The continuing struggle for absolute authority over the United States has been a series of defeats for the spirit of liberty and individualism that were the guiding stars of our Founding Fathers. Or most of them. The defeat of individual enterprise began with the de facto central bank of New York, and the corporations that have grown up around it. This rule of the Corporation continued until the people demanded that limits be put into place. To little avail! Forty years after WW2, the checks and balances on the corporations were removed in Reagan's plan of deregulation. Twenty years after that, 9/11 provided the excuse for passing the Patriot Act, which removed the checks and balances preventing the president from placing himself in the position of absolute authority. Now, here we stand in our own present day and time on the threshold of the unthinkable, and it has materialized right before our eyes.