I've hesitated to broach this angle on the subject of executive power, but the relentless assaults by the Bush administration on our civil liberties under the excuse of wartime necessity is pushing us dangerously close to the brink of a precipice from which there is no recovery without disaster and mass suffering.
Last year, I returned to my onetime home of Berlin, Germany, to revisit a city which hosted me for over four years. It had been nearly 30 years since I had been there, and the Cold War had ended, the country was united, and Berlin had reclaimed its status as an international capital city.
It was a marvelous reunion, but I'll leave the tourism and cultural report for another time. What I was most struck by were two exhibits, one entitled "The Topography of Terror," and the other "Legalized Robbery." The first covered the manner in which the Nazi regime legitimized its oppression, imprisonment, and execution of dissidents, all the way to the extreme of genocidal attacks on Gypsies, Jews, homosexuals, and other groups. The keyword here is "legitimized."
We'd all like to think of the Nazis as just a bunch of gangsters who illegally seized the power apparatus and then ran amok. But that was hardly the case. Hitler was elected. Then he used the apparatus of the state to dismantle all checks and balances and concentrate power in fewer and fewer hands. When the Gestapo kicked down a door and dragged a family to interrogation and then concentration camps, it was all done with the legal authority of legislation and the blessing of courts packed with sympathetic justices. One of the most striking images for me was a photograph of black-robed judges giving the Nazi salute as they swore allegiance to the fuhrer. Remember that judges were supposed to be independent arbiters of legality under the constitution, just like here in the US.
The other exhibit, "Legalized Robbery," was as heartbreaking as it was informative. Relics of Jews whose names had been lost were on display: letters, combs, household articles, locks of hair, rings, photographs. Again, what was most striking was the careful explanation how it was under legal authority that these people were dispossessed of their personal property, and then charged, tried, imprisoned, and exterminated, all with the blessing of law. The paperwork was filled out properly and duly signed by empowered authority. Courts jammed with crony judges presided over trials and appeals processes.
You know the rest. I just wish we could heed the warnings of history about executive authority claiming greater and greater power for fear of external threats, and now a perpetual war against a concept of terror, rather than a specific enemy. This vagueness is no error, for in attempting to constitute unlimited authority it is necessary to keep the rationale as vague and shapeless and fearful as possible.
Yes, they claim that this time it's different. But if we did not have to yield so much of our civil freedom during the Cold War when the Soviet Union had the means, method, and motivation to lob thousands of nuclear warheads upon our heads, and also permeated our society with spies, then why is it that disorganized bands of religious fanatics require even more stringent restrictions?
The reasons are clear, and it has little to do with protecting American citizens. This is about power and its seizure by dangerous people, just as it was in 1933 in central Europe. The Germans aren't afraid to face their own horrible past. Why are we so frightened to benefit from those same lessons?
3 comments:
Isn't it now a logical fallacy to claim that any party is as "bad" as Hitler was? Though I believe that fallacy became such in response to Rush Limbaugh's use of the term "feminazi" to describe advocates of human rights. Perhaps this comparison is warranted.
I don't think Olaf was suggesting that the party was as "bad" as Hitler, but putting forth the suggestion that many of the current administration's policies and activities are startlingly similar. As for Limbaugh's use of "feminazi," there is something very suspect in comparing what is essentially a humanistic and intellectual movement to a totalitarian government that, although wreaked havoc on Europe and annihilated millions of people, was given the consent of the "people." As far as I am aware, there is no such thing as the "Hitler fallacy." Perhaps anonymous would have felt better with a Stalin analogy, or that we should not assume whatsoever that history has a tendency to repeat itself...
CB
I was not comparing regimes but only relating a parallel as I subjectively witness it. Unfortunately, most Americans really don't know squat about totalitarian regimes and how they come about--frequently through completely legal means. Thanks to a propagandistic model of public education that seeks to build little yes-men and yes-women instead of critically thinking adults, we have a collective belief that totalitarianism is only the result of revolution or invasion, when in fact the two most oppressive regimes in the 20th century (Stalin and Hitler) had full legal authority for everything they did, under laws that they tricked or forced.
If we did more thinking and less worshipping, perhaps we wouldn't even have to confront this, but our continuing desire to have a "great leader" show us the way reveals a people ripe for exploitation.
Oh wait--we have the Bush-Cheney criminial empire already. Sorry--too late.
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