America's Mortal Danger

Part I

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Over the following six and one-half years, Hitler pursued an agenda that allowed him to gain complete dictatorial control over the country. It was done slowly -- the stripping of rights from citizens and Hitler's accumulation of personal power. Everyone knows the outcome of these events. Beginning on September 1, 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Hitler began an immense war of aggression and was responsible -- directly and indirectly -- for the deaths of about 50 million people including millions of Jewish, Roma, homosexual and handicapped civilians who were murdered with brutal industrial efficiency.

In the aftermath of the war, the world was utterly baffled at how Germany, a highly enlightened democracy, could have degenerated into totalitarian police state without breaking a single law or violating a single constitutional provision. I do not mention these events in passing. I bring them up because America is currently under attack by the same process that destroyed Germany in the first half of the 1900's.

To begin, I must allow for the fact that some things that I post here are allowed (by me) to get carried away. I do believe everything I say (e.g. I do believe that George W. Bush is a terrorist, based on the strict definition of terrorism), but I allow my tone to be shrill at times to combat the even-more-excessive shrillness on the other side. This entry, on the other hand, will be based strictly on facts and rational analysis of those facts. I am not allowing myself to get carried away with this subject, because it truly is the greatest danger that America has ever faced, and has a very real possibility of actually occurring.

Much of Hitler's dictatorial success can be ascribed to the fact that he was able to gain "emergency powers" with the so-called "Enabling Act" of March 23, 1933. Officially called the "Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich", Hitler was able to get the Enabling Act passed by successfully blaming the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933 on communists, calling it the beginning of an uprising. The Enabling Act gave Hitler dictatorial control of Germany, which was unsettling to many, but Hitler calmed their fears by saying, famously and ironically:

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one."

The moment the act passed was the completely legal end to German democracy. From that point on, the Reichstag was merely a rubber stamp for everything that Hitler wanted to become law, paving the way for gradually diminishing civil liberties, disguised as necessary security measures, the Nuremberg Laws of "racial purity", and the eventual rounding-up and murder of "undesirables." The rest, as they say, is history.

The lesson here lies in the fact that the German people never saw it coming until it was too late. George Orwell had not yet written 1984, but Hitler and the Nazis were masters of "doublespeak." As I mentioned before, the law that gave Hitler complete dictatorial power over Germany was called the "Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich." Opposing a law with a name like that would have been political suicide.

Part II

Americans have never gone to war easily unless prompted to by outside events. On September 5, 1939, four days after Hitler invaded Poland and most of Europe and Canada had declared war on Germany, the United States made a statement of neutrality. Every war that America has entered has been after a dramatic precipitating event. The sinking of the battleship Maine in the Spanish-American war, Pearl Harbor in World War II, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam are the major examples. In hindsight, these events which were shocking and unquestioned at the time have all had doubt cast upon them, if they have not been completely discredited. I don't believe that most Americans believe in an aggressive foreign policy, or that we should act as the world's policemen, and so we have always been slow to go to war or come to the defense on an ally.

It was the same in Germany in the 1930s. Hitler would never have been able to gain control if it had not been for the Reichstag fire, which is now suspected to have been orchestrated by Hitler himself for that exact purpose. Germany didn't want another war, having been soundly defeated in World War I, and it was only by perpetuating the perception that Germany was under attack and was fighting for its survival that public support swung behind the idea of war and of giving the government greater power. Hitler promised that he was protecting the German people, and they bought it. Just as Americans are doing today.

Part III

We in America are rapidly going down the same path today as Germany did in the 1930s. We've already had our "Reichstag fire" on 9/11, and there's plenty of questions as to what Bush knew ahead of time and what his explanation could be for his bizarre actions on the morning of 9/11. His actions, in the absence of any defense from the White House, indicate that he knew much more about the attacks than he let on.

As in Germany, Bush used the destruction of the World Trade Center to whip up public support for a war in Afghanistan under the guise of fighting terrorism. We now know that the war in Afghanistan had much more to do with proposed oil and gas pipelines through Afghanistan than it did with disrupting Al Qaeda.

On the home front, Bush used the threat of terrorism as an excuse for the broad and far-reaching law that strips a variety of civil liberties from American citizens, the law with the belligerently nationalistically named USA PATRIOT act. Among other things, the law functionally revokes the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eight amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

After Afghanistan had been subdued, Bush refocused on Iraq, and sold his war to the American people on the basis of falsified evidence of weapons of mass destruction and invented terrorist connections. As in Germany, the American people bought it. We now know that the reasons for going to war in Iraq were many-fold, but that none of them have to do with the defense of the United States, or with terrorism: 1) To secure access to the Iraqi oil reserves before someone else got access to them first. I'm going to put this part in bold because it's very important: The reason that we were still so determined to go to war with Iraq even after the weapons inspectors found no weapons of mass destruction was because if Iraq could prove that it had no weapons, sanctions against Iraq could have been lifted by the UN. If the UN lifted sanctions, then Iraq would have been free to sell its oil to anyone. America would not have been high on the list that Saddam would have wanted to sell oil to. 2) To remove one of Israel's preeminent enemies in the region, and 3) As a show of American military superiority.

All along the way, whenever public support for these aggressive actions has diminished, the Bush administration issues a "terror threat" to stir up support for their foreign policy by pandering to peoples basest fears. Anyone who questions their policy is called "anti-American" or "cowardly" or a "terrorist sympathizer." This is the definition of fascism (see The Hijacking of America, May 10, 2004).

Part IV

What's next for America if we sit back and allow it to happen isn't pretty. It will pretty well follow the pattern of the Nazi regime in Germany and will ultimately destroy our country. Just today, the Department of Homeland Security (point of order: America is NOT a "homeland" -- this is just another example of a hyper-nationalistic name for something that makes it effectively above reproach) and the Department of Justice have issued a scary sounding terror warning (NY Times) which cites "no new information" and "no specific threat" and "no increase in chatter" (all emphasis is mine). They might as well issue executive statements that "the sky is blue", "John Kerry will run on the Democratic ticket" or that "we've always been at war with Eastasia."

Whether or not a terror attack occurs, we know that there are people who want to hurt Americans, largely due to Bush's arrogant and aggressive foreign policy and they likely are in the United States and they likely are planning attacks. The danger from these attacks is not the potential loss of life, but that Bush will use another terrorist attack (and either allow or cause it to occur) to claim complete dictatorial control of the United States.

Part V

Even though there is no constitutional provision under which the President can declare a state of national emergency, because of executive orders that have been issued over the 20th century, the President has the power to declare a state of national emergency which completely negates the government and turns all power over to FEMA. Make no mistake about it, this is martial law. Concentration camps would be set up. FEMA would have the power to draft whoever it wanted to do whatever it wanted. It would have the power to seize any property it wanted. It is a complete suspension of the constitution (for a more complete treatment, see FEMA - The Secret Government).

Most importantly, we could assume that the scheduled elections would be cancelled. The Bush administration is in a positive-feedback loop, where their actions cause the very reactions which they use to justify more aggressive actions. Bush needs the terrorists to drive his support as much as the terrorists need Bush to drive their recruitment. But let me make one thing clear: a suspension of the constitution under FEMA means the end of America. Just as Germany ceased to be Germany when Hitler became dictator, America will no longer be America no matter how many flags Bush places behind his podium.

America is struggling for its life right now, and very few people are aware of it. The lessons that we were supposed to have learned from the Holocaust were not that we shouldn't separate people by race, and then round them up and kill them. That's not something that we needed to learn through experience. What we were supposed to learn was that we need to take responsibility for our democracy because even the most well-intentioned system of government has the potential to degenerate into great evil. Bush is right about one, and only one, thing. And that is that we do need to have constant vigilence. Not against terrorists -- there will always be those who don't agree with us and will resort to violence -- but against the evil that can come out of our own nation, wrapping itself in the flag and claiming to have good intentions, but committing atrocities in our name.