[A-List] Patriot Act "vs"[=] Nazi Enabling Act/Decrees 1933

[Omahkohkiaayo_ipoyi <omahkohkiaayo@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Patriot Act vs, German Enabling Act:The Decrees of 1933

(a) The February 28 Decree. One of the most repressive acts of the new Nazi
government, this one allowed for the suspension of civil liberties ....The
president was persuaded that the state was in danger and, hence, that the
emergency measures embodied in the decree were necessary. Even though under
Art. 48 of the constitution, the decree would have been withdrawn once the
so-called emergency had passed, any hope of this happening was prevented by
the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship following the Enabling Act (see
below).

It was in fact never withdrawn and remained until the end as an instrument
of Nazi terror against ordinary citizens who ran foul of the regime.
ARTICLE 1. In virtue of paragraph 2, article 48,* of the German
Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against
communist acts of violence , endangering the state:Sections 114, 115, 117,
118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are
suspended until further notice.

Thus, restrictions on personal liberty [114], on the right of free
expression of opinion, including freedom of the press [118], on the right
of assembly and the right of association [124], and violations of the
privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications [117], and
warrants for house-searches [115], orders for confiscation as well as
restrictions on property [153], are also permissible beyond the legal
limits otherwise prescribed.*Article 48 of the German Constitution of
August 11, 1919: If public safety and order in Germany are materially
disturbed or endangered, the President may take the necessary measures to
restore public safety and order, and, if necessary, to intervene with the
help of the armed forces. To this end he may temporarily suspend, in whole
or in part, the fundamental rights established inArticles 114, 115, 117,
118, 123, 124, and 153 ...........Patriot Act:3.. Section 218 which amends
the "probable cause" requirement before conducting secret searches or
surveillance to obtain evidence of a crime;4.. Sections 215, 218, 358, and
508 which permit law enforcement authorities to have broad access to
sensitive mental health, library, business, financial, and educational
records despite the existence of previously adopted state and federal laws
which were intended to strengthen the protection of these types of
records;5.. Sections 411 and 412 which give the Secretary of State broad
powers to designate domestic groups as "terrorist organizations" and the
Attorney General power to subject immigrants to indefinite detention or
deportation even if no crime has been committed; and6.. Sections 507 and
508 which impose a mandate on state and local public universities who must
collect information on students that may be of interest to the Attorney
General.

"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between
the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the
whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it
provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway
. . . (it) gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . .
.and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so 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. . .

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on
occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was
in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to,
one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field
sees the corn growing. . . .Each act. . . is worse than the last, but only
a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a
shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.You don't want to act, or
even talk, alone. . . you don't want to 'go out of your way to make
trouble.' . . .But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds
or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. The
forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops,
the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the
holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the
lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live
in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even
know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. .
. .You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a
year ago, things your father. . . could never have imagined." :

>From Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)

ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot
separately plunder a third: Ambrose Bierce

A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of
evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an
imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists,
and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a
participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate
inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite
nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the
nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to
have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition
to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.And it
gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves
to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of
their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding,
with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable
deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base
or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation: George
Washington's "Farewell Address" -1796
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/washing.htm

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