Posted on 11/13/2008 12:17:20 AM PST by Boucheau
I am hardly apathetic. I am the one in a the group who never takes for grated what my grandfather, who escaped Buchenwald, used to tell me, how he thought it would never happen in Germany. They were wealthy. They were a serious part of the German community, barely celebrated the holidays, owned factories, shops, knew all the right people, etc etc etc. I am the one who has said it COULD happen again (elsewhere in the world) when many of my relatives pooh pooh it.
However, Americans are NOT as uncurious and as easy to manipulate into committing atrocities as the Germans/Poles/etc of the era. Germanic Europe at the time was a strong patriarchal society, with people being trained to fall in line since infancy. There was not the American stress on freedom and individuality. There were not so many keynoters willing to stand up to authority. Nazi Germany can’t happen here unless we disarm our military; American liberals will not start to round us up and shoot our babies in the face. And you know this.
A Civilian Army is such a dangerous thing. It sounds like the revolutionary guard style troops dictators always keep around them. We must fight this.
Well, you can’t just go shooting NOW. We need to all read about revolutionary times and know how to determine WHEN enough has happened. Seriously, being aware is a good thing, but you can’t take action against someone who might want to hurt you, not in civilian peacetime. You need to wait until it gets bad, but be careful.
Obama has not done much at all, and he doesn’t take office for another few months. He may try to govern far left, but maybe this is what our Republican leadership needs to finally grow something more than a Ken doll has in his shorts.
You are brilliant and correct in your assessment of how evil power took over in Germanic Europe in WWII. I agree that the most TROUBLING thing about the American left is how they have insidiously taken over education from K through graduate school (and want preschool too now!), and how they own/control most media sources. That the Democrats, who control Congress and the White House, are even thinking about that “Fairness” (Censorship) Doctrine shows how they fear even a trickle of conservative info getting out.
But I believe that with internet one cannot put the genie back in the box. Satellite radio cannot be stopped. We have so much at our disposal if we needed underground communication; the WWII underground and partisans would have wept with envy if they could see what we have today.
Also, while human nature is what it is, and relatively unchanging since the first human walked the earth, there is also sociology and people can behave greatly differently depending on their upbringings. Mother Theresa and Jeffrey Dahmer both were born human babies with human nature. Life turned them out differently. The American psyche is very different from the 1930s Germanic/Middle European psyche.
We are brought up to nearly worship freedom, bravery, and individuality. This sounds subtle but the differences can be seen even in our kindergartens already. Ask teachers who’ve taught in various countries. Americans are tough audiences. And American families differ from each other FAR more than in any other country.
In other countries, you can go into every house on the street and see that the beds are all the same way, the things are folded or stored in the same way, the diet is similar, etc. This is NOT true in America.
Liberal Americans cannot be manipulated enough to run gas chambers and crematoria to kill us all. They will not be led to believe we are not humans. There are shades of gray along the trail to creating an Auschwitz, and we need to be awake, but nothing will get this far in America unless we are invaded.
Sorry pal, but your historical analogies, political hyperbole and hysteria are way, way over the top.
There is no comparison -- zero, zip, nada -- between the US today and the early days of Hitler, Stalin or Mao.
For one thing, Germany, Russia and China had just suffered years of war and/or civil war, costing the lives of MILLIONS upon MILLIONS dead.
For another, those countries were then economic basket cases, with even relatively prosperous Germany having suffered massive inflation and even starvation after WWI. For Russia & China, every "economic downturn" meant millions died.
For another, none of those countries had long democratic human rights traditions.
And for another, the writings and pronouncements of godless Communists and Nazis bear NO SERIOUS RELATION to those of our next president. For examples: Hitler promised in Mein Kampf to persecute Jews, Russian Communists promised a dictatorship, and Mao promised his power would grow out of the barrels of his guns. We've seen nothing remotely like that here.
So, if we want real and apt historical comparisons, then go back to JFK in 1960, LBJ in 1964, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bubba Clinton in 1992. ALL came to office with Democrat majorities in Congress, and so had at least some years to do pretty much whatever they wanted.
And what were the results? Well, Americans rather quickly decided they really didn't like what Democrats do in power, and began voting for more and more Republicans.
In the mean time each of those Democrats did the country serious damage, some of which we still suffer from today (think especially of Jimmy Carter).
On the other hand, it was NOT the fricken END OF THE WORLD!
Why, thank you. I'll carry this insult with me all day as I care for my little kids, all because I dared to say to some brilliant Freepers that Obama is not Hitler. Hitler killed my great grandparents in the most horrible ways. Obama is not Hitler.
If you think I am a fool, fine, but to use the F word on a conservative, decent Mommy is certainly not showing you to be much of a gentleman.
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. “
Good quote.
But it looks like “danger” is fast approaching....
- John
“American liberals will not start to round us up and shoot our babies in the face. And you know this.”
Do you know the origin and the meaning of the phrase: “useful idiots”
“American” liberals are but tools/puppets for the hard left.
They will be scuttled along with the “opposition” when the hard-left takes hold.
You are missing what I am telling you and twisting my words/meaning. I never said Al Franken would go around shooting babies, or anything of the sort.
The hard-left is hoping the “well-intentioned” American liberals get everything they want and more.
American liberals will soften us up for the real left.
But don’t worry, and there’s no need to argue the point with me, because, after all, it will never happen here.
If only we could have a similar tete a tete in twenty, or so, years.
Well, Christ, I just might go to 0bama the patriot’s swearing-in after all!
Absolutely no comparison at all, folks.
The “American” left is just as patriotic and freedom-loving as I am.
Excuse me while I go kiss my leftist neighbor and offer him my next paycheck.
Are you talking about my posts, or other posts here?
Earlier I agreed that using Hitler and his brothers in tyranny as a direct comparison to 0bama and today’s Democrat was over-the-top.
When I used them it was to illustrate how the left works.
The principles driving the left are the same at any stage along the way, from modern European socialism to the worst communist dictator — the same.
The communists merely had the strength of their conviction, with a boost from economic and war-time “necessity” to facilitate the mass murder that is the inevitable final stage of socialism/communism.
I am saying that we are in the early stages of this falling-off and not that 0bama is Hitler!
“In the mean time each of those Democrats did the country serious damage, some of which we still suffer from today.”
Again, no big deal. A little socialism never hurt anyone, did it?
For someone who seems to know a little something about history you sure are willing to give them a pass.
Hey, enjoy all the patriotic tax increases coming your way. Oh, and say hello to your friendly local leftist and his fascism — he means well. It’s nothing like socialism, nothing at all. Just those irritating little granola-eaters and their homosexual agenda.
If incremental socialism and it’s threat to our freedom and sovereignty is “hysteria” and “hyperbole” then I’m your Huckleberry.
I'm an American -- I have a long way to fall in this regard.
I don't want to fall at all, zero, zip, nada!
I guess if you don't like what I have to say you can always use your free will and stay away from posts from "Boucheau".
Here is some interesting hysterical hyperbole:
by Robert Briggs:
Reading the news has been exciting lately. Hardly a day passes without the announcement of some new government initiative to save the world. Bail out the mortgage lenders; bail out the big insurance company; bail out the banks; bail out the money-market funds; bail out the commercial-paper sellers; bail out the depositors in belly-up banks; bail out the automobile companies; bail out the deadbeats who didn’t make their mortgage payments when they came due. When the Treasury bumps up against its borrowing limits, and interest rates begin to rise on its bonds, bail it out, too, by having the Fed flood the world’s credit markets with new reserves created by nothing more than a snap of its electronic finger. Who knows what industry, special-interest group, or noisy whiners bloc will be bailed out next? With the Fed standing ready to inflate without limit, the festivities need never end.
Of course, our rulers assure us that they will defend the taxpayers’ interest like pit bulls. Why, just recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in which they declared, “We must safeguard the interest of American taxpayers [and also, they continued] protect the hundreds of thousands of automobile workers and retirees, stop the erosion of our manufacturing base, and bolster our economy.” Whew! These dedicated public servants clearly do not intend to rest until they’ve pretty much cured all the world’s visible ills, including bad breath and flat feet. If they fail, in any event, it won’t be because they were too timid about throwing the taxpayers’ money at the problems.
All of which raises the eternal question, have we become a communist country yet? Yes, I know you probably think this question is silly, but I intend to treat it with the seriousness it deserves in the light of past, present, and likely future government actions. To ensure that I do not adopt an irrelevant or tendentious set of criteria in my inquiry, I will consider the question with reference to the list of ten measures that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels presented in the Manifesto of the Communist Party as “pretty generally applicable” for the establishment of communism “in the most advanced countries.” In the following text, I reproduce each of Marx and Engels’s points verbatim in bold font (from the 1955 edition of Samuel H. Beer), followed by my own evaluation or commentary.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
Of course, in this country we pretend to have private property in land, except for the huge amounts of land owned outright by governments, especially the enormous federal holdings in the western states and Alaska. But land taxation, land-use controls, and other regulations that trench on the rights of ostensibly private owners have already cut a big slice out of thoroughgoing private property rights in land. As environmentalism marches boldly onward, private property rights in land are likely to be chipped away further and further. Land rents, of course, are taxed along with other property income.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
In place. Worse to come.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
Some right of inheritance remains, but estate (“death”) taxes have demolished much of its substance. Under the next administration, we might well see renewed attempts to “tax the rich” more heavily by means of increases in estate-tax rates or changes in bracket levels.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Well, the rebels here are simply shot dead (see encyclopedia entry for “American Civil War”), even if their rebellion takes a muted and inconspicuous form (see entry for “Ruby Ridge”). As for the emigrants, if the federal government believes that it can squeeze a dime out of them after their departure, they will be hounded to the ends of the earth for purposes of legalized robbery (aka taxation). I am not a lawyer, but I notice that the law in this regard appears to be extremely complicated. I recommend that you consult your tax attorney before renouncing your citizenship or even moving abroad without renouncing it. Remember the government’s motto: you’ve got money, and we want it.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
We call it the Federal Reserve System. As if it were not enough, the government is now in the process of taking an ownership position in hundreds, perhaps ultimately thousands, of “private” commercial banks by means of preferred corporate shares gained in exchange for its bailout doles.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
Despite PBS, NPR, and other outright socialist media, most of the means of communication in this country purport to be privately owned and managed. Don’t believe it, though. No radio or television broadcasting station can do business until it obtains an operating license from the government. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission makes rules right and left for these stations, often in insultingly trivial detail. Newspapers remain somewhat freer for the moment. It appears that the government has tamed the publishers and reporters sufficiently, rendering them little more than amplifiers for its propaganda, so that no further purpose would be served by nationalizing them. Indeed, permitting them to exist as ostensibly private entities allows the government to spread its lies more effectively than it could by operating its own Pravda or Izvestia.
As for transportation, we have Amtrak, of course, as well as countless government-owned bus, subway, and surface train systems in various cities. But we also have licensing, regulations, taxes, and subsidies galore in the so-called private transportation sector, bearing on cars, trucks, buses, and aircraft, so that any resemblance to capitalism, living or dead, in that domain is purely coincidental.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Except for war-related plants, which the government has built in abundance and continues to own in many instances, the government for the most part has not felt the need to take over manufacturing facilities. If, however, the current proposals to include the Detroit car companies in the big bailout proceed as the Democrats wish, then the government may take an ownership interest in them, just as it is acquiring corporate shares in the banks it is bailing out. Cars built in government-owned factories: what a deal! Remember the Trabant? Holy Smokes, Fräulein! Please, God, do not let them take us there.
Some industries, such as those producing ethanol and beet sugar, would scarcely exist, but for government subsidies or protection from foreign competition, but in a formal sense, they comprise private, not government-owned, undertakings.
As for recovering the waste lands and so forth, we’ve had the Bureau of Reclamation for a century, subsidizing foolish dam-building and unprofitable irrigation of deserts all over the West. The ongoing conspiracy between members of Congress and the Corps of Engineers bids fair to destroy all the natural resources that the Bureau of Reclamation has not polished off. For “the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan,” we’ve had the USDA for a century and a half. If it improves the soil any more than it has already, the dirt will cry out for mercy. (The taxpayers won’t complain, of course, having been persuaded that the whole rigmarole aims solely to support the small family farm, an economic institution whose importance in the modern economy now rivals that of the small family pizza parlor.)
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Thanks to the ingenuity of capitalist inventors, entrepreneurs, and businessmen, we now find that enormous amounts of goods and services can be produced with only a small fraction of the resources previously required. In light of this development, the government has decreed, in effect, an equal obligation of none to work. If you are an ordinary layabout, you may collect unemployment insurance benefits, countless forms of welfare and other public assistance, and generally devote yourself to a life of unproductive dissoluteness. If you are a lousy business manager or owner, you may collect your bailout money and the rest of the lavish subsidies the government uses to keep crummy businessmen at ease, and generally devote yourself to a life of unproductive dissoluteness. Marx and Engels must be high-fivin’ in Socialist Valhalla: in this country the workers and the capitalists are finally completely equal!
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between towns and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
Marx worried excessively about this matter because he lamented “the idiocy of rural life.” Having been born and reared in rural backwaters, I know what he was talking about. In this country, however, the problem has been obviated by educational and cultural developments that have effectively reduced the entire population, urban as much as rural, to a condition of idiocy. Notice, for example, that not a single teenage girl in the United States, whether she lives in a town or in the countryside, can accomplish even the simplest task in a public place without holding a mobile phone to her ear. Many teenage boys seem to suffer the same incapacity, but bigheartedness compels us to admit that they may actually be using the phone for business. Needless to say, none of these kids can make change, but―hey!―MacDonalds and other retail outlets have faced this idiocy squarely and defeated it by putting pictures on the cash registers. If a kid can see, he can sell burgers. Eat your heart out, Karl and Fritz.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of child factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
We’ve long had the “free” education, of course. For the results, go back and read my comments on the previous point. Not that innumeracy is the only outcome of this socialized schooling; would that it were. A kid may not know how to divide two fractions, but he knows that unless his parents recycle the trash, they are destroying the planet. Factory employment of children would be a Godsend for the parents of many of the sixteen-year-old lads and lasses now cluttering the malls or whiling away their youth playing daft video games.
* * *
So, here we stand, having come close enough to communism for government work. It is a mistake, however, to call it communism or socialism, because a major part of its genius is its preservation of the form of private property rights, even as the substance of such rights is progressively gutted. Properly speaking, our system is, and long has been, economic fascism. “It’s a free country,” the Red State voters keep yelping. But it’s not. In truth, it never was. But a hundred years ago, it came a great deal closer to being free than it does now.
So long as the rulers left even a semblance of private property rights in place, however, entrepreneurs kept finding ways to make a buck by serving consumers. Despite being ever more hogtied, they kept bursting the bonds, working around the obstructions, undercutting the looters and world-savers, and benefiting their fellow human beings. There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation, Adam Smith opined, and on that score he certainly must have been right. But we can continue down this fascistic economic road only so long. Therefore, in the present distressing circumstances, we may be warranted in asking: is our politico-economic system finally going smash in a frenzy of monetary inflation, bailouts, and government takeovers? We’ll know the answer pretty soon.
Good post! Thanks! America can and will survive a left wing Democrat as President.
If only.
Thank you so much, I agree with you. I have just sent this link to my email list of family and friends.
I am saying that we are in the early stages of this falling-off and not that 0bama is Hitler!
From BroJoeK:
“In the mean time each of those Democrats did the country serious damage, some of which we still suffer from today.”
From Boucheau:
Again, no big deal. A little socialism never hurt anyone, did it?
For someone who seems to know a little something about history you sure are willing to give them a pass."
"a little something about history," is about all I know, and much of that from arguing with other Freepers, then going back to look up the facts! ;-)
Please understand, we don't disagree here -- but the US has been "sliding toward socialism" for at least 100 years, and some people would argue: since the ink first dried on the US constitution!
Yet somehow we've survived it all, and NO ONE has ever seriously suggested we return to the "good old days" of any particular president (well, I had an uncle who thought "Silent Cal" Coolidge was just about perfect! ;-))
Indeed, if you really want to know where we're headed, it's not toward Hitler, Stalin & Mao -- certainly not right away. Where we're headed now is more toward Canada, Sweden and France.
And yes, I do think that's a terrible thing, if for no other reason: a major failure in US global leadership could easily encourage the kinds of warfare that would make Hitler, Stalin and Mao seem like child's play!
No joke.
“Indeed, if you really want to know where we’re headed, it’s not toward Hitler, Stalin & Mao — certainly not right away. Where we’re headed now is more toward Canada, Sweden and France.”
Well, right now the US is indirectly propping-up these countries because of capitalism and her wealth.
There is a chain reaction that COULD take place after we fall too far to the left resulting in not only our own economic difficulties but worldwide economic failure — utter chaos.
I think what you need to keep in mind is that communism is not dead. It is still there like so many mold spores.
My chief point here is that I believe that many American people can indeed be pushed to the hard-left.
I know that freedom is fragile and it requires upkeep and TLC to remain strong — WHEN EVERYONE BELIEVES IT IS INFALLABLE THEY DON’T WORK TO PROTECT IT.
I’m not “panicked” about Nazi’s.
I’m scared that my kids will be forced to work most of their productive lives for the government.
I’m very concerned about excrutiatingly high taxes and regulation on me as a businessman.
I despise the fact that Americans are distracted from LIVING FREE by having to worry about what their government is going to do them and their private property today. This is NOT the way Americans should live — and it’s destroying our GREATEST ASSET: the American sense-of-life (cofidence, can-do, optimism, spring in our step, a little “cockyness” etc.) that the left loves to hate — and I almost hate them for hating it!
This is a real tragedy - a real loss of the best that being alive has to offer. Most won’t suffer its loss until it’s gone, though. Most will quietly wonder why things “don’t seem the same”.
This is the “frog in a pot” scenario that I am witnessing real-time and it is really bothersome. I have always been uplifted by other people’s happiness. When is the last time you witnessed someone humming a tune in public, or whistling a tune, or walking with real spring and joy in their step, happy to see everyone — YOU MIGHT THINK THEM CRAZY NOWADAYS and be put-off by it.
How about really energetic, motivated and proud people? How much are they tolerated nowadays? With these a human exudes a confidence, a reserve that is presently viewed as arrogant. When, in fact, it is innate human nobility and benevolence that is a allowed to shine as a direct result of being free — our natural state — our birthright.
Proof of our falling-off is that most of us can no longer stand being contrasted in this way with bliss, joy, confidence and optimism. THIS IS THE HANDYWORK OF THE LEFT, PEOPLE! They are succeeding in associating happiness and money, YOUR VERY FREEDOM, with guilt, some indiscriminate negativity via conditioning and groupthink.
“And yes, I do think that’s a terrible thing, if for no other reason: a major failure in US global leadership could easily encourage the kinds of warfare that would make Hitler, Stalin and Mao seem like child’s play!”
Humans are either free or they’re not. Anything else is headed in a direction against our evolving. We either evolve or we die.
When the great man said: “Live free or die.” He wasn’t asking you to make a choice. He was putting universal law into words. There is no other way for human beings.
German kids, activists destroy anti-Nazi exhibit
Jerusalem Post | Nov 15, 2008 | BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
Posted on 11/15/2008 6:47:32 AM PST by fella
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2132612/posts
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I think too many people are going to the mall to buy shoes with lights in them.
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