Rats on a treadmillRats on a treadmill
“What will we do when we lose the war? Prepare for the next one.” – Julius J. Epstein, Cross of Iron
Category: Politics & Law
And this is why the Internet is freeAnd this is why the Internet is free
“Of all the rights of the citizen, few are of greater importance or more essential to his peace and happiness than the right of personal security, and that involves, not merely protection of his person from assault, but exemption of his private affairs, books, and papers, from the inspection and scrutiny of others. Without the enjoyment of this right, all others would lose half their value.” – Justice Field, In re Pacific Railway Commission, 32 Fed. 241
Busybodies on the government payrollBusybodies on the government payroll
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” – Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmsted v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)
Catch it if you canCatch it if you can
“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” – Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmsted v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)
No winnersNo winners
“Food is given out in the evening. We stand in line, but instead of leading us into the kitchen in an organized fashion, they shout, ‘To the canteen!’ ‘Run!’ The hungry people rush to the kitchen, where there are several dirty barrels with a millet slop. Everybody knows that there is not enough food and tries to get at it first. Jostling starts. Now the ‘order supervisors’ appear and start up . . . a line using sticks, rods, rubber truncheons—anything they can beat you with. The usual results are head injuries, nearly broken arms, or the murder of an emaciated and weak prisoner. The beatings go on for hours. Meanwhile, half the prisoners no longer want to eat . . . They lie down on the damp ground—for there are not enough sheds for all—and sleep until 5 in the morning.” – Motel’e (quoted by Karel C. Berkhoff in Harvest of Despair; ellipses in original)
It happened, nonethelessIt happened, nonetheless
“No one, whether Nazi or not, should be led summarily before a firing squad without legal trial and consideration of the relevant facts and proofs. Rather would I here and now be led out into the garden and shot than that my honor and that of my country should be smirched by such baseness.” – Winston Churchill to Josef Stalin (quoted in The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.)
And then the men came homeAnd then the men came home
“American women achieved an unprecedented degree of independence during World War II. Many joined the military, and many others found themselves working outside the home for the first time in their lives. For those who entered the labor force and accepted employment in nontraditional jobs, the civilian day often began earlier and ended later. They were working a 48-hour week and still had a household to maintain. Everything from breakfast to bedtime seemed to have changed. Rationing and shortages affected the preparation of every meal, and the useful life of a piece of clothing was extended far beyond what it once had been. Working women adapted to the use of mass transportation, crowding into buses or streetcars rather than driving their own automobiles. Household items as mundane as metal bobby pins were prized because they were scarce. Working mothers had to provide for the well-being of their school-age children. Because day care was virtually nonexistent, grandparents or neighbors often helped. The phenomenon of the latchkey child began to grow. Because of the demands of wartime, juggling work schedules and maintaining the home, two or three generations of family members often lived under one roof, pooling their resources and sharing responsibilities. They planted victory gardens to supplement rationed staples, recycled whatever they could, and banked much of their income because there was little to buy. These nest eggs would play a part in the U.S. postwar economic boom as pent-up demand for consumer goods was satisfied. Although most husbands and boyfriends did return from overseas—some having been absent for more than three years—the definition of ‘normal’ home life had been forever changed, and aspects of the changed lives of American women in World War II endure today.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
Gun controlGun control
“It’s real simple. If you ain’t gonna eat it and it ain’t gonna eat YOU, put your goddamn gun away.” – Fawn Neun, Facebook, July 29, 2015 (emphasis in original)
Later they grew bombed and invadedLater they grew bombed and invaded
“By the time World War II broke out, Mussolini had been the Italian dictator for 17 years, and all political life revolved around this flamboyant, crude peasant from the Romagna hills in Northeast Italy. His Fascist movement was, like Hitler’s invocation of an earlier racially pure Reich, predicated on a return to the glory days of the Roman Empire. . . . He built up a huge though ineffectual army and bankrupted and terrorized the country. Although one of his greatest achievements, it was claimed, was making the trains run on time, the truth is that, as the war dragged on, nothing in Italy worked. While Mussolini spouted lines from Virgil and Dante, his people grew hungry.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
Business as usualBusiness as usual
“In February 1933, soon after being named Chancellor, Adolph Hitler convened a meeting with German business leaders. The three business leaders most vital to the war industry and rearmament of the Wehrmacht were present: Baron Gustav Krupp von Bohlen, who made armaments; Karl Bosch and Georg von Schnitzler from I.G. Farben, the chemical maker; and Albert Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. They were predisposed to support the new leader because, in their minds, he stood for order. Business leaders also believed, wrongly, that they could manipulate Hitler. Hitler explained to them that he planned to stay in power indefinitely, even if he did not win future elections. Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, also present, explained how certain ‘financial sacrifices’ were necessary and that these ‘surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March 5 would surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years.’ Krupp was particularly impressed by the speech. On the spot, the Nazi inner circle was able to get promises of three million marks from the guests. Thus, from the very beginning of his regime, Hitler had enlisted the financial and political support of the major German industrialists.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
She even had her own songShe even had her own song
“One of the enduring symbols of the contribution of women in World War II was Rosie the Riveter, a smiling girl in overalls and a bandana who represented the many thousands of women toiling in war plants from coast to coast, and who exhorted others to join them. These women, who filled the ranks of civilian jobs left empty by men serving in the armed forces, were an essential element in Allied victory.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
Pretty maids all in a rowPretty maids all in a row
“Despite the immediacy of the German threat in 1940, Great Britain was slow to mobilize its women for war. At first, the country depended on volunteerism to fill its women’s auxiliaries, but a low response convinced Parliament to pass a law in December 1941 requiring young unmarried women to register for national service. Most went to work in munitions plants, but 125,000 were drafted into the armed forces. Another 430,000 volunteered.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
Answering the callAnswering the call
“I joined the army ‘cause there wasn’t anything else around. Not just for a colored man but for anyone. I had a large family, and we were really poor. I knew the army would give me three meals a day and a little pay, so I joined up. . . . I knew that the service wasn’t much better than where I was in terms of racism, but a full belly could take away some of the bitterness. I got clothes, a place to live, and a little money and even got some training on some heavy equipment. I don’t think I would have gotten that anywhere else but in the service. It was segregated, but I felt that I was doing something better with my life instead of just slowly wasting away. When I went in, we weren’t at war. I just wanted three squares a day, some spending money, and a roof over my head.” – Harry Kempt, U.S. Army, 93rd Combat Engineers (quoted in The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.)
BecauseBecause
“Because the unemployment rate in 1939 averaged about what it had been in 1931, some economists argue that the New Deal had failed to both put people back to work and to enhance private investment. However, others argue forcefully that the appeal and success of the New Deal had less to do with economics than with the expansion of political power by the central government. Still others argue that the New Deal was really about hope, and that Roosevelt and his programs helped stabilize the nation. What, then, is the legacy of the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Although the New Deal did not end double-digit unemployment, it did increase the power of the presidency and the central government. Moreover, it changed the focus of the national political debate. The New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt changed the ways that people view the role of the state in American life. The Great Depression forced Americans to wonder whether a system of free market capitalism was capable of bringing both economic growth and economic stability. Whether the Depression was a failure of capitalism or a failure of government policies, the U.S. economy ever since has felt, for better or worse, the guiding hand of government far more than before the nation’s economy collapsed in the early 1930s.” – “The New Deal,” The World War II Desk Reference (Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.)
Prisoners of the statePrisoners of the state
“The radio announced that Hitler had come out of his safe bomb-proof bunker to talk with the fourteen to sixteen year old boys who had ‘volunteered’ for the ‘honor’ to be accepted into the SS and to die for their Führer in the defense of Berlin. What a cruel lie! These boys did not volunteer, but had no choice, because boys who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS as a warning that, ‘he who was not brave enough to fight had to die.’ When trees were not available, people were strung up on lampposts. They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics.” – Dorothea von Schwanenflügel, Laughter Wasn’t Rationed
At least temporarilyAt least temporarily
“A democracy aroused can conquer any evil.” – Douglas Brinkley, The World War II Desk Reference
If we want to get anything accomplishedIf we want to get anything accomplished
“Revenge has no part in politics, and we should always be looking forward rather than looking back.” – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour
Smoke ’em if you got ’emSmoke ’em if you got ’em
“Most people know that the surviving leaders of the Third Reich were prosecuted at Nuremberg before an international military tribunal in 1945–1946, and that a substantial number of them, including the head of the Luftwaffe and the ‘second man in the Third Reich,’ Hermann Göring, the former foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Hans Frank, the Nazi ruler of Poland, were found guilty and condemned to death. Less well known are the twelve specialized trials that followed, of senior Nazi judges, industrialists, doctors, and others. And hardly any trace has remained in the public memory of the large number of trials held, mostly from 1946 to 1949, of the lower-level functionaries of the regime, including the personnel of the concentration and extermination camps. The British alone held 358 trials in their zone of occupied Germany, resulting in the conviction of 1,085 people, 240 of whom were condemned to death, with two hundred actually executed. American military tribunals conducted a lengthy series of 489 trials at the former concentration camp in Dachau, most of which concerned offenses that had no direct connection with events at the camp itself. Altogether, these American trials went on for three years, and resulted in the conviction of 1,416 lower-grade servants of the Third Reich. More than two thousand war criminals were tried in the French Zone, while the convention that offenders should be tried in the countries where they had held office under the Nazi regime resulted in a further series of trials in countries formerly occupied by the Germans, including Italy, Norway, and Poland, where over two thousand Germans were extradited and indicted between 1945 and 1949, including the former commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss.” – Richard J. Evans, “The Anatomy of Hell”
The voice of experienceThe voice of experience
“Past experience carries with its advantages the drawback that things never happen the same way again. Otherwise I suppose life would be too easy.” – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour
He speaks figuratively, methinksHe speaks figuratively, methinks
“An accepted leader has only to be sure of what it is best to do, or at least to have made up his mind about it. . . . If he trips, he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes, they must be covered. If he sleeps, he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good, he must be poleaxed.” – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour
There were giants in the landThere were giants in the land
“If the present tries to sit in judgment on the past, it will lose the future.” – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour
The best lack all convictionThe best lack all conviction
“We’ve sold people on sure. And we’ve sold people on omniscience, and on the loudest, most declarative voice. That has been damaging just in terms of human civilization. The people who are the most certain are often the ones who lead us in the wrong directions.” – Eric Asimov (interview by Meara Sharma in Guernica)
The vital first stepThe vital first step
“Characterizing a victim group as a relentless threat to a perpetrator group is the fundamental mechanism of genocide. It allows perpetrators to interpret their violence as defensive and therefore both justified and unavoidable.” – Richard Rhodes, Masters of Death
They’re so civilized nowThey’re so civilized now
“European society in medieval times and earlier had been dominated by malefically violent nobles who enforced their authority with serious physical violence, which they took pleasure in and celebrated. Homicide rates in medieval Europe even among commoners, who settled their disputes privately with little local interference from the law, were twenty to fifty times as high as in modern Europe. Violence declined across seven hundred years of Western history as monarchs moved to monopolize violence in order to monopolize taxation and thereby limit the power of the nobility and as an emerging middle class sought protection in official justice from the burdens of settling disputes at personal risk. Social controls over violence, primarily increasing access to courts of law, developed in parallel with changes in child-rearing practices away from physical brutalization. The criminal justice system vividly demonstrated this transformation. When official justice began to take control it advertised its authority with public torture and executions, spectacles attended by enthusiastic crowds. As private violence declined—that is, as populations were socialized to less personally violent identities—people lost their taste for such spectacles. Punishment retreated behind institutional walls.” – Richard Rhodes, Masters of Death
The servants of ThanatosThe servants of Thanatos
“The Nazi hecatomb was not ‘modern’ and ‘scientific,’ as it is frequently characterized, nor was it unique in human history. It was accomplished with the same simple equipment as the slaughters of European imperialism and, later, Asian and African civil war. State-sponsored massacre is a complex and recurring social epidemic. Understanding how its perpetrators learn to cope with its challenges is one important part of understanding how to prevent or limit further outbreaks, and no twentieth-century slaughter is better documented than the Third Reich’s.” – Richard Rhodes, Masters of Death
En garde, you swineEn garde, you swine
“Serious dueling—dueling to the death to settle a conflict or an insult to one’s honor—arose among the nobility in early modern Europe at a time when states were centralizing. In medieval days the nobility had dominated its demesnes with serious violence, enforcing decrees, claiming and defending territory and levying tribute much as present-day mafiosi do. To assert authority and collect taxes, centralizing governments had to limit such private violence. Monarchs did so in part by establishing courts that the nobility had to attend as disarmed courtiers to seek royal favor. Monarchs also outlawed violent personal contests. The duel, a formalized violent personal contest, then developed outside the law as an implicit political protest, an assertion by the nobility that while it was prepared to bend its knee to the monarch in matters of taxation and social control, it did not recognize the monarch’s writ in matters of personal honor.” – Richard Rhodes, Masters of Death
A fresh shipment is in on the S.S. BlackshirtA fresh shipment is in on the S.S. Blackshirt
“To say that governments monopolize violence is to imply that violence is a commodity that can be collected and stored. Violence is a behavior. As such, it resides in individuals, people who have experienced it and out of that experience learned to produce it more or less on demand. Weapons enter the picture as tools violent people may or may not use to amplify their violence production. Governments monopolize violence by authorizing some of their citizens to use violence in circumstances deemed legal and official. These citizens may have come to their official duties already experienced with violence, or they may gain their violent experience through official training. However thy learn to use violence, even these violent officials are authorized to do so only under specific circumstances, and if they use violence under unauthorized circumstances, such acts are deemed criminal. Police brutality and military atrocity, for example, are two categories of criminal violence.” – Richard Rhodes, Masters of Death
That’s the theory, anywayThat’s the theory, anyway
“The control of violence is a fundamental responsibility of government. Governments control violence by monopolizing it. They authorize military and police forces to use violence but deem criminal any other individual or institutional use. From this basic division, which evolved across five centuries in the West as governments enlarged and centralized, the common belief has emerged that governmental violence is rational (or at least deliberate and intentional), while private violence is irrational, aberrant, the product of psychopathology rather than deliberate intention. In fact, violence is violence, whether public or private, official or unofficial, good or bad. Violence is an instrumentality, not a psychopathology or a character disorder. Violence is a means to an end—domination and control—one of many possible means. Since its essence is injury, its efficacy in the long term is marginal, but its short-term advantages are obvious.” – Richard Rhodes, Masters of Death
But we do so enjoy kicking people when they’re downBut we do so enjoy kicking people when they’re down
“We don’t force bankruptcy debtors to give up every asset they own in order to get a bankruptcy discharge, recognizing that people need means to live after bankruptcy and need some way to get back on their feet. There is no societal benefit (in fact there is a great cost) in making people homeless or taking all of their clothes.” – Nathalie Martin and Ocean Tama, Inside Bankruptcy Law
Some would prefer they be enslavedSome would prefer they be enslaved
“We do not allow people to file for bankruptcy and discharge most of their debts to be nice. The philosophy is that relieving people of their debts allows them to get back into and contribute to the economy once again. This is considered good for our overall economy, though this theory is not without some controversy.” – Nathalie Martin and Ocean Tama, Inside Bankruptcy Law