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 “totalitariandictatorship.”
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.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”