American elections, power and the Bill of Rights.

Also from Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World:

Those who seek power at any price detect a societal weakness, a fear that they can ride into office.  It could be ethnic differences, ..., perhaps different amounts of melanin in the skin; different philosophies or religions; or maybe it's drug use, violent crime, economic crisis, school prayer, or "desecrating" ... the flag.

Whatever the problem, the quick fix is to shave a little freedom off the Bill of Rights.  Yes, in 1942, Japanese-Americans were protected under the Bill of Rights, but we locked them up anyway - after all, there was a war on.  Yes, there are Constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure, but we have a war on drugs and violent crime is racing out of control.  Yes, there's freedom of speech, but we don't want foreign authors here, spouting alien ideologies, do we?

The pretexts change from year to year, but the result remains the same: concentrating more power in fewer hands and suppressing diversity of opinion - even though experience plainly shows the dangers of such a course of action.