THE LIBERTARIAN FUHRER | 2006-07-26
I was watching a movie about Hitler and the incident was probably fake. But in it Hitler was at Bergtesgarten and some skiers came down a hill and met him. He was nice enought to them but he was not nice about skiing. In the movie, he said, "Skiing is dangerous and pointless exercise. IF I HAD MY way no would ski."
The point of the movie, I suppose, was that Hitler was a Puritan bore. They concentrated so hard on that that they didn't realize that had presented a very interesting insight about THEIR idea of Der Fuhrer.
I said below that the movie "The Night of the Generals" made a point which shallow people would accept. When the policeman went in to arrest the Nazi SS General -- not just NS, but SS! -- there was sudden alarm, so the Evil SS General just shot him and got on with business. One got the distinct impression that, if that copy had not come in at the very moment his division was being scramble to deal with the Hitler Assassination Plot, the SS Genral might have gone meekly away with him in handcuffs.
I find myself being harder on German generals than the movie is. If a cop walks up to a dictator's general to arrest him, be the dictator Saddam or Stalin or Hitler, he g3ts shot.
So wehile all the morons are nodding and drooling over Hitler's boorishness, I was amazed that the Fuhrer of National Socialist Germany would use the words, "If I had MY way." Does anybody but me realize how WEIRD it is for a DICTATOR to use the word "If I had my way?"
Pardon me for being naive, but I had always assumed that the whole point of being a dictator is that you HAVE YOUR WAY. I doubt Hitler ever used those words with any German. Those words would mean he WASN'T dictator. But the movie-maker seemed to assume that Hitler just let people do what they wanted to do.
If Hitler decided that skiing was too risky to be good for Germans,he would have said, "No skiing."
But the movie assumed Hitler was too libertarian to do that.
If you haven't live under a dictatorship, if you insist that America is just like a dictatorship, you tend to get a bit screwy.
I warn that America is on its way to a complete dictatorship. But you won't prevent that by being unable to recognize what a real dictatorship IS.