"...it seems to me that if the U.S. government is doing something that Hitler did, that ought to at least raise some red flags in the minds of the American people."

Bringing Up Hitler
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Yes, I know that American statists hate it when someone brings up Hitler in the context of U.S. government policies. But it seems to be that bringing up Hitler can sometimes be instructive, especially given his historical role as a benchmark for evil.

That’s not to suggest that every single thing that Hitler ever did was evil, but it seems to me that if the U.S. government is doing something that Hitler did, that ought to at least raise some red flags in the minds of the American people.

For example, consider such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, economic regulations, government-business partnerships, welfare, and a big military-industrial complex. Hitler loved those things, and they were core elements of his National Socialist program.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone, at least with respect to the welfare state. As most Germans undoubtedly know, welfare-state programs originated among German socialists in the late 1800s, and they were incorporated into Germany’s political system by Otto von Bismarck, who was known as the Iron Chancellor of Germany. The welfare-state ideas were later imported into the United States and became core elements of America’s political system during the Franklin Roosevelt administration.

Perhaps that’s why American statists hate it when someone brings up Hitler in the context of U.S. government policies. They fear that Americans, upon learning that Hitler embraced welfare-state programs and regulatory programs, might begin questioning the moral legitimacy of such programs. At the very least, Americans might begin realizing what Hitler and the German people realized: that welfare-state programs are socialist in nature and origin, not free-enterprise.

Another thing about Hitler was his appreciation for how crises could be used to centralize and expand the power of the state. The best example of that was the terrorist attack that became known as the Reichstag Fire, when terrorists fire-bombed the German parliament building. For the Germans, the Reichstag Fire was considered as big an event as the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Hitler didn’t skip a beat. His people charged and prosecuted several people who they believed had conspired to commit the attack. To their surprise, the courts acquitted some of the defendants, which motivated Hitler to organize a special court known as the People’s Court to try people accused of terrorism in the future, to ensure that suspected terrorists would never again be acquitted by the regular German courts.

Hitler also seized on the terrorist crisis to seek a temporary suspension of civil liberties from the Reichstag. After all, he argued, adherence to the protection of civil liberties might enable the terrorists to win their war on Germany. By suspending civil liberties, he argued, Germany could win the war on terrorism, after which civil liberties could be restored.

In the process, Hitler had an advantage. He was actually able to present two official enemies to achieve his goal — terrorism and communism. Not only was one of the Reichstag terrorists a communist, every German knew of the threat to Germany posed by the Soviet Union.

The Reichstag granted Hitler’s request for a temporary suspension of civil liberties. Equally important, Hitler was able to use the twin crises of communism and terrorism to support ever-growing expenditures on the German military and German military-industrial complex...

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