Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here" is back in the news; the question is, "Is It happening here?"

Question of the day: did Sinclair Lewis anticipate our time by writing a novel that is suddenly back in the news?

"It Can't Happen Here" was published in 1935. Today, in a story in the Wall Street Journal, it's ranked first on a list of the best five political conspiracy novels ever published.

This is how John Miller describes "It Can't Happen Here" at the Corner on National Review online:

"A charismatic Democratic senator who speaks in 'noble but slippery ­abstractions' is elected president, in a groundswell of cultish adoration, by a nation on the brink of economic ­disaster.

"Promising to restore ­America's greatness, he promptly ­announces a government seizure of the big banks and insurance ­companies. He strong-arms the ­Congress into amending the Constitution to give him unlimited emergency powers. He throws his ­enemies into concentration camps.

"With scarcely any resistance, the country has ­become a fascist dictatorship.

"No black helicopters here, though. Sinclair Lewis's dystopian ­political satire, now largely forgotten except for its ironic title, was a ­mammoth best seller in 1935, during the depths of the ­Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe.

"His president, Berzelius ("Buzz") Windrip, is a ruthless phony with the 'earthy sense of humor of a Mark Twain'; one of the few who dare oppose him openly is a rural ­newspaper editor who is forced to go on the run.

"Lewis's prose could be ­ungainly, but he captured with caustic humor the bumptious narrow- ­mindedness of small-town life."