Lincoln or "Gleichschaltung?"

[Bob Schaffer]

Plaudits and admirations gush upon leaders whose manner is tolerant and considerate of opposing viewpoints. History nonetheless allows that some who rule by treachery rise to ferocious power, too.
In the first instance, Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals acclaims Abraham Lincoln's phenomenal appointments of political rivals to his own cabinet. His picks were prompted by the urgency of slave states seceding to form the Confederacy.

Though a capricious gambit, Lincoln's adroit management of a rancorous cabinet afforded him the counsel of "the very strongest men." He (they) successfully concluded the Civil War and maintained the Republic.

In suitable contrast stands the example of Gleichschaltung Laws imposed by Adolph Hitler's Nazi regime. The term gleichschaltung, meaning "synchronization," came to define the successive process by which the leftist Nazi party accomplished rapid authoritarian control over key aspects of German society - the elimination of unsupportive influential organizations such as trade unions, opposition parties and independent churches.

In the name of democracy, the Nazis took direct control of organizations the new government could not eliminate such as schools, the media, regional and local jurisdictions. The government even assumed ownership interests in principle businesses and industries including automobile manufacturing, banking and healthcare.

Gleichschaltung became a convenient term to justify radical liberal policies as necessary and patriotic responses to an extraordinary economic crisis. Many German citizens embraced the term as intellectual anesthesia to rationalize languid acceptance of the new powers, violence and force used to compel their compliance.

As their businesses and institutions became tools of the Third Reich, legions of German citizens explained their torpor as essential, even righteous, under the new democratic order of Gleichshaltung.

Prudent Americans must fully understand the times we are now in and alertly discern the quickening steps of the country's leaders - whether they soberly respond to extraordinary economic crisis in the candid transparent style of Lincoln or by the disorienting treachery of tyrants.

Among LPR's goals is to train citizen leaders to recognize the differences and thereby grow the capacity to defend liberty - to maintain the Republic.
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Bob Schaffer is the Chairman of the Leadership Program of the Rockies. His monthly columns appear in the organization's newsletters. For more information and to subscribe, please visit www.leadershipprogram.org

More information about Schaffer at www.BobSchaffer.org