The More Things Change

I hope you will take the time to read the following statement, which I found in a piece by Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo, and make a guess about where and when it is from:

"We assert that during the last twenty years, leaders of the Government of the United States under successive Democrat Administrations, and especially under this present Administration, have failed to perform these several basic duties; but, on the contrary, that they have evaded them, flouted them, and by a long succession of vicious acts, so undermined the foundations of our Republic as to threaten its existence. 

We charge that they have arrogantly deprived our citizens of precious liberties by seizing powers never granted. 

We charge that they work unceasingly to achieve their goal of national socialism. 

We charge that they have disrupted internal tranquillity by fostering class strife for venal political purposes. 

We charge that they have choked opportunity and hampered progress by unnecessary and crushing taxation. 

They claim prosperity but the appearance of economic health is created by war expenditures, waste and extravagance, planned emergencies, and war crises. They have debauched our money by cutting in half the purchasing power of our dollar. 

We charge that they have weakened local self-government which is the cornerstone of the freedom of men"

Sound familiar?  This is from the Republican party platform of 1952.

The same old lies.  The same old fear.. The same old cries of victimization.  Nothing ever changes for them, because it works.  It has handed the power in this country over and over again to people who do nothing but despoil everything they touch.  And people still fall for it, because greed and hatred will never die, and for most people, apparently, they are more powerful than any sort of human decency.

This is what really causes Fascism to arise.  If we should have learned anything from Germany and Italy, it is that the most civilized societies on earth have no real safeguards against this calamity; not when the people who should know better are either intimidated, bought off, or just too damned lazy to speak the truth.  The monster lurks beneath the surface of the world, needing only a little human collaboration to break free.

That's what we have in this country today.  Not a pleasant prospect.

Comments

Magpie said…
"...they work unceasingly to achieve their goal of national socialism"

umm... THAT 'national socialism'?
Or were they already calling socialism fascism?
Jono said…
I have been alive since just before that platform was stated. I can't believe how much nothing has changed.

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