This week's issue of my free weekly newsletter, A-Clue.Com, offered some real political red meat. (Subscribe here.)

Some like that. Some hate it. So most of it is after the flip. Enjoy.

How is a democracy lost?

It isn't. Just as freedom can't be given, only taken, democracy can't really be lost, only stolen.

There are dozens of examples over the centuries, of honest systems turned to dictatorships. And what they all have in common is ruthlessness, not just of the dictator, but of those around him.

No one can seize power alone, and toss a system of popular government on the ash heap. That only happens when there are enough people committed to the dictator's cause that they can overwhelm, through discipline, the vast majority.

One of the most recent examples we have is in Zimbabwe.

As Rhodesia, Zimbabwe was a dictatorship of a peculiar sort. It was a dictatorship of a white minority that nevertheless tried to adhere to democratic norms. Its ruthlessness was leavened by its conscience. Ian Smith's people would not follow him all the way to any genocide he might have had in mind.

So real democracy came, just as it later would to South Africa, and Zimbabwe's Mandela became a man named Robert Mugabe. But Mugabe wasn't Mandela. In the end he wasn't even Smith. He was a tribal chief, just like dozens of others across that sad continent, and those around him were willing to do anything, to anyone, in order to maintain power.

So, gradually, democracy was crushed, the media was crushed, non-government opposition was crushed. This year Mugabe's people pushed tens of thousands of their own out of shantytowns built around the largest city, Harare, and few noticed because it simply wasn't covered.

South Africa's leader, Thabo Mbeki, is silent on the Mugabe Precedent, trying to balance the needs of a truly modern civilization with the tribal demands of his own cronies. But Botswana, to the southwest, is building a fence, an African Berlin Wall, on its border with the country, to keep the victims of Mugabe's tyranny from overwhelming it.

Without an open, transparent, and nominally democratic system, no country can move forward. All must regress into tribalism, into tyranny, into barely controlled chaos, starvation at the point of a gun.

This is a lesson China learned throughout the 20th century. A balance between order and liberty, between governed and governing, must be found, a balance that allows people to explore ideas which might, in time, threaten the government's control. We don't know what to call China these days. Is it still an absolute dictatorship? Is it still Communist? Is it free? It's none of these absolutes. It is in flux, headed toward freedom in many ways, but with a corrupt lid still covering the whole, like a pressure cooker whistling on top of a fire.

These ruminations, which I began when I started writing The Chinese Century nearly a year ago now, come to me more and more often, witnessing events in my own country. The novels represent, for me, a virtual diaspora. In fact I remain in America, in my Atlanta home, watching events with a sort of horrified fascination.

How far down the road toward absolute tyranny has George W. Bush moved? However far he has moved (and he has moved some distance), he hasn't done it alone. He has been supported at every turn by a massive, albeit minority, set of political movements - neoconservatives, social Darwinists, and religious fanatics. It's the same alchemy that held Mexico in thrall for centuries - the military, the oligarchs, the church - that in many ways still holds it in thrall.

Keeping it together takes discipline and ruthlessless. We're seeing both on display in regards to New Orleans. Bills are being shoved through Congress without debate. The media is now being prevented from covering the disaster by force of arms. Yet the President's supporters continue to not only buy his spin, but add their own.

It is this discipline among the conservative masses that scares me. George W. Bush, I've come to learn, is a dumbass, a spoiled rich brat with no more cojones than Marie Antoinette. He's a dry drunk living in a bubble of privilege, a figurehead.

The real evil in this country is that of his followers. Those who refuse to question the results of his actions, those who attack the people who do question, rather than addressing the criticism. The oligarchs want to lay off the burdens of government on the poor, the neocons want to rule the world with military technology, the religious fanatics demand that their particular brand of Christianity be the State Religion. All these conspirators, and their followers, choose to keep their mouths shut when they're discomfited, knowing that unless they maintain, the results will be like Nuremberg, and all of them will be destroyed.

Are you part of the conspiracy? You might be. Do you still think this President has a Clue? Do you still think Iraq is related to September 11, or that tax cuts always spur economic growth, or that America is a Christian Nation? Then indeed you might be part of the conspiracy, because you have a cause that blinds you, not only to the evil done in your name, but to the evil done in the name of causes you're aligned with.

At the climax of the Army-McCarthy hearings, over 50 years ago now, Joseph Welch is reported to have said something like, "Have you no shame, sir, at long last?" Well, have you?

And as to the rest of us. How deep must your outrage grow before you're willing to get off your apathetic rear ends and start fighting this tyranny in your community? Will you wait until you're forced into someone else's Church, as the victims of New Orleans are being forced at the Astrodome? Will you wait until the market bubbles burst and you're left with nothing? Will you wait until your own son or daughter lies dead on a foreign battlefield, for no just cause?

If America allows itself to fall, if we don't start listening, as we must, to the Better Angels of our Nature, who will take up freedom's banner, democracy's cause, transparency's demands? Are we to be left like those of Easter Island, who cut down all the trees until their homes became uninhabitable, or the Norsemen of Greenland, whose cattle nibbled away the grass until they starved?

The Earth doesn't care. The Earth will go on. God has all the time in the world. You can blow it up in atomic fire and, after a few million years, new creatures will rise to dominance. You can poison it with greenhouse gases, yet some species will adapt. The marble will keep spinning, long after you and your kind have been thrown off it.

But if you want to leave something behind, you better start fighting for it now. And you better start fighting for it here. Because here and now is all God's giving you. Don't let your neighbors or your prejudices turn this into Zimbabwe. Demand accountability.