Posted on 08/03/2002 6:50:20 AM PDT by serinde
Adolf Hitler predicted, on a number of occasions, that his regime, the Third Reich, would endure for a thousand years. It lasted for just twelve, from 1933, when he was elected Reichschancellor, to 1945, when he poisoned his bride and blew his brains out -- or was it the other way around? During those twelve years, Adolf and his Third Reich did plenty of damage. They executed ten or twelve million folks at home. They set off a worldwide war that murdered about sixty million more. They inspired quantum advances in the technology of killing appalling numbers of human beings in the shortest time possible, reversing the alphabet from Zyklon B to A-bomb, culminating in the annihilation of hundreds of thousands in an hour or an instant in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. They caused the United Nations to be created. Worst of all, their ultimate war crime, they made the United States government come to believe that it was, and ought to be, an elite world power and the Planetary Police. One of the Third Reich's most recognizably totalitarian trademarks was the demand, "Your papers!", as issued by some morally-deficient cretin in a black trenchcoat, or merely being held erect by a stiff woolen uniform. Like almost every "civilized" country following the "progressive" turn of the 20th century (before the late 19th century, nobody had ever heard of a passport, and people were freer to "vote with their feet"), Germany required individuals to carry officially issued identification. All of the expectable abuses followed, not just in Germany, and not just to Jewish people. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the government of Switzerland, idyllic, pastoral land of cuckoo clocks, chocolate, and lederhosen, kidnapped Gypsy children -- how would they know without demanding, "Your papers!" -- bestowing them upon more genetically and socially respectable volk to bring up. Motherly Sweden rounded up and sterilized "undesirables" as late as the mid-1970s. As an aside, I'd say that's reason enough, right there, for those Americans who still care about survival, let alone liberty, to demand the abolition of all forms of compulsory ID -- yes, including drivers' licenses -- rather than inventing new kinds of sorting systems for the sake of the New World Order, the War on Practically Everything, and the President's glorious new Department of Heimatsicherheitdienst. Any problems generated by nobody having any ID are vastly exceeded by the major inconvenience of someday being rounded up and shoved into a giant microwave oven provided by some corporation owned by one of W's pals. Another famous trademark of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich was a way it had of encouraging "good Germans" to spy on one another, reporting each other to the secret police for behavior or perceived attitudes that were even slightly suspicious -- meaning un-Nazi in character. Their proudest achievement in this field was turning little children against their own parents, something William Bennett tried to emulate when he was the Drug Czar (a position that I have tried assiduously, but without success, to find any provision for in Article I, Section 8). So much for the conservatives' widely-advertised regard for the Constitution. And now, not to be outdone by the Nazis' Gestapo, or by similar accomplishments by Stalin's Soviet Union, East Germany's Stasi, or Mao's China, Silverfoot Junior's orcish minions have a "Citizen's Corps" decreed, which would enlist Americans to rat each other out like good Germans. This is all being done in the name of the War on Practically Everything, which is actually a war to drive a pipeline through a nation that had to be destroyed to make it safe for Bush's petrocratic buddies. If this administration were really sincere about apprehending the culprits responsible for what happened at the World Trade Center, then, following current WoE procedures, they'd have to arrest, and possibly torture, everyone who worked for the U.S. State Department from 1945 to September 11, 2001; it was policies they crafted and carried out that have made everybody else in the world hate us enough to try and kill us. If this administration were sincere about preventing all future atrocities of this nature, then they'd abolish the State Department altogether, and bring everybody -- soldiers, sailors, airmen, diplomats, spies, everybody who works for the government -- home for good. If they were sincere, then they'd make sure that the unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right of every man, woman, and responsible child -- to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon, rifle, shotgun, handgun, machine-gun, anything, any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission -- remained sacred and inviolate, even -- or especially -- aboard commercial airliners. It's said that in the Soviet Union, everyday human life became so hideously distorted by the police state that nobody ever spoke freely about anything, even to his or her spouse. Toward the end, it was said six Muscovites in ten were alcoholics. No wonder the Russians are having such a tough time recovering. Perhaps they never will. We Americans are now on a path toward the same kind of half-human existence, driven -- the shabby fact itself is enough to make you retch -- by a gang of mercantilist thugs and political shapeshifters whose goal is to get richer than they are now by pretending to fight a just and noble war, following a catastrophe that they brought upon us themselves. To do this, they require that we make "sacrifices" (as if we weren't doing plenty of that already, to keep them in limousines and caviar) of our basic rights today, and of any remnant of decent civilization tomorrow. It's time to tell the bastards no. It's time to take America back and restore the Bill of Rights to its proper legal and political supremacy. That's the only genuine way to make the country safe from terrorism. As a first step, I suggest an experiment. That's all it is. That's all the significance it has. It's just an experiment. Write to your congressthing today, and your senator, as well. Throw in some state legislators and a couple of judges. Tell him, her, or it that there will be no "Citizens' Corps" or anything even remotely like it, if he, she, or it plans to keep his, her, or its phony-baloney job. Make it clear that you're fed up, and that you're joining a new movement to vote for no incumbent until the Bill of Rights is stringently and energetically enforced and the government is back inside its cage, the Constitution. Tell them you don't want George Busch's Reich to last another five minutes. It's just an experiment. Let me know what happens. If you're afraid of what might happen, doesn't that prove it's time to do something?
Silly! they won't do that!
He will just have an 'accident' on the campaign trail.
Smith 2004
This joker and others who ridiculed the TIPS proposal will change their tunes following the (unfortunately likely) next terror attacks.
(Interesting how they didn't object when citizens were asked to look for the Bronco with the two abducted girls.)
Be sure 'n' ping me.
What office is he running for?
PUBLISHED IN GERMANY -- FULL LENGTH NOVELS:Lando Calrissian und die Geistharfe von Sharu, Goldmann, 1984.
Lando Calrissian und der Flammenwind von Oseon, Goldmann, 1985.
Lando Calrissian und die Sternenhoele von Thon Boka, Goldmann, 1985.
Der Flammenwind, indeed.
GAG WRITING -- CONTRIBUTOR TO:"Ziggy" by Tom Wilson
Someone please drag this man off to the camps...
These people would prefer living in a Hillaryite world, because they would feel better about themselves. They would feel more relevant and would have a larger forum. That's why they work actively for the election of Democrats.
It's not a political or even a social issue; it's a psychological one.
If this is the translation of Homeland Security, can some nice German-speaking person verify it?
I have been waiting for the proper word.
John Galt.
No, seriously check out the link in POST#3.
These people would prefer living in a Hillaryite world, because they would feel better about themselves. They would feel more relevant and would have a larger forum.
That's true of the political animals in any crowd (I'm not including or excluding Neal). Why should anybody care how they feel as long as those that vote for them get what they want out of their representatives if elected?
I have a sick feeling that many Bushies and neocons are praying for another terror attack, so they can ramp up the "war effort".
If Bushies and neocons were truly serious about preventing terror attacks, they'd call for the US to cease intervening in foreign squabbles. That would end terror in the US, and save American lives.
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