The Latest Wake-Up Call

Diane McWhorter has been doing a lot of research on Nazi Germany over the last few years, and she makes some comparisons to our current state of affairs in an article at Slate.com. She does a good job at pushing through the emotionality that seems to drive (and discredit) such comparisons, presenting instead a sober analysis of the power-hoarding and civil-liberty crushing tactics of both the Nazis and NeoCons, and how they manage(d) to get away with it. It reminds me of a bumper sticker I recently read: "Blind Faith in Bad Leadership is not Patriotic."

From Slate:

"The relevance of Third Reich Germany to today's America is not that Bush equals Hitler or that the United States government is a death machine. It's that it provides a rather spectacular example of the insidious process by which decent people come to regard the unthinkable as not only thinkable but doable, justifiable. Of the way freethinkers and speakers become compliant and self-censoring. Of the mechanism by which moral or humanistic categories are converted into bureaucratic ones. And finally, of the willingness with which we hand control over to the state and convince ourselves that we are the masters of our destiny."

This is a must read article.