7. On the military and the n.a.z.is, see Michael Mann, Fascists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 63, 65, 6869, 104.

8. On evangelical capitalism, see Malcolm Gladwell, "The Cellular Church," New Yorker, September 12, 2005, 6067.

9. In connection with the rationalization of the universities, note the persistent efforts of think tank critics and right-wing operatives (e.g., David Horowitz) to demand an end to tenure for professors and to "liberal domination" of faculties.

10. See Bacevich, The New American Militarism, chap. 3.

11. The German scholar Gotz Aly (Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the n.a.z.i State [New York: Metropolitan, 2007]) has argued that the economic lot of ordinary Germans during the n.a.z.i years was better than scholars have allowed, and helped to secure popular allegiance more firmly while making resistance less likely. But see the critical review by Richard J. Evans, a leading contemporary historian of n.a.z.ism, "Parasites of Plunder?" in The Nation, January 8/15, 2007, 2328.

12. Robert Dahl, "Business and Politics: A Critical Appraisal of Political Science," in Robert Dahl et al., Social Science Research on Business: Product and Potential (Columbia University Press: New York, 1959), 53.

13. Josh Meyer, "Unprecedented Domestic Surveillance since 9/11," reprinted from the Los Angeles Times in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 9, 2006, A-1.

14. Robert O. Paxton, as quoted by Alexander Stille, "The Latest Obscenity Has Seven Letters: F-a-s-c-i-s-m," New York Times, September 13,. 2003, A-19. See also Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Knopf, 2004), 42 ff., 78 ff.

15. Both Mussolini and Hitler employed violence during the run-up to the elections. See Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, 266 ff., 285; Mann, Fascists, 9899, 104, 116; Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, chaps. 4, 5.

16. Mussolini launched his "March on Rome" in 1922; by 1924 Fascists were firmly in control. See Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, trans. Leila Vennewitz (New York: Holt, 1966), 217 ff.; Hitler's first sustained, although unsuccessful, attempt at an electoral victory was in September 1930. With the cabinet's decree of February 1933 and the Enabling Act of 1933, the n.a.z.is were able to proceed as they wished. See Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, chaps. 45, and Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, 259 ff., 332, 351.

17. "The Decline of America's Armed Forces," in Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, ed. Robert Kagan and William Kristol (San Francisco, 2000), as cited by Bacevich, The New American Militarism, 86.

18. The New York Times reported that the then head of CNN "made a public show of meeting with Republican leaders in Washington to discuss CNN's perceived liberal bias." According to the Times CNN subsequently became more conservative. April 16, 2003, B-9.

19. See Marie Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Ma.s.s Incarceration in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2, 15, 19. See also Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn, From Noose to Needle: Capital Punishment and the Late Liberal State (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 16668, 17374.

20. During the Katrina disaster the federal government suspended minimum wage requirements for some businesses under contract for the cleanup operations.

21. In keeping with the spirit of inverted totalitarianism the program was later shown, but on a more obscure TV channel.

22. See the Oxford English Dictionary, under "patient."

23. One definition of "popularize" in the OED is "to render democratic."

24. NSS, sec. 1, p. 3.

25. See The Corporation: A Theological Inquiry, ed. Michael Novak and John W. Cooper (Washington: American Enterprise Inst.i.tute, 1981). Also my chapter, "The Age of Organization and the Sublimation of Politics," in Politics and Vision, expanded ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 315 ff. There are good discussions of the modern corporation and of managerialism in Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977); Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., and Herman Daems, eds., Managerial Hierarchies: Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Modern Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980); and Rakesh Khurana, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). For a critical view, see Edward S. Herman, Corporate Control, Corporate Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

26. Michael Ignatieff, "Barbarians at the Gate?" New York Review of Books, February 28, 2002, 4.

27. See Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election (New York: Randon House, 2001).

28. The remarks were by Joshua B. Bolten, the president's budget director and former chief domestic policy adviser. "Bush 'Compa.s.sion' Agenda: An '04 Liability?" New York Times, August 26, 2003, A-14.

29. There were, of course, the unsavory incidents of repression and genuine damage during the McCarthy era, especially by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the later, far less effective attempt by President Nixon at compiling an "enemies list" of academics and intellectuals. See the fine work by David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE NEW WORLD OF TERROR.

1. Cited in Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism, trans. Jean Steinberg (New York: Praeger, 1970), 318n29.

2. Cited in Lewis L. Gould, Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans (New York: Random House, 2003), 350.

3. New York Times. April 4, 2003, B-2.

4. Recall that the celebration was relatively short-lived when glitches were discovered that prevented computer systems from registering the change in millennial dating. Financial reporting, security systems, and the military were temporarily disrupted.

5. The antiballistic missile program (ABM or Star Wars) championed by the Reagan administration was an admission of American vulnerability.

6. NSS, Introduction, p. 2.

7. "Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interest," Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2000, 53.

8. Cited by Roger Cohen, "A Global War: Many Fronts, Little Unity," New York Times, September 5, 2004, sec. 4, p. 1.

9. NSS, Introduction, p. 1.

10. Speech of January 22, 2004, in New York Times, January 23, 2004, A-19, A-23.

11. At the second anniversary of 9/11 the ceremonies of remembrance featured children who read the names of the victims and supplied the music.

12. Ignatieff, "Barbarians at the Gate?" 4.

13. New York Times, September 11, 2003, A-1.

14. NSS, Introduction, p. 1.

15. Ibid., sec. 3, p. 5.

16. See the interesting a.n.a.lysis in Robin, Fear. Fear has long been exploited in American politics. The Oklahoma bombing triggered fearful responses that were quickly exploited. In 1995 a Conference of the States, which was being organized by the usual groups concerned with problems of state governance, quickly became the stuff of conspiracy theories alleging that the aim of the conference was to establish a totalitarian "One World Government." A campaign was launched that eventually led to the cancellation of the conference as one state legislature after another withdrew. In 1994 fifteen states adopted resolutions a.s.serting their sovereignty and insisting upon a narrow view of federal power. See Dirk Johnson, "Conspiracy Theories Impact Reverberates in Legislatures," New York Times, July 6, 1995, A-1.

17. To be sure, "empire" had been ascribed to the United States as long ago as the Spanish-American War of 1898, and "superpower" first began to be used in 1950 to describe the USSR and the United States as the "world's only superpowers."

18. Prior to the invasion of Iraq the main, perhaps the sole, official inst.i.tutions protesting were the city councils in several regions of the nation. Over one hundred of them pa.s.sed resolutions opposing the action.

19. Leviathan, chap. 31, p. 237.

20. Ibid., chap. 42, p. 356.

21. William and Lawrence Kaplan, The War over Iraq (2003), 121, as cited in Bacevich, The New American Militarism, 92.

22. Hobbes meant his state of nature and war of each against all not merely as imaginary constructs but as descriptions of what life is like whenever there is no "common power" to "awe" men into behaving peaceably. Such a condition, Hobbes argued, existed in the international relations among sovereign states and in a society in the midst of a revolution.

23. De Cive, ed. Howard Warrender (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), chap. 10, sec. 9.

24. See "On the Office of the Sovereign Representative," Leviathan, chap. 30, p. 219 ff.

25. Hobbes on violent death: Leviathan, chap. 13, pp. 8183.

26. In converting the citizen into a subject, Hobbes was reacting against the more democratic conceptions of the citizen circulating during the English civil wars of the 1640s.

27. Leviathan, chap. 28, p. 209; chap. 17, p. 112.

28. New York Times, January 23, 2004, A-19, 23.

29. For a further discussion see my Tocqueville between Two Worlds:. The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

30. Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 663.

31. Leviathan, 64.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE UTOPIAN THEORY OF SUPERPOWER:.

THE OFFICIAL VERSION.

1. New York Times, April 15, 2003, B-3.

2. New York Times, March 7, 2003.

3. Not long after it had been issued, the administration withdrew it without offering an explanation or disavowal.

4. NSS, sec. 3, p. 5.

5. The Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945), p. 210, par. 325.

6. NSS, sec. 9, p. 24.

7. Ibid., sec. 1, p. 3.

8. Ibid., Introduction, p. 1.

9. Ibid., p. 2.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., p. 3.

12. Ibid., sec. 6, p. 13.

13. Ibid., sec. 9, p. 24 14. Ibid., sec. 9, p. 23. This claim is accompanied by recognition of the need for "effective international cooperation . . . backed by American readiness to play our part." The current controversy over reconstruction of Iraq suggests that the formula has been reversed: effective American action backed-it is hoped-by international willingness to accept a subordinate part.

15. Later some foreign businesses from France and Germany were selected to compete for contracts. Clearly this was intended as bait to weaken the opposition of those governments to the invasion.

16. See, in particular, Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York: Nation Books, 2007).

17. NSS, sec. 9, pp. 2224. Compare Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), 15960.

18. NSS, sec. 8, p. 18.

19. Ibid., Introduction, p. 2; sec. 3, p. 6; sec. 5, pp. 11, 12; sec. 9, p. 24.

20. Ibid., sec. 9, p. 23.

21. In the light of the Bush administration's record, the NSS's promise to "protect the environment and workers" hardly needs comment.

22. NSS, sec. 9, pp. 23, 24.

23. Note that following the Katrina hurricane disaster of September 2005 when the administration was accused of having responded tardily and ineptly, it dispatched federal troops and began a public relations campaign to amend the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that restricted the employment of federal troops to "the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circ.u.mstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Const.i.tution or by act of Congress."

24. It is true that when trying to quell civil insurrections or civil wars, const.i.tutional governments have appealed to reason of state in claiming extraordinary powers, but the justification was that a war existed.

25. NSS, Introduction, p. 1.

26. Ibid., sec. 9, p. 24.

27. James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer (New York: New American Library, 1963), 78.

28. See the fine study by Michael J. Graetz and Ian Shapiro, Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).