History Repeats...

[An historically prophetic excerpt from Ernest Hemingway...]

For Whom the Bell Tolls

"Do you have no big proprietors (in America)?" Andres asked.

"Many."

"Then there must be abuses."

"Certainly. There are many abuses."

"But you will do away with them."

"We try to more and more. But there are many abuses still."

"But there are not great estates that must be broken up?"

"Yes. But there are those who believe that taxes will break them up."

"How?"

Robert Jordan, wiping out the stew bowl with bread, explained how the income tax and the inheritance tax worked. "But the big estates remain. Also there are taxes on the land," he said.

"But surely the big proprietors and the rich will make a revolution against such taxes. Such taxes appear to me to be revolutionary. They will revolt against the government when they see that they are threatened, exactly as the fascists have done here," Primitivo said.

"It is possible."

"Then you will have to fight in your country as we fight here."

"Yes, we will have to fight."

"But are there not many fascists in your country?"

"There are many who do not know they are fascists but who will find out when the time comes."

"But you cannot destroy them until they rebel?"

"No," Robert Jordan said. "We cannot destroy them. But we can educate people so that they will fear fascism and recognize it as it appears and combat it."

Thanks to The Flypaper Theory for this Hemingway clip.