Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Carl Schmitt, yesterday's Nazis and today's Bush sycophants

Those who are now claiming that "Bush broke no law" when he violated the Fourth Amendment - by letting the government spy on Americans without warrants - sound an awful lot like one particularly notorious Nazi apologist. Carl Schmitt was a German legal scholar who believed in having a strong dictatorship rather than democratically-elected government. He went on to write a lot of complimentary essays on what Adolf Hitler was doing. In 1934 he even published "Der Führer schützt das Recht" ("The Father protects what's right"), in which he argued that Hitler was being virtuous when he carried out his "Night of the Long Knives". Possibly as many as 400 "political enemies" were murdered on Hitler's orders, and Schmitt defended it by saying that Hitler was part of a higher moral law than that which abhors murder. Carl Schmitt did everything he could to justify Hitler being above the law... exactly as too many of Bush's supporters are now saying that "their man" can't be bothered by the Constitution of the United States.

It's been said that had it not been for Carl Schmitt, the Nazis would not have enjoyed as much legal authority as they did when they carried out their plans against their enemies and anyone deemed to be "inferior".

Lord only knows what today's Bush apologists are paving the way for with whatever else the future has in store for us.

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