I just finished reading American Fascists, The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges. I am, over the next few weeks, going to post quotes from the book that I find insightful, and alarming in that it can be seen happening. I will fully index the quotations. I highly recommend reading it.
Chapter 0ne: Faith, page 37.
"… Passivity in the face of the rise of the Christian Right threatens the democratic state. And the movement has targeted the last remaining obstacles to its systems of indoctrination, mounting a fierce campaign to defeat hate-crime legislation, fearing the courts could apply it to them as they spew hate talk over the radio, television and Internet. Despotic movements harness the power of modern communications to keep their followers locked in closed systems. If this long, steady poisoning of civil discourse within these closed information systems is not challenged, if this movement continues to teach neighbor to hate neighbor, if its followers remain convinced that cataclysmic violence offers a solution to their own ills and the ills of the world, civil society in America will collapse."