It CAN Happen Here!

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.”

--Sinclair Lewis, author of It Can’t Happen Here, 1935

For the first time since the Nixon era, Americans have reason to doubt the future---or even the presence---of democracy. We live in a society where government conspires with big business and big evangelism; where ideologues and religious zealots attack logic and the scientific method; and where the ruling party encourages xenophobic nationalism based on irrational, manufactured fear. The party in power seems to seek a perpetual state of war to hold on to power, and they are willing to lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their ends. The question must be asked: Are we headed toward the end of American democracy?

Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis depicted authoritarianism American-style in his sardonically titled dystopian novel: It Can’t Happen Here, published in 1935.

Now, best-selling political journalist Joe Conason argues that it can happen here-–and a select group of extremely powerful right-wing ideologues are driving us ever closer to the precipice. In this compelling, impassioned, yet rational and fact-based look at the state of the nation, Conason shows how and why America has been wrenched away from its founding principles and is being dragged toward authoritarianism.

Joe Conason is a national correspondent for The New York Observer, columnist for Salon.com and head of the National Institute Investigative Fund. In 2007 he wrote: “It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush.”

It Can Happen Here is a must-read if you want to understand that America is undergoing a transition, who is responsible, and why.