When Dictatorship Comes, How Do You Know?

http://www.etherzone.com/2002/stang081602.shtml

Most Americans would agree (I hope) that the victims of a totalitarian dictatorship have the moral, if not the legal, right, indeed the obligation, to use any means to overthrow that dictatorship. The only people I can think of who don't, are Christians who misunderstand scripture, especially Romans 13. You would have to look a long time to find somebody who believes that victims of Nazi oppression didn't have the profound, moral right to use any means, from assassination to TNT, to destroy it. Again, if you believe Romans 13 says you must obey a ruler however evil he is and defer to whatever crimes he commits, if, in other words, you believe God is a Nazi, then you are probably one of those people it would take a long time to find.




One reason the victims are morally justified in doing whatever they can get away with to liberate themselves is that a dictatorship by definition cancels the rules of normal human association. The main reason such victims may do as they like is that God says believers must replace an evil ruler, and scripture is full of praise for people who do exactly that. We are told to remember Jael with approbation, because she hammered a spike through Sisera's temples while he slept and nailed him to the ground. Not at all the kind of thing a genteel Republican woman would do.

So, the question arises, how do you know when a system has become a totalitarian dictatorship, thereby liberating its victims to do whatever they can get away with? What are the signs? When did the Hitler system become totalitarian?

That's easy. Hitler imposed a totalitarian dictatorship on Germany on . . . when he . . . Hmm.

Notice that even in Hitler's case that isn't an easy question to answer. Suppose we're living in Germany and it is January 30, 1933. That is the day Hitler takes over. Are we living under a dictatorship? No, not yet. Remember that Hitler took power legally. President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor. On January 30, 1933, Hitler hadn't yet done anything dictatorial. So, if we start the revolution on that day, we would be wrong. Hitler would have said we were breaking the law, and he would have been right. We do know that somewhere between that day and the day he started World War II in concert with his ally, fellow totalitarian socialist dictator Joe Stalin, September 1, 1939, he did impose a dictatorship on Germany.
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