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Monday, August 21, 2006

LEARN FROM HISTORY

I am reading Alan Furst's

The Polish Officer

Furst specializes in WWII espionage novels which instruct us deeply about that time and the resistance movements in various countries.

You can learn a lot while having a great read.

In this one, I was caught by one character's assessment of the success of the Nazi occupations.

Four horrific, yet simple, principles:

  • Calculated devaluation of the currency make the citizen's holdings worth less and less. Make them scrabble.

  • Replacement of the judiciary—get your own people into all the important positions and game the exisiting laws while you get a puppet to make new ones.

  • Direction of labor—with the weakened economy, make people desparate for work and hire and fire to manipulate and coerce their cooperation

  • Registration—make people carry identity cards and 'papers' so that everyone, everywhere, can be tracked and their whereabouts and activities known. Compile dossiers at a level of 100%.

    • I have spent a little time ruminating about how these principles seem to be similar in many ways to the agenda of our current administration.

    I don't know about the 'Direction of Labor', but I see signs of all the others creeping slowly into our national life without a whimper of complaint.


    // posted by esrose @ 2:41 PM
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