Essays
The Cheney Administration and
National Socialism
Author: Samuel Metz
Date: 06/05/2005
References to our current
administration arise in a variety of places. An essayist
in Foreign Affairs referred to the "…brilliant populist
manipulator who insisted and probably believed that
Providence had chosen him as [his country's] savior, a
leader charged with executing a divine mission. God had
been drafted into national politics before, but [his]
success in fusing … dogma with … Christianity was an
immensely powerful element in his electoral campaigns.
Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion
and politics, but many more were seduced by it. It was the
pseudoreligious transfiguration of politics that largely
ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas."
In his first public address
after assuming leadership, this leader declared to his
constituency, "The national government will preserve and
defend those basic principles on which our nation has been
built up. They regard Christianity as the foundation of
our national morality and the family as the basis of
national life."
The astute reader might
possibly guess correctly that the leader was Adolf Hitler.
However, the resonance with the Cheney-Rove-Rumsfeld-Bush
Administration should not be over-interpreted. The
resonance says more about Hitler than Bush. Hitler neither
invented nor perfected the fusion of religion with
politics. He utilized commonplace political tactics
practiced in many times by many leaders. With the possible
exception of the French Revolution of 1789, dominated by
Age of Reason types, successful secular politicians were a
rare breed before the 20th century.
Hitler's evil was not in
hiding his personal agenda behind a Godly façade. His evil
lay in how he exploited the power he achieved. Other
governments, some of them claiming legitimate election,
created extermination campaigns matching or exceeding
Hitler: the Soviet Union under Stalin and the People's
Republic of China under Mao. Although his absolute numbers
were small, Pol Pot in Cambodia probably holds the record
for systematic extermination of the greatest percentage of
his population. None of these claimed the blessing of
God.
Despite this alarming use of
religion to further politics by the current
administration, it hardly qualifies as abusive as
Hitler's. The United States does not run concentration
camps that exempt internees from the faintest shreds of
respect for human dignity.
Except we do have brutal
prisons in Iraq, don't we? The abuses are attributed to
rogue guards, but it seems the US military administration
was unconcerned with the abuses until revealed by the
press.
But let's not count military
abuses abroad. At least we don't have concentration camps
on US territory. However, Guantanamo Bay is US soil. If we
wish, we can excuse these brutal prisons because they only
incarcerate citizens of other lands.
But we do find there a few
detainees with dual citizenship who might be working
against our National Security. Maybe they deserve to be
held without charges or legal resources until we determine
if their danger to our security warrants ignoring their US
citizenship.
At least we US citizens on
the mainland still enjoy the same rights we enjoyed before
the current administration took office. We need not fear
that our rights will be interrupted without due process.
Except for those of us who
have violated the rather vague provisions of the Patriot
Act. We can still console ourselves that the most
egregious abuses of the Patriot Act have, so far, been
reserved for non-Christian US citizens whose politics are
at odds with our President. The rest of us who believe in
the sanctity of the family and the divinity of Christ are
all the safer because our Administration is looking out
for the best interest of our country and will let no one
stand in the way of protecting us from those who wish to
destroy our common family, religious, and political
values.
A craven Congress approved
the Iraq invasion and the Patriot Act almost unanimously.
The aforementioned essayist, Fritz Stern, said in the same
essay, "...civic passivity & willed blindness were
necessary preconditions for the triumph of National
Socialism..." Perhaps the parallels are more valid than we
might think.
Reference: Fritz Stern,
Foreign Affairs 2005 (May/June); volume 84 (#3): p16.