Alan Stang
WHEN DICTATORSHIP COMES - How do you know?
Sun Dec 15 01:42:16 2002
208.152.73.210

WHEN DICTATORSHIP COMES - How do you know?
http://www.etherzone.com/2002/stang081602.shtml

By: Alan Stang

Most Americans would agree (I hope) that the victims of a totalitarian
dictatorship have the moral, if not the legal, right, indeed the
obligation, to use any means to overthrow that dictatorship. The only
people I can think of who don't, are Christians who misunderstand
scripture, especially Romans 13. You would have to look a long time to find
somebody who believes that victims of Nazi oppression didn't have the
profound, moral right to use any means, from assassination to TNT, to
destroy it. Again, if you believe Romans 13 says you must obey a ruler
however evil he is and defer to whatever crimes he commits, if, in other
words, you believe God is a Nazi, then you are probably one of those people
it would take a long time to find.

One reason the victims are morally justified in doing whatever they can get
away with to liberate themselves is that a dictatorship by definition
cancels the rules of normal human association. The main reason such victims
may do as they like is that God says believers must replace an evil ruler,
and scripture is full of praise for people who do exactly that. We are told
to remember Jael with approbation, because she hammered a spike through
Sisera's temples while he slept and nailed him to the ground. Not at all
the kind of thing a genteel Republican woman would do.

So, the question arises, how do you know when a system has become a
totalitarian dictatorship, thereby liberating its victims to do whatever
they can get away with? What are the signs? When did the Hitler system
become totalitarian?

That's easy. Hitler imposed a totalitarian dictatorship on Germany on . . .
when he . . . Hmm.

Notice that even in Hitler's case that isn't an easy question to answer.
Suppose we're living in Germany and it is January 30, 1933. That is the day
Hitler takes over. Are we living under a dictatorship? No, not yet.
Remember that Hitler took power legally. President Paul von Hindenburg
appointed him Chancellor. On January 30, 1933, Hitler hadn't yet done
anything dictatorial. So, if we start the revolution on that day, we would
be wrong. Hitler would have said we were breaking the law, and he would
have been right. We do know that somewhere between that day and the day he
started World War II in concert with his ally, fellow totalitarian
socialist dictator Joe Stalin, September 1, 1939, he did impose a
dictatorship on Germany.

When? What did he do to make that fatal change? What we are talking about
today applies to all totalitarian dictatorships; we are talking about
Hitler, because the modern species of insanity known as "liberalism" has
assiduously kept the "Nazi threat" alive for its own totalitarian purposes
all these years.

Early in the 20th century, some observer added the word "totalitarian" to
dictatorship to describe a new development in government. Before that time,
your typical dictator was satisfied just to run the system with mock
elections, or none at all. Today, we call such a system "authoritarian." If
you just let the dictator run the government, skim off the graft, live in
the palace and make hefty deposits in Switzerland, he will leave you alone.
Look at your typical banana republic or Al Capone's Chicago.

The totalitarian dictator is not just more of the same thing; he is
something totally different. Inspired to liberal frenzy by the development
of technology that makes it possible, he wants total power, power over
every aspect of your life, from what you eat, to where you work, to what
you read and think and then some. Hence, the term "totalitarian
dictatorship."

New Chancellor Hitler went to work to grab total power, but the people
wouldn't give it to him, so Nazi thugs burned the Reichstag, the building
in which the German version of Congress met. Hitler blamed the Communists
for the crime, and, in the emergency, the people gave him the power he
wanted. All still legal. Hitler replaced the governments of the historic
German states with his own men. See, for instance, The Rise and Fall of the
Third Reich, by William L. Shirer, a liberal.

So, it isn't easy to determine when you are looking at a totalitarian
dictatorship, especially when you don't have the advantage of hindsight.
Years later, professors with that advantage can point to a date and say
when it happened. Indeed, even then they can't be sure. One can make a case
that everything Hitler did from beginning to end was at least legal,
because he was the government and made the laws. Ask the professors when
Nazi Germany became a totalitarian dictatorship and you will probably get a
few answers. And this would apply to every totalitarian dictatorship.

Let me know if I'm wrong, but I can't think of one case in which one of
these weasels came right out and told the people what he was doing. It
would have been so helpful if Hitler had announced well before January 30,
1933: "Guten morgen, Damen und Herren. My name is Adolf Hitler. Since early
childhood, I have been a criminal psychopath. I labored long years as a
homosexual prostitute in Vienna and Munich, with the result that I suffer
from a work-related injury in which it is hard to sit down and must make
hours-long speeches. Now, I am seizing total power in order to impose a
dictatorship and kill Jews."

It would have been helpful, but it doesn't happen. Always, everywhere, the
aspiring totalitarian dictator says he is doing what he is doing for the
people's "own good." In ancient Rome, the dictator gave the people
handouts, then known as "bread and circuses." Hitler loved boat rides and
wanted all German people to enjoy them. You can see the germ of that
classic technique even in the gangs of the 1920s that sold storekeepers
"insurance." Who knows, if Al Capone had hired a couple of Harvard
professors instead of more headbusters, he could have become President.

So, how do you recognize metastasizing totalitarianism? Certainly one
symptom has to be the centralization of power, especially police power, in
the government. That could well be the main symptom, for the obvious reason
that centralization of power is totalitarianism; is just another way of
saying it.

That is why the Founding Fathers gave us "separation of powers." They knew
that when one man has all the power, he has a blank check for abuse. So, in
the Constitution, they put the powers of the federal government into
competing hands and separated federal power from state power. The system
has worked tolerably well all these years.

Look around. Do you see the centralization of power, especially police
power in all its forms, in progress in this country? Is one man merging the
main competing agencies? Is he erasing the line between federal and state
police power? If so, you are looking at the main hallmark of dictatorship.

Another hallmark is government by emergency. Dictators love emergencies
such as war, because emergencies inhibit thought and deliberation.
Emergencies foment hysteria, which dictators happily use as the excuse to
seize additional power. Shakespeare had Henry IV advise his son: "Be it thy
course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels." The Nazis burned the
Reichstag. Look around. Do you see any trace of government by emergency? If
so, you are looking into the eyes of dictatorship.

Look around. Are people here becoming more and more afraid to speak their
minds, as in Nazi Germany? Are certain subjects verboten? One of my
personal heroes, pitcher John Rocker, is in trouble again. Apparently, the
maitre d'hotel made the mistake of seating him next to some sodomites in a
restaurant, and the effervescent Rocker described them as "fruitcakes."
John isn't usually so genteel. The last time he spoke on the subject, the
Prostitute National Press rockered him. Will they do so again? What's your
opinion, sports fans? And how many times this week have you answered Nazi
Germany's signature command: "Your papers, please!" Are you getting used to
that?

What did the Founding Fathers say? Well, why did they give us the Second
Amendment? It certainly wasn't such preposterous reasons as sport or
hunting. It wasn't even self-defense, however crucial that is. No, the
reason the Founding Fathers said again and again and again that they wanted
every American to be heavily armed, was that we would need those arms if it
became necessary to overthrow the government.

Every once in a while, said Jefferson, the tree of liberty must be watered
by the blood of patriots and tyrants. Read the Federalist Papers, by
Hamilton, Madison and Jay. The Fathers were suspicious of the system they
had created, and reserved the right of the people to replace it. The
Declaration of Independence, the nation's birth certificate, perfectly
expresses that spirit. How often did they have to repeat it?

Has the time come? Is today Der Tag? I don't know. I do know that Der Tag
is coming. A long time ago, I was naïve, and believed the United States
fought World War II because we hated Fascism. Now I understand that we
fought because we love Fascism so much we want it all for ourselves.

As we have seen, it would be fatally unwise to act too soon. Please don't
do that. But, God forbid, don't be too late. Be with me here next week for
more.


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