What happens when you put a frog in boiling water?

Let’s find out.

America is rapidly descending into the straitjacket of fascism. Telephone calls are monitored; emails recorded; web traffic analyzed. The government is watching you, and it is not a friendly gaze. We live in a time of fear.

Historically, one of the few practical checks on tyranny in America has been greed. Greed is the carrot that spurs innovation. Quite simply, insufficient liberty is bad for the bottom line.

So the question is: has the swelling chorus of fascism begun to dampen innovation in America? When will Big Business push back?

Or will they? Perhaps the time of innovation is at an end. An increasing array of frivolous patents are granted each year by the US Patent Office; lawsuits threaten the inventor, engineer and software developer at every turn. Many foreign inventors and engineers find it so hard to get a US visa they simply go somewhere else.

There is another possibility. The Western world view may have already spent itself entirely, its mojo gone, its creative juices spent. There may, in fact, remain only tyranny and stasis. Without the greed that fuels innovation, there will remain no one and nothing to defend the rudimentary vestiges of liberty in America, and the world will fall into the black pit of lock-step, mindless uniformity, critics ruthlessly silenced, creative people crushed under heel as deviants.