Skeptic Project

Why do you think that CTers, Tea Baggers and other internet posters love to say we are in Nazi Germany? But don't get the irony that they are not be imperson or shot for actions that they do; that whould be the case in other countries where they are dictatorships.
The reason that I ask is I was readind the following artcle:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_democracy_report<br /> And I almost put my hand thourgh the screen at all the stupid posters at the bottem of the article. If these morons where in a real dictatorship they would most likly crap youself. They are allowed to act like idiots and own guns; but they are loosing there freedom. Thank god you are less likly to come across them in the real world.

Joe,

Germany was the worst example of a totalitarian regime installed by formerly legitimate members of a democratic system. After all, the National Socialist Party was a legitimate faction within Weimar Germany's government and it was only once Hitler and his cabal had maneuvered themselves into position that the Third Reich was possible. These people are arguing (rather poorly) that the same thing is happening here. Historically the Third Reich represents the failure of democracy but only if one divorces the historical particularism of that episode from its political movement. These people love to argue that any democracy can make this shift if we just have another "Hitler" but they are not recognizing how much of a perfect storm Germany was during the inter-war period.

If anyone is interested, there is a rather controversial argument stating that the beginnings of totalitarian regimes were only possible because of the equation of "man" and "citizen" and the subsequent rights attributed to man from the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen. Its proposed by Giorgio Agamben who works off Foucault and Arendt in his book "Homo Sacer." Great read, but not easy.