Backward March

WE hear a lot of bleating and whining from liberals these days about the parlous state of our democracy. For example, Frank Rich of the New York Times-and I am not making this up-flatly said that President Bush “assault[ed]” our democracy so severely that we are little different from Pervez Musharraf’s Pakistan. He said it after Musharraf imposed martial law.

To call this stupid is really an insult to stupidity. Rich is hardly alone in suggesting that Americans are living under a quasi-dictatorship. It is, in fact, a common theme in liberal polemics of late. It seems lost on all of them that if what they were saying were even remotely true, they wouldn’t be allowed to say it.

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Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg is a National Review contributing editor.

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WE hear a lot of bleating and whining from liberals these days about the parlous state of our democracy. For example, Frank Rich of the New York Times-and I am not making this up-flatly said that President Bush “assault[ed]” our democracy so severely that we are little different from Pervez Musharraf’s Pakistan. He said it after Musharraf imposed martial law.

To call this stupid is really an insult to stupidity. Rich is hardly alone in suggesting that Americans are living under a quasi-dictatorship. It is, in fact, a common theme in liberal polemics of late. It seems lost on all of them that if what they were saying were even remotely true, they wouldn’t be allowed to say it.