Crooked Timber ponders the lunatic asylum that is National Review from the point of view of one of the inmates:
Orwellian Undertones?
by JOHN HOLBO on JUNE 24, 2010
Jonah Goldberg points out that there is something sinister, even progressive, about the German phrase, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ – quite apart from the association with Auschwitz. “The Orwellian undertones to the phrase are real, and the associations with the Holocaust are horrific, but Arbeit Macht Frei was a popular “progressive” slogan on the road to serfdom.” Do you know where the phrase came from?
The Arbeit Macht Frei sign [at Auschwitz] was erected by prisoners with metalwork skills on Nazi orders in June 1940, and was a cynical take on the title of an 1873 work by the lexicographer, linguist and novelist Lorenz Diefenbach in which gamblers and fraudsters discover the path to virtue through hard work.
I appreciate that Republicans are hard-pressed to come up with a positive platform in 2010, but this seems an unpromising trial balloon: we must restore a culture of healthy recklessness and corruption, lest, by treading the perilous path of work and responsibility, we be beguiled into serfdom.
It’s like ‘the Fascist octopus has sung its swan song,’ but with Poor Richard’s Almanack as the libretto.
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