The Wisdom of Evil, Have We Learned Nothing?

Bob Hubbard

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"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether its a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
-Hermann Goering. Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII.


"During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information."
-Joseph Paul Goebbels


"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilised nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!"
-Adolf Hitler


"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."
-Adolf Hitler


"It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of the nation, that the position of the individual is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole."
-Adolf Hitler


"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."
-Adolf Hitler


"The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it."
-Dr. Joseph Mengele


"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
-- Joseph Goebbels


“If the day should ever come when we [the Nazis] must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that the universe will shake and mankind will stand back in stupefaction.”
-- Joseph Goebbels


"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
-- Joseph Goebbels


"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
-- Joseph Goebbels




"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." — Joseph Stalin
 
No doubt about it that those guys (quoted)... (exception is Dark Helmet)... were geniuses and knew how to take over the hearts and minds of the people.

They just were ****ed in the head that's all.
 
It is also why those of us over here in Europe have to bite our tongues so hard sometimes when talking about the current world political situation with our American friends.

We see far too many similarities with that time but trying to point them out earns nothing positive nor changes anyones mind.

It's a frightening thing to behold the same principles being re-enacted in the body of nations that once fought to root out a flowering of such a philosophy.
 
Hitler rose to power during a time much like ours. I remember the speech of his that was turned into a wall-poster. We want change, but at what price? We have given up many things, gun registration is not a totally good thing.
 
there are frightening comparisons to be made.

"Amerika fur dem Amerikaners" comes to mind.
 
Basic truths made to appear sinister by use of a tagline. For a bunch of homocidal whackjobs the national socialists had a decent grasp of human behavior. Doesn't mean that every parallel one can draw portends doom, despair, and agony on we. "ZOMG!!! You use toilet paper?! You know who else used toilet paper...?"
 
"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilised nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!"
-Adolf Hitler

LMAO. Hungary has very strict gun control. This way, only the army, the police........ and the criminals are armed well. If one doesn't care about laws, an AK-47 with 2 magazines and 200 rounds is about 200 dollars here, and for about 500 dollars one could buy personal missile launchers (I don't know the proper English name) with surface-to-air missiles at about 50 dollars each. Of course they aren't using them here too usually, for that'd possibly ruin market by bringing too much attention.
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But those very few civilians who legally have guns and are willing to follow the laws can be tracked easily due to registrations. I'm so grateful for that, who would want not controlling law-abiding civilians?
 
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
---Mohandas Gandhi

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.
---Mohandas Gandhi

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.
---Mohandas Gandhi

Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.
---Buddha

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.
---Confucius
 
Humanity learning from its mistakes? What kind of crazy talk is that! ;)
Yeah, just because both Hitler and BOTH democratic candidates want(ed) to force gun registration on the public, that probably doesn't mean anything...
 
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
- George Santayana

Too often, people believe that the past is dead, and has nothing to teach them, and even when they learn about the past, they fail to believe that they could, themselves, make the same mistakes... and then they do, all the while protesting that their response was different.
 
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)


"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither." (Ben Franklin)
 
What some tend to misunderstand is that a country is not a checklist, and a country doesn't reach dictatorship when all the points are checked, and neither does it reach a total state of freedom and democracy if another checklist is complete. So no, America is not rushing to become a dictatorship even if some patterns are present, and no, middle eastern countries aren't rushing to become democracies even if elections take place.
But does the USA have the chance to become a dictatorship? Sure, but for example Hungary has much more chance as observable patterns show.
And is dictatorship in itself wrong or inhuman? Nope. The famous and often mentioned democracy of ancient Athens was more inhuman to our modern eyes than the dictature of say, Mussolini.
 
A dictatorship is certainly a very efficient form of government - it's just that pesky roll of the dice to see if it's benevolent or not that causes the problem. I happen to think that a parliamentary democracy is the 'least worst' form of government we've come up with so far ... but I would think that because I'm English :lol:.

I have to confess that I don't really agree with the assertion that just because a country 'ticks all the boxes' of an authoritarian regime doesn't mean it is one. Surely if it has all the attributes of one then it is?

However, that's by-the-by as what has been said is that the rise of authoritarian attitudes and the imposition of policies in line with that is a worrying trend - especially when the pattern follows so well the machiavellian philosophy which festered in Germany during the inter-war period.

I personally don't think that either America or Britain have gotten there yet and there is every chance that the paths will change. It is simply that, like most things, politics has inertia and cycles. It also has a 'gravitational' need to draw power to itself and if that is not checked then problems can occur.

No regime is immortal tho' and the best we can do as concerned members of of society is try to make sure that the most good and the least harm is done by those that govern us. Most important of all we have to make sure that the 'ballot box' is not compromised; if the nebulous 'they' get away with that then the road becomes really slippy.
 
Maybe I should've been more clear with the checkbox analogue... :)
Of course if every single detail is the same, then it is what it seems. What I tried to say is that it's not a linear sequence, so you can have a democracy with almost but a few boxes checked in the "dictature list", and have a dictatorship with only a few things missing from the "democracy list".
Of course patterns appeared and will appear, just as goverments come and go, but as I can see it, in the core they're only the dynamics so well described by Orwell in '48. In some cases it takes more time, in some less, in some cases they choose a democracy, in some a dictatorship. I've only seen two possible methods of stopping this circle, '48 and Brave new world and I like neither. :)
Humanity just won't learn in a short period of time. :frown:
 
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