From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Thu Jun 13 2002 - 10:07:02 MDT
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer20.html
"...Returning to the Nazi Germany example, did any of the German people have an obligation to at least speak out against Hitler's
vicious practices? And even if they had no obligation to do so, why did so few undertake such a course? There would certainly have
been great risks associated with doing so, potential costs that probably did more to account for the silence of most Germans than
did some alleged venal or heinous trait in their character. We need not engage in abstract speculation nor visit elderly
Rhinelanders to explore this question. We have a ready laboratory in our midst - comprised of most of our friends and relatives,
neighbors, coworkers, and members of the media - to whom this question can be addressed. The same issues that were placed before the
German people in 1933 are now before us, and our grandchildren may one day implore us to explain our silence in the face of a
vicious tyranny.
"It will do you no good to plead the statist's claim that the current totalitarian structures and unilateral war against the entire
world were occasioned by events of September 11th. Just as Adolf Hitler was able to convert the burning of the Reichstag into the
raison d'être for his militaristic campaigns and domestic police-state, George Bush has been exploiting the World Trade Center
attacks to advance a political agenda that goes far beyond the brutalities of early September. The neoconservatives - the
"neocon-men" of this coup - have engaged themselves in a tireless campaign, fueled by self-righteous absolutism, to fashion upon
Americans a police-state transcending that of Abraham Lincoln.
"Secret trials by military tribunals, from which there would be no right of appeal; the close monitoring of people's telephone and
Internet communications, banking and medical records, and credit card purchases; the power of an imperial president, usurped from
Congress, to declare war on whomever it fits his momentary fancy to attack; the threatening of those who dissent from any of Mr.
Bush's policies; the creation of a "Homeland Security" cabinet post - whose very name recalls a preoccupation with "the Fatherland";
and an increasing irrelevance of Congress in the development of government policy - other than to rubber-stamp Mr. Bush's proposals;
fail to arouse much interest from most Americans...."
"In years to come, when Americans have managed to put an end to their collective insanity and rediscover what it is like to live in
peace and freedom with one another in a society capable of producing life-sustaining values, you may be asked by your grandchild:
"what was it like back then, living under a police state? What did you do?" How will you answer her?"
What I have done since I was a child (Cold War years) is make a study of this "collective insanity"- fads, speculative manias,
religious beliefs (eg state-worship), how armies are raised and wars are financed, the structure and evolution of the Establishment,
why civilizations appear and why they collapse, and so on. This has occupied very much of my time for the past four years. Maybe
this research and the coherent ensemble of theories it has generated (which I call "Psychohistory" after Asimov) will become useful.
Forrest
-- Forrest Bishop Chairman, Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering www.iase.cc
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