Anthropogenic Global Warming and the Gun Control Act of 1968: A Common Thread

An interesting article over at the American Thinker today posits that Anthropogenic Global Warming is actually born out of a novel by an Austrian Nazi. You will have to decide, but the author, Mark Musser makes an interesting case in The Nazi Origins of Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory. Here is how he opens the piece:

One of the primary pioneering theorists on apocalyptic global warming is Guenther Schwab (1902-2006), an Austrian Nazi.[i] In 1958, Schwab wrote a fictional novel built off of Goethe's (1749-1832) Faustian religious play entitled "Dance with the Devil." While a few scientists since the late 1800's had contemplated the possibility of minor global warming coming from industrial pollution, Schwab used Goethe's dramatic approach to convert the theory into an apocalyptic crisis. The book outlines many looming environmental emergencies, including anthropogenic global warming. Guenther Schwab's very popular novel was an apocalyptic game changer. By the early 1970's, it had been translated into several languages and had sold over a million copies.

Now, I am ready to believe anything bad that I read about the Nazis. This was a thoroughly wicked group of people lead by a thoroughly wicked man. But the connection here between this novel, and the later AGW theory is tenuous at best, made by inference and innuendo.  But it is an interesting theory.

The appeal of AWG to a Nazi is the control that the theory allows, if they can make you buy into it.  In order to protect the planet, you must give up driving long distances.  Before the invention of the automobile, the average person lived entirely in a 10 mile radius of where he was born.  Most people rarely traveled outside that 10 mile radius.  And that is just the way they would like it.  It controls the peasants, you see, and leaves more space for our betters, unencumbered by the little people coming around and making trouble.

Now, if you want to find an actual connection between the Nazis and 21st century America, let's take a look at the 1968 Gun Control Act. KalashnikovJosh has a good post (but long) linking the 1968 GCA to the 1938 German gun control law here. Or, you can read about it at the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership here.  The Germans already had the 1928 law on the books, but strengthened the law in 1938.  Sen. Thomas Dodd, who probably spoke German, and who was a major player in the Nuremberg war crimes trials, imported many of the concepts from the German law into GCA 68.  Why?  Well, one can only speculate, so speculate I will.  I suspect that Sen. Dodd was a progressive, meaning some shade of marxist/socialist/fascist/communist.  We used to call them "Pinkos."  It is a collective idea.  The notion that men are free to do and think what they will scares the daylights out of some people.  Instead, they want people like themselves in charge and making decisions for everyone.  Oh, good decisions, to be sure.  But some people are not going to like these decisions, and hey, they don't want them shooting up the place.

Never mind the skin heads dressing up in Nazi uniforms and giving the Nazi salute. They are not the true Nazis. For the most part, they are pathetic racists who have glommed onto some of the Nazi ideology.  The Senator Thomas Dodds of the world and the folks who buy the AWG nonsense are the more dangerous. They are scared of what you and I might do if we had the means to do it.  They are afraid of free will.  The sad part is that we have let these people anywhere near the levers of power.  James Madison must be rolling over in his grave.