U.S. supports repressive U.N. policies

Repressive and totalitarian regimes have traditions of excluding sexual minorities from equal protections and access to the same rights offered others. That’s why this article, showing the administration linked to an Iranian initiative that denies United Nations consultative status to organizations working to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people comes as no surprise.

Throughout history, fascist regimes have done their best to eliminate groups and minorities that didn’t fit the criteria of the totalitarian leader at the time. In Nazi Germany, Hitler was behind the killing of over six million Jews. Also singled out for elimination—homosexuals, habitual criminals, resistance fighters, German opponents of Nazism, gypsies, the mentally retarded, and the “anti-social”; beggars, vagrants, etc. Basically, any group deemed by the Nazis as not serving their vision of national political life.

While Hitler didn’t assume total power overnight—it took a series of gradual, but orchestrated steps—he eventually assumed his totalitarian role, with the majority support of the German people.

When I listen to callers on national news programs like C-Span’s Washington Journal, I’m reminded that there are many Americans who would have been right at home, goose-stepping under Hitler. These types of citizens accept authority and the national governement’s policies without question. Even more frightening to me, is their anger at anyone who dares to disagree and dissent from their narrow vision of what their country should be.

When people make statements such as, “either you’re with us, or against us” and assuming that only those who have “something to hide” should be concerned about our government’s domestic surveillance program, it indicates an element in our own country that are very open to a despot taking control of our government. In my opinion, the number of these people (the Kool-Aid drinkers) hovers around 50 percent.

I continue to watch with interest to see how much of our liberty we are willing to cede to Bushco. I think that we are no safer today, than we were September 12, 2001. I continue to posit that the issue isn’t with terrorists attacking America. The real issue with safety and terrorism is related to our imperialistic foreign policy and need to dominate the world.