Patriot Act = Gleichschaltung

On a dark day for this land, when the Spineless Senate has OK’d a raft of legislation known as the USA Patriot Act that has taken away the rights and liberties of American citizens, it may behoove us to note the term “Gleichschaltung,” since it applies to our plight in the USA in 2006.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The German word Gleichschaltung (literally "synchronising", synchronization) is used in a political sense to describe the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control over the individual, and tight coordination over all aspects of society and commerce. Another possible translation is "making equal". One goal of this politics was to enforce a specific way of doctrine and thinking to everybody, eliminating individualism.

The Nazi party's desire for total control required the elimination of all other forms of influence. The period from 1933 to around 1937 was characterized by the systematic elimination of non-Nazi organizations that could potentially influence people, such as trade unions and political parties. Those critical of Hitler's agenda, especially his close ties with the industry were suppressed or intimidated. The regime also assailed the influence of the churches, for example by instituting the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs under Hanns Kerrl. Organizations that the administration could not eliminate, such as schools, came under its direct control.

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One day after the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, the increasingly senile President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg, acting at Hitler's request, issued the Reichstag Fire Decree. This decree suspended most human rights provided for by the 1919 constitution of the Weimar Republic and thus allowed for the arrest of political adversaries, mostly Communists, and for general terrorizing by the SA to intimidate the voters before the upcoming election.
In this atmosphere the Reichstag general election of March 5, 1933 took place. These yielded only a slim majority for Hitler's coalition government and no majority for Hitler's own Nazi party.

When the newly-elected Reichstag first convened on March 23, 1933, (not including the Communist delegates, since their party had already been banned by that time) it passed the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz), transferring all legislative powers to the Nazi government and, in effect, abolishing the remainder of the Weimar constitution as a whole. Soon afterwards the government banned the Social Democratic party, which had voted against the Act, while the other parties chose to dissolve themselves to avoid arrests and concentration camp imprisonment.