The Slippery Slope Toward Tyranny

Thomas Sowell, writing for Investors Business Daily, has observed that which many others have though he expresses it so much more eloquently.  We may very well be stepping onto the slippery slope toward tyranny.

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.

Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.

"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.

In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.

But our government is supposed to be "a government of laws and not of men." [Investors Business Daily]

To which group do you belong, the "useful idiots" or the "informed voters". 

As I said when I initiated my federal lawsuit challenging the censorship of the Kentucky Bar Association over judicial candidates, "informed voters make better choices."

Thank you Mr. Sowell for affirming my observation.

Comments

[Bernie Kunkel]

"When freedom fails the best men rot in filthy jails. And those who cried appease, appease -- are now hung by those they tried to please."

[spinnikerca]

I saw a bit of encouraging data this morning in a Time article -- you know, the ones who a year ago had a cover of Obama in an open car with a monocle a la FDR, as if that were a good thing....

Apparently, they are finally figuring out that Obama isn't actually SAYING anything in these vapid speeches. Mind you, they spin it as his no LONGER having the substance he used to (what substance?). Still it is encouraging.

"Barack Obama Offers Cut-'n-Paste Rhetoric For The Base"

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/06/21/barack-obama-offers-cut-n-paste-rhetoric-for-the-base/?xid=rss-topstories