It Can't Happen Here

by Sinclair Lewis

And Fifteen—well, that’s the one lone clause that really does mean something; and it means that Windrip and Lee Sarason and Bishop Prang and I guess maybe this Colonel Dewey Haik and this Dr. Hector Macgoblin—you know, this doctor that helps write the high-minded hymns for Buzz—they’ve realized that this country has gone so flabby that any gang daring enough and unscrupulous enough, and smart enough not to seem illegal, can grab hold of the entire government and have all the power and applause and salutes, all the money and palaces and willin’ women they want.

America followed, too, the same ingenious finances as Europe. Windrip had promised to make everybody richer, and had contrived to make everybody, except for a few hundred bankers and industrialists and soldiers, much poorer.

As if to prove Samuel Johnson’s adage that “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” all of these violations of the Constitution occur under the blanket pretense that they are emergency measures necessary to preserve the American Way of Life.