Paul Craig Roberts

Before senators vote to acquit a president who has degraded our highest political office and the law of the land, they should sit down together with Christabel Bielenberg's story of life in National Socialist Germany.

In 1934, Christabel Burton, an Englishwoman, married Peter Bielenberg, a German lawyer. They settled in Hamburg and over the next years experienced the breakdown of German law and institutions. In 1969, Christabel Bielenberg told their story in her book, "The Past Is Myself," which was resurrected 20 years later on Masterpiece Theatre as "Christabel."

Adolph Hitler's National Socialists had a more difficult time reshaping Germany to suit themselves than Lenin's Communists experienced in Russia. The Czar's government in Russia, although highly bureaucratized, was a personal form of government. Its rationale and power flowed from the Czar. When the Czar and his family were murdered by the Communists, his government ceased to exist, thereby providing the Communists with a clean slate.

In contrast, German government institutions were independent of party and person. The National Socialists had to contend for a while with independent law and courts and accustomed practices that frustrated their aims.

Hitler's government responded by ignoring inconvenient court decisions, by putting in place a parallel court system, and by replacing traditional law with its own administrative orders. As time passed, fear mounted as new legal terms appeared that cloaked lawlessness with language such as "protective custody," "People's Court" and "offense against the natural healthy instinct of the people."

After building fear with arbitrary power, the National Socialists were able to force people step by step into compromise with their integrity and complicity with evil.

The Hitlerization of Germany was achieved by accustoming the population to a gradual degradation of law and morals until people shuffled for the National Socialists the way prisoners, deprived of shoelaces, shuffle in their shoes.

At this moment nothing but an uncertain Senate stands between us and the degradation of our civic life by the Clintons.

Clinton has already corrupted the media, which shuffles for him.

Clinton has corrupted the Democrats in the House of Representatives, who shuffle for him.

And now Bill Clinton and his government are betting that the U.S. Senate will shuffle for him. Fearful of its constitutional duty, the Senate is already shuffling toward an extra-constitutional compromise that will add to our degradation.

Just as many Germans did not comprehend where the shuffle was leading until it was too late, many Americans are not aware of the implications of excusing the country's chief executive from perjury and obstruction of justice.

If Clinton remains in office, the precedent will be established that the president is above some laws in some circumstances. Caesar will have crossed the Rubicon. The laws, above which the president sits, will increase in number with time, and other executive branch officials will gradually acquire by extension the distinction of being higher than law.

Indeed, the executive branch is already filled with little dictators. Wherever one looks, one sees administrative agencies behaving as if they are legislative bodies. Clinton's EPA is attempting to force the recall of federally certified Toyota/Lexus vehicles based on the issuance of a retroactive standard.

Clinton's Justice Department is using coerced consent degrees to establish illegal and unconstitutional racial quotas as the law of the land.

Clinton's Treasury, Justice, State and Interior Departments are using executive orders and abusing their regulatory authority in order to gradually criminalize gun ownership.

Clinton's appointees are exercising power without being confirmed in office by the Senate, and Clinton's executive branch departments are implementing treaties that have not been ratified by the Senate.

Federal prosecutors fabricate cases in order to meet conviction quotas for "white collar crimes," "environmental crimes" and drug crimes.

After a two-year investigation of prosecutorial misconduct, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette concluded: "Perjury has become the coin of the realm in federal law enforcement."

How is perjury to be rooted out of federal law enforcement when it cannot be rooted out of the White House?

If the president can obstruct justice in order to hide sexual misconduct, a prosecutor can obstruct justice in order to hide misconduct that would exonerate a defendant.

Fair trials will disappear, and our civil rights will shuffle off the stage.

Before Senators shuffle for Clinton, they should add up the stakes.