robert ringer.com
The story of Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, author of Witness to Nuremburg, is one that every person who is concerned about tyranny should read.
Sonnenfeldt fled his German homeland for England at age fifteen when it became clear that Jews were increasingly at risk under the new Nazi regime. After some stranger-than-life twists and turns, he settled in Baltimore, Maryland, at age twenty and became a U.S. citizen.
Sonnenfeldt ultimately ended up in the Army and, at the end of World War II, was one of the soldiers who marched into the Nazi’s Dachau concentration camp. When U.S. troops arrived there, the guard towers were empty, abandoned by Nazi guards who fled when they realized the end was at hand.
Sonnenfeldt could not believe what he saw — unburied corpses piled one on top of another … thousands of emaciated human beings who were barely alive … prisoners beating a German shepherd dog to death in retribution for the way prison-camp dogs had terrorized them. As he stared at the horrors before him, he thought to himself that he was one of the luckiest people in the world to have escaped the fate of the millions who were brutalized.
Following the war, Sonnenfeldt went on to become Chief Interpreter for the OSS group that evolved into the American prosecution team at the 1945 Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. He later wrote about his revealing conversations with Hermann Goering and other principal Nazi war criminals in his autobiography Mehr als ein Leben.
Sonnenfeldt’s story reminded me once again that genocide is woven into the fabric of human history, usually carried out by power-addicted tyrants who are masters at lying and demonizing a targeted group. In the case of Adolf Hitler, he preached that the Jews were the cause of all of Germany’s problems, and his baseless assertion ultimately became accepted by the masses.
Early on, of course, few people took Hitler seriously, and many laughed at his maniacal speeches. But those who believed he was just some clueless kook soon found out differently. Hitler understood exactly what he was doing, as evidenced by his words in Mein Kampf: “The German has no idea how much the people must be misled if the support of the masses is required.”
He clearly understood that in order for dogma to become entrenched, it must find its way into mainstream print. And, in this vein, an essential step in the transformation of an insidious lie into fact is to make certain it appears in children’s textbooks.
Through his character Winston in 1984, George Orwell said: “If all records told the same tale ─ then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”
In other words, given enough repetition and time, a fable like the Holocaust denial could someday pass into the history books as fact. That’s why General Eisenhower ordered pictures taken of the Nazi prison camps, because he was afraid, even at that time, that there would be a movement to deny it ever happened.
But things are different in 21st century America, right? Indeed they are. It’s much easier to spread a preposterous lie in today’s world than it was in the World War II era. Collectivist cheerleaders on the Internet and television have round-the-clock access to the masses, and they understand the power of repetition.
As a result, in today’s lie-a-minute, twenty-four-hour news cycle, separating illusion from fact is not an easy task, even for the most alert and rational among us. It takes a great deal of conscious effort. And when too many people choose not to make that effort, a holocaust — actual or metaphoric — may be just over the horizon.
In Rights of Man, Thomas Paine said:
“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to re‑establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant (my emphasis). … It has never yet been discovered how to make a man unknow his knowledge.”
True, to be sure. But what Paine did not tell us is how to motivate people to become knowledgeable in the first place. [emphasis added]
As I watch Obama and his army of lying thugs frantically spewing out the most preposterous lies imaginable, I am reminded of Eric Hoffer’s warning that the louder the drums of deceit, the more vigilant one has to be about learning the facts. And therein lies the problem. A significant portion of the populace is totally uninformed, and it comprises the very people who decide the winner of every election!
Is it just me, or is there something fundamentally wrong with our system of electing public servants? Repeat, servants. The reality is that the winner of virtually every election is the candidate who convinces a majority of voters that he can do more good things for them than his opponent.
Sorry, but that’s not a politician’s job. His only function is to protect our lives and property — not intrude in our lives and take our property in order to gain our neighbors’ votes.
Sometimes I think Thoreau had it exactly right. That cabin in the woods sounds awfully good right now to those of us who just want to be left alone to live our lives as we please.
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Copyright © 2012 Robert Ringer
ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
Al Fin: "Cowboy Commentary", aka "Eat your veggies" The Flag banner is posted in order to defy those who would make patriotic symbols illegal or disreputable.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Republicans' Gold Rhetoric: Another SCAM???
market-ticker.org
I think that it is a start. But the pressure needs to be kept on to reduce spending, or it won't matter.
It is a bit discouraging to see so much cynicism from people out there. If things are so hopeless, why not just crawl into a corner and start sucking your thumb?
It is rather pointless to even try if you are just going to give up like this.
The gold standard has returned to mainstream US politics for the first time in 30 years, with a “gold commission” set to become part of official Republican party policy.
Drafts of the party platform, which it will adopt at a convention in Tampa Bay, Florida, next week, call for an audit of Federal Reserve monetary policy and a commission to look at restoring the link between the dollar and gold.
I think that it is a start. But the pressure needs to be kept on to reduce spending, or it won't matter.
It is a bit discouraging to see so much cynicism from people out there. If things are so hopeless, why not just crawl into a corner and start sucking your thumb?
It is rather pointless to even try if you are just going to give up like this.
obama demands race-based school discipline
americanthinker.com
It ought to be clear by now that this administration is barking mad. Anyone who votes for this is also barking mad.
The order charges his new racial justice team, in part, with "promoting a positive school climate that does not rely on methods that result in disparate use of disciplinary tools." In plain English, that means that if different races have different incidences of disciplinary action, those of a favored race who act worse will be punished less, or those of a disfavored race who act better will be punished more, or both.
It ought to be clear by now that this administration is barking mad. Anyone who votes for this is also barking mad.
Never Listen To A Feminist’s Opinion About Helping Boys
June 25, 2012 by Heartiste via Parapundit
The above comment on admiring convicts shows where women really gravitate towards. Strength, or appearance of strength. If you let them walk on you, you are fucking up, bro.
- as you find out fast how easily Bloom slips into, in so many words, the phonyfuck talk of “what boys need is more feminism and de-masculinizing reprogramming”.
- Lie number one. The US is third among countries for amount spent per pupil.
- about Title IX causing the closure of many men’s sports programs to cater to girls who have less inclination to play sports.
- Boy stuff bad. Girl stuff good. Let’s make our boys deferential betas, emotional sissies, well-read critics of feminist lit and THUPER THENTHITIVE Iron Johns.
- Lie number two. I’m going to call Bloom out for this even though I’m too lazy to scour for the relevant data. I bet if you break out incarceration rates by race, you’ll find again that the rate for white Americans compares favorably with Europeans.
- Lie number three. Not everyone is cognitively capable of succeeding at college.
- Female economic empowerment has rendered large swaths of working class men unattractive to women who can support themselves.
- Lie number four. Sex differences are real, hard-wired, and exist from the moment of birth.
- Lie number five. Women really are worse drivers than men. And where men suffer more traffic fatalities, women get into more nonfatal crashes. “As we shall see”, indeed.
- Even the serial killers who get tons of love letters from admiring women?[ that ought to set you bolt upright in your chair--- so this is what women admire? We are going to put our society into their hands?]
The above comment on admiring convicts shows where women really gravitate towards. Strength, or appearance of strength. If you let them walk on you, you are fucking up, bro.
Friday, August 24, 2012
How to turn a small problem into a bigger one
Obama may have inherited a weak economy, but his recovery is no great shakes.
Household income is down sharply since the recession ended three years ago, according to a report released Thursday, providing another sign of the stubborn weakness of the economic recovery.
From June 2009 to June 2012, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 4.8 percent, to $50,964, according to a report by Sentier Research, a firm headed by two former Census Bureau officials.
Seems like Reagan had a stock market crash, and it didn't even lead to a recession, much less a depression. Comparatively, it looks like for all of Obama's efforts, he can't even get back to where he was when he began- with a stock market crash.
But he's more interested in expanding government than in creating jobs.
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