Land of the free? Home of the Brave?

[ed_rex]

'If you're simply fed up with trying to counter fantasies and lies with logic and truth, remember that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance". Freedom never comes without a price, a price paid (in good times) with time and with effort, with the repetition of the truth in the face of brazen lies.

'If you believe that all politicians are liars or corrupt and so avoid the political process all together, you deny a truth repeated throughout history, that all politicians are not the same. Even a seriously cynical mind, if honest with itself, understands there is a very real difference between the pathology of a Mussolini and the petty misdemeanours of a Bill Clinton.'

Scared? Maybe you should be

Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship [...] the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That 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 way in any country."

     — Hermann Goering interviewed during the Nuremberg Trials, as per the invaluable Snopes.com.

Shutting down for being shouted down

I know, I know: long-time readers will notice that I have quoted Goering before, but the words bear repeating.

I was talking with my father last week and we had a brief conversation about the "debate" they're having south of the border on the Obama administration's attempt to reform the American health care system.

"Oh that," I said, "I haven't really been paying much attention. I can't take the lies and the lunacy any more. I think it was the senior citizen, who didn't understand that Medicare already is 'socialized medicine' that broke my brain."

But that's an important strategy used by fascists — to turn "debate" into such a stinking pile of lies that ordinary people simply shake their heads and ignore it all-together, either believing that no reasonable person could possibly be taken in, or simply unwilling to expend the necessary energy to call the liars on their lies. (Yes, I used the word, fascist; give me a chance. I'm going somewhere with this.)

( Find out what! )

Rachel Maddow gets Dick Armey fired

[tangaroa]

MSNBC news host Rachel Maddow found a link between the conservative activist group Freedom Works and the law firm DLA Piper which also practices public relations. Dick Armey, the former Congressman who was Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, has been the chairman of Freedom Works while also employed by DLA Piper as "a special policy advisor [...] and co-chair of DLA Piper's Homeland Security Task Force", according to DLA Piper's now-deleted biography page for Armey. Maddow accuses Freedom Works of taking political positions shortly after DLA Piper is paid a large sum of money by an interested party. Maddow's story forced Armey to resign from DLA Piper.