In a democracy, citizens are guaranteed certain rights, and we can read them just as they appear in the Constitution:
– Political power emanates from the people.
– All…are equal before the law.
– Officials are servants of the whole community and not of a party.
But wait: Those guarantees are taken not from our own Constitution, but from that of Germany’s post-World War I Weimar Republic. After just 14 years of existence, it collapsed into dictatorship when Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933.
So despite their lofty intentions, constitutional guarantees are as frail as that.
It’s noteworthy that Hitler and his small, unpopular Nazi Party, having tried unsuccessfully to take over by force in 1923, later employed a different tactic: They gathered power legally, by turning a liberal democracy against itself.
Using ugly propaganda, Hitler’s cultish personality, paramilitary units to threaten political opponents, and campaigns financed by the country’s industrial barons, the party smothered democracy step by step.
Wedded to Hitler’s idea of using “legality” as the path to power, the party also decided to put candidates into parliament – and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels candidly said why:
“We are going into parliament to arm ourselves with weapons from democracy’s arsenal. We are becoming members of parliament in order to hamstring the Weimar way of thinking… If Democracy is stupid enough to give us free tickets and allowances for this disservice, that is its own business… We will use any legal means to revolutionize the current state of affairs.”
We all know where that went.
One wonders, were he alive today, what satisfaction Herr Goebbels might take in seeing what’s playing out in our own fragile democracy:
– A government awash in lies so blatant that Goebbels himself would be envious.
– Creating starvation abroad by shutting down aid programs.
– Unleashing on our streets armed, masked thugs with the power to drag people away.
– Pardoning hundreds of those who attempted to take over our capitol by force.
– Murdering dozens of suspected drug runners on boats off Venezuela without due process.
– Attacking universities, journalists, law firms, and judges.
– Sowing terror in minority communities.
– Pursuing vengeful retaliation against political opponents.
– Firing members of federal and cultural agencies and replacing them with others allied to the president.
– Eliminating attempts to ensure racial equality in government and education.
The list could go on, but a summing-up was provided succinctly earlier this year by Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA:
“One hundred days into his second term, President Trump has led with cruelty and chaos, creating a human rights emergency that has affected millions of people by suppressing dissent, undermining the rule of law, and eroding, norms and institutions essential to the protection of human rights.”
It’s past time for “We the people” to understand just how threatening is the danger we face in our brutish, vile president, who has hinted many times that he’s like the protagonist of a second coming.
I agree, but only in this sense:
Just after World War I, Irish poet William Butler Yeats penned verses that he called “The Second Coming,” reflective of his fear that societal chaos might lie ahead.
Among those lines was a terrifying question:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
Well, now we know.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.