You've been warned!

This Alex Jones program with Naomi Wolf, a prominent progressive feminist, would be funny if the subject of her interview, her book The End of America, wasn't so scary. This book now makes it ok for progressives to become alarmed over the accelerating pace our liberty is being withdrawn. She lays out 10 steps that governments take to destroy a democracy. She claims these steps were developed by Mussolini, usually cited as the origin of fascism.

Mussolini, though, may have been following a blueprint laid out by Louis Napoleon who was elected president of France in the turbulent 1840s. On 11 December 1851, he staged a coup d'etat, rewriting the constitution to make the presidency the only real power (a show parliament was retained). This book, by Maurice Joly, a satirical dialog between Montesquieu and Machiavelli, where Machiavelli explains how Louis Napoleon followed Machiavelli's advice in his method of taking over control of France. The conceit is that Machiavelli knows what has happened in France and Montesquieu does not. One can discern Wolf's ten points in Joly's description of how Louis Napoleon took down the Republic, creating the second French Empire.

Wolf's ten steps:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizen groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors.
10. Suspend the rule of law.

I recommend reading The End of America.