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This is not intended to engender an emotional reaction, but the mere mentionof Hitler can make rational discussion problematic. I am interested in adispassionate argument on the merits of the following concept:
Wars are fought and won on battlefields, but are ultimately fought overideas, and in the long term, won in the realm of ideas. So, did Hitler ultimately win WWII, asreflected in the current state and direction of the US government (and other western democracies), and its (their)relationship with its (their) citizens?
Below is obviously not a complete list, but outlines in broad concepts why Iam thinking perhaps Hitler did win in the war of ideas, and why we as a countrymay be heading, step by step, down a blind alley that none of us intended to godown with each individual decision.
Gaining and Maintaining Tyrannical Power. Hitler used demagoguery to gain and maintain political power, andcontinually ran "against" the establishment, even after he was theestablishment. Once in power, Hitler began a very concerted effort to consolidatepower at the expense of the Weimar Republic’s checks and balances forpower. The president has used this political modelvery successfully, and I suspect the republicans will follow suit in the nextelection cycle (2016), as will whoever is the democrat nominee - because it hasworked! As checks and balances areeliminated, those in power will be rewarded with more power. I don’t see this as a liberal/conservativeissue, I see this as a political class/general population issue (in that verynarrowly defined way, and only in that way, there is some correlation with OWSand the TEA Party movements and their concern with government overeach), and I have no faith in either party to return to powerbalance, but rather, both parties will continue down the same path, because itincreases government power (at the expense of individual liberty).
Demagoguery. Currently the 1%/richare the whipping boys, but nobody is really defining "The Rich", andeven though 1% is a statistically definable group, the 1% that are actuallytargeted as "examples" are limited to a very specific subset of theactual 1% group; used as a method of gaining consensus that the "The Rich"are somehow the cause of all societal ills, not societal choices are causingsocietal ills. Maybe I am over reactingor over analyzing, but I see a very ominous correlation between US politiciansdemogauging “The Rich” and Hitler demogauging “The Jew” - mob mentality alwaysends poorly. In our public discourse, weseem to be using demagoguery as acceptable method of communicating, setting the public up for anemotional, rather than rational, response to correcting our collective societalproblems.
Fascism. Fascism is found in allsorts of government organizations. The easiest most obvious examples are theEPA, BLM, and Dept. of Labor, however, congress has ceded much if not most of its law making andoversight responsibilities to the various departments for their (congress) own ease, butthe vacuum of power they left has been filled in most cases with a fascist bureaucratclass of government official, enforcing arcane and arbitrary regulations, withthe effect and force of law. The arbitrary delays in Obama care are anotherexample. The law is quite specific, and the executive branch cannot nullifylaws at its convenience, unless of course, the congress is complicit.
The individual as property of the state. I don't think we are where NAZIGermany took the concept, but the US government is clearly redefining thegovernment’s relationship to the population, to the disadvantage of theindividual, and taking us toward the concept of the government owns theindividual, not the other way around. Tax law clearly sees/is set up for the government owning all individualincome (and ultimately property), and the government determines how much the individualcan keep. Salary caps, Nixon’s wage andprice caps in the 1970’s, are another example of this concept gaining traction as acceptable (even though it never works). The Patriot act under Bush is not as clean of an example, but did weaken individual privacy for security, and again moves us closer to the concept of the government owning the individual, as cited above.
Did the Nazi government persist after the war, or was the country occupied by four Allied powers? There's your answer. The rest of your statement, obviously copied from some other source, is nonsense and has nothing to do with Hitler.
Sorry, not copied, from my own fertile mind. No, the Nazi government did not continue to exist, but many of the concepts of Facsim and Socialism did, and IMO they are, steadily gaining traction with the US government. It is a concept I have been thinking about for a long time.
The soviet occupation of Afghanistan left a currupted ruling class, and a culture of corruption, that essentially destroyed that country even though the soviets were defeated on the ground and ultimately left the country, they won the war of ideas.
Hitler didn't win it. We know that because the govt he built and supported, was eliminated and is now nowhere to be found.
Stalin won it. We know that, because the government he supported, is alive and well, and growing steadily in the United States, supplanting more and more of the personal freedom and responsibility that used to characterize the United States.
Last edited by Little-Acorn; 04-21-2014 at 06:55 PM..
Hitler didn't win it. We know that because the govt he built and supported, was eliminated and is now nowhere to be found.
Stalin won it. We know that, because the government he supported, is alive and well, and growing steadily in the United States, supplanting more and more of the personal freedom and responsibility that used to characterize the United States.
Who is this "we" you are referring to? Certainly not anybody who knows anything about Stalin and what he supported.
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