Aktive Massnahmen

(Active Measures)

Dr. Michael L. Ford

9 February 2006

            In the play, “The Measure Taken” there is a line:

                        What baseness would you not commit,

                        To stamp out baseness?

                        If you could change the world

                        What would you be too good for?

                        Sink in the mire

                        Embrace the butcher but

                        Change the world,

                        It needs it.

This play by Bertolt Brecht rationalizes the more extreme measures undertaken to strengthen the Communist Revolution. But when I read this line I was reminded of the people who are now trying to obtain power in the United States and are willing even eager to undermine the country to do it.

            Thus came about my choice of titles for this reflection. It is the title of a group of undercover operatives in communist East Germany who were working to undermine the West German government’s international position during the Cold War. They were intent on doing these things to build a better socialist world.

            Brecht became a Marxist after World War I and fled Hitler’s Germany before WWII. After testifying before the House of Un-American Activities Committee, where he stated he had never been a member of the American Communist Party, he left for East Germany. No doubt, had he not died in 1956, he would be amazed at the views of many of the people in American government today. I think he might view some of them as extreme.

            Today we have people from the Executive Branch, to those now holding the majority in Congress who have a loyalty to something other than the Constitution of the United States. How they differ is only on how to achieve their goals of undermining the United States both internationally and internally. Their purpose is to build something new, a thing they think will be better. For whom? They should remember that when you dance with the devil, he always leads.