanded it. For our modern age, that may very well be the greatest lesson. In general, people demand tyranny because they become convinced that tyranny is the solution to their problems.
Though I’m pretty confident that no free country ever became a tyranny due to the circumstances of birth of an elected leader.
But what we’re talking about here is more a matter of perceptions of current events. No matter who is in power you’ll be able to find someone, somewhere who is convinced that those in power are engaged in something nasty.
Reagan was going to implement martial law to keep himself in office. Then Bush the Elder was going to do it. Then Clinton was going to use the military to avoid impeachment and stay in office and continue selling tainted blood (If you could pull up the Mia T posts from 1992 through 2000 you’d be in for quite a ride). Then Bush ChimpyMcHitler and his illegal war for oil started by a false flag operation that killed thousands of Americans….
But, all of that passed. It passed because none of it was true and there was never any evidence for it, just what people wanted to believe. It was, at best, well intentioned people who couldn’t grasp events. And at worst, foul folks who simply had no interest in truth only in venting their own anger and frustration.
I really don’t think I can convince you, I don’t plan to really try. I just want you to remember these conversations in four years when the pendulum swings the other way and you hear allegations of President Palin having sold oil rights in Alaskan wilderness refuges to gain the dirty money she used to steal the 2012 election and how the GOP used displaced caribou to intimidate minority voters. And of course, how she will be planning a military coup in order to declare herself Emperess.
A few days ago I sent you a link to a Townhall.com column by Jonah Goldberg. That column was somewhat pertinent to your question. You might check it out if you haven’t had the chance yet.
Here’s a link to that same article at National Review for anyone else who might be interested: http://article.nationalreview.com/425923/better-here-than-there/jonah-goldberg
If you want to delve into this further, I strongly recommend the following books:
Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell
The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer
The Paranoid Style in American Politics, by Richard Hofstadter
As well as anything else ever written by Thomas Sowell, Eric Hoffer or Victor David Hanson.
A lot of kerfuffles are shown to be nothing in retrospect.
Then again, a lot of things that are actually quite significant aren’t remembered later because other kerfuffles take their place. I went back and read what I had written last June, regarding Obama’s first six months in office. I didn’t remember most of that stuff, even though it was pretty major.
I gave up trying to keep track after 6 months, but you might want to check how much of it you remember. http://www.veritasbelt.blogspot.com (It’s my sister’s blog but she let me post there last year)
The admonition to keep perspective is well-taken. But especially in the context of all the cram-it-down-our-throats changes that Obama has crammed into his first year in office, I think a lot of people realize that something different is going on now than in past years. What’s going on now, for instance, makes Watergate look like tiny burps.