After America: There is No Place to Go (Part 2 of 2)
1) The government redefined education.
Education was nationalized. The day Hitler was elected (March 13, 1938), Kitty walked into her schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler's picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Her teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class they wouldn't pray or have religion anymore. Instead, they would sing nationalistic songs and participate in physical education.
Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum, but they were told that if they did not send their children, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail. Kitty says the first two hours consisted of political indoctrination, and the rest of the day was devoted to sports. As time went along, they came to love it, and would go home and gleefully tell their parents about the wonderful time they had.
2) The government redefined equal rights.
Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn't support his family. Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been required to give up for marriage.
In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant, if you didn't work you didn't get a ration card, and if you didn't have a card you starved to death. Women who stayed home to raise their families didn't have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.
By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.
3) The government redefined service.
Soon after this, the draft was implemented. It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps. During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys. They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines.
When Kitty goes back to Austria to visit family and friends, most of the women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat. Three months before she turned 18, she was severely injured in an air raid attack and nearly had a leg amputated. As a result she was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.
4) The government redefined the family.
When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no mothers to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology.
5) The government redefined health care.
Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries. To support this level of healthcare, tax rates went up to 80% of our income.
6) The government redefined welfare
Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.
There was another agency designed to monitor business. Kitty's brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities, even though it was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn't meet all the demands, and he soon went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.
We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the livestock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.
6) The government redefined mercy killing.
In 1944, Kitty was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps. The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow causing people to be isolated. So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When she arrived she was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work. She knew one named Vincent, very well, who was a janitor at the school.
One day, she looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van. When she asked her superior where they were going, she was told they were going to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months, and also told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.
As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled, and recognized what was happening. There people left in excellent physical health and yet died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.
7) The government redefined individual rights.
Next came gun registration. Officials said that the real way to catch criminals was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law-abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long afterwards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.
No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.
Don't let freedom slip away:
Totalitarianism didn't come quickly in Austria, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943 to establish a full dictatorship. Their lives were changed forever by creeping gradualism. Had it happened overnight, Austria's countrymen would have fought to the last breath, but now their only weapons were broom handles.
The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little, eroded their freedom. America might truly be the greatest country in the world, but this country is in trouble. If we are to loose our freedom, it won't be the on-slot of tanks and guns, it will be because we have let freedom slip away while listening to others tell us it's for our own good!
