We are there

Some people watch old films of the crowds adoring Mussolini, Tojo, the Nazis in Germany, or Stalin in Russia and think to themselves; how could that many people be so foolish as to voluntarily surrender their freedoms? The thought processes go something like this; those naïve Russians, those naïve Germans how could they? How could they be so foolish?

The answer is pretty simple. Most were looking for the easiest way to a better life. They were promised things that were never going to be possible, but it sounded so easy. So they suspended their common sense and they believed. And before you knew it, they were saying to themselves that they never thought, “it would come to that.”

Author George Orwell was a literary genius. He understood how totalitarianism can obtain an initial foothold in freedom-loving countries. He shared that insidious process with us in Animal Farm. Like Orwell, author Ayn Rand was able to intricately illustrate the process quite well in Atlas Shrugged.

The pattern is oft repeated. Dictatorships that somehow take hold in countries that once embraced the rule of law don’t establish footholds over night. It begins with a gradual emboldening as seemingly minor abuses of power and violations of the constitutions are tolerated. As each successive abuse goes unchallenged, it gets much easier to confiscate more and more basic freedoms. Eventually, the ruling class develops a deep contempt for the rights of the governed. And eventually, that contempt comes out into the open. When it does, the ruling class makes it legal for itself to disobey laws that apply to all others. We are there. Yes, it has now "come to that."

The telltale signs are everywhere. How should we know we are there? The sequence is all too familiar and quite unmistakable.

When the NSA is allowed to engage in tens of millions of warrantless searches of emails and telephone calls with hardly of a whimper of objection, we are there. When Americans accept a Nixon-like claim of “Executive Privilege” as the legal excuse for blocking testimony and the release of documents regarding botched government operations that resulted in murdered Americans, we are there. When our own IRS is allowed to selectively suppress the 1^st Amendment for the benefit of the party in power, we are there. When government disregards the 2nd Amendment we are there.

For those unfamiliar with the ideas behind the Bill of Rights, these examples might seem to be minor abuses. However, in recent weeks the ruling class, which passed Obamacare for the general population in 2010, arranged for a separate set of legal interpretations so they would not be required to obey the rules of Obamacare. Yes, we are there.

This week the ruling class in America told the media to tell the governed that Obamacare is the "law of the land," and it will not tolerate anarchy. The media (except Fox) didn’t bother to point out that "the law of the land" does not apply to the ruling class, just the masses.

Just as in the examples of totalitarianism gaining a foothold in other nations, most Americans are still not paying attention. Is this new? Not really. Few were paying much attention in America when the Fugitive Slave Act became the law of the land in 1850; nobody except the activist abolitionists, all slave owners, and freedom-seeking slaves.

There was one lone voice this week pleading for America to pay attention. Senator Ted Cruz offered strident objections to the encroachment on freedoms on the floor of the Senate. He was ridiculed. Cruz was called a distraction by many of his colleagues in the GOP and a political “terrorist” by the Democrats.

Those of us who follow history know that activist abolitionists were treated the same way. So were opponents when anti-Jewish laws were first passed in Germany. People like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were called absurd sideshows in Russia.

And so it was as Americans acquiesceed further and submitted to more tyranny this week that many of us with a sense of history knew......we are there and it has “come to this.”