ABOUT THAT CIVILIAN NATIONAL SECURITY FORCE

Okay, so Obama went to Europe, blah blah blah.

Still, if you look at some of the things he's said on the campaign trail and pair them with what his wife has said, against the German backdrop, it does conjour up images.

He said:

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded"

She said:

"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

She didn't say if they would use the security force to make this happen, but...

Didn't they try that whole require-you-to-work-civilian-security-force thing in Germany a few years back?

The Gestapo was originally the Prussian security police and pre-dated the Nazi party. Goehring took it over and went national with it before handing it off to Himmler.

I'm not trying to make an overt Nazi comparison, it's just that when you get something that big set up, run by human beings, it's open to abuse.

Especially if it's ideologically driven.

What began as a run-of-the-mill European security aparatus became, in the hands of someone with broader ambitions, a different entity.

The building process of something that pervasive should consider what can happen if it's badly run. Given the habit of government programs to mutate, it's not an unreasonable concern.