Shoes & Nazis

Senator Robert Byrd who in turn quotes Alan Bullock:

“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.”

And that is what the nuclear option seeks to do to Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate.”

Byrd gave one of the most significant speeches I’ve read or heard in a long time on Tuesday. If you’ve heard about it at all, it’s probably been from the main stream who fixated on the outrage of the right who say that Byrd called them Nazis.

Having read the entire speech, which I highly encourage you to do by clicking here, I can say that Byrd did not call the Republicans Nazis. He did however outline a series of tactics used by the Nazis to seize power. His warning is against the use of a similar tactic by the Republicans.

To any Republicans that find that warning engenders uncomfortable feelings, I quote my departed mother: “If the shoe fits, wear it!”