Journal of No. 118

The head of the U.S. federal government agency that doles out benefits to disabled veterans is under fire for saying Bible study is "more important than doing [my] job."

And that's not just empty rhetoric! Since he became the head of the agency, "the number of veterans waiting on their disability claims has increased dramatically, from 325,000 in 2002 to 600,000 today."

I'm usually not a fan of the sound-bite, but... "He's prostituting his position," argued Mikey Weinstein, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. "We could have done just as poorly as he's done by sticking a German Shepard or a cactus in that job."

In related news, Bush says we're kicking ass in Baghdad, recalling the vim of President Roosevelt's stirring D-Day address to the nation, in which he related how US troops were "knocking the snot out of the Krauts".

"Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling."

Remarks by the President to the U.S. Conference of Mayors
Capital Hilton Hotel
Washington, D.C.
Jan 23, 2004

I'm the last person to lend credence to government conspiracies or equate the Bush Administration with fascism, but I certainly have disagreed with many of the Administration's most newsworthy actions of late.

How do these statements grab you?

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security."

Sounds like Colin Powell's 'proof' of WMD in Iraq.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes."

Sounds very much like the cleverly-named Patriot Act, which was supposed to be temporary, but now the Bush Administration wants to get rid of the sunset clause. And of course, now Patriot II is coming along.

"[Our leaders] gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the 'national enemies', without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful."

Sounds like US citizens, eager for anything to keep those foreign terrorists at bay.

But these quotes are not about the US of today, but about the rise of Nazi Germany. They come from Milton Mayer's _They Thought They Were Free_, a collection of interviews he carried out with Germans after WWII, discussing the rise of Nazism.

So keep your eyes open. As Jefferson said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."