After reading dozens of [Paul Krugman] columns you start to hunger for something more in-depth that might answer the central political problem of our era: With so much to get mad about, sitting in broad daylight, why hasn't America risen in rage?

... The story of mainstream America's failure to understand the radicalism of the Bush/Cheney Republican regime, Krugman argues, echoes Kissinger's account of the difficulties Old Europe faced in recognizing the rise of a "revolutionary power" that did not play by its rules and that did not acknowledge its legitimacy. Turning Kissinger's geostrategic diagnosis inside out, Krugman casts Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove & Co. as today's Jacobins and Napoleons, determined to upend the status quo of American democracy and slaughter its sacred cows -- like a tax-supported social safety net, civil liberties, electoral norms and international cooperation.