Has Senator Byrd...

[Somme]

...got it right?

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2005/1084

Senator Byrd is correct to equate Bush with Hitler
March 7, 2005

The U.S. Senate's senior Constitutional scholar has correctly equated Bush with Hitler, and the usual attack dogs are howling. But they are wrong, and Americans must now face the harsh realities of an increasingly fascist and totalitarian GOP.

Octogenarian Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia made the equation in the context of Bush's attack on Senate procedures which might slow or halt his on-going attempt to pack the courts with extreme right-wing fanatics. Byrd said Bush's moves to destroy time-honored Senate rules parallel Hitler's ramming fascist legislation through his gutted Reichstag. "Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality," said Byrd. "He recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."

Anti-Defamation League Director Abraham Foxman has played the holocaust card for the Republicans, saying "It is hideous, outrageous and offensive for Senator Byrd to suggest that the Republican Party's tactics could in any way resemble those of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party.

GOP Chair Ken Mehlman has labeled Byrd's remarks "reprehensible and beyond the pale," remarks joined by Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. Santorum is best known for equating sexuality between consenting gays with bestiality between humans and dogs.

But Byrd is one of the few in either house of Congress to truly understand the Constitution and to advocate for the Bill of Rights. He points out that like Hitler, Bush is pursuing a strategy designed to win absolute rule by one party and one leader. Hitler's central slogan "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" -- one people, one government, one dictator -- accurately describes the current GOP strategy of Karl Rove, Bush's Joseph Goebbels.

Now the Republicans have renominated extreme right-wing judges to high courts from which they were barred prior to the 2004 election. With enhanced majorities in Congress, the GOP is moving to gut rules put in place to protect the rights of minorities within the government. For the GOP, as for Hitler, such safeguards are annoying barriers to absolute power.

These judges are consistent in their eagerness to protect the power and privilege of private corporations at the public expense, while simultaneously promoting the invasion of individual rights by the government. Masquerading as "free market/small government" advocates, GOP conservatives -- like Hitler's Nazis -- promote an all-powerful central government run by and for the corporations that sponsor them while crushing individual rights and liberties.

While Bush advocates for "democracy" overseas, the GOP is crushing it at home. These judicial nominees mean to further solidify Republican control of the court system, which they have added to their grip on the Executive, both houses of Congress and the media. The GOP is also gutting safeguards within the FBI and CIA, turning them into a personal police force that could parallel Hitler's Gestapo.

Because the regime wraps itself in the rhetoric of our democratic roots, it's emotionally difficult for Americans to equate Bush with Hitler. He is not, after all, running death camps like the ones Hitler used to exterminate millions of Jews, Gypsies, gays, unionists, Jehovah Witnesses, the elderly and infirm, birth defected and handicapped. But the distinction may be lost on the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died in the wholesale slaughter there, and whose land has been carpeted with radioactive depleted uranium which will kill for centuries.

Bush is now operating a classic concentration camp in Guantanamo. This infamous holding center operates entirely outside the rule of law, with prisoners held without charge, without evidence, without access to attorneys, family or the outside world.

At Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere -- including the US "civilian" prison system -- the door has been opened onto the Nazi world of officially sanctioned torture and systematic human degradation. The new Attorney General of the United States has explicitly endorsed their use. Despite some phony genuflections to the contrary, Bush has renounced the Geneva Accords and has clearly stamped this most notorious Nazi trademark on a party also in love with the death penalty.

Bush now holds some 2.2 million prisoners in the US gulag, the world's biggest prison population since the Nazis both by absolute number and by percentage of population. At least 800,000 Americans are held for victimless "drug" crimes, including marijuana. Thousands die each year from torture, rape, suicide and treatable disease. The system is designed to remove from the political process and, in many cases, exterminate people of color, alternative life style and political dissidence.

Is this worthy of the Nazi label?

Fascism has long been clearly and simply defined as corporate control of the state, with strong totalitarian, militaristic, anti-feminist and anti-gay characteristics.

Both Mussolini's Fascists and Hitler's Nazis used acts of terror and alleged terror to grab absolute power. Ranting at Bolshevism as the GOP now does against Islam, the Nazis used the burning of the Reichstag much as the GOP has capitalized on the terror attacks of September 11.

George W. Bush does not spellbind huge Goebbels-massed rallies as Hitler did. But he does not tolerate groups that might ask embarrassing questions, and has packed the nation's bloviator corps with servile panderers. Rove uses the mass media to manipulate and deceive in ways suited to the trappings of American culture as surely as Goebbels shaped Hitler's speeches to the German volksgeist.

Bush has courted both people of color and Jews. But his far right fundamentalist backers see all non-believers as children of Satan who must ultimately perish in a "cleansing" Armageddon that will allow only the chosen few into Heaven. Amidst the psychotic twists of the Book of Revelations, these are people who love Israel but hate Jews and all the other "un-saved." At its core, there is little to distinguish today's far-right Christian fundamentalism from Hitler's Aryan master racism.

The Bush/Rove view of science parallels that of Stalin. The Soviets slaughtered researchers whose data failed to confirm their theories. Today's GOP demands scientists fit their findings to the Bush/Rove gospel. The Bush EPA, Fish & Wildlife Service and other agencies routinely assault those who challenge corporate destruction of the earth. Despite the long-standing consensus on global warming, Bush's faith-based corporate-sponsored climatology insists CO2 emissions are no problem, the scientific equivalent of claiming the Nazi Holocaust never happened.

Like Hitler, Bush believes he talks to and for God. He has said at least twice in public that he does not oppose dictatorship as long as he can be the dictator. His family has long, well-documented financial and political ties to the Nazi regime, as well as to Osama bin Laden and a long list of oil-rich Islamic fundamentalists.

Senator Byrd's invocation of the Nazis to describe the Bush regime may be considered impolitic. But it's folly to ignore the important parallels.

By all accounts American democracy is hanging by a thin thread which Bush/Rove is laboring mightily to cut.

Sen. Robert Byrd is a conservative, uniquely learned man. When he equates Bush with Hitler, he speaks with great sadness and scholarship -- and must be heeded.

As those "W" bumper stickers morph into swastikas in the killing fields of Guantanamo, Iraq, and the American prison system, we must, at Sen. Byrd's urging, revive recent history's most vital vow: "Never Again."

--
Many of Harvey Wasserman's relatives perished in the Nazi holocaust. His HISTORY OF THE US is at www.harveywasserman.com.

 

[shereads]

...got it right?

Not really. For one thing, Hitler was organized.

 

[Blackie Malone]

Not really. For one thing, Hitler was organized.

and could say nuclear in German.

 

[cantdog]

The national socialists had the brownshirts in the street.

The parallel is thus very imcomplete. Roving gangs of intimidating ruthless thugs have quite an impact.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Arse.

I don't care who steps on Bush's little toes, and be all means call him a moron, fuckwit, whatever you like. But to call him a Nazi is an act of self-glorifying delusional hyperbole. When we allow ourselves the luxury of villifying our personal enemies by invoking one of the greatest evils ever committed by mankind, we destroy all meaning in language and political thought.

No doubt it's very attractive to call Bush a Nazi - in much the same way that it's fun to sling around words like "rape," "terrorism," and "genocide" to refer to one's own pet peeves. (Ted Turner's a big fan of this; he's likened his personal boardroom reversals to the Holocaust, female circumcision, and rape). But slinging loaded images and language proves nothing. Worse; it destroys the meaning and memory of those words and events.

Hate Bush all you like. Zero in on, for example, the insane double-speak recently required to explain why mercury isn't "really" toxic (umm ... haven't we known that it's poisonous since the 1800's?), or the 40% of researchers who stated that they felt pressured to change their findings and analysis. Dig up the issue of CIA "renditions" involving spiriting targets away to countries in which torture is still practiced and pretending that we don't know where they are or who has them. Focus on the insanity of a massive tax cut without a clear plan for how to fix Social Security. By all means, eviscerate him on all these levels.

But do not compare him to the calculated murder of six million men, women, and children. Do not presume to stand before the gates of Auschwitz and state that his policies are equivalent. Not for Bush's sake; for the sake of the six million.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Don't get so huffy. They are merely fulfilling Godwin's Law.

Besides:

Hitler had eleven years of power in all.

So far, Bush has had little more than five.

If the scale is similar, we have not yet reached Kristallnacht.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Sounds like the Senator is grandstanding. I agree with Shang'.

 

[Boota]

We're dealing with semantics really. To say Nazi makes people think of the Holocaust and they realize that Bush has not committed an atrocity of that level. He is using the same tactics politically as the Nazi's, but that is not the same thing as being a Nazi in the eys of most.

I have no argument with the word fascist. This administrations policies are heavily weighted toward fascism. If they can continue to successfully subvert the Constitution we actually could end up in a fascist state.

There are a lot of interesting paralells between Bush and Hitler if you loo at the details.

 

[rgraham666]

All dictators use the same tools. Hate, fear and ignorance. That's all it takes to keep yourself in power.

One thing hinted at here, but rarely mentioned elsewhere is that Hitler's Germany was a coporatist state. That is a state where the individual does not matter, but the groups within it do.

Corporatists believe that balancing off the various goals of the groups is the same as serving the public good. Political life consists of nothing more than a struggle between the groups for power.

The problem is that a state constantly at war with itself cannot serve the public good, or survive long for that matter. And as with any competition, the losers get forgotten about.

I found the article filled with hyperbole. Bush is not Hitler. That is something for history to decide. The parallels in technique are startlingly similar, though.

 

[miles]

Let's not forget the distinguished Senator's past as a former member of the Klan. Remember them? Those good old boys who terrorized, murdered, and tortured black people?

Byrd is a senile old moron who makes the late Strom Thurmond seem enlightened by comparison.

 

[shereads]

For one thing, Hitler was organized.

and could say nuclear in German.

There are any number of differences between Bush and Hitler.


• When Hitler killed his racial and ethnic inferiors, he wasn't doing it for their own good.

• Bush is clean shaven.

• Hitler would have looked ridiculous driviing a pickup truck.


I could think of more, but I have to go see if the Evangelical Gestapo has arrived to install the new mandatory phone taps.

 

[cantdog]

Bush drives a golf cart on his "ranch," not a pickup.

 

[impressive]

I'm not wild about everything Senator Byrd does, but he's spot on with this one.

In terms of political maneuvering, Bush IS Hitler. Now, before you jump all over me, I'm not saying Bush would sanction mass exterminations (at least not as blatantly as Hitler did, anyway). I'm just agreeing with his statements on how Bush is systematically making the illegal legal in order to gain absolute power. It's fucking CREEPY.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

A different take on the senator's outburst:

Washington (The Daily Standard) - WHEN DEMOCRATIC SENATOR ROBERT BYRD rose on the floor Tuesday to compare the tactics of his Republican colleagues in the battles over judicial nominees to those employed by Hitler in building the Reich, you knew two things.



First, that the Democrats would never abandon their extra-Constitutional position that nominees to the federal courts could be required to receive 60 as opposed to 51 votes for confirmation.

Second, that the Democrats had already lost the battle. When the captains are named Leahy, Kennedy, Schumer, Boxer, and Byrd, the outcome is not in doubt.

If you missed the Byrd outburst, you can read it here. Radioblogger did a survey of the mainstream media on Wednesday morning and found little coverage of the meltdown, though by Wednesday afternoon some cable news shows began to address Byrd's astonishing comparison.

Senator Byrd is anticipating that, faced with continued obstructionism, Majority Leader Frist will force through a rules change that provides for up-or-down votes on any judicial nominee that emerges from the Judiciary Committee (news - web sites). The GOP base, the thinking goes, will demand nothing less, and any Republican senator who refuses to support the change will be finished as a significant force in 2008 presidential politics.

But Byrd's outrageous objection is doubly offensive because during his stint as majority leader, Byrd himself pushed through rules changes that benefited his party. Here is Byrd, from the Congressional Record, January 15, 1979 (courtesy of the blog Beltway):

"This Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past . . . The first Senate, which met in 1789, approved 19 rules by a majority vote. Those rules have been changed from time to time . . . So the Members of the Senate who met in 1789 and approved that first body of rules did not for one moment think, or believe, or pretend, that all succeeding Senates would be bound by that Senate . . . It would be just as reasonable to say that one Congress can pass a law providing that all future laws have to be passed by two-thirds vote. Any Member of this body knows that the next Congress would not heed that law and would proceed to change it and would vote repeal of it by majority vote."

IF THE GOP sets up the confrontation with care, it could set the Democrats back another ten years. The American public knows that a simple majority is the essence of fairness, and that the number "40" does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. They also know that Democrats have raised the bar highest for nominees with orthodox religious views; their campaign against Catholic judge David Pryor is especially offensive. Imagine the handicap newly announced Democratic Senate candidate Bob Casey--the pro-life Treasurer of Pennsylvania--will face in his race against incumbent Senator Rick Santorum given his party's bigotry towards devout Catholics like Pryor. Is Casey serious about making the argument that the rights of the unborn will be better off with another Democratic vote added to the caucus of obstruction? And if Casey promises to be open-minded about judges, will the GOP hesitate to point to newly elected Democratic Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado--who took less than two months to reverse his campaign position that all judicial nominees should get an up-or-down vote?

The Democrats have insisted on calling people of faith "extremists." Last weekend Howard Dean (news - web sites) went so far as to brand his opponents on abortion issues as "evil." This is the sort of extremism that brings forth not only anger but also resolve.

An epic political battle will begin within weeks, and it is one which the Democrats have lost before it has begun.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, and author most recently of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That is Changing Your World. His daily blog can be found at HughHewitt.com.



I don't neccessarily disagree that the current administration is leaning towards faschism or even a totalitatian oligarchy. But to compare anyone short of Stalin or Pol pot to Hitler, is bullshit.

Bush may be stuipd, he may even be A brain damaged ex-drunk, he might even be a delusional religious fanatic. He has not, however, taken any steps, nor stated his plan, to systematically kill any particular race/class/religion. Even if you accept the most wildly inflated estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq, you are talking about 100,000 dead by his policies. In Hitler you have at least 6 million innocnents intentionaly murdered and millions dead in combat he instigated.

Anyone who compares someone to Hitler is a fucking idiot. You can compare his policy choices to the nazi's without invoking the specter of Adolph Hitler and by extention the final solution of the jewsih question. When you don't, you're just looking for attention, IMHO.

 

[impressive]

Anyone who compares someone to Hitler is a fucking idiot. You can compare his policy choices to the nazi's without invoking the specter of Adolph Hitler and by extention the final solution of the jewsih question. When you don't, you're just looking for attention, IMHO.

Bush is the head of an administration that is on the fast track to fascism using methods eerily similar to Hitler's. Yes, I AM comparing Bush to Hitler.

Humbly,

Fucking idiot.

 

[impressive]

UNLIMITED DEBATE IN THE SENATE -- (Senate - March 01, 2005)


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---
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, in 1939, one of the most famous American movies of all time, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,'' hit the box office. Initially received with a combination of lavish praise and angry blasts, the film went on to win numerous awards and to inspire millions around the globe. The director, the legendary Frank Capra, in his autobiography, ``Frank Capra: The Name Above the Title,'' cites this moving review of the film, appearing in the Hollywood Reporter, November 4, 1942:

Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,'' chosen by French Theaters as the final English language film to be shown before the recent Nazi-ordered countrywide ban on American and British films went into effect, was roundly cheered. .....

Storms of spontaneous applause broke out at the sequence when, under the Abraham Lincoln monument in the Capital, the word, "Liberty,'' appeared on the screen and the Stars and Stripes began fluttering over the head of the great Emancipator in the cause of liberty.

Similarly, cheers and acclamation punctuated the famous speech of the young senator on man's rights and dignity. "It was ..... as though the joys, suffering, love and hatred, the hopes and wishes of an entire people who value freedom above everything, found expression for the last time. .....''

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For those who may not have seen it, "Mr. Smith'' is the fictional story of one young Senator's crusade against forces of corruption and his lengthy filibuster--his lengthy filibuster--for the values he holds dear.

My, how things have changed. These days, Mr. Smith would be called an obstructionist. Rumor has it that there is a plot afoot to curtail the right of extended debate in this hallowed Chamber, not in accordance with its rules, mind you, but by fiat from the Chair--fiat from the Chair.

The so-called nuclear option--hear me--the so-called nuclear option--this morning I asked a man, What does nuclear option mean to you? He said: Oh, you mean with Iran? I was at the hospital a few days ago with my wife, and I asked a doctor, What does the nuclear option mean to you? He said: Well, that sounds like we're getting ready to drop some device, some atomic device on North Korea.

Well, the so-called nuclear option purports to be directed solely at the Senate's advice and consent prerogatives regarding Federal judges. But the claim that no right exists to filibuster judges aims an arrow straight at the heart of the Senate's long tradition of unlimited debate.

The Framers of the Constitution envisioned the Senate as a kind of executive council, a small body of legislators, featuring longer terms, designed to insulate Members from the passions of the day.

The Senate was to serve as a check on the executive branch, particularly in the areas of appointments and treaties, where, under the Constitution, the Senate passes judgment absent the House of Representatives.

James Madison wanted to grant the Senate the power to select judicial appointees with the Executive relegated to the sidelines. But a compromise brought the present arrangement: appointees selected by the Executive, with the advice and consent of the Senate confirmed. Note--hear me again--note that nowhere in the Constitution of the United States is a vote on appointments mandated.

When it comes to the Senate, numbers can deceive. The Senate was never intended to be a majoritarian body. That was the role of the House of Representatives, with its membership based on the populations of States. The Great Compromise of July 16, 1787, satisfied the need for smaller States to have equal status in one House of Congress, the Senate. The Senate, with its two Members per State, regardless of population, is, then, the forum of the States.

Indeed, in the last Congress--get this--in the last Congress 52 Members, a majority, representing the 26 smallest States, accounted for just 17.06 percent of the U.S. population. Let me say that again. Fifty-two Members, a majority, representing the 26 smallest States--two Senators per State--accounted for just 17.06 percent of the U.S. population. In other words, a majority in the Senate does not necessarily represent a majority of the population of the United States.

The Senate is intended for deliberation. The Senate is intended for deliberation, not point scoring. The Senate is a place designed, from its inception, as expressive of minority views. Even 60 Senators, the number required under Senate rule XXII for cloture, would represent just 24 percent of the population if they happened to all hail from the 30 smallest States.

So you can see what it means to the smallest States in these United States to be able to stand on this floor and debate, to their utmost, until their feet will no longer hold them, and their lungs of brass will no longer speak, in behalf of their States, in behalf of a minority, in behalf of an issue that affects vitally their constituents.

Unfettered debate, the right to be heard at length, is the means by which we perpetuate the equality of the States. In fact, it was 1917, before any curtailing of debate was attempted, which means that from 1789 to 1917, there were 129 years; in other words, it means also that from 1806 to 1917, some 111 years, the Senate rejected any limits to debate. Democracy flourished along with the filibuster. The first actual cloture rule in 1917 was enacted in response to a filibuster by those people who opposed the arming of merchant ships. Some might say they opposed U.S. intervention in World War I, but to narrow it down, they opposed the arming of merchant ships.

But even after its enactment, the Senate was slow to embrace cloture, understanding the pitfalls of muzzling debate. In 1949, the 1917 cloture rule was modified to make cloture more difficult to invoke, not less, mandating that the number needed to stop debate would be not two-thirds of those present and voting but two-thirds of all Senators elected and sworn. Indeed, from 1919 to 1962, the Senate voted on cloture petitions only 27 times and invoked cloture just 4 times over those 43 years.

On January 4, 1957, Senator William Ezra Jenner of Indiana spoke in opposition to invoking cloture by majority vote. He stated with great conviction:

We may have a duty to legislate, but we also have a duty to inform and deliberate. In the past quarter century we have seen a phenomenal growth in the power of the executive branch. If this continues at such a fast pace, our system of checks and balances will be destroyed. One of the main bulwarks against this growing power is free debate in the Senate ..... So long as there is free debate, men of courage and understanding will rise to defend against potential dictators ..... The Senate today is one place where, no matter what else may exist, there is still a chance to be heard, an opportunity to speak, the duty to examine, and the obligation to protect. It is one of the few refuges of democracy. Minorities have an illustrious past, full of suffering, torture, smear, and even death. Jesus Christ was killed by a majority; Columbus was smeared; and Christians have been tortured. Had the United States Senate existed during those trying times, I am sure that these people would have found an advocate. Nowhere else can any political, social, or religious group, finding itself under sustained attack, receive a better refuge.

Senator Jenner was right. The Senate was deliberately conceived to be what he called "a better refuge,'' meaning one styled as guardian of the rights of the minority. The Senate is the ``watchdog'' because majorities can be wrong and filibusters can highlight injustices. History is full of examples.

In March 1911, Senator Robert Owen of Oklahoma filibustered the New Mexico statehood bill, arguing that Arizona should also be allowed to become a State. President Taft opposed the inclusion of Arizona's statehood in the bill because Arizona' State constitution allowed the recall of judges. Arizona attained statehood a year later, at least in part because Senator Owen and the minority took time to make their point the year before.

In 1914, a Republican minority led a 10-day filibuster of a bill that would have appropriated more than $50,000,000 for rivers and harbors. On an issue near and dear to the hearts of our current majority, Republican opponents spoke until members of the Commerce Committee agreed to cut the appropriations by more than half.

Perhaps more directly relevant to our discussion of the "nuclear option'' are the 7 days in 1937, from July 6 to 13 of that year, when the Senate blocked Franklin Roosevelt's Supreme Court-packing plan--one of my favorite presidents.

Earlier that year, in February 1937, FDR sent the Congress a bill drastically reorganizing the judiciary. The Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill, calling it "an invasion of judicial power such as has never before been attempted in this country'' and finding it "essential to the continuance of our constitutional democracy that the judiciary be completely independent of both the executive and legislative branches of the Government.'' The committee recommended the rejection of the court-packing bill, calling it "a needless, futile, and utterly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle ..... without precedent and without justification.''

What followed was an extended debate on the Senate floor lasting for 7 days until the majority leader, Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, a supporter of the plan, suffered a heart attack and died on July 14. Eight days later, by a vote of 70 to 20, the Senate sent the judicial reform bill back to committee, where FDR's controversial, court-packing language was finally stripped. A determined, vocal group of Senators properly prevented a powerful President from corrupting our Nation's judiciary.

Free and open debate on the Senate floor ensures citizens a say in their government. The American people are heard, through their Senator, before their money is spent, before their civil

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liberties are curtailed, or before a judicial nominee is confirmed for a lifetime appointment. We are the guardians, the stewards, the protectors of the people who send us here. Our voices are their voices.

If we restrain debate on judges today, what will be next: the rights of the elderly to receive social security; the rights of the handicapped to be treated fairly; the rights of the poor to obtain a decent education? Will all debate soon fall before majority rule?

Will the majority someday trample on the rights of lumber companies to harvest timber or the rights of mining companies to mine silver, coal, or iron ore? What about the rights of energy companies to drill for new sources of oil and gas? How will the insurance, banking, and securities industries fare when a majority can move against their interests and prevail by a simple majority vote? What about farmers who can be forced to lose their subsidies, or western Senators who will no longer be able to stop a majority determined to wrest control of ranchers' precious water or grazing rights? With no right of debate, what will forestall plain muscle and mob rule?

Many times in our history we have taken up arms to protect a minority against the tyrannical majority in other lands. We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men.

But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler's dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law.

Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it. Bullock writes that "Hitler was prepared to promise anything to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality preserved intact.'' And he succeeded.

Hitler's originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.

That is what the nuclear option seeks to do to rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate.

I said to someone this morning who was shoveling snow in my area: What does nuclear option mean to you?

He answered: Do you mean with Iran?

The people generally don't know what this is about. The nuclear option seeks to alter the rules by sidestepping the rules, thus making the impermissible the rule, employing the nuclear option, engaging a pernicious, procedural maneuver to serve immediate partisan goals, risks violating our Nation's core democratic values and poisoning the Senate's deliberative process.

For the temporary gain of a handful of out-of-the-mainstream judges, some in the Senate are ready to callously incinerate each and every Senator's right of extended debate. Note that I said each Senator. Note that I said every Senator. For the damage will devastate not just the minority party--believe me, hear me, and remember what I say--the damage will devastate not just the minority party, it will cripple the ability of each Member, every Member, to do what each Member was sent here to do--namely, represent the people of his or her State. Without the filibuster--it has a bad name, old man filibuster out there. Most people would be happy to say let's do away with him. We ought to get rid of that fellow; he has been around too long. But someday that old man filibuster is going to help me, you, and every Senator in here at some time or other, when the rights of the people he or she represents are being violated or threatened. That Senator is then going to want to filibuster. He or she is going to want to stand on his or her feet as long as their brass lungs will carry their voice.

No longer. If the nuclear option is successful here, no longer will each Senator have that weapon with which to protect the people who sent him or her here. And the people finally are going to wake up to who did it. They are going to wake up to it sooner or later and ask: Who did this to us?

Without the filibuster or the threat of extended debate, there exists no leverage with which to bargain for the offering of an amendment. All force to effect compromise between the parties will be lost. Demands for hearings will languish. The President can simply rule. The President of the United States can simply rule by Executive order, if his party controls both Houses of Congress and majority rule reigns supreme. In such a world, the minority will be crushed, the power of dissenting views will be diminished, and freedom of speech will be attenuated. The uniquely American concept of the independent individual asserting his or her own views, proclaiming personal dignity through the courage of free speech will forever have been blighted. This is a question of freedom of speech. That is what we are talking about--freedom of speech. And the American spirit, that stubborn, feisty, contrarian, and glorious urge to loudly disagree, and proclaim, despite all opposition, what is honest, what is true, will be sorely manacled.

Yes, we believe in majority rule, but we thrive because the minority can challenge, agitate, and ask questions. We must never become a nation cowed by fear, sheeplike in our submission to the power of any majority demanding absolute control.

Generations of men and women have lived, fought, and died for the right to map their own destiny, think their own thoughts, speak their own minds. If we start here, in this Senate, to chip away at that essential mark of freedom--here of all places, in a body designed to guarantee the power of even a single individual through the device of extended debate--we are on the road to refuting the principles upon which that Constitution rests.

In the eloquent, homespun words of that illustrious, obstructionist, Senator Smith, in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'':

Liberty is too precious to get buried in books. Men ought to hold it up in front of them every day of their lives and say, "I am free--to think--to speak. My ancestors couldn't. I can. My children will.''

I yield the floor.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I compliment my friend and colleague from West Virginia for his excellent comments about the responsibilities of the Senate under the Constitution and the implications of a parliamentary maneuver that would effectively undermine the constitutional rights of our Members to speak in accordance with the ways our Founding Fathers intended.

Once again, the Senator from West Virginia has spoken eloquently and passionately about this institution and about this Constitution. He is in this body the true student of the American Constitution. There is in this body no one who works to preserve the rights and responsibilities of this institution the way those rights of individuals in this institution, within the framework of the Constitution, were so intended.

We, once again, thank him and urge our colleagues in the Senate to pay close attention to his well thought out, reasoned, compelling, legitimate, and persuasive arguments.

They are enormously important because they reach the heart and soul of this institution and the heart and soul of the whole constitutional framework that our Founding Fathers drafted when they wrote the Constitution. It was an extraordinary contribution to the whole debate that takes place in this body from time to time about the authority and the powers of the institution and the individuals who are elected to serve. We all will benefit from reading his comments closely.

 

[rgraham666]

No, Bush has not engaged in genocide, yet.

But he, more correctly his backers, are using the letter of the law to subvert its intent.

Not surprising. America is failing. It's a 19th century nation failing to make the change to the 21st. This is frightening a lot of people. When people are frightened, they tend to embrace things they wouldn't if they could think clearly.

It's the perfect environment for demagogues.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Bush is the head of an administration that is on the fast track to facism using methods eerily similar to Hitler's. Yes, I AM comparing Bush to Hitler.

Humbly,

Fucking idiot.

No, if you are comparing his methods to those of National Socialism, then you are comparing his methods to the Nazi party's methods. While I think that comparrison is a little weak, there are similarities, enough to make the comparison valid.

Comparing G.W. to Hitler is another thing entierly.

You can invoke the methods even the schizophrenia of the nazi party in it's rise to power with only a caveat here or there to denote radical differences and be on base. I myself have compared some of the measures of the current administrtion to the nazi rise to power.

But comparing GWB to Hitler himself is really, outlandish rhetoric. Having coniption fit because the GOP is trying to change rules to aid their party, when you , yourself did the same thing when your party was in power, makes it worse than just outlandish rhetoric, it makes it hypocracy on a grand scale.

 

[impressive]

But comparing GWB to Hitler himself is really, outlandish rhetoric.

If it makes just one sleeping sheep WAKE UP and break from the herd, it'll be well worth it.

 

[rgraham666]

People, please.

We've had enough of this for four years.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

No, Bush has not engaged in genocide, yet.

But he, more correctly his backers, are using the letter of the law to subvert its intent.

Not surprising. America is failing. It's a 19th century nation failing to make the change to the 21st. This is frightening a lot of people. When people are frightened, they tend to embrace things they wouldn't if they could think clearly.

It's the perfect environment for demagogues.

But Rg, Hitler didn't just mention genocide, he advocated it. From the publishing of Mein Kampf onward, his intentions were clear. Flatly stated for anyone who cared to read or listen. Some of his first legislation was the Nuremberg laws. Hitler's evil, is on a scale so vast, only a couple of other monsters in the scope & scale of history even bare comparrison. Stalin perhaps. Pol pot. Robspiere maybe. Torquemada is even a long shot.

GWB? Based on what? A military adventure in Iraq? Support of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage? Gitmo? Abu grhaib?

I'll accept GWB as not to bright. I can acept him as misguided or even a pupet of stronger personalities. But stark, blackest evil? No.

 

[rgraham666]

That's for history to decide Colleen.

And none of the great monsters of history thought they were doing evil, the exact opposite in fact.

However, I don't believe that GWB or his backers are going to be thought of well by future generations. They are remaking your country into something never dreamed of by The Founding Fathers.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

If it makes just one sleeping sheep WAKE UP and break from the herd, it'll be well worth it.

I refuse to accept that cheapening the evil that was Adolph Hitler serves any purpose, save to decrease the interval of time needed for people to forget. Six to eight million lives, were extinguished on his orders. Neither combatants, nor workers in industiral complexes, nor even citizens in a city that housed war production. They were destroyed without even the flimsiest of excuse. Killed just because.

Now that monumental evil has become a political tool, bandied about with no understanding of its magnitude. Reduced to a sound bite and people are O.K. with that?

I'm not.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

That's for history to decide Colleen.

And none of the great monsters of history thought they were doing evil, the exact opposite in fact.

However, I don't believe that GWB or his backers are going to be thought of well by future generations. They are remaking your country into something never dreamed of by The Founding Fathers.

I never said they were saints rg. I said there was no basis for comparing Hitler to GWB.

I will make a bet with you though. If, Iraq manages to form a stable government with representation for its citizens and If the palestinians and israelis can reach an accord. I'm willing to bet GWB is hailed by future historians as a great statesman and visionary, who saw what needed to be done and did it, despite the waffeling of lesser men. It may not be fair, but I suspect he will get the credit, as Regan got the credit for bringing down the soviet union.

 

[impressive]

I refuse to accept that cheapening the evil that was Adolph Hitler serves any purpose, save to decrease the interval of time needed for people to forget. Six to eight million lives, were extinguished on his orders. Neither combatants, nor workers in industiral complexes, nor even citizens in a city that housed war production. They were destroyed without even the flimsiest of excuse. Killed just because.

Now that monumental evil has become a political tool, bandied about with no understanding of its magnitude. Reduced to a sound bite and people are O.K. with that?

I'm not.

I don't see it as "cheapening" anything. To be unable or unwilling to look at Hitler's actions beyond the monumental evil for which he is reviled is, IMO, folly. To think for one moment that such a twisted individual could not achieve that level of power again is also folly. Not once did Byrd compare Bush's actions to Hitler's heinous genocide campaign or even insinuate that Bush was capable of such things.

Regardless of what Bush would DO with that power (and I'm not saying that he'd use it in the same way Hitler did -- not directly, anyway), the fact remains that Bush & Co are making this country ripe for that type of regime.