John Whitehead's Commentary

As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.
--Bertram Gross

No matter how much money George W. Bush allocates or how many great things he says about America in his State of the Union Address, the reality is that this country is in dire straits. And as it now stands, things will only worsen.

Unfortunately, most Americans do not realize the gravity of the problem because they are lost in a haze of drugs, alcohol and entertainment distractions--numbed to the crumbling foundations beneath their feet. And our leaders are not advancing any real solutions to the disorder that surrounds us.

Such chaos eventually brings change. In the past, it has inevitably included authoritarian government--which some fear is raising its ugly head in the U.S.

Former NYU professor Leonard Peikoff, for example, has argued that the trends toward authoritarian government of the Nazi kind are too apparent to be ignored. These were set forth in his 1982 book The Ominous Parallels. "The similarities," writes Peikoff, "cannot be shrugged off. America is moving toward a Nazi form of totalitarianism. It has been doing so for decades."

There are those who always say that it cannot happen here. That was also what many were saying in Germany in the 1930s. The Nazi's crimes were the official legal acts and policies of modern Germany--an educated, civilized Western European nation. Much like the U.S. of today, it was a country renowned throughout the world for its industrial and cultural achievements. In fact, Berlin was the epitome of the modern city. Freedom in everything seemed to be the new clarion call in Germany. However, within a short time, Germany became part and parcel to some of the most barbaric acts ever perpetrated by a people.

What happened? The danger signals, much like today, were blazing like neon signs in the night. But they were not heeded, and those in the know miscalculated human nature crushed beneath the weight of chaos. Granted, we do not yet resemble the kind of authoritarian regimes of the past. But there are similarities, and alarm bells are going off that range from economic concerns to threats to our civil liberties, an increasing military presence in our daily lives, and an undermining of religion and the loss of traditional values.

To start with, the most critical of all the warning signs of our passage down the slippery slope to authoritarianism may be those that signal an economic destabilization.

"It's the economy, stupid" quickly became the catchphrase for the 1992 presidential election, and it's easy to see why it resonated with the American people. When people vote, as any astute political observer knows, they most often vote their pocketbooks to keep intact the two basic values of modern existence--personal peace and affluence. When threatened, such as with economic collapse, the democratic vote may be for the one who can restore a semblance of these values.

Inflation, whether at the gas pump or the grocery store, is a major cause of economic destabilization, impacting a population at every level of the social structure. Massive inflation in pre-Nazi Germany, which destroyed prosperity and affluence and resulted in Germans being willing to sacrifice principle and freedom for the promise of security, clearly contributed to the rise of Hitler. As Peikoff recognizes, "The Nazi Party was elected to office by the freely cast ballots of millions of German voters, including men on every social, economic, and educational level."

While our present inflation may not match that of pre-Nazi Germany, inflation does not have to reach the level of Germany to wear down morality, productivity and support for the basic institutions of society such as the family and lay the groundwork for political upheaval. If the American economy continues to destabilize, there will be a clamor for someone--an authoritarian leader--to create order out of chaos and run the government, and it will be put to a vote to keep a semblance of democracy. As William L. Shirer, author of the monumental The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, noted back in the early 1970s, America may be the first country in which fascism comes to power through democratic elections.

Equally alarming is the staggering national deficit, which has swollen to $422 billion, much of it owed to foreign banks and entities such as Saudi Arabia. This enormous debt has some observers prophesying that the United States faces imminent bankruptcy. "Our country is insolvent, and bankruptcy will come," Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.) recently said in an interview with Oldspeak. "We are much poorer than we think we are. Some actually think the [national debt] can be paid off. But the debt will be liquidated. The danger is that there is a lot of turmoil when that happens. There is also the fear that in order to keep order we will resort to having a much stronger Executive Branch--a centralized power in one man."

We cannot ignore that there are some kindred underlying dynamics between the political and cultural situation of pre-Nazi Germany and the emerging American political and cultural trauma of the last 40 years. To do so would be a big mistake.

In fact, the troublesome merger of Big Business and Big Government affords those in power the tools of manipulation unheard of in Hitler's time. Add to this the entertainment and drug industries that distract and numb us from feeling any type of reality, and we are ripe for "friendly fascism." This is merely authoritarian propaganda packaged by the advertising and government moguls. But make no mistake about it. In the end, all authoritarian regimes, even the "benevolent" types, arrive at the same anti-human point.

Finally, we must remember that most police states, like that of Nazi Germany, come about through the democratic process with majority support. And their leaders, much like those today, come into power citing platitudes of religion, morality and order, asking us to put blind faith in the government.

"But," as Daniel Kurtzman recognizes in an article on www.tompaine.com, "when the government abuses that trust and begins to stamp out the freedom of dissent that is the hallmark of a democratic society, can there be any turning back?"

Such is the state of the union.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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