Date: Mon, 25 May 98 00:54:38 -0000
From: philgraf <[p--lg--f] at [dsp.com]>
To: "Coast Writers Syndicate attn: Phil " <[c--wr--s] at [unobtainium.com]>
Subject: Nazi (Liberal) Mind-Set In America

TWENTIETH CENTURY BODY COUNT 

Governments: 360,000,000 (and counting) 
Ted Kennedy's driving: 1 
Militias: 0 


The Nazi Mind-Set in America
from The Future of Freedom Foundation
August/September, 1994, by Jacob G. Hornberger 

Before the end of World War II, in 1944, Friedrich A. Hayek, who was 
later to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, startled the 
Western world with a book entitled "The Road to Serfdom". Hayek argued 
that despite the war against Nazi Germany, the economic philosophy of the 
Nazis and communists was becoming the guiding light for American and 
British policymakers. In a later forward to the book, Hayek wrote: 

"But after the war broke out I felt that this widespread misunderstanding 
of the political systems of our enemies, and soon also of our new ally, 
Russia, constituted a serious danger which had to be met by a more 
systematic effort. Also, it was already fairly obvious that England 
herself was likely to experiment after the war with the same kind of 
policies which I was convinced had contributed so much to destroy liberty 
elsewhere... 

Opinion moves fast in the United States, and even now it is difficult to 
remember how comparatively a short time it was before "The Road to 
Serfdom" appeared that the most extreme kind of economic planning had 
been seriously advocated and the model of Russia held up for imitation by 
men who were soon to play an important role in public affairs...Be it 
enough to mention that in 1934 the newly established National Planning 
Board devoted a good deal of attention to the example of planning 
provided by these four countries: Germany, Italy, Russia, and Japan." 

As the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, 
Americans must ask themselves a troubling question: Did Hayek's concerns 
become reality - have Americans, in fact, traveled the road to serfdom 
the past fifty years? Or, to put it another way, did the Nazis lost the 
military battles but win the war for the hearts and minds of the American 
people? 

Consider, for example, the Nazi economic system. Who can argue that the 
American people do not believe in and support most of its tenets? For 
example, how many Americans today do not unequivocally support the 
following planks of the Nationalist (Nazi) Party of Germany, adopted in 
Munich on February 24, 1920: 

"We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of 
providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a 
living."  

"The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the 
interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and 
be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: ...an end to the power of 
the financial interests." 

"We demand profit sharing in big business." 

"We demand a broad extension of care for the aged." 

"We demand...the greatest possible consideration of small business in the 
purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments." 

"In order to make possible every capable and industrious [citizen] the 
attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of 
leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our 
entire system of public education...We demand the education at government 
expense of gifted children of poor parents..." 

"The government must undertake the improvement of public health - by 
protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor...by the greatest 
possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of 
youth." 

"[We] combat the...materialistic spirit within and without us, and are 
convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from 
within on the foundation of The Common Good Before The Individual Good." 

I repeat: How many Americans today do not unequivocally support most, if 
not all, of these Nazi economic and political principles?  

And if there is any doubt whether the Nazi economic philosophy did, in 
fact, win the hearts and minds of the American people, consider the 
following description of the Nazi economic system by Leonard Peikoff in 
his book "The Ominous Parallels:" 

"Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of 
the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and 
run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, 
is secondary: what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, 
therefore, may continue to hold titles to property - so long as the state 
reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their 
property." 

What American objects to these principles of the Nazi economic system? 
Don't most Americans favor the planned economy, the regulated economy, 
the controlled economy? Don't most Americans favor the type of economic 
controls, and the right of government to institute such controls, that 
characterized the Nazi society: wage and price controls, high taxes, 
government-business partnerships, licensing, permits, and a myriad other 
economic regulations? 

The truth is that Hayek's warning was ignored. Having defeated the Nazis 
in battle, Americans became ardent supporters and advocates of Nazi 
economic policies. 

Why? Part of the answer lies in another feature that was central to the 
Nazi way of life: public schooling. "Oh, no! You have gone too far this 
time," the average American will exclaim. "Public schooling is a 
distinctively American institution - as American as apple pie and free 
enterprise." 

The truth? As Sheldon Richman documents so well in his book, "Separating 
School & State," twentieth-century Americans adopted the idea of a state 
schooling system in the latter part of the nineteenth century from - you 
guessed it - Prussia! And as Mr. Richman points out, public schooling has 
proven as successful in the United States as it did in Germany. Why? 
Because it has succeeded in its goal of producing a nation of "good 
little citizens" - people who pay their taxes on time, follow the rules, 
obey orders, condemn and turn in the rule-breakers, and see themselves as 
essential cogs in the national wheel. Consider the words of Richard 
Ebeling, in his introduction to "Separating School & State:"  

"In the hands of the state, compulsory public education becomes a tool 
for political control and manipulation - a prime instrument for the 
thought police of society. And precisely because very child passes 
through the same indoctrination process - learning the same "official 
history," the same "civic virtues," the same lessons of obedience and 
loyalty to the state - it becomes extremely difficult for the independent 
soul to free himself from the straight jacket of the ideology and values 
the political authorities wish to imprint upon the population under its 
jurisdiction. For the communists, it was the class struggle and obedience 
to the Party and Comrade Stalin; for the fascists, it was worship of the 
nation-state and obedience to the Duce; for the Nazis, it was race purity 
and obedience to the Fuhrer. The content has varied, but the form has 
remained the same. Through the institution of compulsory state education, 
the child is to be molded like wax into the shape desired by the state 
and its educational elite. 

We should not believe that because ours is a freer, more democratic 
society, the same imprinting procedure has not occurred even here, in 
America. Every generation of school-age children has imprinted upon it a 
politically correct ideology concerning America's past and the sanctity 
of the role of the state in society. Practically every child in the 
public school system learns that the "robber barons" of the 19th century 
exploited the common working man; that unregulated capitalism needed to 
be harnessed by enlightened government regulation beginning in the 
Progressive era at the turn of the century; that wild Wall Street 
speculation was a primary cause of the Great Depression; that only 
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal saved America from catastrophe; and that 
American intervention in foreign wars has been necessary and inevitable, 
with the United States government required to be a global leader and an 
occasional world policeman." 

This brings us to the heart of the problem - the core of the Nazi 
mind-set: that the interests of the individual must be subordinated to 
the interests of the nation. This is the principle that controls the 
minds of the American people, just as it controlled the minds of the 
German people sixty years ago.

Each person is viewed as a bee in a hive; his primary role in life is to 
serve the hive and the ruler of the hive, and to be sacrificed when the 
hive and its rulers consider it necessary. This is why Americans of our 
time, unlike their ancestors, favor such things as income taxation, 
Social Security, socialized medicine, and drug laws; they believe, as did 
Germans in the 1930s, that their bodies, lives, income, and property, in 
the final analysis, are subordinate to the interests of the nation. 

As your read the following words of Adolf Hitler, ask yourself which 
American politician, which American bureaucrat, which American 
schoolteacher, which American citizen would disagree with the principles 
to which Hitler subscribed: 

"It is thus necessary that the individual shall finally come to realize 
that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of 
this nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned 
solely by the interests of the nation as a whole; that pride and 
conceitedness, the feeling that the individual...is superior, so far from 
being merely laughable, involve great dangers for the existence of the 
community that is a nation; that above all the unity of a nation's spirit 
and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an 
individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the 
whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests 
of the individual." 

Even though the average American enthusiastically supports the Nazi 
economic philosophy, he recoils at having his beliefs labeled as "Nazi." 
Why" Because, he argues, the Nazi government, unlike the U.S. government, 
killed six million people in concentration camps, and this mass murder of 
millions of people, rather than economic philosophy, captures the true 
essence of the Nazi label. 

What Americans fail (or refuse) to recognize is that the concentration 
camps were simply the logical extension of the Nazi mind-set! It does not 
matter whether there were six million killed - or six hundred - or six - 
or even one. The evil - the terrible, black evil - is the belief that a 
government should have the power to sacrifice even one individual for the 
good of the nation. Once this basic philosophical premise and political 
power are conceded, innocent people, beginning with a few and inevitably 
ending in multitudes, will be killed, because "the good of the nation" 
always ends up requiring it. 

Political killings of innocent people could never happen in America, our 
fellow citizens tell us. America is a democracy. But so was Nazi Germany. 
Hitler was popularly elected, and his economic policies were widely 
favored and acclaimed (by Germans and Americans). 

But there is another basic problem with that assertion: it is happening 
here in America. And like the German people of the 1930s, Americans 
either refuse to see it happening, or they rationalize what is happening 
so that they do not have to deal with it. Now, it is true that the 
killings do not number in the millions - but they certainly do number, so 
far, in the thousands. 

Let's take some examples. The Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas: U.S. Army 
tanks and gas were used against peaceful, religious, well-armed people. 
More than eighty Americans, including children were gassed and burned. 
And is there any remorse - any regret - any independent governmental 
investigation into this massacre? Not on your life. The government 
officials, just like their Nazi counterparts, think they did "the right 
thing" in killing our fellow citizens. And for those of you who look to 
the judiciary for protection, you had better look elsewhere: the federal 
judge who presided over the trial of the Waco survivors declared that he 
would not permit the government to be "put on trial," and then slapped 
forty-year sentences on the Branch Davidian survivors. 

Or take Randy Weaver, his wife, and son, of Idaho. First, they were set 
up on an idiotic gun charge. (Weaver sold a shotgun that was a quarter of 
an inch too short, at the request of a U.S.. government agent.) Then, 
they sent Weaver a notice of a wrong trial date. When he failed to 
appear, they surrounded his house and attacked. A government sniper shot 
his unarmed wife in the head with a bullet as she was holding her baby. 
And they shot Weaver's son in the back. Then, at Weaver's trial, they 
fabricated evidence and committed perjury. Fortunately, Weaver was 
acquitted. But have any criminal charges been brought against the 
government agents for the murder of Weaver's wife and son? Did the 
federal judge in the case even cite the agents for contempt for their 
reprehensible conduct? Well, did the Nazi government ever bring charges 
against the SS? Did Nazi judges ever punish Nazi officials for killing 
Jews? 

Government officials killed Donald Scott, a millionaire rancher in 
California. They claimed that they needed to barge into his house in the 
middle of the night to look for marijuana. And when Scott obeyed their 
order to lay down the gun he had picked up in his fear of the intruders, 
they shot him dead. And it later turned out that they hoped to find 
marijuana so that they could confiscate his land and convert it to a 
national park. 

But Americans either look the other way, the way the Germans did, or they 
rationalize what is happening by saying, "The war on drugs has gotta be 
won." 

And it is not just killings. Just as the Nazis did, they are confiscating 
people's money, land, boats, cars - anything they can get their hands on. 
No longer do they need to depend only on taxes for their revenues - they 
just go grab the money and property directly and keep it, regardless of 
the guilt or innocence of the victims. And, of course, it's all 
rationalized because "the war on drugs has gotta be won." 

And it's not just confiscation. It is also terror - the terror of the 
Internal Revenue Service agents barging into people's homes, "visiting" 
them at work, and levying liens on bank accounts and real estate without 
notice, hearing, or other semblance of due process. 

Yes, it's true - we are not dealing with the killings and mass 
confiscations and infliction of terror on millions of people. It is 
happening only to several thousands. But that's today. What happens in a 
crisis? Suppose an American ruler decided he is not going to get "pushed 
around" by the ruler of North Korea, Haiti, Panama, Iraq, or Japan? What 
happens if a war is not over in a few weeks, but instead drags out into 
months, even years, with higher taxes, more controls, and...conscription? 
What happens if Americans, who are already being taxed 50 percent of 
their incomes, now find taxes at 70 or 80 percent? What happens if there 
is a massive tax strike in which millions refuse to pay their taxes? What 
happens if hundreds of thousands of American students refuse to be 
drafted by a president who refused to be drafted? 

Will the government meekly surrender? Will it simply agree to lose 
"international face"? Not on your life. The Internal Revenue Service, the 
Department of Justice, the FBI, and the army will simply turn their 
massive powers against the leaders of the tax revolt and as many of its 
followers as possible. And they will do whatever is necessary to teach 
those "draft-dodging cowards" a lesson. The American people will learn 
what the German people learned: that the omnipotent state that loves the 
poor and the needy will remove its velvet glove and use its iron fist to 
smash those who interfere with the "good of the nation." 

Let's look at some more examples of the Nazi mind-set in America - this 
time in the Department of the Army. The army conducted nuclear radiation 
experiments on American soldiers. Why? Because the good of the nation 
required it. The army conducted drug experiments on American citizens. 
Why? Because the good of the nation required it. The army conducted 
disease experiments on the American people. Why? Because the good the 
nation required it. The army herded innocent Americans of Japanese 
descent into American concentration camps. Why? Because the good of the 
nation required it. The army entered into joint ventures with German 
Nazis at the end of World War II. Why? Because the good of the nation 
required it. 

In other words, in the past, U.S. government officials have engaged in 
evil. Nazi-like conduct for the "good of the nation." Would they do so 
again? You can bet your life they would, if the "good of the nation 
required it", and even it if entailed the violation of every single 
restriction on government power set forth in the U.S. Constitution. 

There is nothing inevitable in all this. Through the power of ideas, we 
can reverse the trend. If ideas did not matter, governments would not try 
to suppress ideas. Ideas do matter; they do have consequences; they do 
influence people into acting, into changing, into reversing course. 

But the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment - the right to speak, to 
write, to disseminate ideas - are not sufficient. The ultimate safeguard 
against the ultimate tyranny lies instead with the right to bear arms 
guaranteed by the Second Amendment. If this Amendment is destroyed or 
severely constricted, the rest of the Constitution becomes worthless, 
because in a crisis in which their power base is threatened, and in which 
there are no means of forcible resistance, government officials will 
squash the things they view as "technicalities" - free speech, habeas 
corpus, trial by jury, and the other rights guaranteed in the 
Constitution. 

Combine a crisis with a disarmed, discontented citizenry, and the 
concentration camp for hundreds of thousands becomes a real possibility. 
But when the citizenry, together with various patriotic sheriffs, police, 
and members of the armed forces, have the means to inflict severe 
casualties on their potential oppressors, tyrants think twice before they 
try to oppress their own citizens too heavily.  

That is why every single effort to restrict or control or manage the 
ownership of guns must be resisted. The ultimate barrier to the ultimate 
tyranny lies not with the ballot box. It lies not with the soapbox. It 
lies not with the jury box. The ultimate barrier to the tyranny of one's 
own government lies with the cartridge box. 

Contrary to everything our rulers tell us, and everything that our 
schoolteachers are teaching the children of this nation, the biggest 
threat to the lives and well-being of the American people lies not with 
some foreign government. The biggest threat to the American people lies 
with the United States government. 

And while gun ownership stands as a barrier to potential, Nazi-like 
behavior, the long-term solution is to dismantle, not reform, the iron 
fist of the welfare state and the controlled economy. This includes the 
end (not the reform) of the IRS, the DEA, the BATF, the SEC, the FDA, 
HUD, the departments of HHS, Labor, Agriculture, and Energy, and every 
other agency that takes money from some and gives it to others or 
interferes with peaceful behavior. It entails the repeal of all laws that 
permit such conduct. And it means the privatization of most of the 
bureaucrats who work for the U.S. government. 

But it also entails the end of potential oppressors, who, in the past, 
have shown no reluctance to engage in evil, malicious, illegal, Nazi-like 
conduct against American citizens, such as the CIA and the standing army. 

Would this mean that the U.S. government would not be permitted to act as 
the international Roman emperor? That is exactly what it should mean. But 
what about threats of invasion of the United States? Such threats are 
virtually nonexistent. But if every single citizen if free to arm himself 
to the teeth, any nation contemplating invasion would know that attacking 
the United States would be like swallowing a porcupine. 

What about a quick mobilization? There would be no reason why 
citizen-soldiers would not quickly mobilize in the event of an emergency. 
For example, suppose that the standing army is disbanded. The members of 
the 82nd Airborne Division would not simply disappear. They would become 
private, productive citizens, but ready in times of peril to answer the 
call. They could be, and probably would be more than willing to be, at 
any location in the country within 24 hours. 

Moreover, there would be a doubly positive effect in terms of economic 
prosperity. No longer would taxes have to be sucked out of the pockets of 
private citizens to support the armed forces. And the members of the 
armed forces, now privatized, would now be economically productive 
members of society. 

In his book "The Road to Serfdom," Friedrich Hayek warned Americans in 
1944 that despite their military war against the Nazis, they were 
traveling the philosophical and economic road that the Nazis and the 
communists were traveling. Our grandparents and parents ignored Hayek's 
warning. Now, we are left with the consequences; a government of 
omnipotent size and power using its power to kill innocent, peaceful 
citizens and confiscate millions of dollars of property to feed its 
insatiable hunger for more power. Today, the number of victims is in the 
thousands. But at the end of this road lie the concentration camps for 
the multitudes. 

Can the tide be reversed? Can the omnipotent state be dismantled, rather 
than simply reformed?

Yes. It will take a return to first principles - the principles on which 
this nation, not Germany, were founded: principles that hold that it is 
the individual, not the collective, that is supreme; that each individual 
has been endowed by his creator with inalienable rights; that among these 
rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure 
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just 
powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any government, 
including the American government, becomes destructive of these ends, it 
is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute a new 
government; and that no individual - his life, liberty, or property - 
shall ever be sacrificed for the good of the nation. As Ayn Rand put it 
thirty years ago in her essay, "The Fascist New Frontier": 

"If you wish to oppose [statism], you must challenge its basic premises. 
You must begin by realizing that there is no such thing as "the public 
interest" except as the sum of the interests of individual men. And the 
basic, common interest of all men - all rational men - is freedom. 
Freedom is the first requirement of "the public interest" - not what men 
do when they are free, but that they are free. All their achievements 
rest on that foundation - and cannot exist without it. 

The principles of a free, non-coercive social system are the only form of 
"the public interest." Such principles did and do exist. Try to project 
such a system. In today's cultural atmosphere, it might appear to you 
like a journey into the unknown. But - like Columbus - what you will 
discover is America." 
  
- - - - - - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- 
- - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -



 
"What is truly amazing is that the majority of our intellectual class has 
already embraced the basic tenets of fascism;  and the common man is the 
only stumbling block to the imposition of tyranny.
 The common man has read the handwriting on the wall, and he is banding 
together in militias or otherwise to stand as one to fight that which 
would suppress American liberties."