Posted on 03/31/2010 5:59:00 PM PDT by ConservativeHideout
Vin Suprynowic, writing in the Las Vegas Review Journal, writes:
"The modern Prussian police state was built by Bismarck and others in the 19th century on a Spartan model, giving the central government vastly greater control over the individual than had ever been considered possible before.
Bismarck’s program centered squarely on insurance programs designed to increase support for the ever larger and more powerful government. The program included health insurance, workman’s compensation, disability insurance and old-age retirement pensions, all innovations at the time.
Starting with the model of Prussian compulsory schooling, American “educators,” starting with John Dewey and Edward Thorndike eagerly imported this Prussian model to America.
Trained to accept such state control (and now the new “green” religion) in the schools for most of the past century, then made dependent on government insurance programs (Social Security, Medicare) as surely as the pimp makes sure his young ladies are dependent on the needle and the fix only he can provide, slavery to the state soon appears inescapable, even ordained by God and nature.
“It is possible that all our politics will come to nothing when I am dead, but state socialism (“Der Staatssozialismus”) will push itself through,” Bismarck said in 1881.
“State socialism,” he called it.
We’re told that for some reason we’re not allowed to call the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda “socialism,” “communism,” “Marxism,” “state socialism” “fascism,” or anything else that might sound unpleasant.
Much as I hate to cite the tyrant Lincoln, if we call a dog’s tail a leg, does it have five legs? Telling us we’re not “allowed” to use an accurate label for something doesn’t change what it is.
Instead of allowing General Motors and Chrysler to go through normal bankruptcies, through which new and more efficient private operators could have purchased their worthwhile assets while shedding their crippling union contracts, the two giant auto makers have now been effectively nationalized. Meantime, an unelected federal “pay czar” decides on the compensation of executives, even at supposedly private banks that have paid back all their “bailout” loans. Does that sound like the normal function of the American free market, as understood in 1910, 1960 or even 1990?
Thanks to thoroughly unconstitutional “bailouts,” the federal government now de facto manages our major banks and/or credit card companies, along with our airlines and airports.
The health care bill was “sweetened” with a federal takeover of college loans. Why? You don’t imagine the federal government will ever try to manipulate the behavior of college graduates, offering to “forgive their college loans” if they agree to behave in ways favored by the fedgov, do you?
“Federalizing” all these programs shifts money and employment from the private to the government-bureaucrat sector. Unionized government bureaucrats tend to belong to outfits like the SEIU, which actively back Democrat/socialists, while dispatching purple-shirted thugs to beat up black freedom-fighters handing out “Don’t tread on me” Gadsden flags outside rigged Democratic “town hall” meetings.
The so-called “health reform” bill authorizes $10 billion to field 16,500 more IRS agents to collect and enforce mandatory “premiums,” which we’re assured are not a “tax.” Providing you’re a “normal” citizen with a job and house, of course. (Illegal aliens Get Out of Jail Free, as usual.)
Last week the Review-Journal mentioned in passing, in an editorial about socialist Congresscritter Dina Titus’ move to facilitate the takeover of Nevada Occupational Safety and Health enforcement by the federal government, that the Constitution grants the federals no authority to regulate workplace safety within the states. One letter writer couldn’t wait to write in that the newspaper was wrong: turns out the preamble to the federal OSHA law as adopted specifies that it’s all constitutional, since the federal government is empowered to regulate interstate commerce, and “workplace health and safety can impact interstate commerce.”
So we’re right back to “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, does it have five legs?” If Washington can do anything it likes because everything somehow “impacts interstate commerce,” why do we have a Constitution with that two-page list of specifically delegated powers? Why not just one sentence: “Congress shall have power to do anything it figures might promote the general welfare and/or impact interstate commerce”?"
Vin is right- our Constitution was written for the expressed purpose of limiting the power of the national government so that our god-given rights to life, liberty, and property would be better protected. As the federal government expands, so does its threat to your life, your liberty, and your property, and that is what our founding fathers were trying to protect us against. They wanted to unleash the best of human potential, and knew that that is best done when man is allowed to be free from the constraints of the state. Our economy is more prosperous when we are free and property is protected, and our society is more civil when people provide funds for charities rather than having the government take money from people and redistribute it to favored charities.
In Michigan, I have observed what happens when Democrats run government, and I predicted accurately what would happen if Obama and the Democrats won the elections of 2008. Democrats turned Michigan into Detroit, and Democrats are now turning the United States into Michigan. You need to make sure that everyone you know votes Republican next election, or else your kids will grow up in a nation that is less civil, less prosperous, and less free than then one they are growing up in now. We need to stop these Prussians who are running out government today before they turn us into Germany in 1900… 1920… or 1940.
Prussian state schools came to America in the mid 1800’s, and they’re still here. Not a good sign.
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I would take the Prussian state model over any functioning system that has ever been shown in the real modern world.And I am ducking fer sur!
Old Otto von was the granddaddy of the modern civil service. After cobbling the multi-fractious and various German states, principalities and the Prussian states into a unified Germany in 1871, somebody had to administer all the various departments and over-see the postal system, make sure folks got taxed, make sure the taxes got collected, make sure the trains ran on time ,etc. And then in something that would latter get to be a kind of habit with the Germans, to celebrate their new found power and glory as a unified nation, they invaded France in 1879. They’d do that again in 1914. And then again in 1940. The Krauts sure had a thing about kicking the Frenchies around.
John... John...John..., lookup something, anything really’’’ try to educate yourself. france declared war on Prussia around 1870 or 1871, just to teach those un-nationalistic perenial victim Germans a series lesson. It did not turn out well for the frogs.
Thanks!
...and we see the results every day.
It was pay back for all the French invasions of German-speaking principalities. The French weren’t surrender monkeys in the past, but rather very militaristic. The french militarism has gone away but the obnoxiousness continues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Meynier_-_Napoleon_in_Berlin.png
As an American of Polish descent, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I tend to side with the Germans.
In can’t help but ask, given your own time frame.
How did the American education system of 1840 falter due to modern 1850 influences and how do we suffer today from the same?
The Prussian school system was based on dull, repetitive tasks, bells, division of cirriculum and time blocs, long-term isolation from daily life, and building groupthink. The building of knowlege has never been the goal of American public education. Many of those who supported implementing it admitted that much.
Ohhhh plulllezzeee!
Are you actually saying that the Prussian advances in popular education of the early and mid 19th century are our problem one hundred and fifty years on?
Sorry but I say you are not intellectually serious, just a parrot that responds to certain cues, words, etcetera,etcetera, according to type.
It’s a free country, so you’re entitled to your opinion, not that I have any reason to value it.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Nice link.
Considering what the Poles suffered at the hands of the Germans?
Yeah, you’re right on the first point. I forgot that bit of history. Whats was the excuse for 1914 and 1940?
I assume by “1940” you are referring to the declaration of war by france against Germany in “1939”?
I assume by “1914” you are referring to the response of Germany to the total war mobilization declared by france and her Czarist ally against Germany?
Yeah I know dude, I’m being a bit cheeky here. 1914 was bad alliances on everybodys part. France, Britain and Russia against Germany, Austria/Hungry, the Ottoman Turks, etc. Never mind the Kaiser, the King and the Czar were all cousins. 1940 was everybodys response to Adolph’s wanting to set the world on fire.
I don’t believe in collective guilt. The madmen who committed those atrocities against Poland and a host of other countries are dead. Dead and buried.
However, the brilliant German culture of Goethe, Beethoven, Schiller, Schubert, Schumann, Bach, etc etc lives on! No sense throwing the baby out with the bath water.
It’s unfair to blame the Germans of today for their past. (my Polish mother said that to me when i was boy almost 40years ago.)
I’m biased as I can read German and speak “ein bisschen”.
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