From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Sat Aug 30 2003 - 09:54:14 MDT
[Having (hopefully) resolved the chronic email problems I've been having all
summer, I'm back to more regular posting.]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robbie Lindauer
>
> On Saturday, August 30, 2003, at 12:01 AM, Brett Paatsch wrote:
>
> > I do NOT see President Bush as an evil or Hitler-like character,
> > but I DO think that the US is now riper and more receptive for
> > the rise of a genuine Hitler-like regime than ever before.
>
> What do you think "Shock and Awe" means from below?
>
> The pretty pictures you see on TV of nice lights lighting up the desert
> sky are really, every one of them, horrifying, evil and atrocious acts
> of murder.
>
> That we are not ALL completely horrified that there were two wars that
> didn't need to happen is a sign that in fact we are already living in
> Die Neue Reichstadt and that a Hitler-Like character has already taken
> over.
I try to stay out of discussions of contemporary partisan politics on this
list, because I think they have only limited relevance and it's extremely
hard to manage the risk that they will spiral out of control into
personalistic flame wars. But I feel compelled to speak up here. I will
*NOT* engage in any kind of tit-for-tat discussion or argument about the
subject of this thread, but I feel the need to note my distaste for the
original message in this thread and the tone of posts like this.
I've worked in the legal system of the United States every day for the last
19 years. I've also studied the rise of fascism and other totalitarian
systems in the 20th century as a major personal interest for over 30 years.
With that base of experience and knowledge, I find that likening the Bush
administration to Nazis utterly *absurd*. Yes, there have been some
curtailments of civil liberties in some very, very few cases that have an
arguable connection to *foreign* terrorism. That I know of, there have been
no real curtailments of civil liberties in wholly domestic cases. None.
Might the cases involving suspected foreign terrorist activity be the first
trickle in some kind of tide that would roll back the main body of civil
liberties in the United States? I personally doubt it very seriously,
although I'm glad they are taken seriously. But they bear no resemblance to
the kind of wholesale destruction of civil liberties that accompanied the
rise of real totalitarianism to which this post makes a comparison. Thus I
feel that calling the Bush administration "Die Neue Reichstadt" baseless.
Simply because it's been done to death here and serves no useful purpose *on
this list*, I won't address the points about U.S. foreign military activity.
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
My Blog: http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html
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