The dangerous parallels are NOT among the power brokers. It's not the way the government is currently behavior that is dangerous or should be frightening.

It's the way *the people* have changed. The willingness with which they now surrender sovereignty over their lives. Their ignorance of even recent history.

I still say we were set up for this in the 70s. When gas prices spiked, and Carter emasculated us, telling us to get used to being just another country, to be content with less, etc. It was then that quality went out the window, in every meaning of the word. It was in that same era that the old-fashioned western view of "honor". Self-respect has become, instead of a necessity of life, a frivolous luxury. Shame has become a dirty word. Where once it was a signal of failure, of dishonor, of unworthiness of respect, now it's a PC code word. No longer is shame a tool to coerce positive behavior in the one feeling shame. It's now a weapon to hurl at whoever or whatever is making One feel shame. It's the person, situation, or object making One feel shame that is bad, not the One. Notice I put "One" in caps. People today are full of hubris, particularly those least deserving of hubris. Full of self-importance for no greater reason than their ability to avoid the abortionist's knife and get themselves born (granted, quite an accomplishment in today's culture). And they are taught this self-importance... this UNEARNED self importance, from cradle to grave.

It is this failing of character that A) makes the current situation possible in the U.S. and B) makes the current situation so very, very dangerous for the survival of individual liberty and civilization itself.

So's the Bradly Fighting Vehicle an armored vehicle.

I don't know the purpose of consolidating the State Militas into the National Guard, but prior to their nationalization (and being sent to fight in foreign wars from WWI to Somalia to Afghanistan), the State Militias existed to preserve the sovereignty of the the States...