Oh brother. Cue the brand new CTers here to agree with this guy.
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) believes that President Obama is bent on turning the United States into a totalitarian state and already has all the tools he needs for the purpose.
“He has the three things that are necessary to establish an authoritarian government,” Broun told a meeting of local Georgia Republicans on Wednesday, citing the creation of a private army, a ban on gun ownership, and complete control of the press.
The threat of Democratic Party totalitarianism appears to be an issue very close to Broun’s heart. Last month, he described President Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as “a socialistic elite” and responded to a question about swine flu preparations by warning, “They’re trying to develop an environment where they can take over.”
Broun bases his claim that Obama intends to set up a private army on a speech during last year’s presidential campaign in which the then-candidate called for the establishment of “a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the military.
Broun referred to the same speech last fall, in a statement a few days after Obama’s election, when he warned direly, “We may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. … History shows that ‘civilian national security forces’ bode ill for citizens.”
“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun’s statement continued. “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.”
An Obama spokesman explained at the time that the candidate had simply been endorsing the creation of a civilian corps to handle postwar reconstruction effects.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “The flap has been watched with particular interest inside the State Department, which already is building a civilian corps similar to the one Obama described in a campaign speech. The Civilian Response Corps, as it is called, was launched two years ago by the Bush administration, after a bipartisan vote by Congress and the urging of Republicans, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell.”
Broun, who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2007 by less than 400 votes, has recently taken other high-profile positions. In May, he raised a firestorm by proposing that 2010 be declared “The Year of the Bible.” In June, he voted against climate change legislation, calling global warming a “hoax … perpetrated out of the scientific community.”
At this week’s meeting, Brown described health care reform as yet another attempt to control peoples lives and suggests that health care costs could be brought down by repealing consumer protections and enacting tax credits for doctors to take on charity cases.
