Pop quiz

Who said this and what country is he describing?

The government was always right and never apologized;

Any dissent was suppressed, ridiculed, banned or worse;

Secret prisons were denied and never acknowledged or spoken about;

The torture of captives was condoned;

State incarceration was not subject to the checks and balances of a legal system;

Economic plans, like for oil, were established/determined in closed sessions between politicos, commissars and production managers, far outside public view, and where government claimed privilege in so doing;

Wages were set at the lowest common denominator, no matter what Bloc country you were in;

Government agents had access to your medical records, your library records, your telephone, and your e-mail.

A place where judicial power and judicial review were proclaimed concepts, but simply ignored in application;

Where criminal records of young adults were closed to all but the military;

Where a Constitution was a mere facade and ignored by state actors.

Any dissent, debate and protest were deemed unpatriotic;

The public media was bought, paid for, and provided by the state;

The military clandestinely and shamelessly influenced the national media and public opinion;

A place where wrong was declared right;

Where tapping a phone was like tapping a pencil;

Where lying was considered a patriotic skill;

The extraction of natural resources was paramount to any concern for the environment and the impact on the health of its people;

Where the use of “state secrets,” (those things embarrassing to the government) were confused with legitimate issues of “national security”;

A place where "secrecy" and "national security" were used to control debate;

Where legitimate secrecy, was subject to political use and abuse;

Where "legislators" were mere mouthpieces for and rubberstamps of whoever was in power;

Where you lived and died with the permission of the government;

A place where foreign policy was more important than domestic concerns;

Where fear was used as a political weapon and an acceptable means of control;

Where the best medical care was reserved for the influential;

Where wealth was concentrated in the top 5%;

A place where there was no middle class -- just a small economic and political elite, and the working poor.

The speaker is Jim Marcinkowski, former Republican and CIA officer, now running for Congress as a Democrat in Michigan's 8th. The country is the Soviet Union. And he went on to note that our Republican party and its corporate friends have, in just 10 years, built a system here just like the one we spent 50 years trying to defeat.

Thanks to Steve Clemons.