“How could the German populace claim ignorance of the slaughter of the Jewish people. How could the townspeople, railroad conductors, teachers, doctors, claim they knew nothing about concentration camps and human carnage. How can people who were neighbors and maybe even friends of the Jewish citizen say they weren't there when it happened.”

“The school was alive with conjecture and curiosity. It affected everyone. The school cook asked what a Third Wave cookie looked like. I said chocolate chip of course. Our principal came into an afternoon faculty meeting and gave me the Third Wave salute. I saluted back. The Librarian thanked me for the 30' banner on learning which she placed above the library entrance. By the end of the day over two hundred students were admitted into the order. I felt very alone and a little scared.

Most of my fear emanated from the incidence of "tattletaling". Though I formally appointed only three students to report deviate behavior, approximately twenty students came to me with reports about how Allan didn't salute, or Georgine was talking critically about our experiment. This incidence of monitoring meant that half the class now considered it their duty to observe and report on members of their class. Within this avalanche of reporting one legitimate conspiracy did seem underway .…

Three women in the class had told their parents all about our classroom activities. These three young women were by far the most intelligent students in the class. As friends they chummed together. They possessed a silent confidence and took pleasure in a school setting that gave them academic and leadership opportunity. During the days of the experiment I was curious how they would respond to the equalitarian and physical reshaping of the class. The rewards they were accustomed to winning just didn't exist in the experiment. The intellectual skills of questioning and reasoning were non existent. . .

In telling their parents of the experiment they set up a brief chain of events. The rabbi for one of the parents called me at home. He was polite and condescending. I told him we were merely studying the German personality. He seemed delighted and told me not to worry. He would talk to the parents and calm their concern. In concluding this conversation I envisioned similar conversations throughout history in which the clergy accepted and apologized for untenable conditions. If only he would have raged in anger or simply investigated the situation I could point the students to an example of righteous rebellion. But no. The rabbi became a part of the experiment. In remaining ignorant of the oppression in the experiment he became an accomplice and advocate.

By the end of the third day I was exhausted. I was tearing apart. The balance between role playing and directed behavior became indistinguishable. Many of the students were completely into being Third Wave Members. They demanded strict obedience of the rules from other students and bullied those that took the experiment lightly.”

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
. . constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights 
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. 
4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. . .
5. Rampant Sexism
. . .Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
6. Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media are indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy . . often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. 
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. . .
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. . .
14. Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections. 

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

. . . what I need to convey is that a 'fascist shift' in a democracy is incremental.
It does not progress like a diagonal line going straight across a chart; it progresses in a buildup of many acts assaulting democracy simultaneously that then form a critical mass, that suddenly erupts the nation into a different kind of reality; the nation `stablizes'; then this process begins again at that elevated level of suppression; and eventually there is no turning back. It is more like a series of `tipping point' progressions than an arithmetic one. If you mapped it on a chart it would look more like a series of steps.

Each critical turning point marks a vertical line in a 'step'.
Historian Richard Evans points out that the Nazi ascension to power came about in a series of tactics, and that there were many points early on at which the German people could have said, 'enough!' and together derailed the escalation. Needless to say, that didn't happen. Evans also points out that part of this passivity had to do with the fact that no one in the Germany of 1933 could see what was coming later in the decade.”

“Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, has announced a series of hearings titled “The Constitution in Crisis: The State of Civil Liberties in America.” Topics to be covered by the hearings include:

– The National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and proposed expansions;

– The erosion of Habeas Corpus through the Military Commissions Act;

– The sanctioning of torture through the Military Commissions Act and other government policies;

– The practice of “extraordinary rendition,” or government sponsored kidnapping;

– PATRIOT Act threats to privacy rights, including the FBI’s abuses of the National Security Letter authority and intrusions into Americans’ “Freedom to Read”;

– Government surveillance of First Amendment-protected activities; and

– The gutting of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights and Voting Rights Divisions.“

Hope must come not with what we can do, but with continued resistence. We must, onthe one hand, face the gravity of the moment and not sugar coat it with false hope. It is not good. But to give up is to be defated, not just in a material sense, but a spiritual sense. For me real spirituality comes with resistence, even when times are bleak. This is what gives life meaning and integrity. Martin Luther King and Bonhoeffer wrote about this eloquently. To fight, no matter what the odds, is to win, to give hope, so sustain the divine spark which is love and compassion and tolerance. Chris

Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school
Grads influential in Justice Dept.

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | April 8, 2007

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- The title of the course was Constitutional Law, but the subject was sin. Before any casebooks were opened, a student led his classmates in a 10-minute devotional talk, completed with "amens," about the need to preserve their Christian values.

"Sin is so appealing because it's easy and because it's fun," the law student warned.

Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson to provide "Christian leadership to change the world," has worked hard in its two-decade history to upgrade its reputation, fighting past years when a majority of its graduates couldn't pass the bar exam and leading up to recent victories over Ivy League teams in national law student competitions."

"It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession," wrote a contributor to The New Republic website . ". . . That a recent graduate of one of the very worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ."

In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people's civil rights.

"When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was 'maddening,' I knew I correctly answered the question," wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division's housing section -- the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

"A reader demands to know how I contracted the infectious conservatism for which he plans to horsewhip me. So if you have tears, gentle reader, prepare to shed them now as I reveal how my gloomy temperament received its conservative warp from early and prolonged exposure to the Chicago Cubs.

The differences between conservatives and liberals are as much a matter of temperament as ideas. Liberals are temperamentally inclined to see the world as a harmonious carnival of sweetness and light, where goodwill prevails good intentions are rewarded, the race is to the swift, and a benevolent Nature arranges a favorable balance of pleasure over pain. Conservatives (and Cub fans) know better.

Conservatives know the world is a dark and forbidding place where most new knowledge is false, most improvements are for the worse, the battle is not to the strong, nor riches to men of understanding, and an unscrupulous Providence consigns innocents to suffering. I learned this early."

a liberal is a. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry. b. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

A conservative is a. Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change, b. Traditional or restrained in style: a conservative dark suit. c. Moderate; cautious.

“ . . we are only at the beginning of the road to the Great Society. Ahead now is a summit where freedom from the wants of the body can help fulfill the needs of the spirit.
We built this Nation to serve its people.
We want to grow and build and create, but we want progress to be the servant and not the master of man.
We do not intend to live in the midst of abundance, isolated from neighbors and nature, confined by blighted cities and bleak suburbs, stunted by a poverty of learning and an emptiness of leisure.
The Great Society asks not how much, but how good; not only how to create wealth but how to use it; not only how fast we are going, but where we are headed.
It proposes as the first test for a nation: the quality of its people.
This kind of society will not flower spontaneously from swelling riches and surging power.
It will not be the gift of government or the creation of presidents. It will require of every American, for many generations, both faith in the destination and the fortitude to make the journey.”

A NATIONAL AGENDA

I propose that we begin a program in education to ensure every American child the fullest development of his mind and skills.
I propose that we begin a massive attack on crippling and killing diseases.
I propose that we launch a national effort to make the American city a better and a more stimulating place to live.
I propose that we increase the beauty of America and end the poisoning of our rivers and the air that we breathe.
I propose that we carry out a new program to develop regions of our country that are now suffering from distress and depression.
I propose that we make new efforts to control and prevent crime and delinquency.
I propose that we eliminate every remaining obstacle to the right and the opportunity to vote.
I propose that we honor and support the achievements of thought and the creations of art.
I propose that we make an all-out campaign against waste and inefficiency.”

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception--the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.”

To the citizens of this proud Nation. I apologize for the shameful way I have conducted the affairs of this country for the past six years. I hereby pledge the following priorities for the next two years or however long it takes:

The war in Iraq, at least our part in it will end forthwith. We will put in place all the operational personnel and equipment needed to affect a swift and careful redeployment of our troops. We will work with neighboring nations and the UN to help them establish a peace-keeping force to stabilize Iraq and allow for the rebuilding of that devastated country. At home we will provide for the needs of our returning military by fully funding the Veterans Administration and see to it that the physical and emotional needs of our brave service men and women are provided.

The rule of law will be re-established respecting the worth and dignity of every person. The Attorney General will be directed to reinstate the honest hard working prosecutors who have been dismissed because they have been attempting to investigate members of congress and the administration who have been committing crimes. The right of habeas corpus will be extended to all on our shores and in our care abroad. Every detainee will be treated with respect and have access to council. Those for whom we have a reason to believe have committed crimes against this country will receive fair trials according to the Constitutional rule of law. Those for whom we have no solid evidence will be released from custody with our apologies and transportation to their homes. Should restitution be needed, we will provide for it.

We will begin the serious work of diplomacy and peace-making between nations. We will call upon the most gifted and talented among our citizens to help in this endeavor. We will listen with open hearts and minds and work unsparingly to find common ground and equitable solutions to the problems that nations around the world are facing. We will work with the World Bank to find ways of alleviating poverty, firstly in the war torn nations as we know that poverty leads to despair and often to violence.

We will begin immediately with implementing the programs of the Apollo Alliance that have outlined a ten year plan to make this country energy self-sufficient. This will involve industries and creative thinkers across the board re-imagining how it is that we create and use power. If we can combine our efforts to send a man to the moon, we can do this as well. This program will also include the reduction of greenhouse gasses to pre-1990 levels. It is time to begin the long process of reversing the damage we have done to the environment.

We will concentrate efforts in scientific discovery in the prevention and fighting of disease. With that we will also begin the planning of a single-payer health plan modeled after Medicare so that every man, woman, and child in this nation will have access to excellent medical care without worry about the cost. Prescription drugs will be available to all in need through a plan that will set fair prices and reasonable costs.

We will respect your privacy in all matters. Who you choose to love and marry, how and when you choose to have children, how and where you choose to pray will be matters dictated by your own conscience without interference of the government.

We will introduce the federal funding of elections so that candidates no longer have to spend a large portion of their time raising funds for reelection. They will no longer be beholden to the corporations. We will also federalize the machinery used for elections. There will be verifiable paper trails for all voting machines and the source code will be open for inspection. Voter harassment or intimidation will be met with stiff fines and jail terms. Election fraud will not be tolerated.

The FCC will be further empowered to do all within its purview to reverse the media consolidation that has led to a dominance of the airwaves by one side of the political spectrum. We need to hear all voices and all opinions as we wrestle with the difficult challenges facing us. We will also move to restore the Fairness Doctrine providing equal time for the airing of issues and the interviewing of candidates.

There is much more to do, and things I forgot to list, but this is a start. And knowing that everything that is laid out above is antithetical to who I am as a human being and to the principles adhered to by the current administration, therefore I further announce that I, the Vice President, and the entire Cabinet are submitting our resignations so that a new administration can be elected to carry out this work.

“Armageddon, the war of wars, the ultimate conflict, came at last, and there began a campaign of hatred and vilification by both sides which made the propagandist tirades of the days of peace seem almost mild. . . .The Prime Minister Asquith, in a speech in October, accused Germany of ‘devastation and destruction worthy of the blackest annals of the history of barbarism. . .the French cartoonist, Jean Véber, portrayed the German soldier as an unleashed monster striding out to slaughter and destroy. . . .

If the British acquired a talent for hating the Germans, the Germans excelled themselves in hating the British—or more specifically England. . .

. . .strong fuel was added to the fire by the angry debate, the claims and counter-claims, relating to the treatment of the occupied territories of Belgium and France. Allied newspapers at the time were full of the appalling, inhuman atrocities allegedly committed by the invading Germans. Babies spiked on bayonets, hands or breasts cut off, priests hung as living clappers from bells—the worst examples from this gruesome catalogue have been convincingly discredited. . .The Germans for their part claimed that many of the civilians executed were guerillas (or, to use the more precise terms, francs-tireurs [french terrorists]) and that others were legitimately shot either to punish or deter resistance.”

The British had the attitude that Germany was the school bully that needed punishing and needed to be taught how to behave. “Few anticipated the long ordeal to come. Shared between soldiers and civilians alike was the assumption that the war would be short, successful and glorious. ‘The general view,’ wrote Harold Macmilllan, ‘was that it would be over by Christmas.’”

"Several of my chums had been able to get hold of two small Christmas trees complete with candles, to be mounted on the parapet of the trenches, while others dragged planks, fascines etc. with them, to be used in the battle against water and mud. As was usual at that time, having settled in the trenches, we fired the occasional shot from our outposts to let the enemy know we would not let ourselves be surprised."

"On Christmas Eve we got the order to go into the trenches, The day before we had celebrated Christmas in our rest quarters with the civilian people and children who were presented with chocolate, bonbons and cake. It was all in good humour. Then at darkness we marched forward to the trenches like Father Christmas with parcels hanging from us. All was quiet. No shooting. Little snow. We posted a tiny Christmas tree in our dugout -the company commander, myself the lieutenant, and the two orderlies. We placed a second lighted tree on the breastwork.

Then we began to sing our old Christmas songs: 'Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht' and '0 du Frohliche'..."

"It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere,—and about seven or eight in the evening there was a lot of commotion in the German trenches and there were these lights -I don't know what they were. And then they sang 'Silent Night' -'Stille Nacht'. I shall never forget it, it was one of the highlights of my life. I thought, what a beautiful tune."

“Suddenly a man from my company reported: 'The English are letting off fireworks'. And sure enough across the way from us the enemy trenches were lit up with fires and rockets and so on. We then made up a few banners reading 'Happy Christmas!' with a couple of candles behind and a couple on top.”

"I was standing on the firestep, gazing towards the German lines and thinking what a very different sort of Christmas Eve this was from any I had experienced in the past. In the ordinary way of things, my father would be making Rum Punch from an old family recipe, which had been written out by his grandfather, and was kept, of all places, in the Family Bible! Earlier, after the evening meal, we would have decorated the living rooms and hall with the traditional greenery, and would now be looking forward to wishing one another a 'Happy Christmas', and toasting the occasion in the result of my father's labours. Instead of this, here was 1, standing in a waterlogged trench, in a muddy Flemish field, and staring out over the flat, empty and desolate countryside, with no signs of life. There had been no shooting by either side since the sniper's shot that morning, which had killed young Bassingham. But this was not at all unusual.

Then suddenly lights began to appear along the German parapet, which -were evidently make-shift Christmas trees, adorned with lighted candles, which burnt steadily in the still, frosty air! Other sentries had, of course seen the same thing, and quickly awoke those on duty, asleep in the shelters, to 'come and see this thing, which had come to pass'. Then our opponents began to sing 'Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht. This was actually the first time I heard this carol, which was not then so popular in this country as it has since become. They finished their carol and we thought that we ought to retaliate in some way, so we sang 'The First Nowell', and when we finished that they all began clapping; and then they struck up another favourite of theirs, '0 Tannenbaum'. And so it went on. First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up '0 Come All Ye Faithful' the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words 'Adeste Fideles.' And I thought, well, this was really a most extraordinary thing -two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war."

"You will hardly credit what I am going to tell you: but thousands of our men will be writing home today telling the same strange and wonderful story. Listen.

Last night as I sat in my little dugout, writing, my chum came bursting in upon me with: 'Bob! Hark at'em!' And I listened. From the German trenches came the sound of music and singing. My chum continued: 'They've got Christmas trees all along the top of their trenches! Never saw such a sight.'

I got up to investigate. Climbing the parapet, I saw a sight which I shall remember to my dying day. Right along the whole of the line were hung paper lanterns and illuminations of every description, many of them in such positions as to suggest that they were hung upon Christmas trees. And as I stood in wonder a rousing song came over to us-, at first the words were indistinguishable, then, as the song was repeated again and again, we realized that we were listening to 'The Watch on the Rhine'. Our boys answered with a cheer, while a neighbouring regiment sang lustily the National Anthem. Some were for shooting the lights away, but almost at the first shot there came a shout in really good English, 'Stop shooting!' Then began a series of answering shouts from trench to trench. It was incredible. 'Hallo! Hallo! you English we wish to speak.' And everyone began to speak at once. Some were rational, others the reverse of complimentary. Eventually some sort of order obtained, and lo! a party of our men got out from the trenches and invited the Germans to meet them halfway and talk.

And there in the searchlight they stood, Englishman and German, chatting and smoking cigarettes together midway between the lines. A rousing cheer went up from friend and foe alike. The group was too far away from me to hear what was said, but presently we heard a cheery 'Good night. A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all,' . with which the parties returned to their respective trenches.

After this we remained the whole night through, singing with the enemy song for song."

". . .the night was filled with sights and sounds too remarkable to credit one's senses, and daylight came too soon. It took a suspension of disbelief to accept the reality that the hateful enemy hungered for Brüderschaft. For most British soldiers, the German insistence on celebrating Christmas was a shock after the propaganda about Teutonic bestiality, while the Germans had long dismissed the British as well as the French as soulless and materialistic and incapable of appreciating the festival in the proper spirit. Regarded by the French and British as paganseven savages-the pragmatic Germans were not expected to risk their lives on behalf of each beloved Tannenbaum. Yet when a few were felled by Scrooge-like gunfire, the Saxons opposite the Seaforths stubbornly climbed the parapets to set the endangered trees up once more. To those British troops whose concepts of Christmas had been molded by Charles Dickens, the custom had become their own. To Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, who after the wartime death of his son turned to mysticism and spiritualism, the British and Germans had found "a sudden and extraordinary link in that ancient tree worship, long anterior to Christianity, which Saxon tribes had practiced in the depths of Germanic forests and still commemorated by their candle-lit firs.... It was an amazing spectacle, and must arouse bitter thought concerning those high-born conspirators against the peace of the world, who in their mad ambition had hounded such men on to take each other by the throat rather than by the hand."