First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller, 1945


      Martin Niemöller was a German Christian, a hero of World War One, who supported the rise of Adolf Hitler in his earliest stages. But he broke with Nazism in 1933, declaring that he "would rather burn his church to the ground, than to preach the Nazi trinity of 'race, blood, and soil.'" After 1937, he was harassed and imprisoned by the Hitler regime; held at the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Dachau, he barely escaped execution at the end of World War Two.
      After the war, he became prominent figure in Germany's democracy. He urged Germans to fully and frankly acknowledge their war guilt, and their special debt stemming from the Holocaust. He died at the age of 92 in 1984, honored by his fellow Germans as a hero of anti-fascism.
      And now, in our time, we wonder whether It Can Happen Again. Don't get me wrong. There's no comparison between Nazi German and the US government. None whatsoever. Nada.
      But what can happen again is the idea of "salami tactics." That is, the Iron Hand of the state goes after the least popular group first, then the next least popular, then the next least popular after that, and so on. Eventually, in little slices, everyone is made to suffer.
      And so to Howard Stern, the famous radio "shock jock." OK, the man whose best-known stunt is appearing on TV as "Fartman" is not a particularly appealing figure. But that's the point. Because he's not appealing, it's easy for the government to clobber him. The FCC has had Stern in its crosshairs for a decade; and now, in 2004, it looks as if Uncle Sam is going to take him down.
      And Stern knows it. "This show is over. Over. These are the last days," he said on the air recently. Radio networks and stations, licensed and controlled as they are by the government, are not about to risk their investments and profits for Stern, even if they have made millions from his programming in the past.
      But after Stern goes, who will go next? If Stern was an easy target, who's the next-easist target? You? Me?
      To repeat: the stakes aren't nearly as high as they were in Nazi Germany 70 years ago. But even so, freedom, including freedom of speech, is precious. And if we lose it, we could yet find ourselves slipping down a slippery slope. And as history proves, it's possible for a non-free people to fall into a deep abyss of state control. It's happened before.


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