Is it Godwin's Law if it's true?

I hear more than a few folks comparing the current administration to that of the Third Reich. Generally speaking this is infantile hyperbole, pointing out the failure of the accuser ever to have lived with real hardship more than it points out any qualities of the current administration. Yes, there are huge abuses of power, but frankly it's more comparable to any unchecked government, from the Gaullists to the Nazis to the Fascists to the Stalinists to the administration of Abraham Lincoln (don't forget, the man suspended habeas corpus...he was a great man, but historical perspective must be kept clear). Jumping straight to the Nazis just makes the case look weak, which it isn't.


There is a fundamental similarity there, though. Well, more like a lesson not learned from the Nazis. British historian Anthony Beevor touched on it, but BBC documentary filmmaker Laurence Rees hit the nail on the head in his book Auschwitz: A New History. The Nazis continually prepared for one, and only one, outcome.

For example, when they invaded Poland (and later the USSR), they planned to live off the food already there. The problem with this was that more often than not the countries invaded didn't have much of a food surplus. In Poland this meant terrible rationing and malnutrition among the native population, worse among the Polish Jews. In the USSR it meant that whole families were left without any food for what turned out to be the most brutal winter in decades. Locals tended to either hoard food or steal a little back, so they were rounded up and tossed in prison or labor camps. When it became clear there would barely be enough food for the German army, the prisoners'/slave laborers' rations were cut further, and in some cases whole groups of Poles were shot for no other reason than the Nazis had no food for them, and by the twisted logic of the Reich it was more humane to just kill them and be done with it.

Now, I'm in no way saying the current administration is rounding up slave laborers from a perceived "slave race" and then taking their land as lebesnraum. However, the continual refusal to plan ahead, refusal to allow for changes in plans, and refusal to admit problems until they become nearly insoluble is a hallmark of the current administration, and a close reading of Nazi behavior and administrative techniques from 1939 to, say, 1944 might have been a wise move.

Inflexibility has never been a good leadership trait, at any level. Sure, here and there one finds examples of some leader or other, at whatever level, refusing to bend and thereby saving the day. More often, though, and even within those seemingly obstinate examples, a leader who can adapt to a given situation and to the fluid conditions of geopolitical, national, local, and even battlefield dynamics is likely to be the one who sees their followers, be they a nation, a state, a province, a city, or a platoon, through difficult times and safely to the other side.

(no subject)

No color correction. You can't smell the distant fires, but the impact this far away is unmistakable.

If the Obama/Biden campaign doesn't jump on this...

So, the US bank, stock, real estate and insurance markets are unhappy right now. It seems the root of this unhappiness is the intermingling of these various markets. Back in the days following the Great Depression of the first half of the 20th century a whole slew of laws and regulations were written to isolate these economic spheres from each other, the thinking being that in the case of one industry stumbling the others would trundle onward unharmed.

The counter argument to this was that by restricting the freedom of businesses to participate in two, three or four of these spheres the regulations prevented potential economic growth. Which, frankly, is true.

The question became one of whether the reassurance of isolation was worth the restriction of trade. To one side the regulations were a straightjacket. To the other they were a three-point seat belt. Of course, as time took the nation further and further from the Depression the regulations seemed less and less crucial.

Well, the current situation underscores the issue nicely. Bear Stearns is gone, AIG is getting a massive bailout, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are for all intents and purposes now agencies of the federal government, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch...etc., etc., etc.

Traditionally, during a national election strength in economics has been attributed to Republicans. This cycle Obama seems to have an advantage, if only because McCain was foolish enough to actually say he didn't know enough about the economy and needed to learn more. (It didn't help that his then-chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm, referred to the economic worries as the product of the USA being a "nation of whiners.")

This is kind of disingenuous on McCain's part. He's been an active participant in economic policy in the Senate for years. However, ignorance may well be the better tack to sail.


In 1999, "McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.

"That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments."
(Quoted from the Washington Post)

McCain is now railing at the greedy CEOs who clamored after the dollar with no concession to safety. Really? CEOs working toward fiscal reward, despite risk? Bizarre, eh? This is coming from a member of the Keating Five, an experience which seems to have taught McCain little.


Obama's been on McCain's case about the economy, but the very legislation that made the current fiscal fiasco possible was legislation which McCain actively supported and which carried the name of McCain's main economic guru. McCain either knows the economy and believes that this is the way to run it, or he doesn't know the economy and still felt justified pushing legislation directly affecting it.

Either reality is pretty damning.



For the record, true Free Market advocacy means none of this phases you. All these failures are part of the market adjusting & shaking off the shackles of regulation, and eventually everything will correct itself and all will be right with the world. Any regulation, any, is merely hampering the market's ability to self-regulate in its natural, healthy way. It's actually close kin to Anarchism, in that the anarchists, the political theorists, not the bozos trying to blow up civil servants, feel that Law and Government get in the way of people dealing with each other, and in no small way prevent a better society from happening by alienating citizenry from their natural moral compass. Both systems require of the adherent either rose-colored glasses of Coke-bottle thickness or an utter disregard for human misery.