Fritz has posted a response, of sorts, to the video below on his site (which you may have trouble reading as the site is a giant coding mess and completely unreadable in many browsers). His point, which he gets by channeling William F. Buckley, seems to be that anyone who accuses the Bush administration of police-state tactics, violations of civil liberties, fascist tendencies, or "Nazi leanings" is "loony-tunes" and therefore not only not credible, but is a Holocaust denier of a different stripe.
No really, that's his argument. It is irrelevant, by this logic, whether or not the administration is indeed engaging in police-state tactics or does in fact have fascist tendencies. In his mind, everything done by this administration is automatically justified. Keeping protesters completely out of sight of those whom they protest against is a valid security measure, the War in Iraq is now a "drive for freedom and human rights" (my god, even typing that phrase made me want to throw up), and anyone who implies that there is any relationship between our interest in the region and its vast oil reserves is off the deep end.
Where to begin? Ignore reality? Are you fucking serious? While many may exaggerate or overdo it when complaining about police-state tactics and fascism, which party has lately been most likely to ignore reality? We have a president who consistently insists that everything is going super while Iraq sinks ever faster into a complete catastrophe. We have a ruling party that insists that global warming is a liberal conspiracy to undermine the U.S. economy. A party that supported lifting an assault weapons ban supported by up to 90% of the population. A party that insists publicly that Social Security is facing an immediate crisis while their own data show that this is a gross distortion. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison recently said, "I don't think rehashing potential mistakes some think may have been made in the war on terrorism, specifically in Iraq, is something that should be brought up as a reason to vote against Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State." (Congressional Record) That's not just ignoring reality in practice, she's actually specifically advocating ignoring reality on the floor of the Senate! Good stuff!
Also notice what Fritz does in the above quote. He takes relatively small and certainly debatable claims of violations of civil liberties and extrapolates that we (liberals) claim that Republicans want to bring back slavery and open death camps. And this from someone who spends much time bitching about the rules of debate and rhetoric.
Moving on... Briefly, anyone who thinks the "horrible fantasy world of 1984" is not a possibility should maybe read a history book or two. The hubris inherent in the idea that "it could never happen here" is exactly how it happens here.
The Nazi thing. I'm sick of it. This bullshit idea that by simply mentioning Bush and Hitler or Nazis in the same sentence you're somehow diminishing the suffering of those killed in World War II is absurd and insulting. I categorically reject the notion that you can't compare one feature of a person or a system of government without comparing all features. Further, if it matters, I don't think Bush or his administration are Nazis or that they are even particularly like the Nazis. There are innumerable differences, obviously. This isn't the point. All of this bluster is just a smokescreen so that you'll never have to deal with the substance of the argument. A comparison is made to police-state tactics, you play this Nazi card, veering the debate far from the issue of civil liberties in America and into the realm of ad hominem. It's all so transparently hypocritical.
To state that anyone who would make a comparison involving Nazism doesn't take the Holocaust seriously is backwards. In fact, keeping the lessons of the Holocaust in mind while observing our current situation shows a profound respect for the victims of the Holocaust. It's not that I think that Bush or his ilk have any intention or desire to literally exterminate any particular race, but avoiding such horrors literally isn't the only thing we can learn from the Holocaust. We can also learn how popular, nationalist movements can spin out of control and become totalitarian regimes run by psychotic ideologues. What their specific goals are is not really the point, the point is the process. The point is suppression of dissent. Do you think citizens in Germany in 1937 were all about exterminating Jews? They were just flag-waving patriots. And then it was too late.
Again, tiresomely, I'm not saying that we are on our way to exterminating anybody. The comparison above is of the mindset of the population, not of the end result. The idea I'm promoting is one that's been around for a long time: civil rights must be protected wherever they are threatened. A heavy burden should always rest on those who would limit freedoms to prove the measures absolutely necessary and to ensure that freedoms taken away will be returned when the immediate threat is passed. Once we relinquish small bits of our freedom, the rest will soon erode. "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Sound familiar?
Conclusion: They are not Nazis, given. But that doesn't mean they're not despicable scumbags.
Finally Fritz, I would once again ask you to try just a little bit to imagine yourself on the other side of some of these debates. If the Democrats were in power, you would presumably be opposed to many of their policies. Imagine that you went to the inauguration to voice your opinion and were not only greeted by hundreds of riot police, but you were kept blocks away from the proceedings. Not kept away because you posed a demonstrable threat, kept away because you disagree. Now imagine that the Dems started putting stickers in textbooks debunking Christian mythology. "Christmas is a holiday rooted in paganism," "Jesus was a hippie," stuff like that. Imagine that you went to hear a Democratic politician speak during a campaign and were required to sign a loyalty oath or were turned away for wearing the wrong t-shirt. Would you support these practices? I can only assume that you would.
