Yearly Archives: 2019

March 20, 2019 · 21:19

Alexander Stephen’s Cornerstone Speech and the Continuing Curse Of White Supremacy

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On March 21st 1861 in the midst of the Secession crisis, the newly elected Vice President Of the Confederacy, The former Georgia Senator, Alexander Stephens made a speech in Savannah Georgia demonstrating just how much the new Confederacy was different that the Republic founded in 1776 and who those founders struggled with the morality of slavery.

For people who like to comfort themselves in the myth of the Noble South, The Lost Cause, or the illusion that the war was brought about by Northern infringements on the States Rights Of the Slave States, the Speech is damning. The American version of White Nationalism and the superiority of the White Race over African slaves, and in more recent times Eastern Europeans, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Hispanics (especially Mexicans), and Arabs can be refuted by Stephens’ words. He spoke:

“But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other — though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind-from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics; their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just-but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

In the conflict thus far, success has been on our side, complete throughout the length and breadth of the Confederate States. It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly planted; and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world.

As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo-it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of his ordinances, or to question them. For his own purposes, he has made one race to differ from another, as he has made “one star to differ from another star in glory.”

Stephens honesty infuriated Confederate President Jefferson Davis who while he agreed with Stephens was infuriated by the international response to the speech. On learning of the speech and its contents Davis, who had counseled his cabinet members to downplay slavery as an issue wrote:

“That speech infuriated me, Oh, what Stephens had said was true, perfectly true, but could anything hurt us more abroad than such impolitic remarks? It was the beginning of a fatal falling out between me and that rebellious and vindictive dwarf, who was hell-bent on forming his own policies and disputing mine with niggardly deviousness.”

Unfortunately, what is called America’s Original Sin remains with us. We have a President who historian John Meacham points this out repeatedly in his book The Soul Of America.

So, before anyone wants to defend Southern Secession based on anything other than the maintenance and expansion of slavery and White Supremacy at the expense of Free States as evidenced in the Compromise Of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law Of 1850, compounded by the Dred Scott Decision, and the attempted takeover of Kansas and the battle over the Lecompton Constitution which would have made it a slave state over the majority of its population, try to defend the words of the President and Vice President of the Confederacy.

I bet you can’t.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 19, 2019 · 23:24

The Founding Of Dachau, the Model Concentration Camp

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On March 20th 1933, barely a month and a half after the Nazi takeover of the German government and three days before the passage of the Enabling Act the Police President Of Munich, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler ordered the establishment of the Dachau Concentration Camp. He appointed SS Standartenführer Hilmar Wäckerle as Commandant and the first 200 political prisoners from Munich’s Stadelheim prison arrived at Dachau on March 22nd.

Wäckerle’s brief tenure as Commandant was marked by extraordinary brutality on the part of his staff, so much so that charges were brought against him by the Munich courts which resulted in his relief by SS Gruppenführer Theodore Eicke in July 1933. Eicke would establish the regulations which governed all the later Concentration Camps, and make Dachau the model camp for all others.

Theodore Eiche

Theodore Eicke

Among the later SS killers of the Holocaust who served at Dachau were Adolf Eichmann, and the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rüdolf Höss. It became a training ground for other Concentration Camp commanders and staff. Others would become leaders in the Waffen SS and the Einsatzgruppen death squads.

The announcement of Dachau’s Opening was reported by the German press in this release:

On Wednesday the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5000 people. ‘All Communists and—where necessary—Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated here, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons, and on the other hand these people cannot be released because attempts have shown that they persist in their efforts to agitate and organize as soon as they are released.

Dachau began as a political prisoner camp for the Nazis to imprison Socialists, Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, some Jews, and other dissidents. It wasn’t a “death camp” designed to exterminate people even though tens of thousands of people died or were executed there. It was designed to terrorize, dehumanize, and destroy the souls of its inmates. It was a place of inhuman medical experiments, a place of terror, and the administrative center of a network of over 30 large and 100 small sub-Camps which were used as sources of slave labor for the German armaments industry. But one has to remember that the SS was not simply an instrument of terror, but an institution devoted to profit. Prisoners were valued in what their lives equated in profits. A prisoner was valued in what he or her could produce versus the expenses of keeping them alive for a period of 6 to 12 months. Under Himmler and his assistant for production and profits, Obergrüppenfuhrer Oswold Pöhl the Concentration Camps, as well as the death camps became centers of profit for the SS in collaboration with German industrial concerns and industries owned by the SS itself.

I have been to Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Flossenburg, and Buchenwald. I have also been to the T4 Euthanasia Center at Hadamar. To walk through these places where human beings subjected other people to the most inhuman of conditions, punishments, and torture brings the reality of the Holocaust into stark reality. The great evil committed by the Nazis in these places have made them hallowed ground.

Sadly, the way things are going in this country under the Trump Regime, and so many similar regimes around the world there will probably many more places of hallowed ground, ground hallowed by the victims of tyranny.

Never forget.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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March 18, 2019 · 21:32

“Remember Thou Art Mortal”the Death Of a Friend and a Cold Look at My Own Mortality

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I had retired Navy friend die over the weekend. He was a Chief Warrant Officer with about 30 years of service when he retired not long before their marriage. None of us knew it then but he probably had the stage four Brain Cancer that was diagnosed not long after their marriage. He stayed active and when he retired he was still in peak physical shape. He did a lot of sea time, mainly on cruisers and destroyers, and deployed with Naval Special Warfare Teams to various combat zones.

He was younger than me and in May of 2017 I had the honor of performing the marriage of Dan and his wife in the presence of their children at their home. He passed away Saturday and I found out last night. I didn’t sleep well, it is hard to believe that Dan Trevino is dead.

His death reminded me of my mortality, that and an extensive pre-retirement physical form on which I have to list everything that is wrong with me now or I have ever been treated for over the course of my career. I have to explain any yes answers and since there is not enough room on the form I am having to type it out on Microsoft Word and attach it. I think that I am about seventy to seventy-five percent complete, but I found today will waiting in the hospital pharmacy that I do need my foot high 2000 or so page medical record. I also have to dig up my old Army Medical records, and am waiting for more from the Navy and a civilian doctor that the Navy sent me out to in Camp LeJeune. There is nothing like having a friend that you admired who was younger and in better shape die and going through all of these forms, and I haven’t yet started with the Veterans Administration, but once I am done with this, that is my next priority.

I spent most of today at the Naval Medical Center. I had a follow up appointment from my left knee, which I had arthroscopic surgery on about six weeks ago. It is progressing, it still hurts some and though much stronger than it was, it still occasionally catches, but it is doing better than the right knee which I will have my follow up for after failed Platelet Rich Plasma treatments and injections of a gel into the knee, which I have completed but don’t seem to be working. I also had to see the dermatologist who treated me for a pre-cancerous condition on my face. That is gone, but in it’s place I now have some kind of bacterial infection that has caused a rash on my face and will require three months of creams and antibiotics to treat, as well as a telephone consult with my sleep doctor. This is a pain but it beats the heck out of being dead.

So back to work tomorrow, more physical therapy, and more medical appointments on the docket, and more digging through the records to complete this part of my medical requirements. All this even as I start the job search for after the Navy.

But also in thinking about this I am deciding to make this time an opportunity for growth. Marcus Aurelius wrote:

“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.”

I am going to use my days open up the windows of my soul to the sun, and in the process hopefully grow wiser and more loving. As the great Roman soldier-philosopher said:

“Life is short. Do not forget about the most important things in our life, living for other people and doing good for them.”

We should do well to remember our fallen friends like Dan and while remembering our mortality, also remember that no matter what our infirmities, and how long our past, we still have a future. As a Christian, in spite of my many doubts I believe this. The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann wrote:

“As time goes on we become old, the future contracts, the past expands…But by future we don’t just mean the years ahead; we always mean as well the plenitude of possibilities which challenge our creativity…In confrontation with the future we can become young if we accept the future’s challenges.”

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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March 17, 2019 · 22:53

Erin Go Bragh, and Go Bayern München

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day and as anyone with 45% Irish DNA should be doing I am donning the green. Of course it happens to be my 2014 German National Team, Manuel Neuer World Cup goalkeeper jersey. Of course I am sporting a red Bayern baseball cap, can’t help that since I watched Bayern München play and absolutely smash Mainz 6-0 while waiting for some friends to come by. during the match James Rodriguez score a hat trick for the first time this season, vastly increasing his value to the team in the last part of the season and maybe for a long time to come.

The win keeps Bayern ahead of Dortmund and increased the goal differential to seven goals. Since both teams are now out of the UEFA Champions League Bayern is going to take this to their 7th straight Bundesliga Championship. Two and a half months ago Dortmund led Bayern by 9 points on the table and what looked like an insurmountable goal differential. Now Bayern is resurgent and the talented but young Dortmund team is struggling. My prediction is that Bayern will win the Bundesliga and Dortmund finish second or third which will put them both in the UEFA Champions League in 2020.

But enough football for today. I may be 45% Irish by DNA and less than 5% German, I am a conflicted mix of Irish, Scottish, and German, with a large amount of English, Welsh, and non German Western Europeans, mostly French Huguenot, I am a man who is quite complex and often quite conflicted.

Conflicts aside, I love German Beer and Irish Whisky. I like European football more than American, and prefer Baseball to Cricket. But that doesn’t matter because my family, regardless of their ancestry or even incestry has been in this country for between 280 and 320 years which means that that I am a very conflicted American. I have many near and distant cousins who are African American, all of which are related to me through white ancestors, and their descendants who just happened to be slave owners, including men on both sides of my family who all fought for the Confederacy and their slave ownership rather than follow the majority in their part of Virginia and side with the Union. They all fought under the flag of the 8th Virginia Cavalry Regiment.

All that being said, I am an American with a highly conflicted genetic stew who happens to be defiant Unionist and abolitionist. I a fully for freedom and the understanding of the Declaration of Independence, and Abraham Lincoln that “all men are created equal,” and that we are engaged in a a conflict that will bring about “a new birth of freedom.”

Today outside my home hang the 35 Star Circle Union flag of June 1863 and that of the 69th New York Volunteer Infantry, also known as the 1st Regiment Of the Irish Brigade. I will never display the flag of the 8th Virginia or any other secessionist Regiment at my home in the Virginia Tidewater.

So, in the spirit of my Irish ancestors, even the most distant who fought under the flag of the Union and the regiments of the Irish Brigade I raise my pint glass and say Erin go Bragh!

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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March 16, 2019 · 13:43

“A Symbol of Renewed White Identity and Common Purpose” What Trump is to White Supremacists and Nationalists

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Yesterday in Christchurch New Zealand an Australian White Nationalist not only committed mass murder against Muslims at worship in Christchurch’s two mosques. Before he did so he released a 74 page manifesto on Twitter, and announced it on 8chan, a website devoted to White Supremacism, Racism, and war against Muslims, Jews, dark skinned immigrants, and people on the political left. When he made his attack he announced to his followers that it would be carried live on his Facebook page.

He killed 49 men, women and children in cold blood, and wounded many more, live-streaming the whole event. It was an event made for social media and it became viral before media outlets and YouTube attempted to scrub it from their servers, but be assured, it will keep popping up in other places because White Nationalists will publicize it, and ghoulish people will,watch it and share it. In a way the Eagles nailed it in their song Dirty Laundry:

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
Comes on at five
She can tell you bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
Its interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry…

New Zealand doesn’t have many Muslims so he killed about one of every 500 living in the country. Since Muslims make up less than one percent of New Zealand’s population this is quite a blow to a small community, in many cases made up of people who fled repressive governments in Southeast Asia. It’s about the same percentage of the population made up by German Jews in 1932, just before Hitler came to power.

The murderer, a 28 year old Australian named Brenton Harrison Tarrant, possibly aided by others is a self-proclaimed White Nationalist who subscribes to the theories of “White Replacement” and “White Genocide” which are quite popular among White Nationalist groups around the world. During the White Nationalist Charlottesville marches, the White Nationalists chanted Jews will not replace us.”

The killer also made it clear that he is a white nationalist. The references to Hitler, Serbians convicted of war crimes for killing unarmed Bosnian Muslims, Anders Breivik, the Swedish killer who murdered 77 people, Dylan Roof, the killer of 9 people at an African American Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, whose Tree Of Life Synagogue experienced such an attack last year noted: “To me it was as though I’m living the movie ‘Groudhog Day’ as a horror film all over again,”

Sadly, the Rabbi is right. These acts be they directed at Muslims, Jews, African Americans, and others won’t be going away. One of the reasons is that many of these cold blooded killers and their followers believe they have a world leader who tacitly gives them his support, even if they don’t agree with all his policies or feel that he is somewhat a fool. It is not whether Trump is an actual White Nationalist at heart, something that I believe that he is; but even if he is not, he now serves as a symbol and rallying point for White Nationalist and Neo-Nazis worldwide: as Tarrant, the New Zealand killer called Trump: A symbol of renewed White Identity and common purpose…”

Another thing that Tarrant said was that he hoped to promote civil war in the United States. This is troubling because quite a few Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists in the United States speak of the same thing.

In his manifesto and his comments during the shooting Tarrant referred to the New Zealand Muslims as “invaders” and shortly thereafter Trump used the same term to describe Central American refugees when he vetoed the bi-partisan Congressional legislation overturning his State Of Emergency. Such language is designed, especially when placed in the context of him referring to the refugees as criminals, murderers, and rapists; intentionally designed to whip up public anger and resentment toward them. It is the same language used by Hitler and the Nazis in referring to Jews. The same is true of various European leaders who refer to use the same language to describe immigrants and refugees from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

As for those who pay little regard to manifestos written by people like Tarrant because they often jump from topic to topic and include a lot of irony and “snark” are mistaken. Such writing and communication styles have been long a part of the Nazi and White Supremacist tradition. One only has to read Mein Kampf, Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer, other Nazi tracts, as well as the speeches of Hitler and other leading Nazis. They are an encouraged method of delivering the Nazi/White Supremacist Message.

We have to fight against and expose the Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists, and if such people take up the message of President Trump in using physical violence against political opponents and the press, they may have to be met with force. To defend themselves, their offices, and their meetings against the Nazi Sturmabteilung or S.A. and Communist Roter Frontkämpferbund in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, the Social Democrats had to form their own organization of former soldiers called the Reichsbanner. I would hate to see our country devolve into the street battles but if it happens then Democrats and other progressives may have to imitate the Reichsbanner, especially if the police refuse to police the violent right wing, as was often the case in Weimar Germany. Personally, I have more faith in our institutions, but one never knows what happens when democracy fails.

So anyway, the Christchurch Mosque Massacre should serve as a warning about the international spread of racist White Nationalism. When asked if he thought that White Nationalism was a major problem yesterday, President Trump said:

“I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. It’s certainly a terrible thing.”

But, the President, who in 2017 said that there were “very fine people” among the White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis who cause chaos, carnage, and death in Charlottesville, the words sound hollow and disingenuous, when he demonizes whole groups of people and when he advocates violence in his Tweets and at his rallies.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder wrote:

“A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.”

That has to be our attitude. We have to stop it, with or without the support of the President.

Until next time,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 14, 2019 · 21:57

The Stuff Of Dictators: More Threats Of Violence From the President

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

In 1989 Donald Trump wrote in a full page advertisement in the New York Daily News:  “civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.” He said that in relation to the Central Park Five, five teenagers who were falsely accused and convicted of the rape of a jogger in Central Park. In 2002 after the real assailant confessed and his crime verified by DNA evidence. Despite the reality Mr. Trump has continued to speak to that issue and claim that the five falsely convicted and imprisoned men are guilty.

Mr Trump repeated expressed his anger that they did not receive the death penalty, something that by the way is not part of the law in any state. Since becoming President the Mr Trump has suggested all sorts of extrajudicial and unconstitutional remedies to crime. Today he suggested doing that to gun owners who could be considered potential mass murderers. He told a group of Congressmen and Senators, as well as his own Vice President Mike Pence: “You could do exactly what you’re saying, but take the guns first, go through due process second.”

Now personally I don’t think that’s such a bad idea, but it still is unconstitutional. Earlier in the week the President proposed the death penalty to all convicted drug dealers. Again, no love for drug dealers but the President doesn’t get to impose sentences, but the President praised the extermination methods that Philippine President Duterte uses not just to kill suspected drug dealers but political opponents and members of the press. Of course the President has long suggested the political opponents should be jailed and the Press is an “an enemy of the people.” 

As I have written over the past few days in discussing the Reichstag Fire I am very concerned that as the walls close in on the Trump Presidency, that as the Muller investigation implicates more and more of his advisors and quite possibly family members, that as members of his administration like Hope Hicks admit that they lied for him, that the danger to our Republic only rises. I am afraid that there will be a Reichstag Fire moment that will allow the President to through already existing Executive orders and laws to scrap constitutional liberties and establish an authoritarian state. It’s not so much that he has to be popular to do so, the fact is that under threat of attack that most Americans will surrender liberty for the illusion of security. That was demonstrated in 2002 when the Patriot Act, an act so revoltingly un-American and totalitarian in its implications was passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress with hardly any resistance.

Today the President again made violent threats against his political opponents. He said:

“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,”

That is what concerns me. For a President claim that the Army and Police are his personal protection force, for him to equate them to motorcycle gangs, for him to say that Nazis are fine people is extraordinarily evil and in complete defiance of the oath that he swore when he became President. In the past he has said similar things and during his campaign offered to pay the legal fees of anyone charged with attacking his opponents at his rallies.

Should a war break out, should there be a major terrorist attack, or anything that severely disrupts the country the mechanisms are in place for the President to declare the situation extraordinary and to take power. The thing is that no President has acted in such a way, but President Trump has repeatedly suggested violating the Constitution and praised foreign leaders like Dutarte, Putin, and Erdogan, men who all use such circumstances and laws to their advantage.

Timothy Snyder wrote:

“For tyrants, the lesson of the Reichstag fire is that one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission. For us, the lesson is that our natural fear and grief must not enable the destruction of our institutions. Courage does not mean not fearing, or not grieving. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away, from the moment of the attack, precisely when it seems most difficult to do so. After the Reichstag fire, Hannah Arendt wrote that “I was no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander.”

Of course Mr Trump has a hard core of loyal supporters who in his words would remain loyal to him “even if he shot someone on 5th Avenue.” Some are actually quite frightening, but in truth I am more frightened by the vast number of people in this country of every part of the political spectrum cannot tell the difference between fact and fiction or true and false, people how simply go along with the flow, especially in times of crisis.  Hannah Arendt, who saw the Nazi takeover of Germany in the beginning wrote:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

In a world such as the one that we live today it is those who simply go with the flow or are easily persuaded into accepting what in normal times they would not accept because the times are exceptional, or in a crisis believe what they are told and regardless of what happens to fellow citizens or neighbors turn their backs on injustice. Most are totally ordinary and unremarkable and are no different than so many others who committed terrible crimes against humanity and too part in genocide.

British Historian Laurence Rees wrote:

“human behavior is fragile and unpredictable and often at the mercy of the situation. Every individual still, of course, has a choice as to how to behave, it’s just that for many people the situation is the key determinate in that choice.” 

When people feel that a crisis makes a situation exceptional to the point that normal codes of conduct, social mores, laws, and ethics are Christopher Browning wrote in his book Ordinary Men:

“I fear that we live in a world in which war and racism are ubiquitous, in which the powers of government mobilization and legitimization are powerful and increasing, in which a sense of personal responsibility is increasingly attenuated by specialization and bureaucratization, and in which the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. In such a world, I fear, modern governments that wish to commit mass murder will seldom fail in their efforts for being unable to induce “ordinary men” to become their “willing executioners.” 

My question is: when the crisis finally comes, what will Americans do?

I want to be hopeful. I am not a fatalist. I believe that we can all given the opportunity rise to greatness and defend our Constitution, civil liberties, and embody the principles of the Declaration of Independence. It has happened before. But that being said human history, especially the history of the past century shows us that more often than not that most people do not rise to the occasion. Snyder wrote:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

In our time that is the most important consideration. With the complete Trumpification of the Republican Party that day is today. he has for all intents and purposes given political cover for his supporters to commit violence on his behalf. The peril is mounting.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 13, 2019 · 00:05

‘Allo, ‘Allo! A Comedy Worth The Laugh,

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Judy and I have been binge watching the BBC comedy series Allo, Allo! It is currently on Netflix and originally aired from 1982-1992. If you like comedy that makes fun of the Nazis like Hogan’s Heroes did, this might be your glass of cognac.

The series is set in a French Cafe Bar In German occupied France. The bar owner played by the late Gordon Kaye is working with the French resistance. The town Commandant played by Richard Marner and assisted by Captain Geering and Lieutenant Gruber, played by Sam Kelly and Guy Siner find themselves beholden to the resistance because of their incompetence and greed.

I am only about halfway into the second season, but if you need something to give you a laugh at the expense of Nazis, this might be a show for you.

I am tired and have an early meaning tomorrow followed by setting up what I need to accomplish for my required retirement physical, after which I will sift through another hundred or so of the emails and other tasks I need to do before dropping off a resume with another local university that does a lot with veterans and hopefully get home in time for Judy to be able to drop me off to watch Bayern Munich play Liverpool in the UEAFA Champions League Round Of 16 game before she heads off to do ceramics with her friends.

So until tomorrow, adieu, adieu.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 12, 2019 · 00:11

Anti-Semitism: Not Just One Prejudice Among Others

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I had lunch with a local Rabbi today who I have gotten to know over the past year at a number of diversity celebrations at the headquarters of the Navy Exchange Command, or NEXCOM. I always love taking part I their events because they are not perfunctory, the are occasions of learning, and building community from a diverse workforce. I have taken part in many diversity events in military and civilian settings, but by far NEXCOM, its leadership and people make the events worth going to and being part of, but I digress.

I met the Rabbi at a couple of these events where we offered prayers or spoke. We have become friends and he has invited me to speak at his synagogue during Holocaust Remembrance week,  and invited me to an ecumenical ministers gathering that takes place monthly. I think that I am in the process of finding a spiritual community that I can really be part of when I retire from the Navy. It’s actually something that I have needed for a long time but haven’t found, until now. But again I digress…

We were talking about the various types of anti-Semitism which appear to be growing more strident, public, and vocal than the past. Likewise we discussed how it has not only grown roots in the political Right, but also in the political left., most noticeably in Britain’s Labour party, but also among elements of the American Left. This is troubling because the vast majority of American Jews  tend to be affiliated with the Democratic Party, and much more socially progressive than many other Americans, including guarding the civil rights of other minority groups, including religious minorities.

Despite that there is a long history of prejudice, discrimination, and even violence against Jews since the founding of the United States, the Know Nothings, the KKK, other White Nationalist groups, pre World War II American Fascists and Nazis, and the original America First Crowd. 

We have to be honest; there have been other genocides, including those perpetuated over centuries by the British Colonists and their American descendants against Native Americans, and the inhabitants of El Norte, the northern states of the Republic of Mexico. Likewise, the Nazis perpetuated other mass killings and would have continued their genocidal practices against the Jews and others had they not been defeated.

The late Christopher Hitchens wrote something with which I completely agree. He wrote:

“We should not at all allow ourselves to forget the millions of non-Jewish citizens of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other Slav territories who were also massacred. But for me the salient fact remains that anti-Semitism was the regnant, essential, organizing principle of all the other National Socialist race theories. It is thus not to be thought of as just one prejudice among many.” 

If this is what it means to make America Great again then we are deep trouble.  Historian Timothy Snyder wrote: “When exactly was the “again” in the president’s slogan “Make America great again”? Hint: It is the same “again” that we find in “Never again.”

Can someone disagree with the policies of the government of Israel and not be anti-Semitic? Of course, vast numbers of American Jews do just that, but in doing so one cannot subscribe or perpetuate the hate filled myths and conspiracy theories of The Protocols Of the Elders Of Zion, or any other brazenly anti-Semeitc and anti-Jewish works that have been used for centuries to demonize Jews, nor can one subscribe to ahistorical Holocaust Denial theories and their authors. Nor can one elevate and mythologize the Nazi Waffen SS as mere elite soldiers fighting for their country. Many were true believers in the Nazi racial theories, and they carried them out, at the front, behind the lines with the Einsatzgruppen, and in alleged anti-partisan operations where hundreds or thousands of kills were claimed but few weapons ever seized, and this was not just on the Eastern Front.

The fact that anti-semitism is arising from the depths of the abyss should not surprise us, but for the President Of the United States, some of his closest advisors, the head of the British Labour Party, and a host of European political parties espouse overt anti-semitism in their party platforms and praise their ancestors who committed genocide is particularly disturbing.

It is with a great deal of humility that I will assume the pulpit in my friends synagogue on April 27th, and speak to his congregation and their guests about the necessity of revisiting the places where these crimes against humanity occurred because it won’t be long until the last perpetrators, victims, and bystanders who witnessed the crimes committed by the Einsatzgruppen, in the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Soribor, Belzec, Treblinka, the Labor murder Camps of Maulthausen, Nordhausen, Begen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Flossenberg, the political prison of Dachau, and the T-4 Euthanasia centers like Hardheim, Sonnesnstein, and Hadmar where disabled infants, children, adults, as well as the mentally ill were sent to their deaths, murders that were carried out by physicians and nurses.

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Likewise one cannot forget the courtrooms, such as the one in Nuremberg which before it was taken over by the Allies at the end of the war saw some of the greatest abuses of justice known to humankind by adjudicated. Nor, can one leave out the room at the Wannsee House in an affluent suburb of Berlin where represenatives  of every major depart of the German Government and Nazi Party gathered to discuss the implementation of what euphemistically was known as The Final Solution Of the Jewish Problem. One learns at Wannsee that language can easily be used to disguise genocide and mass murder.

Timothy Snyder wrote something that we should not forget. We as Americans are not unique, we are as prone to moral cowardice and selling the lives of others in the cheap as any nation on earth. So we must remember that what happened in Europe could just as easily happen here. He wrote:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

That is what we need to ask and act upon today. The danger is upon us, and as Snyder wrote:

“The world is now changing, reviving fears that were familiar in Hitler’s time, and to which Hitler responded. The history of the Holocaust is not over. Its precedent is eternal, and its lessons have not yet been learned.”

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

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March 11, 2019 · 00:01

The Psychological Portrait Of Trump, by an American Diplomat in 1940

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I been doing a voracious amount of reading of late. I mentioned some of the titles I read during February and so far in March I have completed Tom Segev’s Soldier’s Of Evil which is about the commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s “Fascism: a Warning,” Ian Kershaw’s “Luck Of the Devil” which is about the attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944, Kati Marton’s ”Wallenberg: The Incredible True Story Of a Man Who Saved Thousands of Jews,” Max Hasting’s Bomber Command; Volume Nine Of the Nuremberg Trials, the Complete Proceedings, the Case Against Goering, and today William Russell’s Berlin Embassy. 

All are worth the read, but Russell’s book is fascinating because it deals with the observations of an American diplomat in Berlin during the 1930s and early 1940s. His primary duties dealt with immigration which alone make the book a must read in the age of President Trump’s despotic anti-immigrant policies, which are starting to make the U.S. policy limiting Jewish entry into the country look positively moral.

Russell makes a number of observations about the various Nazi leaders. But when I read these words about Hitler I could not help but think of the current observations of former staff members, diplomats, civil servants, and journalists of President Trump I was dumbfounded. Never before have I seen a description of Hitler by one of his contemporaries so fit the attitudes and actions of President Trump. Russell wrote:

”This is the man who has in his hands a power greater than that ever held by any ruler in history —a power multiplied by the airplane, the radio, the fast printing presses. He is uncontrolled, he does not have to give account to anybody, he crassly and ruthlessly conceals his every failure, he puffs himself up with every success. Today he follows an impulse. Tomorrow he condemns it as wrong —without admitting that he has been wrong. To promise something and never to do it; to forget things which were never meant seriously; to break every promise but to faithfully keep every threat. That is the psychological picture of Der Fuehrer.” 

The rest nay thing missing was the Twitter tirades, but then Twitter was unknown in 1940.

So, I go back to work tomorrow, at least part time with all of the medical and physical therapy appointments I will continue to have the next few months before my retirement.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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March 10, 2019 · 00:01

The Moment that Freedom Of Thought Becomes Impossible: Hatred Of the Other and Blind Ideology

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Salman Rushdie one wrote: “The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.”

We seem to be at another crossroads in Western civilization, a crossroads where the classic liberalism that was the basis for democratic societies is being stampeded by zealots of various persuasions who guided by the supposed infallibility of their ideological belief systems, deliberately and without remorse seek to destroy the institutions that are the guardians of liberty.

We have seen the results of such movements in history before and each time they succeed in gaining power they have brought disaster to nations, and sometimes the world.

Proponents of ideological purity assume that their ideological bias is equivalent to sacred truth, be it a religious or secular truth. The promoters of such systems promote something more than their opinion, as Hannah Arendt noted: “For an ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it claims to possess either the key to history, or the solution for all the “riddles of the universe,” or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws which are supposed to rule nature and man.”  As such, ideology is not based on knowledge, but is distinct from it and the enemy of knowledge for it binds the mind in a straitjacket in which all thought must be submitted to the truth of the ideology. As Arendt noted such ideologies must be handled with caution as they “pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.”  An ideology protects the believer from having to think for himself, it allows the insecure to grasp at the protection that it allegedly provides, and allows the believer to deny reality, and to by definition declare everything that contradicts the ideology to be heretical, and opponents to be aligned with the devil himself, allowing the believer to hate the opponent. As Eric Hoffer noted, “Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.” 

My favorite television character, Raymond Reddington, played by James Spader in The Blacklist once said “I know so many zealots, men and women, who chose a side, an ideology by which to interpret the world. But, to get up every single day and to do the hard work of deciding what to believe. What’s right, today? When to stand up or stand down. That’s courage.” The fact is, no matter how stridently they espouse their beliefs, ideologues are by definition not courageous, because courage takes critical thinking, something that ideologues of any persuasion are incapable of doing.

As for me I consider myself to be a left-leaning progressive. I am pro LGBTQ rights, and despite being against abortion in principle,  I believe that Roe v. Wade and the right of a woman to have an abortion must be upheld. I believe in equality for women and believe that women are held to a much higher standard than men, especially in politics. Likewise I believe that women face far greater discrimination in the workplace, academia, and the military than do men.

I believe that racial prejudice, especially against blacks is still a major problem, but it is not confined to blacks, but Hispanics, Arabs, and Asians. These are mostly the provence of the political Right, the but then there is classic Anti-Semitism, a prejudice and hatred of Jews, and it spans the political and ideological spectrum. I can say that as a historian of the Holocaust and as a gentile Christian.

That being said, to offer criticism of the Government of Israel in its dealings with its Arab and Druse minorities that happen to be Israeli citizens, and to Palestinians who have been the victims of the Pan Arab nationalism of the 1950-1970s, to find themselves abandoned by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the Gulf States is not being anti-Semitic, it is observing something that is the victimization of a people caught in the middle of a greater political-military struggle.

In 2007 I came across a Palestinian refugee camp at the border of Iraq ans Syria at Al Waleed. Thousands of Palestinian Arabs were marooned there, dependent on th U.N. for food and shelter, and the good graces of Americans and Iraqis for security as they had no place left to go. The new Iraqi government didn’t want people who were allies of Saddam Hussein in their country and drove them to their farthest reaches. Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States didn’t want them either. Likewise, the government that should accept them, the Palestinian Authority didn’t want them and they were not welcome anywhere else in the Arab world. Of course, the Israeli government didn’t want them either. This is an irefruable fact. They were abandoned by all.

As far as Anti-Semitism goes, you don’t have to look hard to find it. Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers have cottage industries that attemp to disprove or minimize the Holocaust. Most reside on the political Right, such as in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and in some parts of the German political spectrum. But some too make their home of the Left, the Labour Party in Britain has come under the spell of Jeremy Corbin, a Left Wing anti-Semitic leader if one existed at all. Much of the current anti-Jewish and and Israel propaganda from both the Right and Left is often lifted straight out of The Protoclals Of the Elders Of Zion, not that the polcies of the Netanyahu government are helping anyone.

I happen to be a liberal and progressive realist, but I cannot be an ideologue. That being said I think that the Presdency and policies of the Trump administration exemplify the worst of American racism and exceptualism. Barely educated racist demagogues hold power over a President whose supporters would support him even if he murdered someone on 5th Avenue. Likewise, I think that there are some progressives who are incapable of seeing both sides of an argument and who are as historically as blind, deprived, and ignorant as the most myth bound Christian Conservatives, or other Right Wing anti-Semites. I truly must be a progressive realist in wonderland.

It takes no courage to be an ideologue, and once a person surrenders to an ideology as his or her reason for existence, they sacrifice the ability to reason, the ability to think critically, and the capacity to acquire knowledge. That is the danger of the blind ideologies that are consuming our world today.

Quite obviously, a lot of ideologues from across the spectrum will disagree.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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