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| Reichstag fire |
Compare the following account in
Conservapedia with the logic behind
Sections 1033 and 1034 of the Defense Appropriations bill, which we discussed
Tuesday. I found the comparison rather chilling:
On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag in Berlin
was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly
who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most
contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still
blame the Nazis themselves, though [author William] Shirer admits in The Rise and Fall of
the Third Reich that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will
probably never be known...”
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| 9-11 |
Didn't all this hysteria over terrorism start with 9-11? Like the Reichstag fire, the whole truth of how the World Trade Center was destroyed will probably never be known.* In response, Congress passed several acts designed to restrict the freedom of the American people, notably the USA PATRIOT Act, creation of the Department of Homeland Security (which makes it possible for the federal government to create a secret police apparatus), the REAL ID Act, and those Transportation Security Administration gropers and scanners.
The article continues:
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of
opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and
association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and
telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for
confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible
beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.” [Does the part in italics sound familiar?]
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state terror was rendered “legal,” as over the next week Brownshirts
took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and
many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched
from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and
carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them
were held, tortured and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale
for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire
threat posed by the communist menace...
Not to be alarmist, but if the Defense Appropriations bill stands, our soldiers will be able to do exactly the same thing, and not just to suspected al-Qaeda terrorists! And then there are those empty
FEMA camps... Continuing in
Conservapedia:
“The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody
insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have
seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons,
against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful
population, and also the beginning of general civil war.”
Compare this paragraph with Senator Lindsay Graham's statement about Al-Qaeda on our shores in the Defense Appropriations bill debate (from
The Hill):
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) argued that al Qaeda members are enemy
combatants and should be held and prosecuted by the military. He and
fellow Republicans have been critical of reading terror suspects Miranda
rights.
“When they say, ‘I want a lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up,’ ”
Graham said. “ ‘You don’t get a lawyer. You’re an enemy combatant, and
we’re going to talk to you about why you joined al Qaeda.’ ”
At this point, the democratic Weimar Republic became Adolf Hitler's
totalitarian Third Reich. Let me suggest that we may have a point of
comparison here with a
statement of President Obama's (July 27):
[The President] admitted
that “the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting” when it came
to dealing with Congress over the debt deal. And while he added the
caveat that our democracy doesn’t work like that – the crowd was
cheering the possibility of Obama side stepping Congress and doing
things his own way.
The Third Reich built a system that
enriched Germany's largest industrialists at the expense of everyone else. We call that system
Fascism. In one of my early posts (
January 2008),
I listed ten steps to fascism. This act effectively completes Step 10 (to suspend the rule of law). The only remaining step is Step 9, to assert that dissent is the same as
treason, and I expect that shoe to drop very shortly. We are already close to that, as evidenced by this
Washington Times interview April 6 (which I reported
a month later) and this Homeland Security
advisory dated April 7, 2009.
When I was a student at Ohio Northern University, I lived on the west end of a large open space on campus. I could see the sunrise (or a moment or two after, because of buildings and trees in the distance). I once had a horrific dream where I saw the sun rise, on which was emblazoned a black swastika. In the midst of the Red menace when I went there, that would have seemed ridiculous; but it convinced me then that Fascism would be a greater threat to this country than Communism ever was.
This is one dream that I do
not want to come true.
(Source of the Reichstag fire account: William Shirer,
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, volume II)
* Update 12/2: I have encountered some skepticism about this claim, because it suggests that I am a so-called "Truther". There is considerable evidence gathered by professional architects, engineers, and demolition experts that the World Trade Center could not have fallen the way it did solely from the planes crashing themselves through the buildings. The collapse of each building, in their professional opinion, and from films I have seen of controlled demolitions, suggest that the crash was supplemented by a controlled demolition. See the 911 Architects and Engineers for Truth site for this evidence. Also see my Dec. 2 post.
