David Brat: Hitler’s Rise ‘Could All Happen Again’
The Wall Street Journal has some excerpts from a bizarre pseudo-libertarian essay written by Tea Party heartthrob Dave Brat, warning that Hitler’s Rise ‘Could All Happen Again’.
Raise your hand if you’re shocked that a Tea Party religious fundamentalist employs confused Nazi Germany comparisons to market victimhood. But also notice that in this quote, Brat is pretty openly establishing his position as a Christian supremacist.
In his 13-page essay titled “God and Advanced Mammon — Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?” Mr. Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., near Richmond, calls both conservatives and liberals hypocritical and wrote that “the government holds a monopoly on violence” because it enforces the law.
But it is the reference to Hitler’s Germany that is likely to turn heads during Mr. Brat’s first full day as a tea party star.
The full context of his second Holocaust prognostication comes in a section about how if Christian people “had the guts to spread the word,” government would not need to “backstop every action we take.”
He writes:
Capitalism is here to stay, and we need a church model that corresponds to that reality. Read Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s diagnosis of the weak modern Christian democratic man was spot on. Jesus was a great man. Jesus said he was the Son of God. Jesus made things happen. Jesus had faith. Jesus actually made people better. Then came the Christians. What happened? What went wrong? We appear to be a bit passive. Hitler came along, and he did not meet with unified resistance. I have the sinking feeling that it could all happen again, quite easily. The church should rise up higher than Nietzsche could see and prove him wrong. We should love our neighbor so much that we actually believe in right and wrong, and do something about it. If we all did the right thing and had the guts to spread the word, we would not need the government to backstop every action we take.