You Can Laugh At Trump Or Palin—Just Be Certain You Don’t End Up In A Concentration Camp
You can laugh or think you know more than people like Donald Trump…..
(Below–Donald Trump. Picture by David Shankbone.)
Sarah Palin…..
(Below–Sarah Palin. Photo by T Toes.)
Ron Paul…..
(Below–Ron Paul. Photo by Gage Skidmore.)
And Michele Bachmann.
( Below–Michele Bachmann.)
Just be sure you don’t end up in a concentration camp or living in a dictatorship of some kind.
(The best political history I am aware of Nazi Germany is the three-volume history of Nazi governance of Germany by Richard J. Evans.)
If you think these things can’t happen here, review the history of Native Americans who were almost wiped out by the genocidal policies and actions of the American government and the American people.
Think of Black Americans who have been forced to confront hundreds of years of slavery and Jim Crow.
Nazi Germany was a place you would recognize. There were newspapers, radio, cars, movies, and a politics of left and right in the years leading up to Nazi Germany. These things can happen in the most modern and up-to-date societies.
You are mistaken to give any benefit of the doubt at all to people in our nation who would eliminate the social safety net, deny the facts on where the President was born, establish propaganda channels like Fox News, blame immigrants for our troubles, and slash education funding to the bone so we are all ignorant.
You can laugh at people who believe crazy things. You can think you are smarter than Sarah Palin. You can see Donald Trump as a clown.
History tells us time after time that nothing is so horrible it can’t come true.
It is up to each of us as individuals to make the decision to work together to be certain that people we see as ”stupid, or “ignorant” or as “clowns” don’t end up with the power to dictate our futures and ruin our lives.
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Welcome To Texas Liberal
Texas Liberal is a blog of politics and political history.
My name is Neil Aquino. Here is my profile.
I can be reached at naa618@att.net.
Additional focuses of the blog are books, art, poetry, personal relationships and, also, sea life and marine mammals.
( The picture above is of the Houston Ship Channel. A narrow channel can lead to a wide sea.)
The signature post of this blog is the Martin Luther King Reading & Reference List. This list is the best of it’s kind on the web.
Another good post is my reciting the words to the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts on Galveston Island, Texas as a ship passes behind.
I live in Houston, Texas and I do sometimes write about political issues in Houston and in Texas.
I also often write about my former hometown of Cincinnati, and about the great beach city of Galveston, Texas.
I define liberalism as a role for government in the economy to help make life more fair, and a broad acceptance of people regardless of who they are.
This is why it says “All People Matter” at the top of the blog.
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Texas Liberal began regular posting on July 25, 2006.
I also blog at the Houston Chronicle as one of eight featured political bloggers, and on Where’s The Outrage? which posts out of North Carolina.
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Texas Liberal 
Nazi Germany was a place you would recognize. There were newspapers, radio, cars, movies, and a politics of left and right in the years leading up to Nazi Germany.
Spot on. Except for the violent insurrections, lack of democratic institutions, 3 million percent inflation, general strikes, government default and repeated putsches, we’re virtually indistinguishable from the Weimar Republic.
They had cars and movies!
It took none of things you mention to wipe out the native population and keep black Americans in chains. And, as I say, it can happen in the most modern and up-to-date of societies.
Neither of those situations began or arose under constitutional republican government, but both were ended by it. Comparing contemporary America to Nazi Germany insults both your countrymen and the memories of people who suffered under the rule of National Socialist German Workers’ Party. You know, real Nazism, not the kind you pretend to see when you happen upon a television tuned to a channel you don’t like.
As for cutting education spending “to the bone,” per-pupil spending will remain significantly higher in real dollars than it was the last time Democrats controlled Austin.
Not that it really matters, since outcomes and spending aren’t well correlated, but it’s worth noting.
Seriously… This HAS to be about making the eventual candidate look moderate in comparison.
Can’t you hear it already? “Oh look, Henry. Mitt Romney can speak in complete sentences, does not advocate abolishing Social Security, and has never called Obama a Muslim extremist. Romney is almost TOO liberal!”
Matt—What are you talking about? Slavery was part of our Constitution and was ended by a war. You could make your own limited-government point by noting that the most brutal crimes in our nation’s history have had full government sanction. They have also had plenty of support at the ballot box.
No, slavery was not ended by a war. Nor was it ended by the Emancipation Proclamation, which didn’t even purport to end slavery nationwide. Slavery was ended by the 13th Amendment to the United States.
I’ll repeat my earlier point: slavery did not arise under constitutional government, but it did end under it.
I noticed you didn’t address the fact of higher real per-pupil education spending under Republicans than under Democrats. I don’t blame you.
Also, something I’ve been meaning to ask. In a previous post, you mentioned that you pay taxes to support local education. What taxes are those?
d’oh, that’s “the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Sorry for the error.
Slavery was ended by a war. The shadow and the substance of a matter are one and the same.
Why would I bother to mention the commitment of either major party to education when neither party has ever been sincere in addressing the question of education in Texas?
A well-thought-out dodge.