It happened like this.

[Truth]

What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap,
between the government and the people. Just think how very wide
this gap was to begin with, and it became always wider.
What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by
little, to being governed by surprise to receiving decisions deliberated in
secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the
government had to act on information which the people could not
understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it,
it could not be released because of national security. Their sense of
identification with their leader, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap
and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap,
took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps
not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated
with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the
crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they
did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of
government growing more and more remote.

 

[JasonLyons]

long post

 

[aahmom1]

Thank you for the lesson, how much do I owe you.

 

[TinkerPixie]

O.K.

 

[WebmasterAlex]

Well Truth... it is an interesting passage... but I don't see the sense of plagarizing something, especially since this is from a book about the coming of facism in germany. If you are trying to make a point why don't you cite your sources instead of trying to pass off someone elses writing as your own?

 

[Truth]

Thanks for asking Webmaster.

The "plagarizing" (your term but more like dramatic license, if that)
of the passage, editing to remove German references and
shortened to try not to bore to many people, was from
"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-35 " by Milton Sanford Mayer

The idea to post it was from reading a reply on page twenty here
http://forums.alternet.org/guest/motet?show+Issues+384+472
posted by Jon White {jwhite} posted Fri, 17 Jan 2003 08:46:11 CST
on discussion of this story
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14873
at
http://www.alternet.org/

In the thread Jon White posted this link
http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free_nn4.html
which is where the most of the content was obtained.

It seemed Jon was saying that there were similarities to
current World events with those leading up to World War 2.

This DIS thread was composed to get an indication of how valid Jon White's premise was.

Had anyone shown any interest in discussing the content of this DIS thread, Mr. Mayer would have been credited before beginning a dialogue so everyone could be on the same page.

P.S. Webmaster, this is competely rhetorical as with almost all posts by " Truth " but
which do you consider the most offensive,
Content that is not credited,
Content that is false,
Content attributed falsely to an Author
who has made it known that it was not their work ?

also Thank you for responding here instead of forcing a PM

 

[WillyJ]

Hmmmmm. . . . I would have sworn that passage was from Howard Stern's Private Parts. . .

 

[Buckalew]

Truth, All this went straight over my head (what did you expect LOL) but I luv ya anyway!

Maybe I'll go look at the links you provided and see if something clicks.




*please, no one hold your breath.*