Obama, the remaking of America, the reverie for a police state

Nationalized health care is only the latest page in the ongoing saga of U.S. president Barak Obama's attempt to remake/reinvent America into a socialist utopia. Without fail, an ever-vigilant, all-powerful central government with police state powers will also arise to assist in tending to the "needs" of the dependent population.

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Almost unbelievably, a recent poll taken in Germany confirms that once dependency is bred into a people, the longing for security becomes so strong that a police state is preferred to the uncertainties of a free society. This is a stark warning to Americans. The German poll encountered a reverie for one of the most vicious, totalitarian regimes of the Cold War: the German Democratic Republic (GDR), better known as simply East Germany. Following World War II, defeated Germany was divided into zones under U.S., British, French, and Soviet control. By 1949, two separate German states arose from the ashes of war: West Germany, which was democratic and pro-capitalist; and East Germany, which was Communist and a firm ally of the Soviet Union. Because large numbers of Soviet troops were stationed in East Germany -- as much to keep the East German government in power as to confront the allies -- the West considered East Germany to be a mere puppet of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, East Germany was one of the most oppressive regimes of all of Moscow's Eastern European satellites. But they did have health care, a guaranteed job, and all the other amenities of Communist rule. They also had a secret police. Every citizen of East Germany lived under the shadow of the dreaded Stasi (the German abbreviation for Ministry of State Security), which had thousands of highly trained officers and many more thousands of informers. The Stasi had two purposes. The first was to keep the citizens of East Germany loyal to the Communist state. In the GDR, elections were fraudulent and the voices of opposition were silenced. The Stasi were expert at these and a host of similar tactics of oppression. Secondly, the Stasi carried out espionage activities against West Germany, allied governments, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Stasi agents carried out their tasks well, and worked closely with their Soviet counterparts, which toward the end of the Cold War included KGB spymaster Vladimir Putin. Recovery from World War II was very slow in East Germany, which continued to look drab and bombed-out while West Germany was attractive, free, and prosperous. The number of East Germans fleeing to the West was so great that in 1961 Soviet and East German officials ordered the construction of the infamous Berlin Wall. By some estimates, over eight hundred East Germans died attempting to escape the oppression of their government. Initially, euphoria spread across both Germanies when the destruction of the Berlin Wall began in 1989, and was followed shortly thereafter by the collapse of East German government. A long nightmare for the German people seemed finally over. But not today. Shockingly, in the eastern half of Germany, which was once the old Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic, there is now a nostalgia for the old East Germany, even among young people. Despite its puppet status during the Cold War, today a majority of eastern Germans dislike East Germany being called an "illegitimate state," and somewhat fewer than half the young eastern Germans consider the defunct East German government to have been a dictatorship. Half of the young people polled believe that the Stasi was a "normal" intelligence service. According the polling, 49% of eastern Germans agree with the statement, "The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there." Some today are voicing the opinion that East German border guards had the right to shoot their fellow citizens attempting to escape to the West. The people of eastern Germany, especially the young, are proving today how seductive the promise of the socialist state can be - even when the experience of history cries out in opposition. The crimes of the Stasi are still being uncovered, as is the extent of a web of informers working for the secret police. Even now, there is no complete list of all who worked for the Stasi, who were arrested, and who were killed. Many in eastern Germany, however, don't seem to care. The most elemental concern for eastern Germans seems to be that, at one time, there was a government which would care for them. Dependency is infectious, and leads to self-deception which denies the past and the present. Now at stake is the spirit of America and what it is to be an American. It is vital that every American learn and apply the lesson taught by the sad results of the poll in eastern Germany. [See: Homesick for a Dictatorship, Der Spiegel Online]