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The Road To Galactic Serfdom - Libertarian Lessons From Star Wars
Submitted by Dan Sanchez via AntiWar.com,
Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theaters this week, continuing the cinematic saga of an interplanetary civilization’s struggles with galactic war and tyranny. It will be watched by millions whose own civilization is beset by global warfare driven by a planetary empire on the verge of descending into a militarized police state. So now would be a good time to review the lessons to be found in the first two Star Wars trilogies concerning the road to universal serfdom and how to keep off it.
* * *
The story of how the Galactic Empire arose is told in the prequels trilogy. The whole process is orchestrated from within the Galactic Republic by Palpatine, a seemingly benign politician who is secretly Darth Sidious, grand master of the Sith, a power hungry order of mystic warriors wielding the dark side of the Force. The Sith are a dark reflection of the Jedi Knights, who use the Force to protect life and in service to the Republic.

Sidious is the “phantom menace” who, aided by his apprentice Darth Maul, covertly manipulates the galaxy’s republican government to progressively increase his own power, steadily advancing toward a total Sith coup. Just as with real life democracies, the Galactic Republic masks the machinations of the true wielders of power with the facade of “representative government” and drapes their seizures of still greater power with the sanctifying mantle of “popular sovereignty.” The Sith can be seen as an analogy for the deep state.
Sidious’s implement of choice for accumulating power is war. His modus operandi is as follows. He first manufactures an interplanetary conflict and crisis, manipulating one side as Palpatine and commanding the other side as Sidious. He then engineers enhancements of his own power over the Republic, justifying them as regrettably necessary for decisively dealing with that crisis.
In Episode 1, as Darth Sidious, he commands the Trade Federation to blockade and occupy the planet of Naboo. Then as Senator Palpatine, he convinces Naboo’s elected queen Padme Amidala to call for a vote of no confidence against the Republic’s Chancellor after he and the Galactic Senate fail to come to the aid of her people. This paves the way for Palpatine’s own election to the Chancellorship.
In Episode 2, as Darth Sidious, he organizes a secessionist movement and directs the separatist Confederacy of Independent Systems to build a massive droid army. Meanwhile, he also oversees the spawning of a vast army of clone troopers, bio-engineered for docility.

The Republic had been hesitant to raise an army to confront the secessionists. But after news breaks of the Confederacy’s droid build-up, the Senate grants Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers, enabling him to enlist and deploy the clone troopers as the Grand Army of the Republic. Palpatine assures the Senators:
“It is with great reluctance that I have agreed to this calling. I love democracy! I love the Republic! Once this crisis has abated, I will lay down the powers you have given me.”
In Episode 3, the fielding of the clone and droid armies has engulfed the galaxy in all-out war between the Confederacy and the Republic, with the Jedi leading the clone troopers into battle. This presents the opportunity for Sidious to issue Order 66, which activates the clones’ bio-programmed “Protocol 66,” under which they turn on and kill their Jedi commanders. (I will cover Anakin Skywalker’s role in all this later in the essay.)
Finally, unhampered by the Jedi, wreathed with emergency powers, and backed by a perfectly obedient standing army, Palpatine declares himself Emperor with the following address to the Senate:
“In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society.”

All the steps in the Dark Lord’s rise to total power were enabled by the crises of wars that he himself engineered. The overriding theme of the first trilogy is that the star wars engendered galactic tyranny. This is a perfectly realistic narrative motif, because it is merely an interstellar extrapolation of Randolph Bourne’s insight that war is the health of the State. The emergency-propelled rise of the Sith also fits with Robert Higgs’s broader insight that crisis is the health of Leviathan.
Indeed, throughout history, rulers, regimes, and power cliques (just like Sidious and the Sith) have dragged their countries into wars in order to acquire, shore up, and enhance their power. This power play almost always works, because war activates in indoctrinated adherents of a State what Randolph Bourne called the “herd mind”: a sort of statist Protocol 66.
Terrorized by the menaces of war, and aroused by its prizes, State citizens react like a spooked herd or a ravenous pack. They become as docile as sheep or dogs (or Sith-bred clones) to their shepherds and masters in government, swarming to their feet and granting them sweeping emergency authority, just as the war-spooked Galactic Senate repeatedly empowered Palpatine. They yield their liberties, even to the point of renouncing their individuality (like how the imperial troopers were all clones of a single man). Under the exigencies of war, the people, as Bourne put it:
“…proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the environments of their lives, and turned into a solid manufactory of destruction toward whatever other people may have, in the appointed scheme of things, come within the range of the Government’s disapprobation. The citizen throws off his contempt and indifference to Government, identifies himself with its purposes, revives all his military memories and symbols, and the State once more walks, an august presence, through the imaginations of men.”
As Higgs detailed, the expansions of state size and power that occur during a war or other emergency are generally scaled back after the crisis passes, but never all the way down to the pre-crisis level. Thus, the power of the state ratchets up with every war.
This is why governments pursue war, and why war eventually leads to tyranny, and ultimately to totalitarianism.
Empires are so enamored with the empowering effects of war, that they will often try to maximize the clash by, like Palpatine, deliberately provoking (or fabricating) attacks, arming future enemies, and aiding both sides in a conflict. Especially egregious in this regard has been the US empire.
The casus belli of the Mexican-American War (the Thornton Affair), the Spanish-American War (the USS Maine), World War I (the Lusitania and the Zimmerman telegram), World War II (Pearl Harbor), and the Vietnam War (Gulf of Tonkin) all involved engineered conflicts, deliberate provocation and baiting, deception, or outright fabrication on the part of the US.
The US armed the Soviets against the Nazis in the Second World War, then armed international jihadis against the Soviets in the Cold War, and is now devastating the Greater Middle East under the pretext of fighting international jihadis in the Terror War.

The US sold weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for use in invading Iran, while secretly selling arms to Iran at the same time.
To provoke a crisis which led to the first war on Iraq, the US greenlit Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait over an oil rights dispute, just as Sidious greenlit the Trade Federation’s invasion of Naboo over a trade taxation dispute.
After having sold WMDs to Saddam, the US invaded Iraq again years later over then non-existent WMDs, as well as non-existent ties to the international jihadi movement that the US first built up.
And now the US is arming the new Iraq government to fight the jihadis of ISIS, while also arming the jihadis fighting alongside ISIS in Syria.
And Washington has used every single war and crisis it has concocted to expand its global empire and justify the accumulation of greater power over its domestic subjects. Are you getting the picture yet? We are ruled by a power clique just as diabolical and ruthless as the Sith.
* * *
What especially accelerated Palpatine’s accumulation of autocratic power was general frustration over the fractious Galactic Senate’s inability to come to decisive agreement over how to deal with the Sith-generated crises. This was most fully expressed in an intimate interlude between Padme Amidala and the young Jedi apprentice Anakin Skywalker (who later becomes the evil Darth Vader), following a romantic romp through the countryside.
ANAKIN: I don’t think the system works.
PADME: How would you have it work?
ANAKIN: We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problems, agree what’s in the best interests of all the people, and then do it.
PADME: That is exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don’t always agree. In fact, they hardly ever do.
ANAKIN: Then they should be made to.
PADME: By whom? Who’s going to make them? (…)
ANAKIN: Someone wise.
PADME: That sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me.
ANAKIN: Well, if it works…
Padme then decides that Anakin is teasing her, and, sitting in a meadow with the future Fuhrer, laughs it off. “You’re so bad!” she playfully chides him, as if to say, “Oh, Adolph…!”

As F.A. Hayek explained in The Road to Serfdom, such an impulse toward dictatorship among those “impatient with the impotence of democracy,” as he put it, occurs frequently. He argued that it is a function of citizens giving their republics too expansive a mandate for addressing the ills of society through central planning. As Hayek put it:
“…agreement that planning is necessary, together with the inability of democratic assemblies to produce a plan, will evoke stronger and stronger demands that the government or some single individual should be given powers to act on their own responsibility. The belief is becoming more and more widespread that, if things are to get done, the responsible authorities must be freed from the fetters of democratic procedure.”
For example, Hayek argued that Weimar Germany’s embrace of planning paved the way for the rise of Adolph Hitler:
“In Germany, even before Hitler came into power, the movement had already progressed much further. It is important to remember that for some time before 1933 Germany had reached a stage in which it had, in effect, had to be governed dictatorially. Nobody could then doubt that for the time being democracy had broken down… Hitler did not have to destroy democracy; he merely took advantage of the decay of democracy and at the critical moment obtained the support of many to whom, though they detested Hitler, he yet seemed the only man strong enough to get things done.”
When dictators come to power, it is generally because many in the public are clamoring for it, yearning for an Alexander who will cut the Gordian knot of parliamentary discord, and who will use unchecked power to finally deliver all the good things that they believe can only flow from the State. As Padme remarked upon Palpatine’s declaration of the Empire, “So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause.”
All this is very disquieting when we reflect on our present political state of affairs. We ourselves are mired in war, crisis, and insecurity. Great swaths of the country are demanding more planning (whether escalation of the war on ISIS or a larger welfare state at home), and expressing frustration over the republic’s inability to decisively deliver on those demands. Moreover, every one of the leading Presidential candidates is a potential strongman.
Trump preens as a “tough guy” and his ardent followers want him “make America great again,” with a strong, authoritarian hand. Trump, echoing Palpatine’s promise of a “safe and secure society”, foretells that:
“…security is going to rule. […] And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
Then there is Marco Rubio, a loyal apprentice of the neocon Sith who parrots his masters in everything from his phraseology (“New American Century,” “Clash of Civilizations,” etc.) to his dedication to an ever-expanding Empire and ever-proliferating wars.
And Ted Cruz would have loved to command his own Death Star, judging from his expressed enthusiasm for civilian casualties and dropping nukes.
On the Democratic side, there is the Machiavellian Hillary Clinton who is almost as imperialistic and warlike as Rubio. Clinton is also eager to disarm the American public, which would place us in completely prostrate serfdom under the government’s stormtroopers in the military and militarized police departments.
Then there is the avowed advocate of all-around economic planning, Bernie Sanders.
In America we have the blessed freedom to select our flavor of dictator. We can choose where we want the coming totalitarianism to begin before spreading everywhere else: total war, a total police state, or total economic planning. “I love democracy! I love the Republic!”
* * *
The Jedi suspect that Anakin is the prophesied “chosen one” who will restore balance to the Force. Yet his turn to the dark side is also anticipated. When Anakin is brought before Yoda as a child, the Jedi Master senses much fear in the boy: specifically fear of losing his mother.
“What has that got to do with anything?” Anakin objects. “Everything!” Yoda answers, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

This echoes the 12th century Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes), who wrote:
“Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence. This is the equation.”
Years later, after Anakin does turn, becoming Darth Vader, Yoda warns his son Luke Skywalker not to follow in Vader’s footsteps:
“Yes, a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did [Darth Vader].”
Yoda later clarifies that:
“A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.”

Yoda’s references to “aggression” and “attack,” as opposed to “defense” invite a libertarian interpretation of what the dark side of the Force is. Indeed a fundamental libertarian concept is the “Non-Aggression Principle” (NAP). According to the NAP, violence is unjust (crosses over to the dark side) when it is aggression: that is, violence initiated against another. Violence, as Yoda would say, is only justified in defense against aggression (which, according to libertarians, includes violence to reclaim stolen property or restitution).
What about the “path to the dark side” that Yoda spelled out? It is difficult to believe that anger and fear never serve a good function.
However, if instead of “anger,” we stress Yoda’s and Ibn Rushd’s reference to “hate,” it makes more sense. We can define “hate” as anger that is so overwhelming that it leads one to commit aggression against the target of that anger, as well as to indiscriminately attack those lumped in with that target.
Similarly, we might substitute “terror” for “fear,” defining “terror” as fear that is so overwhelming that it drives one into hate, and thus into aggression.
Terror is the path to the dark side. Terror leads to hate. Hate leads to aggression. Aggression leads to suffering.
Especially with these refinements, we can see Yoda’s warning about Anakin being vindicated throughout the prequels trilogy. The terror Anakin feels over losing his mother, which Yoda identifies in Episode 1, emerges again in Episode 2, as he begins having dreams about her suffering.
Later, after his mother is killed by Tusken Raiders, the terrorized Anakin slips into hateful indiscriminate vengeance: into aggression, the dark side. As he later confesses to Padme, he massacres the entire camp of “Sand People”, including even innocent children and babies.

With this massacre, Anakin starts down the “dark path,” and from then on it “dominates his destiny.” He takes another step down that path at the beginning of Episode 3, when he again yields to hate and executes a surrendered prisoner under the prodding of Palpatine.
He also begins having premonitions of his beloved Padme suffering. And so terror of losing his mother is replaced by terror of losing his wife. This leads to his final turn, after Palpatine offers to teach Anakin how to use the dark side of the Force to stave off Padme’s death. After helping Palpatine kill a Jedi Knight, Anakin swears himself to the Sith, taking on the name Darth Vader. When his new master activates Protocol 66, Vader participates in that Night of Long Knives, even massacring young children in a Jedi temple school.

Nonetheless, his terror of losing Padme ensures that he does lose her. Thinking she had turned against him, he lashes out using the Force and wounds her. Despondent over her husband’s dark turn, she soon after dies giving birth to Luke and his sister Leia. As Yoda warned, the path to the Dark Side only leads to suffering.
Anakin then takes his station beside the new Emperor in the “benevolent” ironfisted dictatorship that he had dreamed of years ago.
* * *
Throughout the original Star Wars trilogy, Luke faces challenges similar to those of his father. In Episode 5, Yoda has misgivings about Luke as well, complaining that his new apprentice is too impatient and impetuous. But Luke assures Yoda, “I’m not afraid,” marking out the fundamental difference between himself and his father: freedom from terror.
Yoda is dubious, especially when Luke, like his father, begins having his own premonitions about people close to him suffering: in his case, Leia and Han Solo. Terrified of losing his friends, Luke insists on breaking off his training with Yoda to go help them. Yoda worries that this is Luke’s own start down the same dark path that his father followed.
And Luke indeed is faced with temptations to join the Dark Side, especially after learning he is Vader’s son, and upon his father’s invitation to help him rule the galaxy. But Luke rejects the offer, choosing to jump to his own possible death instead.
Far from turning to the dark side, Luke is determined to turn his father away from it. To this end, he allows himself to be captured by the Empire in Episode 6. This leads to a duel with his father, during which Vader terrorizes Luke by threatening to turn Leia to the dark side. This drives the young Jedi into hate, causing him to temporarily lose control, and to grievously injure and incapacitate Vader.
The Emperor is also present, and urges Luke to complete his turn to the dark side by striking his helpless father down:
“Good! Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father’s place at my side!”
But Luke catches and calms himself, breaks the spell of terror and hate, casts his lightsaber away, and refuses to commit aggression against his father, a defeated opponent. He says:
“Never. I’ll never turn to the Dark Side. You have failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”

Enraged by failure, the Emperor tries to kill Luke. Seeing his son about to be slain by his master, Anakin finally turns back against the dark side and against the Sith. In defense of his boy, he incurs mortal injury by hurling the Dark Lord into the Death Star’s reactor.
As Anakin lay dying, his son pleads with him, “No, you’re coming with me. I won’t leave you here. I’ve got to save you!”
His father answers, “You already have, Luke.”
* * *
The libertarian spin on the path to the dark side has many lessons for our country.
As a result of decades of foreign wars and intervention, on 9/11, we were struck by terrorists and allowed ourselves to be stricken with terror. This terror drove us into irrational, broad-brush hatred toward Muslims in general. That hatred provided cover for a war of aggression in Iraq which has resulted in over a million dead, followed by over a decade of wreaking havoc throughout the Muslim world, which has left over four million dead. Having suffered the massacre of our innocents, like Anakin after the murder of his mother, we ourselves allowed for the massacre of innocents, and in far greater numbers.
Shortly after 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney said on television, “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will.” And, stricken with terror and indulging in hate, America did embrace the dark side, accepting torture, indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance, assassination, perpetual illegal wars, and mass civilian casualties.

Terror led to hate, hate led to aggression, and aggression has led to suffering, not only for the the direct victims of the wars, but for Westerners at home, as we find ourselves afflicted by blowback in the form of a refugee crisis and terrorist attacks.
This blowback has, in turn, provoked a fresh bout of Islamophobic terror and hate, driving calls for still more aggression in the form of more foreign militancy as well as domestic oppression against Muslims. This too will only lead to suffering, both in the form of further blowback,and in the form of an oppressive militarized garrison state that will not stop at persecuting only Muslims. As Yoda warned: “If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will…”
But it need not dominate our destiny literally forever. As difficult as it may be, we can always choose to turn away from the dark side.
It will help if we recognize that our giving in to the dark side is precisely what the terrorists want. They are, like the Sith, striving to terrorize us into hatred and aggression. They want us to sink ourselves into military quagmires, where we can be “bled to bankruptcy,” as Osama bin Laden put it. They also want our indiscriminate violence to radicalize Muslims in order to boost their recruitment.
Also like the Sith, the terrorists want to breed antagonism. As ISIS proclaimed in its own official magazine, the strategy of its terrorism is to polarize the whole world into two warring camps (Islamists and Crusaders) locked in a black-and-white clash of civilizations, with no “gray zone” in between. “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy,” said Anakin after he turned, echoing a sentiment expressed by President Bush, and explicitly seconded by Osama bin Laden. “Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” responded Anakin’s former master Obi Wan.
We must also realize that the ultimate source of most of our terror and suffering is our own government. As discussed above, the Sith-like State accumulates power by making enemy menaces (terror), cultivating nationalistic furor (hatred), and instigating foreign wars (aggression).
Indeed the very essence of the State is regularized aggression, which it terrorizes the populace into accepting as the only possible way of providing security. And the modern democratic State wins loyalty and revenue by stimulating mutual hatred and fear among its citizens, and then brokering the mutual aggression that results.
The dark side is the health of the State. But it is the sickness of civilization.

Luke Skywalker’s heroic victory was that he resisted terror, renounced hate, and rejected aggression. Inspired by his son’s example, Anakin finally turned back from the Dark Side, and so was redeemed.
If we would but be similarly inspired, then America could be redeemed as well. And we would finally step off the dark path to global suffering and universal serfdom.
May liberty, justice, and peace be with you. And enjoy Episode 7.
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So this is how Liberty dies, with thunderous applause.
it's not called blowback when the result is exactly what the principal actors intended
There will be millions upon millions of C-Section Awakenings.
im not seeing the disney pc nightmare.
it will be well received because of how progressive it is. Anyone who derides the movie will be called a racist
This guy's bedroom must be loaded with Star Wars posters and figurines and DVD's. Bet he has Star Wars PJ's too
Will there be a 1080P YIFY version of this movie at some point? I have my own popcorn.
Can't wait for it to come on torrent sites
'Til then..
http://goo.gl/xFQREO
Didn't know there was a new Star Wars coming out... Guess that's what happens when you produce your own entertainment, rather than consuming what is dished out [by private interests].
The original trilogy was pretty sweet - I like Joseph Campbell's take on myth and the hero's journey, and Lucas' keen interest in the age-old story shone through. Ol' man Campbell is rolling in his grave.
This article does a better job of explaining those rotten prequel movies than the movies did themselves. If you haven't seen them, don't.
Thanks Jar Jr.
I hate the digitally 'remastered' versions of the originals as well, Han shot first.
Look for it this January at the State of the Union Address
Watching the Republican debate tonight reminds me that we are the empire. As disappointed as I am with Rand Paul and his corporatism, he was the sole rational voice on the stage tonight and he would have my vote if he was a viable candidate.
You will be given two candidates or a "choice"....the "choice" for you will be the "lesser of two evils" and that will satiate you desire to have participate in a democracy.....ALWAYS give them a "choice"
What is odd to me is that so many here see Trump as something else. Watching him tonight should be scary to anyone who believes in the Constitution, and I don't mean the banning Muslim shit which I half support.
The ONLY solution to this mess is:
1. Sound money and trade, instead of wars/occupations.
2. Stop the insane foreign policy.
Not a single candidate is talking about these two options. shitty 'choices' of candidates, if you ask me.
The United States is the one country that exists, as far as I know, and ever has, that was founded as an empire explicitly. According to the founding fathers, when the country was founded it was an “infant empire.” That’s George Washington.
Modern-day American imperialism is just a later phase of a process that has continued from the very first moment without a break, going in a very steady line. So, we are looking at one phase in a process that was initiated when the country was founded and has never changed.
http://chomsky.info/20080424/
I think Chomsky has a lot of interesting shit to say, and to be fair to him and you I didn't read your link. But it is ridiculous to say that this country was founded on being an empire. Virtually all of the founders were against foreign entanglements. We were a fucking colony. We have become that against which our forefathers fought.
I must disagree, LTER: it is sadly true -and you should face it..
American Exceptionalism/Manifest Destiny is blatantly imperialistic.
Ask the Cree or the Comanche or the Crow -or any of the other conquered Nations- if the United States was/is imperialistic and you will get the true and honest answer.
It was/is a manifestation of European monarchal imperialistic tendencies and was/is exhibited by the anglo, dutch; -and most violently of all- by the latins.
This imperialism has only become more deeply entrenched in the general fabric of the culture, and more violently projected unto the far reaches of the world as globalist corporatism has eroded the vestiges of the original soft-imperialism of the neo-republican founding over time.
Republicanism always devolves into democracy and democracy always devolves into pure statist imperialism/oppression.
Power cannot be concentrated without corrupt, greedy and evil persons seizing that concentrated power for their own purposes and to sate it's own lusts...
The key is to keep government small and weak, corporations small and weak; and to impose term limits on the time in which people may exorcise perogatives via either. BOTH must be limited and be created with explicit expirations lest one comsume or become the other and seize what belongs to those who are not enfranchised in/by/with either...
I agree with what you say. My question is, given the truth of our situation, what do we do? Yes, much of our existing threats are self manufactured but that make them any less real? Yes, the more we fight Islamic terror, the more of it we potentially create, but what of it? Our conflicts with indigenous Indians exacerbated the conflict from both sides which made it impossible to stop. Each horrific event caused by one side justified a response. In facing the real Islamic threat, do we simply surrender? This isn't a movie as much as our idealized simplistic view of the world would like it to be so. The root of the problem is human nature....maybe even nature itself. How do you fix that? As George Carlin said, it is those who think they can fix it that are the real problem. The road to hell is paved a mile deep with good intentions. It makes it easier for us to imagine those who are doing all of this as simply evil, when in reality they are likely people just smart enough to think they have the answer to all this. Listen to the leaders of jihad speak. They think they have the answer as well and see themselves as anything but evil....the hand of God.,
Wasn't manifest Destiny Teddy Roosevelt, and American Exceptionalism after that even?
Sorry, but Teddy Roosevelt was not a Founder and America was not founded on either of those principles.
Your assertions about government in general appear accurate but your timeline needed some major correction.
@LTER, I have to disagree and say that empire was on the minds of our founders/owners from very early on. Set aside for a moment that by 1850 we had taken a large chunk of Mexico and in the 1860s had gone to war on the South under the later cover of 'abolishing slavery' to say "you aren't leaving, you aren't going anywhere," we decimated every Indian treaty 'we' signed to expand the territory.
when George Washington talked about "infant empire", it was in a historic and cultural context that was different from the modern one
today, nearly any American will spontanously say that an empire is something evil
Ask a Brit or an Australian or a New Zealander... and you might get a more differentiated answer
yes, George Washington and the whole lot of Founding Fathers took a lot of inspiration from former empires, particularly the Roman Empire... in it's Roman Republic form
and so you find in the US Senates and Capitols, and the American Eagle is a descendent of the Roman Eagle
empires, btw, don't have to include centralizations, or a dominant part subjugating lesser parts. the British Empire wasn't the template for the US Founding Fathers
if you take centralization (of decision making) in account, then
- properly speaking, an empire is actually less then a confederation, and a confederation is less then a federation, while a federation is less then a unitary state
- properly speaking, the United States of America are now a unitary state, or nearly so, while the empire is the alliance system that this country leads
in the Star Wars novels, there is a Trade Federation and a Confederacy of Independent Planets that interact with both the Republic and later the Empire
in our reality, there are various alliances, some interlocking, some somewhat opposed to each other, depending from the issue
"When dictators come to power, it is generally because many in the public are clamoring for it, yearning for an Alexander who will cut the Gordian knot of parliamentary discord, and who will use unchecked power to finally deliver all the good things that they believe can only flow from the State. As Padme remarked upon Palpatine’s declaration of the Empire, “So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause.” "
cutting the Gordian knot of "we agree to disagree on that". cutting the Gordian knot of "we agree to have a constitution, or to set up a new one". cutting the Gordian knot of "different opinions are here to stay". cutting the Gordian knot of "I disagree with you, but I will defend your right to have your opinion"
cut that knot, and you are on the dark side of human politics
cut that knot, and you are on the side of the extremes, the radical change, tyranny, domination and "might makes right"
constitutions are good examples for Gordian knots (though not the only ones)
some are old, some are knotted a bit strangely, it does not matter, then the essence of the Gordian Knot is simple: if you pick up your sword and cut it...
Indeed. Trump offers to cut the knots while dreaming of himself as Emperor.
I believe that what we have here is a SELECTION of the next President, not an ELECTION of the next President. Political power in the USA has nothing to do with an election - least of all with the election of a President - a tip of the hat to Strother Martin and COOL HAND LUKE.
Too bad they did not have a scene of Anakin and Padme executing Protocol 69, where the Flux Capacitors reverse polarity and blow the fuses.
Perhaps you can find that on 4Chan, or YouPorn?
I am so glad only the USA is evil and competant enough to do all the above great evils, and all other countries and of course Muslims are all innocent victims. Good grief, what a way to warped thinking.
More fucking false dichotomy. What are you, fucking retarded?
You fucking statist bytchez need to refine your goddamed arguments, and work our your logical fucking fallacies. FFS...do it on your own fucking time, and stop polluting my fucking news.
Bluebear1914 is 102 years old. Where's your manners, Moose? Now, get off my LAWN!!
Good essay! As another poster noted, finally a concise and halfway comprehensible explanation of the politics in the first three prequels.
Amazing, though, that while the essay itself, and dozens of ZH commenters, are rightly eager to condemn various American adminstrations' use of war and violence to ratchet up the power of the federal government and erode individual freedoms, and to draw (pretty scary) parallels between Palpatine/Sidious and assorted presidential candidates, no one has yet pointed out that all of it applies at least as well to ZH's most beloved autocrat.
As an experiment, try reading the essay again, replacing Palpatine/Sidious with Putin. Sith with KGB, the star wars with Chechnya/Georgia/Ukraine, etc.
(Then, bring on the "thunderous applause" of the Clone -- er, Troll Army, protesting that it's not the same thing at all...)
+1000
Tylers - thanks for posting this fascinating essay.
Agreed. The title smacked of corniness and then the article turned out to be a complete pleasure to read - full of simple, illuminating ideas. Nice article.
The worldwide obsession with a _movie_ is something I find troubling.
I like movies ok, some more than others, of course. But when I see people creating military-style "units" of "storm troopers" and marching through Hollywood at premiere events, or thousands of Chinese kids juxtaposed along the Great Wall in assorted Star Wars character costumes, I think, "yet another ominous sign that all of humanity is very ill."
I'm not religious but have some level of fear that one day, God is going to do something frightening to send the message that humanity's energy and focus should be chiefly directed toward Him, as Creator and as God.
Not some silly, fictitious movie.
You have a good point. It's just speculation, well actually it is more than that, but it's possible that imagination may be a faculty that has connections to God and other fields or information sources. Some movies, inventions and creativity in general may contain an advancing purpose or warnings, we really don't know.
Then there are the theories about human archetypes...
Statism is a creation of fear.
Fear of competing in the world without the explicit support of other people.
Belief in the necessity of the support of other people leads to hate for those that refuse to provide their support willingly.
That hate leads to violence via Statism by which expropriation and oppression are manifested.
This is the equation.
Statism is the way of the Sith.
What tools/power/assets/etc. of their own do the Sith have without the expropriative and oppressive powers of the State?
NONE.
No taxes/printing press = NO Death Star, NO Battle Cruisers, NO Clone Army.
Statism the way of the Sith is.
Perfectly stated.
Fear from competion, and by that I mean fear even from honest, fair competion, is what drives the masses in all this.
Fear of scarcity drives fear of competition. Whether real or artificial.
Fear OF competition.
Statism annuls any and all ordained competitive outcomes in favor of contrived outcomes.
Under Statism -no matter the rules or lack of rules- the outcome is fixed, the competition rigged, the results faked..
Statism is always and everywhere exemplified by lies and fraud.
Statism cannot ever be honest about itself: it's goals, it's results.
Maybe Statism can evolve; but, all of the present variants of it are crude, prone to capture or hi-jacking from within the attendant bureaucracy, political mechanisms, or monetary system, and oppressive and cruel to those who defy it's imperatives and demands.
I still have hope and seek alternatives and the seeds of (re)evolution:
http://www.propertarianism.com/en_US/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit
I think we understand how fear is used to control and aggregate power. I think history pretty much proves its inevitability. I think the only solution is education, or more accurately a lack of ignorance. A truly enlightened person can deduce real threat from false and better still properly identify bullshit when they see it. Further and more importantly an enlightened person is SECURE in their self, insecurity being the single greatest point of leverage used against us. While I own many guns I also recognize that this massive trend in our country also indicates great insecurity. It is positive that we stand ready, but it is a negative that we feel we must. This will be our painful reconciliation.
Actually no.
Even the best education doesn't give the pupil/person the needed self-esteem, if the teacher or others fail to provide real appreciation (for real results.)
Now look at all the fake appreciation nowadays, participation trophies and so on -
still wonder how fear of competition coud be cured?
People long for the protection of a parent, and the state is happy to oblige. See James Buchanan's brilliant essay, "Afraid to be Free".
(Trigger warning: Rather depressing reading for libertarians, I'm afraid.)
"Mmmmmm. Begun the currency war has."
"In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Bankster Empire, for a safe and secure society which I assure you will last for ten thousand years, or until we go bankrupt"
Bankruptcy itself has been redefined.
This is the same empire that wont bomb enemy targets because its bad for the environment?
Give me the empire any day....the rebel alliance reminds me of our moderate headchopping wahhabi sunni allies, you know the one we and the saudis and qataris are NOT supporting...yah
Will ISIS be using CIA provided lightsabers for beheadings now?
Funding for those lightsabers are being debated in the ______________ committee in D.C. Stay tuned!
Another great piece by Dan Sanchez.
It's always best to avoid black and white thinking but the global situation is such that it is easy to perceive circumstances as the equivalent to the last battle between good and evil. Something is taking over all of our governments, economies, food production, medicine, entertainment and everything in between.
The people of the world may not be perfectly good and benign entities but we are much better than this cancer that is taking over. It's just really strange how much our reality is very similar to many movie plots involving the last stand between good and evil, not just in the sense of the memes that they are pushing but in the reality that is taking place as well. Humanity seems to be being pushed into a confrontation with it's shadow the psychopath.
Reality is still stranger than fiction.
Connecting
two quotes:
9/11 was yet another casus belli created by inside job, false flag attacks, as the most spectacular symbol, so far, of the general historical pattern of "deliberate provocation and baiting, deception, or outright fabrication on the part of the US" done by the Deep State Shadow Government that controls the public US government.
Ironically, tragically, and pathetically, all of the famous art work movies, that people resonate with as appropriate metaphors, actually end up making the social pyramid systems worse! They ultimately repeat the patterns of ripping off some culture, to sell it back to people, which end up making those who were most able to rip off that culture and sell it back even more able to continue to do so.
Overall, although I liked to click through the many interesting links embedded in that article above, it continues way too much to take for granted the DUALITIES of false fundamental dichotomies, and related impossible ideals. The various famous movies that people resonate with as appropriate metaphors actually more end up being morality plays, that not only drive the vicious spirals of enriching those who are able to make and sell those, but also, reinforce their basic superficial moralities.
In the case of Star Wars, it is the false fundamental dichotomy between the Light Side versus the Dark Side, which serves the interests of telling that story, which basic narrative itself enables professional hypocrites to continue to promote similar sorts of over-simplifications and superficial analyses of the problems, as kinds of magical thinking regarding how and why there must necessarily be some murder systems, while the ones that exist are based on the history of the social successfulness of deceits and treacheries.
It every significant way, on every deeper level, all of the entertaining narratives presented in movies which become popular metaphors for our political problems are actually more parts of those problems themselves, rather than lead towards any better resolutions of those problems. On the material level, those movies fit into the movie business, where business is the dominating noun, while movie is merely the adjective that qualifies that noun. Beyond that, on philosophical and spiritual levels, the over-simplifications and superficial analyses of the political problems are also aspects of the vicious spirals of the problems which they pretend to criticize.
While I too enjoy popular entertainment (since I grew up with it), I usually find it quite disturbing to reflect upon the various ways in which those end up becoming merely more manifestations of "amusing ourselves to death." THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SPENT TO MAKE MOVIES WHICH ARE BASICALLY NOTHING MORE THAN GLORIFIED COMIC BOOKS, WHICH PRESENT MORALITY PLAYS THAT ARE NOTHING BETTER THAN CHILDISH COMIC BOOKS. At the same time, there is virtually nothing spent to make movies which would enable viewers to develop a more sophisticated and deeper understanding (since there is almost no audience that would actually be interested in that.)
Zero Hedge collection of economic truth documentaries:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-14/top-15-economic-truth-documentaries
I find it ironically appropriate that most of those links have been broken since that article was published, but nevertheless, under that article I published a comment, that I repeat here, which continues to be just as relevant to the issues raised by the article above, regarding mass media entertainment.
A LINK to my favourite collection of
Excellent Videos on Money Systems
Not long ago, there were too few, now there are too many. I have time to watch them, most people do not. Worse, the overall situation continues to be that evidence and logical arguments mean nothing to systems based on lies, backed by violence. After we figure out what has been happening, there is still nothing realistically practical that can be done to stop the established trillionaire mass murders from punching their debt engines on through hyperdrive! The banksters and their buddies already own the mass media, and control their political puppets. Any miraculously successful politicians, that might be able to change things, would end up being discredited or destroyed in order to prevent that. Moreover, in my view ALL the videos of this kind that I have ever watched fit the pattern of "reactionary revolution." They usually spend 90% of their time doing good historical analysis, then followed the last 10% presenting bullshit "solutions" based on impossible ideals, depending upon false fundamental dichotomies.
I have never yet seen any video of those kinds which continues to be consistent through its ending, with what it demonstrated before that ending. The history has been the triumph of the methods of organized crime, taking control of governments: LEGALIZED LIES, BACKED BY LEGALIZED VIOLENCE. The general abstract pattern demonstrated by the historical facts are based on SUBTRACTION and ROBBERY. The only genuinely realistic solutions would be based on changing the organized systems of lies, to operate a differently organized system of robbery. The best we can hope for is to try to more effectively fight bullshit with bullshit, in order to change the social rates of robbery to bring them back into better ecological balance. However, ALL of those kinds of videos that I have ever watched either ignore that reality was based on robbery, or suggest "solutions" based on the impossible ideal of ending that robbery.
Of course, I would like to make my own videos, that presented my ideas ... However, I present the fringe of the fringe of the fringe position, and that Fringe Cubed position has way too small an audience to sustain the effort to make videos for them. Instead, the only videos on these topics that I have ever seen appear to me to mostly be more on the general theme of "entertaining ourselves to death."
The most "successful" people were those who are the best at being dishonest, while appealing to their particular viewers. Thus, the paradox is that since almost nobody likes more radical truth, that radical truth almost never gets made into videos. Instead, we have mainstream morons making videos for other mainstream morons ... and pretty well nothing else could be actually made, and presented, because there is only a fringe of a fringe of a fringe audience for more radical truths.
The funding to make videos about the monetary system is just another subset of the overall problems with respect to funding the political processes in general. The trillion dollar mass media make trillion dollar videos, (practically all the mainstream movies and TV shows) to support their view ... and then proportionally less money is spent to make videos for the fringe market, and then the fringe of the fringe market, and then, the fringe of the fringe of the fringe market. Ironically, the more times one goes through that process of going through the infinite tunnel of deceits, regarding the runaway fraudulence of our financial accounting system, the closer to more genuine economic truth one gets.
The economic truth follows the pattern of more radical truths. Economics is a dismal science, and the more one knows the more dismal it becomes. Thus, dismal squared, dismal cubed, and so forth. Similarly, the more radical economic truth becomes fringe squared, then fringe cubed, and so on ...
Ultimately, the TRUTH is paradoxical. As soon as human beings are perceived and defined as separated from their environment and each other, then those human beings always operate as robbers in their environment. Human beings must always operate through more or less organized systems of lies. The banksters were simply the best at doing that, while their apparent opposition is almost always controlled in ways that more or less allow them to reveal some of the history of those processes, but then, tend to collapse back to bullshit "solutions" based on the old-fashioned impossible ideals, and false fundamental dichotomies found in various religions and ideologies from the past. Nobody yet, that I am aware of, has made any videos which continue to propose genuine solutions that remain consistent with the results of their analysis. Like I said, ALL of those kinds of videos that I have ever watched go through more or less 90% good analysis of history, to then always collapse back to bullshit "solutions" at the end.
To NOT do that would require that we continue to view the solutions in the same way that we analyzed the real problems. Namely, there are combined money/murder systems, in which the debt controls depend on the death controls, and there are feedback loops whereby the money system pays for the murder system, and then that murder system backs up the money system in return. To be consistent with the history of militarism that made and maintained the real money system, real solutions MUST be based upon changing the murder systems, and changing the death controls, or else, everything that is said about changing the money systems, and changing the debt controls, is just a collapse back to impossible ideals, which are more bullshit, which always assisted the established systems to be run by professional liars and hypocrites.
We should make videos about economic truth that are consistent with energy laws and general systems theory, and especially consistent with evolutionary ecology. However, the number of viewers for that is way too small to sustain making those kinds of videos. Generally speaking, the REAL systems are based on lies, backed by violence, and so, the REAL solutions could only be changing to different systems of lies, backed by different systems of violence. ... So far as I am aware, better videos about that have never been made yet, and it is hard to imagine how they could be paid for, to get made. Those who most benefit from running their degree of participation successfully within the established systems of fraud and robbery, in proportion to that, do not want to face the radical economic truths any more, and neither would any potential audience. The relative wealth and power of those who have the means to communicate were due to the proportions to which they previously were successfully dishonest, to themselves, as well as others.
The economic truths about the money system are buried as deep as the truths about war. The history of war has always been that success in war was based on deceits, and that spies were the most important soldiers. The success inside the established monetary system depends on the same factors. Thus, the history that made War King, then morphed to make Fraud King. Our entire economic system is always based on organized lies, operating organized robbery, and it is IMPOSSIBLE for any real world to not be that. The paradox that those who were the best at lying to others, as well as themselves, became the most successful, i.e., more wealthy and powerful, then directly feeds back to them proportionately being able to make their videos, for their audience to view.
ALL OF THAT APPLIES TO THE BIG MOVIES!
On the basis of the other articles republished on Zero Hedge, that were Submitted by Dan Sanchez via AntiWar.com, he is merely another reactionary revolutionary, promoting superficial analysis of the political problems, which includes his promotion of the shallow Star Wars world view, which continues to promote the dualities of false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals. All of the various old-fashioned religions and ideologies which do that end up assisting the established and entrenched social systems operated by professional hypocrites to continue to get worse, faster ...
The view that there exists a Dark Side versus a Light Side is the wrong way to think, except if one is a professional hypocrite. Rather than continuing to rely upon the dualities of those kinds of false fundamental dichotomies, and therefore, promote bogus "solutions" based upon somehow realizing impossible ideals, (e.g., goofy Libertarianism,) we ought to be developing an understanding based upon more unitary mechanisms.
Most of the prodigious progress made through series of profound paradigm shifts in the history of physical science were made in ways that replaced old-fashioned dualities with better unitary mechanisms. That is also what we should be doing within political science too. However, the article above continues to do the opposite, and to extol those as being good ideas, which is how and why it could write such a superficial analysis of the Star Wars series of movies.
For instance, Dan Sanchez wrote:
Since politics without violence is as impossible as physics without force, NAP is an impossible ideal, which necessarily backfires badly, and causes the opposite to happen. Of course, that ironically makes sense due to the ways that guys like Dan Sanchez are actually forms of controlled opposition, that fit within this description, which was previously published on Zero Hedge by Cognitive Dissonance: "The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled."
Oh wow, using Star Wars to explain your argument now? That's a step below talking about Hitler and Nazis.
States will do what states always do -- oppress their own citizens to varying degrees and wage war against each other. Libertarians haven't the most rudimentary plan to stop this. Their non-aggression principle ensures that they will never gain power, nor could they keep it long if they had it.
Before the invention of long-range bombers and ICBMs, you could settle an isolated mountain valley and have a little libertarian paradise, but the seas always belonged to the empire with the strongest navy. Star Wars takes this nightmare to a new level, where interstellar battleships allow an empire to dominate an entire galaxy, and there's no place to hide.
But as the Non Aggression Principle becomes more widespread, mass murder is delegitimized. As it is a universal human principle (except for psychopaths and their states) all that remains is to apply the Non Aggresion Principle to the State itself. A natural extention.
Evolution does occur. Besides, Non Aggression is not pacifism- it only means a prohibition against initiating violence. It does not mean you can't retaliate.
But how does the Non Aggression Principle become more widespread? There's nothing universal about it. For their own benefit, all states suppress violence among their subjects, but e.g. Sweden has done this too well, leaving the country defenseless against foreign invasion.
Evolution is not your friend. If I decide to initiate violence, I'll choose the most opportune moment. You won't have a chance to retaliate because you'll be dead, and I'll be injecting my violent genes into your wife and daughters.
Evolution is not your friend? It's not about you, when it comes to evolution. It's about LIFE as a whole. You could say that Human Ego is not friend to LIFE.
If you think that the name of the game is YOUR SURVIVAL, you will be disappointed, as Nietzsche once was.
What I meant was, evolution is not directed toward my or PoasterToaster's idea of a more perfect world; it's directed toward whoever succeeds in passing on their genes. See also "Whig history".
I disagree (if by 'libertarians' you mean voluntaryists/anarchists). Just getting the idea 'out there' does great things in a highly-interconnected world. It won't happen on timescales that suit people who can't remember the plotlinew of a TV shows from one week to the next without 'Previously, on [whatever]', so folks with truncated horizons think it's never going to happen.
Ask yourself how Western societies moved from mandatory membership of (usually an established) organised religion, to widespread, accepted atheism.
Back in the day, coutnries usually hewed to one variant of a faith, and treated dissenters extremely harshly - from denying heretics full citiczenship rights and the right to give evidence in court (even in their own defence) through to actual execution... not just for outright atheism, but for adhering to a variant of the same religion that had very slightly different theological nuances (e.g., the civil war in Byzantium was basically an escalation of a theologicval argument between the iconodules and iconoclasts).
In 1811 Shelley was expelled from Oxford and lost custody of his children for writing a pamphelt entitled 'The Necessity of Atheism. Yet by the late 20th century, being an atheist was not an issue, anywhere outside the retarded bits of the US.
Whenever people witter on about how hard it would be to move to a system of voluntary, large-scale non-state institutional structures, I simply respond: "Remember: atheism used to be a death penalty offence, and religions asserted the monopoly right to perpetrate violence against dissenters in the same way that States do today. Nowadays, religion is voluntary, but membership of the tax base is not. But it will be."
The stooge patsy, Jar Jar Obama Binks, was manipulated by Palpatine to grant him emergency powers.
The rise of the Empire was the Fault of Jar Jar.
Fourty years later the Empire was destroyed by Teddy Bears, they may have walked softly but they carried a big stick.
That's what happens when you give a dumb ass like Jar Jar the right to vote. Some people have no business voting, and this republic was founded with that ideal in mind.
I expect episode 7 will be full on hollywood propaganda of the multicultural marxist and feminist variety.
curious that ZH didn't do an equally involved review/analysis of spectre. obviously ZH has no problem with complete surveillance.
Truth is stranger than fiction and the world we find outselves in today is probably that period that is alluded to in Star Trek, the one where they gloss over a nuclear war and say yeah it happened then things got better.
Well great but for those of us who have to endure this I think this battle between good an evil wil kill most if not all of us.
There are too many things stacked against the average person.
There are those who are awake but not enough and they aren't in power and they can't get anywhere near it and violence isn't the answer because you can tell that those in power are practically goading people into it to put the final hammer down.
I'm surprised no larger group has snapped yet but they will and then we will all hear the slamming shut of liberty for perphaps forever.
The technology is the key we are being hemmed in at every turn, then the lights will go out and bad bad things will then happen.
I wish I was more optimistic but I believe there is little cause for it. Being awake is a curse not a blessing it just means more suffering, ignorance in this case truly is bliss.
The trick will be to hold on and wait for the Deep State to make the first major strike. In that respect i almost fear a GOP president more than a Dem. The base will go back to sleep and think the Empire..er Republic is fine now cause 'our' guy is in power so what could possibly go wrong,lol. A HRC presidency would overreach just like 0 has thus forcing the crisis upon us enabling defensive agression needed to reform the system. kinda having second thoughts on Trump after this article. Bernie is still my first choice,but even he makes me nervous about the 2A.
The radicalization of Luke Skywalker:
http://decider.com/2015/12/11/the-radicalization-of-luke-skywalker-a-jed...
I liked how the byline for that article on the "radicalization of Luke Skywalker," becoming a "terrorist" from the perspective of the Empire, was attributed to "Confortably Smug."
Sith Lord Cheney, disciple Darth Dubya, and the Oilygarchs pretty much ran the GOPee into the Ground. Possible GOP/Independent Candidates who "could" have done well (Forbes, Dole, Ron Paul, Ross Perot, and the Late Fred Thompson) have been passed over.
Who's left? Congressman Boehner? Senator McCain (went off the deep end during the 2008 Campain, IMHO)? Eddie Munster ?
I don't plan to stick around in the USA much longer, so I'm not about to lose any sleep over the POTUS Race's Outcome.
I am Entertained somewhat by the Races; and look forward to the Late Night Comedians lighten things up. I can still remember ROTFLMAO when Leno or Letterman (forgot which) showed Vampire/Cryptkeeper clips when referring to Warren Christopher.
Jedi Lives Matter!
This article should be put as a permanent link on ZH home page.
I've read several of the posts on this article and some are interesting. For my observance the movie makers know how to hook viewers and they have perfected (most) the plot to get folks interested and to then merchandize everything into bags of money. The producers and writers for most of if not all of this series clearly believe in big governement and a twisted form of socilaism. Over thinking a movie like this article has exposed really doesn't seem to help other be entertaining which putting the money aside is the purpose.
Now all the political crap-trap poured out in these posts is a whole other question and it seems we have no shortage of opinions so why not leave mine here too. The entire world is connected whether we have the internet or not. Our lame attempts at controlling the financial systems and the governmental systems have made it worse clearly just by observing the mess we have developed. The cultures of the past have been excellent teachers if we would just open our minds and seek to understand the cycles that seem to be obvious. All our erudite examination is not moving us to a better world. There is evil living amoung us and if we chose not to fight then we will become slaves or die. we have turned most in USA into slaves of financial institutions. Our enemy is within and it is corruption of our legal system, our governmental system and our financial systems. Not addressing these and there is not much meat on the bones for ISIS to feed on.
Cognitive Dissadence was accurate in his comment.
"In Germany, even before Hitler came into power, the movement had already progressed much further. It is important to remember that for some time before 1933 Germany had reached a stage in which it had, in effect, had to be governed dictatorially. Nobody could then doubt that for the time being democracy had broken down… Hitler did not have to destroy democracy; he merely took advantage of the decay of democracy and at the critical moment obtained the support of many to whom, though they detested Hitler, he yet seemed the only man strong enough to get things done.”
Except this just wasn't how it was in the Weimar Republic. Hitler never had a consensus of support from the people. He seized power by usurping the existing government structures and, waiting until after the death of the last legitmate president, Field Marshal Hindenburg, 'crowned' himself Chancellor and 'Supreme Ruler'. Remember: he wasn't even a German by birth - he was Austrian! You don't think it matters? It matters, all right!
There was a healthy free press in Germany before 1933 with 100s of national and local newspapers of all political hues. There was healthy political opposition to the Nazis as there 'handiwork' was evident in the streets long before the 1993 'putsch'. The only fly in the ointment, which the Nazis exploited to the limit was the disasterous (for Germany) Versailles Treaty which caused 100,000s of death by starvation before the victorious allies of The Great War reelaxed their strangelhold on Germany. Don't believe me? Read about what happened in Germany from 1918-1923. The reason was not only to punish Germany 'for starting the war'; the allies wanted Germany's GOLD, using the pretext of REPARATIONS, in order to replenish their depleted reserves. This is hardly difficult either to figure out or to confirm by reading about the Versailles Treaty and life in Germany during the early years of the first ever German republic.
"Hitler never had a consensus of support from the people."
And with that, you that you're ignoring (deliberately or through ignorance) either the actual history of the time, or what 'support from the people' means.
In the November 1932 election, Hitler got more votes as a proportion of the eligible voter base than any ruling party in Germany since 1919.
However that did not translate into enough seats to form a government without a coalition... so after months of wrangling, there was another election in March 1933.
In March 1933, the NSDAP got the votes of 44% of the turnout, meaning they got the votes of 39% of the eligible electorate - a full ten percentage points higher than the average for all US Presidents elected since 1860.
Furtherrmore, there have only been only 4 US Presidential elections since 1872 - and none since universal suffrage - where the winner of the US Presidential election polled within 1% of what nasty old Adolf got.
He also got a greater proportion of eligible votes than any previous Chancellor since democracy was implemented in Germany.
And the numbers for US Congress and the Senate? Much much much lower.
So for those stupid enough to believe that the 'general will' can be ascertained by periodically aggregating the ordinal preferences of 'voters' (choosing between competing platforms, not on a policy-by-policy basis)... Adolf Hitler's 1933 government was more representative than any previous or subsequent German government, than any US government since 1860, any Australian Federal or State government since Federation, any UK government since the days of Pitt, any Canadian government ever, any New Zealand government ever, any French government ever... you see where I'm heading here, right?
For those who don't carry around some idiotic cartoon trope that 'the will of the largest interested minority' yields a valid social preference function, none of this matters... all political contests are the dim-witted and gullible choosing which of a set of identical professional parasitic sociopaths will get to enrich themselves at public expense.
Here's something to consider: there has only been a single US Presidential election since WWI where the winner has got more votes than the number of people who abstained. That was LBJ in 1964.
PADME: So this is how liberty dies; with thunderous applause
You have a bigger pussy than my cat breeder.
I enjoyed reading this article and most of the comments/debate that resulted from it.
Not bad except for the essential call to immigrate millions of sand people to all the peaceful planets of the Galactic Republic. Just look at Gaffi stick attacks on Alderaan. They’re up 1500%. Those that adhere to their beliefs are not following a peaceful religion but rather an aggressive and often violent political ideology. This is proven by the fact that it’s the hypocrites and apostates among them that are the peaceful ones. Sand People and a libertarian republic are simply incompatible.