Listen To Your Elders

I can remember the period of the Hitler regime in Germany being of that age and from Europe.

Hitler was a monster that conned the people of Germany into first thinking that they were a master race and that they had to protect their superiority from contamination from minority groups such as Jews and Gypsies. This enabled him to introduce a policy which would persecute this unpopular group.

To improve the ability to arrest and torture these people he introduced a policy whereby the secret police and gestapo could arrest and hold people without charge and if anyone questioned the arrest they also could be arrested and tortured.

The next step was to ensure that education was of a rote nature which taught and didn’t allow question. All books that encouraged thought were burnt and history was adjusted to suit the nazi line.

Trade unions were suppressed and workers were made to work for the good of the country, as determined by Hitler.

Wars were taken up with countries that had no chance of defending themselves against the by now mighty army of Germany.

News was censored and justice was perverted.

However, Hitler did bring about an economic boom for the while that things were going well.

Patriotism was replace by saluting of flags and jingoistic nationalism.

If you were to ask the average Australian today if he would welcome a Hitler regeme here in Australia he would laugh at you and think that you were mad. However, I would suggest that they think again because if one looks closely at the things that Hitler did, the Howard government has followed pretty closely in the same path.

As in Germany, the industrialists thought that Hitler was the bees neez but it was the ordinary workers that paid the price for the Hitler excesses. I’m afraid that we here may have to suffer the same humiliation.

I presently feel that the world is going dangerously towards the far right wing approaching fascism similar to Europe in the 30’s and 40’s and the use of fears caused by fanatical religious fundamentalists are being used by the pseudo democratic governments to take away basic rights and liberties.

I believe that the only way to obtain a true free democracy is to have absolutely secular public education, as wide a range of views as possible with the full right to express these views and to criticize the various so called experts that speak so authoritively about matters that often haven’t a black and white solution and to have an independant legal system free of political control.

Secular education tends to limit the teaching of fanatical hatred and terrorist activities, the right to hold different views and to criticise tends to keep development of new ideas and progress towards a state of human dignity and freedom and an independant judiciary protects the people against excesses of over self righteous governments.