The Ubiquity of Evil

Ol' Remus, at the Woodpile Report has a must read post up entitled It Can't Happen Here, but it is. Ol' Remus often posts as well at Eternity Road, but I didn't find it there. Instead, I have David Codrea of the War On Guns to thank for pointing me to this one.

Ol' Remus uses Babi Yar, the site of the Nazi's great killing of Jews, and other dissidents during the invasion of the USSR as a cautionary tale to remind us that the evil being perpetrated by the DHS and TSA can be found in any population.  Evil is, unfortunately, ubiquitous as well as banal.

The "reason given for it" was security. To review, at Babi-Yar, a ravine near Kiev in Ukraine, German security units assisted by local volunteers worked day and night until 33,771 captive Jews had been "processed" in this largest of such special actions. It took two days of nonstop killing. Eventually about 100,000 others—POWs and various civilian hostages—were also stripped, murdered and interred at Babi Yar. These and other security agents protested at their trials they were merely following orders. That they did what they did at all condemns them, orders or no. That they did so under pretense of security, with enthusiasm and macabre inventiveness, earns them an eternal place in the annals of the unspeakable.

Warrantless strip searches and hands-on violation of ourselves and our kids, our sisters, wives and grandmothers as a condition of travel is something we of a certain age believed wouldn't happen here. That it's being done in the name of security recalls events and regimes we thought well behind us. That DHS has labeled dissenters as domestic extremists suggests something else truly ominous is in the making. To be clear, the only acceptable course for DHS is to back away from this. Well away. Alas, it appears they're determined to make this blunder all but irretrievable.

The "something else truly ominous" is, I believe, the strategy to transform America into a socialist dictatorship. The regime is squeezing Americans from the top down. They want us to feel as helpless as possible. No doubt many do. One can imagine that there would be many TSA agents and police officers to beat down anyone who objected to having his wife or children groped. One can also imagine that few of his fellow citizens would come to his aid.  At the same time, union officials are organizing to create chaos, like the riots in Greece and France, to squeeze Americans from the bottom up. No doubt members of the MSM have already written the stories, leaving only blanks for the names and places.  The hope is that these actions will turn us inside out.

When all this starts, we must remain calm. We must be prepared to provide for and defend our families, but we must otherwise remain calm. The regime will be looking for people to call for more security, to which they will respond with legislation calling for sweeping powers. We must stand firm on that day, that what we want is for the government to act within the Constitution.