Saturday, March 13, 2010

First They Came...


"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communists.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."


The above is a popular quote attributable to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group. The present ‘health care’ drama is a classic modern-day example of just what the good German pastor was talking about. Legislators are being given a false choice to vote either yes or no on a deeply flawed bill. In effect, they’ve been given a loaded gun. Either way they vote, they fatally damage themselves and, with it, their institution.

Some of our representatives have already recognized the ploy. After a long and prolific career sucking at the public troth, they have recused themselves; jumped ship. It was the only way to avoid a virtual bloodbath of embarrassment. Their intimate and long association with Washington high jinx has taught them that the gig is now up; that the progressives now rule; and that there are no longer any rules.

They recognized that they’ve been playing along without it ever having occurred to them that some day they too might stand in the cross hairs. They’d stood by and watched as the courts have been polluted; as once mighty industrialists and financiers have been dragged in front of congressional kangaroo courts and publicly castrated; as the desperate cries of the American people have been deliberately ignored; as our country’s founders have been discredited; our Constitution shredded; our press hobbled; religion disparaged; etc.

There’s no one left to save them now. Even the occasional sane utterance is but spit in the wind. The progressives are on the march. What will stop them? The military? What, military? You mean the one that’s still arguing about ‘don’t ask; don’t tell’? The military that’s already been issued its own poisoned pill to swallow?

1 comment:

  1. I don't think this is the first time we have found ourselves at this kind of crossroads. I was not there but it seems to me something similar in depth, a similar power vacuum existed in the years leading up to WW2 and the Civil War. Once true polarization takes place things can move very swiftly from abject impotence to decisive strength. Remember all those Essex class carriers produced in an unbelievably short lapse of time following Pearl Harbour.

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