Posted on 08/29/2002 8:24:14 AM PDT by justlurking
What Will Stop It?
Lesson #1 en Route to the Gulag
by John Loeffler, Steel on Steel Radio Program
Americans have enjoyed so much freedom for so long, they have forgotten that freedom is a fluke in the history of the world; not the norm. Our freedoms were hard-won over hundreds of years of human tears. The current view that freedoms are somehow self-sustaining and "obvious" ignores a primary rule of the political universe, well established in human history: governments and those in them always gravitate toward power, money and control; power for themselves, confiscating money and property from their people, who then have to be controlled lest they protest too much.
The founding fathers thoroughly understood this, having experienced a lack of protections first hand. They understood that government is a necessary evil, not a paternalistic good. In assembling the Constitution, they knew that only a clear statement of citizens' rights would prevent power money and control from having their way.
Every one of our rights was established to protect individual citizens, the minority against the majority and to block abuse of power. "Shall not be infringed" was designed to prevent government encroachment; not as a guide for a "delicate balance" between "liberty" and "security." Delicate balances always collapse uni-directionally toward power, money and control and away from individual freedom!
Lessons from the Looking Glass
Since 911, conservatives have been falling all over themselves to blow gaping holes in constitutional protections, demonizing those who object as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. "This is a war," they rant, "and we're defending freedom!" Now catch the illogic of this: We are going to protect freedom by demolishing the very legal protections that guarantee it.
In 1933 Germany faced a crisis. The country had just come through a horrible post-World War I decade of economic chaos and massive inflation. Tensions between the communists and the fascists were fierce. Both parties had substantial seats in the national parliament -- the Reichstag.
On February 27, 1933 the Reichstag building itself was set aflame by arsonists. Germany's newly-elected Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, quickly blamed the deed on his chief political rivals, the communists, accusing a mentally-deficient Dutchman by the name of Marius van der Lubbe of setting the fire. Van der Lubbe was tried and subsequently executed. Still many suspected something was amiss. The conflagration was so massive and so rapid, that the hapless van der Lubbe couldn't have been a sole operator. Indeed, took 60 years before conclusive evidence surfaced that the Nazis had actually set the fire as a ruse for blaming the communists!
Germany's new chancellor, Adolf Hitler, approached the aged president, Paul von Hindenburg, warning that their country was on the verge of a Bolshevik revolution and that emergency measures were required to handle the situation; measures Hitler assured him would only be temporary.
Reluctantly, von Hindenberg issued a warm fuzzy executive order entitled, Die Verordnung des Reichspraesidenten zum Schuetz von Volk und Staat (Ordinance of the Reichspresident for the Defense of People and State). Has that Vaterland Security sound to it, doesn't it?
The Verordnung suspended those portions of Germany's constitution, which were equivalent to our Bill of .Rights - temporarily, of course. However, once the rights were suspended, power and control quickly took over. The Nazis shut down the dissenting press. Political rivals were "disappeared" off the streets and hauled off to Dachau concentration camp (ten years before the Endloesung (Final Solution) was determined at the Wannsee Conference!). Squads of SS began spying on all the potential citizen criminals to see whose ideas were not politically correct so they could be branded enemies of the state.
Shortly thereafter, on March 24, 1933, the Ermaechtigung Gesetz (Empoerment Law -- Law to Remove the Distress of People and State) passed the Reichstag 441-94, which gave Hitler the power to run things by executive order. In the avalanche of bad legislation was included the Heimtuecke Gesetz (Treachery Law), which made opposition to Nazi Party policies equivalent to treason against Germany. This meant you couldn't criticize government policy without being an enemy of the state. This was in essence the very same argument being made by conservatives that if you oppose Constitutional violations by Homeland Security, you are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The Nazis used this law to imprison dissenters.
Since the German populace had been disarmed, no one could fight back. An atmosphere of fear settled over Germany as the long night of the black shirts began. Everyone - Jews especially -- hunkered down, hoping that it would all blow over and get better. But it never did. Once constitutional limitations against abuse were suspended - for the good cause of defending the Homeland -- they never came back.
But We're Not Nazis!
Oh, but we're not Nazis. We love freedom. Really? When Hitler came to power, the majority of Germans hailed him as the salvation of Germany. They were the good guys, or so everyone thought. It is crucial to remember that the entire Third Reich was a totally legal event, including the Holocaust! The people voted it in. Even after the war, many Germans were still wondering what had happened those last 15 years.
Witness the worldview changes that have occurred since the radical left flower child revolution of 1960s. Americans have experienced such historical revisionism in schools that few can tell you what the Bill of Rights contains and why those rights are so important. America has been in a constant state of self-demonization to the extent that Constitutional rights are viewed as the obsolete product of dead white slave owners.
Communism is alive and well on college campuses. For thirty years college students have been fed a steady diet of anti-American propaganda, attacking capitalism and exalting socialism with an all-powerful state as the ideal form of government. Indeed, Americans have accepted most of the major tenets of the Communist Manifesto, thinking they embody the essence of a free society. Moreover, American students have been encouraged to think of themselves as citizens of the world rather than the U.S. The Constitution is seen as a block to the emerging need for environmental harmony and global governance.
Americans have come to accept the core belief of Postmodernism; that there is no such thing as absolute truth or morals. Since there is no such thing as absolute truth, there is no such thing as absolute law. It all depends on what your definition of "is" is and the law can be tortured to say what we want it to say. As such, it can be used to convict anyone who needs to be convicted, since their rights can be defined away because it's all a matter of definition. Besides, many Americans believe that rights are something that are "deserved" rather than inalienable. And, after all, politically incorrect people don't deserve rights.
The Bill of Rights itself is under severe attack by means of thousands of laws which curtail the exercise of the rights or end run its prohibitions. The Bush administration seems determined to abolish habeas corpus and to suspend individual rights at will, merely by definition of an enemy combatant. The list of abuses is virtually endless. Every day, American citizens are routinely having their rights violated thanks to some legal precedent, which was established early on - usually leaving them little recourse because the law has been distorted so badly and the system has been rigged against them. The slide towards money, power and control is proceeding virtually unabated.
In a free society, rights protect the individual from the government. In a dictatorship, rights protect the government from the people. If enough legal precedents for end-runs of all the protections contained in the Bill of Rights are allowed to continue unchecked, where will those precedents be taken by future leaders when all protections have been dismantled? What will stop the tyranny that will invariably follow? Nothing.
We've already had our Reichstag Fire. I won't claim that the government is to blame, but the previous administration certainly did try to take take advantage of it.
Americans have experienced such historical revisionism in schools that few can tell you what the Bill of Rights contains and why those rights are so important.Yes.
And even those who call themselves "conservatives" or "Christians" continue to voluntarily send their children, the only real hope our nation has, into these government indoctination camps called "public schools".
Ahh, but that's only the ignorant majority. History is shaped by that minority of folks with a positive vision and a sense of destiny -- like the millions of kids being raised in home schools today!
(With Thanks to Schoolmasters Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Tse-Tung and Pol Pot for the Teaching.)
As an amateur historian of this sad century whose time is almost up, I would like to reflect upon six lessons I have learned in my studies. Folks who wish to live free and prosperous in the next century would do well to understand the failures of the last.
Lesson No. 1: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and take you someplace you don't want to go because of who you are or what you think-- kill him. If you can, kill the politician who sent them. You will likely die anyway, and you will be saving someone else the same fate. For it is a universal truth that the intended victims always far outnumber the tyrant's executioners. Any nation which practices this lesson will quickly run out of executioners and tyrants, or they will run out of it.
Lesson No. 2: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and confiscate your firearms-- kill him. The disarmament of law-abiding citizens is the required precursor to genocide.
Lesson No. 3: If a bureaucrat tells you that he must know if you have a firearm so he can put your name on a list for the common good, or wants to issue you an identity card so that you may be more easily identified-- tell him to go to hell. Registration of people and firearms is the required precursor to the tyranny which permits genocide. Bureaucrats cannot send soldiers to doors that aren't on their list.
Lesson No. 4: Believe actions, not words. Tyrants are consummate liars. Just because a tyrant is "democratically elected" doesn't mean that he believes in democracy. Reference Adolf Hitler, 1932. And just because a would-be tyrant mouths words of reverence to law and justice, or takes a solemn oath to uphold a constitution, doesn't mean he believes such concepts apply to him. Reference Bill Clinton, among others. The language of the lie is just another tool of killers. A sign saying "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Makes You Free) posted above an execution camp gate doesn't mean that anybody gets out of there alive, and a room labeled "Showers" doesn't necessarily make you clean. Bill Clinton notwithstanding, the meaning of "is" is plain when such perverted language gets you killed. While all tyrants are liars, it is true that not all political liars are would-be tyrants-- but they bear close watching. And keep your rifle handy.
Lesson No. 5: Our constitutional republic as crafted by the Founders is the worst form of government in the world, except when compared to all the others. Capitalism, as well, is a terrible way to run an economy, except when compared to all other economic systems. Unrestrained democracy is best expressed as three wolves and a sheep sitting down to vote on what to have for dinner. The horrors of collectivism in all its forms-- socialism, communism, national socialism, fascism-- have been demonstrated beyond dispute by considerable wasteful trial and bloody error. Leaders such as Bill Clinton who view the Constitution as inconvenient and ignorable are harbingers of tyranny.
Lesson No. 6: While nations do not always get the leaders they deserve, they always get the leaders they tolerate. And anyone who tells you that "It Can't Happen Here" is whistling past the graveyard of history. There is no "house rule" that bars tyranny coming to America. History is replete with republics whose people grew complacent and descended into imperial butchery and chaos. Dictators count on the assistance of people who are complacent, fearful, envious, lazy and corrupt. While there is no "Collective guilt" to the crimes of a regime (all such crimes being committed by specific criminal individuals), there is certainly "collective responsibility"-- especially for those who watch the criminals at work without objecting or interfering. A French journalist of the last century wrote: "I must speak out for I will not be an accomplice." Evil tyrants require, indeed they depend upon, willing and unwilling accomplices-- good people who would never think of harming a soul themselves. Lenin called such people "useful idiots". DeTocqueville observed that "America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, she will cease to be great." As related in the Old Testament, God judged nations based upon the immorality and criminality of their leaders. Entire peoples were scourged because of their failure to remove corrupt leaders. As we move from the Twentieth Century into the Twenty-First, we should take care to remember the ancient story of Sodom and Gomorrah. If we wish to avoid the butchery of the Twentieth Century and the righteous judgment of the God of our antiquity, we would do well to keep our Bibles, our Constitution and our firearms close at hand.
Prof. Rudolph J. Rummel, author of Democide and Death by Government offers these observations :
1. Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth.
2. Nobody can be trusted with unlimited power. The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom.
3. Political scientists almost everywhere have promoted the expansion of government power. They have functioned as the clergy of oppression.
4. Power kills, absolute power kills absolutely.
5. The way to virtually eliminate genocide and mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking power. This means to foster democratic freedom.
6. We have a solution for war. It is to expand the sphere of liberty.
7. Our knowledge and our ability to handle our problems progress through the open conflict of ideas, through the tests of phenomenological adequacy, inner consistency, and practical-moral consequences. Reason may err, but it can be moral. If we must err, let it be on the side of our creativity, our freedom, our betterment.
Absolutely true. Never forget that the same leftists who howled that Jorge Bush was "illegitimate" due to not having a popular-vote majority claimed that the Klintons - who got only 39% of the European-American vote in 1992 - won by a landslide, despite being every bit as much an example of "minority rule" as anything in South Africa ever was (except with the races reversed).
Learn what roadside spy cameras and traffic cameras look like - and what their weak point is!
Don't kid yourself. The current administration continues to perpetrate this attack on our God-given rights.
What seems to be common to dictators is the control of the military. The control is cemented by ordering troops into battle and increasing the power of government. Have a nice day.
Zero. Nothing.
His argument is as meaningless and worthless, as his laughable attempt to link American policy with the actions of an infamous Austrian paperhanger.
Blowhard, claptrap, nincompoop, drivel unworthy of a Freeper consideration.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.