WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.
“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force,” Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. “I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.”
Broun cited a July speech by Obama … in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.
“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”
Obama’s comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado in which he called for expanding the nation’s foreign service.
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” Obama said in July. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
The Obama transition team declined to comment on Broun’s remarks. But spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama was referring in the speech to a proposal for a civilian reserve corps that could handle postwar reconstruction efforts such as rebuilding infrastructure — an idea endorsed by the Bush administration.
Broun said he believes Obama would move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national security force.
Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors “common sense” gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he’ll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.
“We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun said. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential of going down that road.”
Looks like the liberals aren’t the only ones who get their panties in a wad. Broun isn’t outside of the realm of possibility, but his argument is considerably premature. One could make the case that people in pre-Nazi Germany had fewer warning signs than this so Broun is right to be sounding the alarm, but, in the spirit of bipartisanship, let’s allow Obama to prove himself a Marxist before we label him one. The early name calling will only serve to discredit the truth-tellers later if Broun’s hyperventilations bear out. That’s a pretty big if, people.
Additional insight from Ed Morrissey at HotAir:
At the time [of the speech], Obama’s supporters claimed that he meant the Peace Corps and other volunteer organizations. That seems a stretch, but so does Broun’s interpretation of it. As I wrote at the time, the nation already has a number of non-military national security forces, including the FBI, ICE, Border Patrol, and so on. If we want to fund that better, many conservatives would agree, but not funding it to the same extent as the military. In the context of Obama’s remarks above, though, he fairly clearly meant to at least include a volunteer force in outreach within and outside the US as some sort of Department of Peace-like indirect boost to national security.
Nothing in that speech hints at a Gestapo-like organization at all. I’d agree that we have to remain vigilant at all times to ensure that the government doesn’t try to impose such a regime upon us, but this is an extremely thin reed to grasp for such a conclusion. Although I supported a freer hand at the NSA in monitoring communications with one end in the US for possible terrorist activities given the dangers we face in this era, it’s far easier for the government to turn that into a Gestapo than what Obama proposed. That’s why I understood the Left’s opposition to it (as well as a small minority of conservatives) and thought reasonable safeguards against potential abuse were appropriate, as the eventual compromise in Congress provided.
If we plan to offer a rational alternative to the coming debacle of the next two years, then we’d better stick to facts and eschew hyperbole. We need to oppose the reality of the radical agenda proposed by Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress, not fantasies spun out of context-free snippets of speeches. The more critics invoke Hitler and Stalin instead of Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson, the better the reality of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi will seem in 2010.
