America 2007 Is Germany 1930
By
Norman D. Livergood
We who live in the post-World War II period possess an immensely valuable symbol, even if we don't understand it or use it effectively: the example of Nazi Germany.
"The German experiment, except to those who are its victims, is particularly interesting, and, like the offer of a strong man to let himself be vivisected, should make a great contribution to political science. For the Germans are the most gifted and most highly educated people who ever devoted the full strength of a modern state to stopping the exchange of ideas; they are the most highly organized people who ever devoted all the coercive power of government to the abolition of their own intellectual life; they are the most learned people who ever pretended to believe that the premises and the conclusion of all inquiry may be fixed by political fiat." Walter Lippmann. (1936), The Good Society
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The 2004 election revealed that many American citizens are as intellectually and morally incompetent as the Germans in 1930. Such incompetence and ignorance always lead to tyranny. The United States is exactly at the same point in national degradation as the German nation in the 1930s when Hitler assumed absolute power and began his regime of mass murder and war crimes against the people of the world.
We've been conditioned to see Germany under Hitler as an unquestionably horrible example of dictatorial tyranny and inhuman barbarity--and to see our present American culture as completely opposite to that of Nazi Germany. And we like to think that if a tyranny such as that in Germany under the Nazi regime were present and growing in America we'd unquestionably be able to see it.
So it's a shock when we realize: most people living in Nazi Germany didn't see the tyranny! They thought it was the best time of their lives!
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By learning from the German Nazi tragedy, we can see--in twenty-first century America--that we could easily wait too long. For example, we must look at the interesting similarity of Hitler's use of the Reichstag Fire to seize dictatorial powers and Bush's use of the September 11 terrorist attack as his excuse to move us to a police state where Bush can simply "declare" that a foreigner is a terrorist and that person's rights become almost non-existent.
Without any necessity of presenting evidence, the president can now brand a non-US-citizen--OR A US CITIZEN--a "terrorist" and the suspect is brought before a secret military tribunal where the rules of evidence and prisoner rights are drastically attenuated.
Off with their heads Hitler was able to brand anyone he considered an enemy and see that that person was summarily executed. How long will it be before President Bush begins to brand as "terrorist" any US citizen who disagrees with him?
The fact that ivy league university professors and other supposedly intelligent persons think Bush's seizure of such police-state powers is okay, and the civilian and military cover-up of torture in American prisons in Iraq and Cuba, proves that the fascist mentality is rampant in our society.
http://www.hermes-press.com/germany1930.htm