My grandma forwarded me this email because her friend sent it to her, and she wanted a snappy retort. Five pages later I made my argument, but I doubt that any of her friends will read it. Anyway, the original text can be found here: http://patdollard.com/2009/02/i-am-a-student-of-history/. The email has a few changes made to the text, which I address in my response.
I normally don't like to engage with people who have views so different from my own because I find that it is impossible for either of us to budge, but there is a larger issue here that I'd like to address. It saddens me that competent, intelligent people do absolutely no fact checking and take everything they hear to be truth. Of course the internet is full of lies - most chain emails are a bunch of garbage anyway - but that's a small part of the overall problem. Journalism is at a very bad place. People can watch and read news that simply reinforces what they already believe rather than seeing news that reports the facts and allows the readers to come to their own informed conclusions. Fox News, of course, is a big culprit. They pander to their base and report very biased news despite their slogan ("Fair and Balanced"). The left isn't immune to this, though. MSNBC is pretty bad as well. Neither bias is helpful because it is not showing a clear picture of what is happening, and it doesn't allow for healthy debate on the issues. It is very unfortunately that so many people are simply following the Glenn Beck's and Keith Olberman's of this world rather than learning from different sources, checking facts, and finding the truth. Speaking of taking nonsense as truth, here's my response to the email:
First of all, it's funny that the person who put this email together quoted Wikipedia for David Kaiser's biography, but that same person did not read the entire biography (just a few paragraphs) and see this statement at the end:
"In April 2009, an essay comparing Barack Obama to the rise of the Third Reich was wrongly [1] attributed to Kaiser; Snopes.com
[2] traced the essay to an anonymous commenter on Pat Dollard's blog."
Side note: Kaiser, the actual historian, said that he disagrees with much of the content of this email.
So right there any credibility of the author is in question as we do not know who he/she is and what he/she actually knows. Pat Dollard, by the way, is a Hollywood director turned conservative political blogger. If there is anything that we have learned from the internet, it's that under the guise of anonymity (like the commenter above), people will say really stupid and sometimes hurtful things. I actually went to Pat Dollard's website where the content of this email was posted. Check it out for yourself: http://patdollard.com/2009/02/i-am-a-student-of-history/. He doesn't accredit it to David Kaiser, so someone else must have taken that comment and then CHANGED IT before circulating the email. In fact, in the original comment on his blog, the first paragraph states that the author is a "student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life." Note that the email says that the author wrote 15 books in six languages about HISTORY. That is obviously not the case. The individual(s) who edited the original content added that the author was an expert in history in order to lend false credibility to the statement. And look at how many people have since read the email and taken it to be the opinion of a scholar rather than some schmuck on the internet. This person could have written his books on anything at all - conspiracies, fear-mongering, how fantastic his cat is, etc. He doesn't even say that his books were published.
Anyway, now that I've killed the credibility of the author, I will address some of the points in the email. Let's start with the economy. It's a very complicated issue that I could go into further detail about, and of course there are many things that I don't know, but I can say that economic policies of deregulation put into place over the last 20 years or so led to where we are now. Yes, that includes Republican and Democratic presidents and varying sessions of congress. However, it is primarily conservatives who push for deregulation in financial sectors. Capitalism is a wonderful system, but without regulation greedy people will take advantage of it. Over the past few years, banks continued to make loans to riskier clients in order to satisfy a demand from investors who saw our growing housing market. If any bank had said "No, I'm only going to take clients with a steady income and a credit score above 650," they would have gone out of business in a heartbeat. Consumers, seeing that it was so easy to get financing for a home, went to the banks in droves and borrowed money. They would lie about their income at times. They would take loans that they could never pay off. That was also very, very wrong. The situation was snowballing, and banks began to sell the loans in bundles (mortgage-backed securities), and then the investment groups bought insurance on these mortgage-backed securities from companies like AIG. When one part of this web began to crumble, the whole thing came crashing down. Customers defaulted on their loans. The investors weren't collecting their payments. They went to their insurance companies but the insurers didn't have enough money to pay what they had promised. On all levels, people were promising money that they couldn't deliver but they thought they wouldn't get caught because the economy would be strong like this forever, or that they wouldn't get caught. I believe that if ALL people in the world were responsible investors, insurers and purchasers, none of this would have happened. But we know that that will never be the case. There is greed in the world. People confuse "wants" and "needs." In order to prevent things like this from happening, there needs to be more government regulation and oversight of the financial sector. All stakeholders have proven that they will not act responsibly. We saw it from Enron but didn't make the necessary changes.
As for the bank bailouts, yes, it's a tough thing to swallow. No one wants to see so much taxpayer money being given to large entities that behaved so badly. However, the global economy is very complicated and relies heavily on the large banks like AIG, Fanny and Freddie, etc. These banks lend money daily to companies so that they can purchase equipment and raw materials, begin projects and many other things that require capital up front. Millions if not billions of dollars flow through the global economy every day. Without these large banks, this flow of capital doesn't exist. And without this flow of capital, companies all over the world will close because they don't have the money to operate. Trust me, that would be MUCH worse than our current situation with 10% unemployment. Thankfully some of the bailout was in fact a loan. The federal reserve will be paid back. In addition, giving this money to the banks allows our economy to keep functioning, which in turn keeps people employed and paying taxes. So while the bailout was unfortunate, it pretty much had to be done. I do think that those companies need to be punished for what they did - there needs to be regulation on the criteria for loans, and banks shouldn't be able to grow to the size that they did. In addition, there needs to be some kind of regulation on securities trading because of now there isn't.
Continuing on in the email, I agree that our schools are in bad shape and not enough is being done about it. No Child Left Behind was a giant failure, and the United States ranks very low on education in the world. A few weeks ago I was reading the results of the PSSA (Pennsylvania System of Schools Assessment) and I was sick by the percentage of students in 11th grade who were listed as less than proficient in reading, writing, math and science. However, as the first paragraph I wrote argues, we are a part of the problem. Adults are not challenging themselves to think critically, so we are certainly not passing that trait along to our children. There are many things wrong with our educational system and I hope that they can be addressed soon. I definitely liked President Obama's speech to children urging them to stay in school, and I still don't understand why some people were against it. Who honestly wants kids to drop out of school? HOWEVER, this part of the email lends no support to the author's other arguments, and I feel like they were included because they are statements that most people of any political party will agree with. This is a rhetorical strategy to make readers feel as if the author is aligned with them.
Moving on, I have little to say about the next part about contesting close elections (so what?) and statements about "unelected judges writing laws" and "Marxist groups like ACORN." There are no FACTS here. Link to articles and then we can discuss this.
Now we're getting to the really hate-filled part. This part is just ridiculous:
"And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so."
First of all, our enemies have been named: Al Qaeda, Taliban, Islamic extremists. We are not fighting against all Muslims nor do we have anything to fear or hate about the majority of Muslims. That statement about seems to claim that people of the "same religion" want to "slit the throats of your children" and I think we all know how untrue that is. The majority of Muslims are peaceful, just like the majority of Christians. All Christians aren't judged by the Crusades, are they?
After that nonsense the author claims that we don't know anything about Obama, when in fact we do. He has written two books about his life and thoughts for our country. You might not agree with him but it might be helpful to read them so that you can see where he is coming from. Not only that, but Obama was in the Senate. He was respected enough by the DNC to speak at the 2004 convention. I think more people had heard of him than Sarah Palin. Oh, and that "mandatory civilian defense force" that's mentioned? In the actual speech (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/07/02/obamas-remarks-on-service/), Obama was talking about service to our country as in public service, volunteerism, making our country better. As the conservative blog American Thinker points out, "He plans to double the Peace Corps' budget by 2011, and expand AmeriCorps, USA Freedom Corps, VISTA, YouthBuild Program, and the Senior Corps. Plus, he proposes to form a Classroom Corps, Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, Veterans Corps, Homeland Security Corps, Global Energy Corps, and a Green Jobs Corps. " So giving more funding to social groups that make our country better? I think that the author of the original email took that statement way out of context and is now using it to drum up fear among conservatives, which is especially ironic to me since conservatives typically want a larger army anyway.
Now let's get down to the Hitler comparison. First of all, I object to the parallels drawn between 1930's Germany and the United States today. Germany had been devastated by WWI and the citizens were desperate for something or someone to help them. As a nation they had been given a huge reprimand with the Treaty of Versailles. They took full responsibility for causing WWI, they had to give up a lot of land, and they had to pay huge reparations. Does that compare to us right now? I don't think so. Yes, we are involved in two wars but they are relatively small and they are certainly not world wars. Yes, we're spending a significant amount of money on Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's nowhere near as devastating as what Germany was forced to pay. In addition, Germany is significantly smaller than the United States and we have a much larger population. It would be pretty much impossible for that kind of groupthink to happen with so many people. Frankly, I think we're too smart and strong for that.
Now I'm not a scholar of history, Nazism or Germany, but I do have a college education and access to a computer. From very basic research on the Nazi Party it's easy to see how their situation was different from ours today, but I'd like to focus on the general argument that this individual makes. As I read it, he is arguing that Hitler took an economically weak country, promised the people jobs, healthcare and national pride, but then he went off the deep end and perpetrated horrible crimes such as genocide. Obama was elected president of an economically weak country and he too is promising people jobs, healthcare and renewed national pride. Therefore, the author concludes, Obama is going to end up just like Hitler. However, isn't it the case that ALL presidential candidates promise jobs, better healthcare and national pride? Have you ever heard a candidate promising to take away your jobs, make you pay more for healthcare, and wanting you to be self-loathing? I haven't. The author makes an unfounded logical leap tying Obama and Hitler together that he doesn't actually support. Think about it and read your history books, he says, knowing full well that most people won't. The author uses convincing language and imagery (Oh, a strong orator. He must be like Hitler and Obama!) which is really just smoke and mirrors. And what about the claim of socialism? Yes, Obama wants schools to be better. Yes, Obama wants every American to have access to healthcare. Yes, Obama wants volunteer to make their communities better. Yes, Obama wants to introduce some regulation to our economic system so that another disaster like this one won't happen. Well, to see if that's socialism let's look at its definition:
Socialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended.[1][2][3]
Most socialists share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation, creates an unequal society, does not provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximize their potentialities[4] and does not utilize technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public.[5]
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
I have to say, I think that our country unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital. While the statistics vary, a conservative estimate is that 70% of wealth in our country is controlled by the richest 10% of the population. Those people therefore have political sway because they can donate to politicians and advocacy groups who will help to perpetuate their wealth. The part about the belief that society does not provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximize their potentialities also rings true. There is a big difference if you are born into a wealthy family, middle-class family or a family at or below the poverty line. Your level of income correlates to the quality of education that you receive and the opportunities that you have. Yes, there are people who come from poverty and end up very successful, but that is not the norm. Being born in this country should be all that it takes for you to have access to excellent education, healthcare and opportunities. HOWEVER, these goals can be achieved through capitalism with the help of government to allocate resources. A society does not have to be socialist in order for its citizens to uniformly have a chance at a good life. If that were the case, I think a lot more countries would be practicing socialism. So is Obama a socialist? No. But he's trying to make our capitalist democracy work for all of the citizens rather than just the wealthy. I don't see anything wrong with that. Let's face it, none of us are in that upper 10%.
Why are people so afraid of a smart president? Why is intellectualism frowned upon in this country? In my opinion, THAT is what we should be afraid of, not that our president is secretly trying to undermine everything that our country stands for.
