Category Archives: History

June 29, 2018 · 21:02

A Spirit of Unbelief: Confederates Before Gettysburg

Lieutenant General A. P. Hill

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I’m hoping to take a few days off from writing about current events and spend a few days reposting some of my writings about the Battle of Gettysburg.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

When Robert E. Lee learned of the Army of the Potomac’s presence north of the Potomac River he ordered his widely dispersed army concentrate near Cashtown and Gettysburg. It was a complicated movement that involved at least five major operations: the shift of the bulk of Ewell’s Second Corps from its planned attack on Harrisburg, the redirection of Early’s division east from its position on the Susquehanna to the west, the movement of Hill’s Third Corps from the area around Cashtown to a position east of Gettysburg, Longstreet’s First Corps north to Chambersburg and Cashtown and the cavalry brigades of Beverly Robertson, Grumble Jones and John Imboden which were to join the army in Pennsylvania. The movement “would take at least two days – the 29th and the 30th of June – and perhaps more…the complete its concentration, especially since the rains had “made the roads very muddy,” forcing “the infantry” to march off the roads….” [1]

Lieutenant General A.P. Hill’s Third Corps that was nearest of Lee’s major units to Cashtown and Gettysburg. Major General Harry Heth’s division led the corps and arrived at Cashtown on June 29th. His division was followed by that of Major General Dorsey Pender which arrived on the 30th. Hill ordered his last division under the command of Major General Richard Anderson to remain behind at “Fayetteville until July 1, when he would join the rest at Cashtown.” [2]

Cashtown was important as a road junction and because it “was situated at one of the few gaps in the Pennsylvania Mountains” and because one of the roads emanating from it “snaked eight miles to another community called Gettysburg.” [3] However the order to concentrate the army at Cashtown presented its own problems. First was the matter of forage. There was not enough room for all the units ordered to Cashtown to have adequate areas to forage, as:

“each division would (by the standard required of nineteenth-century armies) require a circle twelve and a half miles around its encampments to forage (for water, firewood, and feed for men and horses); one single regiment could denuded an acre of woodland just for firewood every three days.” [4]

Likewise, because of the limited road network, Cashtown was becoming a choke point which as his units closed in slowed their movement and created massive traffic problems and confusion. Hill ordered Heth’s division to take the lead and advance to Cashtown on the 29th. The units of Hill’s corps had to endure heavy rains on the 29th which slowed their march and Heth halted at Cashtown knowing that the army would concentrate there while Pender’s division moved into the area his division had vacated.

Early in the morning of June 30th Harry Heth decided to undertake a foraging expedition to Gettysburg to “search the town for army supplies (shoes especially), and to return the same day.” [5] It was the first in a series of miscalculations that brought Lee’s army into a general engagement that Lee wished to avoid and it is hard to comprehend in light of Lee’s orders not to precipitate a fight.

However, the expedition had taken a toll on the soldiers, especially in terms of shoes, clothes and equipment. The “long march over the hard macadam roads of the North had played havoc with the scraggly foot coverings of Lee’s men.” [6] After muster on the morning of June 30th Heth ordered Johnston Pettigrew’s “brigade to Gettysburg in search of supplies, especially badly needed shoes, which were badly needed by his the men of his division.” Heth, for a reason he never elaborated on decided that there must be shoes in Gettysburg. Perhaps he did not know that the town had been picked clean by John Gordon’s brigade of Jubal Early’s division just a few days before, but for whatever reason he believed this to be the case.

Hill’s Third Corps had been formed as part of the reorganization of the army following Stonewall Jackson’s death after the Battle of Chancellorsville. Hill had a stellar reputation as a division commander; his “Light Division” had distinguished itself on numerous occasions, especially at Antietam where its timely arrival after a hard forced march from Harper’s Ferry helped save Lee’s army late in the battle. At Chancellorsville Hill briefly succeeded Jackson until he too was wounded.

Hill was recommended for promotion to Lieutenant General and command of the new Third Corps by Lee on May 24th 1863. He was promoted over the heads of both Harvey Hill and Lafayette McLaws. The move displeased Longstreet who considered Lafayette McLaws “better qualified for the job.” Likewise there were others who felt that the command should have gone to Harvey Hill, now commanding the Department of North Carolina who’s “record was as good as that of Stonewall Jackson…but, not being a Virginian, he was not so well advertised.” [7]

Ambrose Powell Hill was slightly built and high strung. “Intense about everything” Hill was “one of the army’s intense disbelievers in slavery.” [8] Hill was an 1847 graduate of West Point and briefly served in Mexico but saw no combat. He spent some time in the Seminole wars but due to frequent bouts of ill-health he spent much of his career in garrison duty along the East Coast. Since he was prone to sickness he was assigned to the office of Coastal Survey, a Navy command from 1855 through 1861. Despite pleas from his superiors and his own opposition to secession and slavery, Hill resigned his commission just before Virginia’s secession.

At the outbreak of the war he “received his commission as colonel, and soon trained one of Johnston’s best regiments in the Valley.” [9] He commanded a brigade under Longstreet on the Peninsula and was promoted to Major General and command of the Light Division in May 1862, leading it with distinction, especially at Antietam where his march from Harper’s Ferry and timely arrival on the afternoon of September 17th saved the army of Northern Virginia from utter and complete destruction. He was plagued by health problems which had even delayed his graduation from West Point, health issues that would arise on the first day at Gettysburg.

Hill’s Third Corps was emblematic of the “makeshift nature of the reorganization of the whole army.” [10] It was composed of three divisions. His best and most experienced division was that of the recently promoted and hard fighting Major General Dorsey Pender. Pender’s division was built around four excellent brigades from Hill’s old “Light Division” one of which Pender had commanded before his promotion. Hill had strongly recommended Pender’s promotion during the reorganization, a proposal which was accepted by Lee. Pender, though a fierce fighter and excellent leader, found command of a division to be a heavy burden. He was “an intelligent, reflective man, deeply religious and guided by a strong sense of duty….” [11]

Hill’s second experienced division was that of Major General Richard Anderson. This division had been transferred from Longstreet’s First Corps during the reorganization. Longstreet resented losing the division to Hill, with who he had previously run afoul and this was yet another issue which failed to endear Hill to Longstreet. [12]

The unassuming Anderson had distinguished himself as a brigade and division commander in Longstreet’s corps, but in “an army of prima donnas, he was a self-effacing man, neither seeking praise for himself nor winning support by bestowing it on others.” [13] At Chancellorsville Anderson fought admirably and Lee wrote that Anderson was “distinguished for the promptness, courage and skill with which he and his division executed every order.” [14] With four seasoned brigades under excellent commanders it was a good addition to the corps, although the transition from Longstreet’s stolid and cautious style of command to Hill’s impetuous style introduced “another incalculable of the reshuffled army.” [15]

Major General Harry Heth’s division was the final infantry division assigned to Third Corps. The division was new and had was cobbled together from two brigades of Hill’s old Light Division and “the two new brigades that Jefferson Davis had forced on an already disrupted army organization.” [16] The organization of this division as well as its leadership would be problematic in the days to come, especially on June 30th and July 1st 1863. The hasty and makeshift organization under leaders who had not served together, many of who were new to command, as well as units which had not fought together spelled trouble.

Harry Heth, like Dorsey Pender was also newly promoted to his grade and the action at Gettysburg would be his first test in division command. Heth was a native Virginian. He came from a family that well connected both socially and politically. He had a social charm had “many friends and bound new acquaintances to him” readily. [17] Heth was a cousin of George Pickett. He was a West Point graduate and classmate of Hill. At West Point Heth had an undistinguished academic career and graduated last in the class of 1847. His career in the ante-bellum army was typical of many officers, he served “credibly in an 1855 fight with Sioux Indians” but his real claim to fame was in authoring the army’s marksmanship manual which was published in 1858. [18]

Major General Harry Heth

Heth’s career with the Confederate army serving in western Virginia was undistinguished but he was a protégé of Robert E. Lee who recommended him as a brigade commander to Jackson before Chancellorsville. Tradition states that of all his generals that Heth was the only one “whom Lee called by his first name.” [19] A.P. Hill when writing Lee about the choice of a successor for the Light Division noted that Heth was “a most excellent officer and gallant soldier” but in the coming campaign “my division under him, will not be half as effective as under Pender.” [20] Douglas Southall Freeman noted that Heth was “doomed to be one of those good soldiers…who consistently have bad luck.” [21]

Heth’s division was composed of two depleted brigades from the Light Division which had taken heavy casualties at Chancellorsville. One brigade, commanded by the hard fighting former regular army officer Brigadier General James Archer. Archer was from Maryland and a graduate of Princeton University who had given up a law practice to join the army. Described as a “little gamecock” who “had no sense of fear” [22] Archer had saved the Confederate line at Fredericksburg leading a desperate counterattack at Prospect Hill. The brigade was composed of four veteran regiments, but was now down to barely 1200 soldiers in the ranks by the time it arrived at Cashtown. However, the brigade which was recruited from Alabama and Tennessee was “well led and had a fine combat reputation.”

But the second brigade was more problematic. This was the Virginia brigade under the command of “the plodding, uninspiring Colonel John Brockenbrough.” [23] Brockenbrough was an “1850 of the Virginia Military Institute and a farmer,” who had “entered the Confederate service as Colonel of the 40th (Virginia) in May 1861.” [24] The brigade had once been considered one of the best in the army had deteriorated in quality following the wounding of its first commander Brigadier General Charles Field. Heth took command of it at Chancellorsville where both he and the brigade performed well. The brigade had taken very heavy casualties and now was reduced to under 1000 effectives. When Heth was promoted the lack of qualified officers left it under the command of its senior colonel, John Brockenbrough.[25] Lee did not consider Brockenbrough “suited for promotion” but “could be counted on to keep together a command sadly reduced in numbers.” [26]

Heth’s  third brigade came from Mississippi and North Carolina and was commanded by the “stuffy and ambitious” [27] Brigadier General Joe Davis.  Davis’s uncle was President Jefferson Davis. Davis served on his uncle’s staff for months during the early part of the war but had no combat experience, never leading as much as a company. [28] One author noted that Davis’s promotion to Brigadier General was  “as unadulterated an instance of nepotism as the record of the Confederacy offers.” [29] Davis’s subordinate commanders were no better; one of them, William Magruder was so incompetent that J.E.B. Stuart suggested that “he have his commission revoked.” In Magruder’s outfit only one of the nine field grade officers in his brigade had military training, and that was because he was a graduate of the Naval Academy, hardly fitting for service in the infantry. [30] This brigade was also a makeshift operation with two veteran regiments including the 11th Mississippi which had “gone through blood and fire together on the Peninsula through Antietam.” [31] After Antietam, these units were then paired with two new regiments and a new politically connected commander and sent to the backwater of North Carolina where they saw no action. The veteran regiments “mistrusted not only their commander, but the reliability of its yet untested units.” [32]

Brigadier General Johnston Pettigrew

Heth’s largest brigade was new to the army. Commanded by the North Carolina academic Brigadier General Johnston Pettigrew it had no combat experience. Pettigrew himself was considered a strong leader. He had been badly wounded at Seven Pines and thinking his wound mortal “he refused to permit his men to leave the ranks to carry him to the rear.” [33] He was captured but later paroled and returned to the army to command a brigade later in the year.

Hill was under the impression that Meade’s army was still miles away, having just come from meeting Lee who assured him that “the enemy are still at Middleburg,” (Maryland) “and have not yet struck their tents.” [34] With that assurance Heth decided to use June 30th to send Pettigrew’s brigade on the foraging expedition to Gettysburg. An officer present noted that Heth instructed Pettigrew “to go to Gettysburg with three of his regiments present…and a number of wagons for the purpose of collecting commissary and quartermaster stores for the use of the army.” [35]

However Heth did instruct Pettigrew in no uncertain terms not to “precipitate a fight” should he encounter “organized troops” of the Army of the Potomac. [36] Heth was specific in his report that “It was told to Pettigrew that he might find in the town in possession of a home guard,…but if, contrary to expectations, he should find any organized troops capable of making resistance., or any part of the Army of the Potomac, he should not attack it.” [37]

That in mind anyone with the slightest experience in handling troops has to ask the question as to why Heth would employ “so many men on a long, tiring march, especially as without a cavalry escort he took the risk of sending them into a trap” when his “objects hardly justified” using such a large force. [38] Edwin Coddington is particularly critical of Heth in this regard.

Likewise it has to be asked why the next day in light of Lee’s standing orders not to provoke an engagement that Hill would send two divisions, two thirds of his corps on what was supposedly reconnaissance mission. Some have said that Hill would have had to move to Gettysburg on July 1st anyway due to forage needs of the army, [39] but this is not indicated in any of Hill or Heth’s reports.

As his troops neared Gettysburg Pettigrew observed the Federal cavalry of Buford’s 1st Cavalry Division as they neared the town. He received another report “indicating that drumming could be heard in the distance – which might mean infantry nearby, since generally cavalry generally used only bugles.” [40] He then prudently and in accordance with his orders not to precipitate a fight “elected to withdraw rather than risk battle with a foe of unknown size and composition.” [41] His troops began their retrograde at 11 a.m. leaving Buford’s cavalry to occupy the town at ridges. One Confederate wrote “in coming in contact with the enemy, had quite a little brush, but being under orders not to bring a general engagement fell back, followed by the enemy.” [42]

Upon returning Pettigrew told Hill and Heth that “he was sure that the force occupying Gettysburg was a part of the Army of the Potomac” but Hill and Heth discounted Pettigrew’s report. [43] “Heth did not think highly of such wariness” and “Hill agreed with Heth” [44] Hill believed that nothing was in Gettysburg “except possibly a cavalry vedette.” [45] Hill was not persuaded by Pettigrew or Pettigrew’s aide Lieutenant Louis Young who had previously served under both Hill and Pender. Young reported that the “troops that he saw were veterans rather than Home Guards.” [46] Hill reiterated to both that he did not believe “that any portion of the Army of the Potomac was up” but then according to Young Hill “expressed the hope that it was, as this was the place he wanted it to be.” [47] 

Part of the issue was related to the fact that Pettigrew, though highly intelligent, and who had been an observer of wars in Europe was not a professional soldier. Likewise, since had was new to the Army of the Northern Virginia he was an unknown to both Hill and Heth. As such they dismissed his report. In their casual dismissal of Pettigrew’s report, the West Point Graduates Hill and Heth may have manifested an often typical “distain for citizen soldiers…a professional questioning a talented amateur’s observations” [48]

Pettigrew was “aghast at Hill’s nonchalant attitude” [49] while Young was dismayed and later recalled that “a spirit of unbelief” seemed to cloud the thinking of Hill and Heth. [50] In later years Young wrote that the “blindness in part seems to have come over our commanders, who slow to believe in the presence of an organized army of the enemy, thought that there must be a mistake in the report taken back by General Pettigrew.” [51]

Since neither man believed Pettigrew’s report, Heth asked Hill “whether Hill would have any objection to taking his division to Gettysburg again to get those shoes.” Hill replied “none in the world.” [52] It was to be a fateful decision, a decision that brought about a series of events which in turn led to the greatest battle even fought on the American continent.

Lee’s biographer and apologist Douglas Southall Freeman wrote “On those four words fate hung” [53] and in “that incautious spirit, Hill launched Harry Heth’s division down the Chambersburg Pike and into battle at Gettysburg.” [54]

Notes

[1] Guelzo, Allen C. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion Vintage Books a Division of Random House, New York 2013 p.128

[2] Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign, A Study in Command A Touchstone Book, Simon and Shuster New York 1968 p.194

[3] Robertson, James I. Jr. General A.P. Hill: The Story of a Confederate Warrior Random House, New York 1987

[4] Ibid. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.128

[5] Ibid. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, A Study in Command p. 263

[6] Ibid. Robertson A.P. Hill p.205

[7] Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two Fredericksburg to Meridian Random House, New York 1963 p.453

[8] Ibid. Dowdy, Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation p.79

[9] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s a Study in Command p.109

[10] Ibid. Dowdy, Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation p.88

[11] Ibid. Dowdy, Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation p.85

[12] Ibid. Dowdy, Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation p.86

[13] Ibid. Dowdy, Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation p.86

[14] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s a Study in Command p.512

[15] Ibid. Dowdy, Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation p.86

[16] Ibid. Dowdy, Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation p.87

[17] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s a Study in Command p.527

[18] Krick, Robert K. Three Confederate Disasters on Oak Ridge: Failures of Brigade Leadership on the First Day of Gettysburg in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gallagher, Gary W. Kent State University Press, Kent Ohio 1992 p.96

[19] Ibid. Krick. Three Confederate Disasters on Oak Ridge p.96

[20] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s a Study in Command p.527

[21] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s a Study in Command p.46

[22] Ibid. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.134

[23] Sears, Stephen W. Gettysburg. Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston and New York 2003 p.55

[24] Pfanz Harry W. Gettysburg: The First Day University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London 2001 p.118

[25] Ibid. Dowdy, Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation p.87

[26] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s a Study in Command p.529

[27] Ibid. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.133

[28] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s a Study in Command p.533

[29] Ibid. Krick. Three Confederate Disasters on Oak Ridge p.99

[30] Ibid. Krick. Three Confederate Disasters on Oak Ridge p.101

[31] Ibid. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.134

[32] Ibid. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.134

[33] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s a Study in Command p.136

[34] Ibid. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.131

[35] Trudeau, Noah Andre. Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, Harper Collins Publishers, New York 2002 p.128

[36] Ibid. Sears Gettysburg p.136

[37] Ibid. Trudeau Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, p.129

[38] Ibid. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, A Study in Command p. 263

[39] Ibid. Guelzo. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.131 This argument does have merit based on the considerations Guelzo lists but neither Hill, Heth or Lee make any mention of that need in their post battle reports.

[40] Ibid. Trudeau Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, p.130

[41] Gallagher, Gary. Confederate Corps Leadership on the First Day at Gettysburg: A.P. Hill and Richard S. Ewell in a Difficult Debut in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gallagher, Gary W. Kent State University Press, Kent Ohio 1992 p.42

[42] Ibid. Trudeau Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, p.135

[43] Ibid. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, A Study in Command pp. 263-264

[44] Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two Fredericksburg to Meridian Random House, New York 1963 p.465

[45] Ibid. Pfanz Gettysburg: The First Day p.27

[46] Ibid. Gallagher, Gary. Confederate Corps Leadership on the First Day at Gettysburg p.42

[47] Ibid. Pfanz. Gettysburg: The First Day p.27

[48] Ibid. Gallagher, Gary. Confederate Corps Leadership on the First Day at Gettysburg p.42

[49] Ibid. Guelzo. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.131

[50] Ibid. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, A Study in Command p. 264

[51] Ibid Pfanz Gettysburg: The First Day p.27

[52] Ibid. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, A Study in Command p. 264

[53] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s a Study in Command p. 563

[54] Ibid. Krick. Three Confederate Disasters on Oak Ridge p.94

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June 27, 2018 · 00:46

“Silence in the Face of Evil is Evil Itself” A Critique of Politeness and Civility When Confronting Injustice and Evil

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the words “silence in the face of evil is evil itself.”

This is a very difficult article to write because truthfully I believe that civility and mutual respect should be an ideal that we as Americans should not retreat from, as John F. Kennedy noted:

“So let us begin a new remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

I have written about that a number of times, the last being on November 22nd 2016 shortly after President Trump’s election and on the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination. However, since that time I have seen the President lead a descent into depravity that I fully comprehended then, though I hoped for a different outcome.

The fact is that the President has in his words, deeds, and tweets destroyed any hope of our political divide being healed, or of Americans of different viewpoints being able to reconcile their differences anytime in the foreseeable future. He stokes the hatred and division almost on an hourly basis, and of course his opponents having become wise to him are rolling up their sleeves and fighting back.

Too me that is an unfortunate situation that might become a tragedy for the United States and the world, as Abraham Lincoln noted “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” To GOP Congressman Steve King of Iowa the sight and sound of Trump’s opponents is like “Harpers Ferry” and what comes next will be “Fort Sumter.” Since King proudly displays the Confederate Battle Flag in his office I know exactly what side of this fight that he is on.

The fact is that he and many like him want bloodshed, they want Civil War, they want to remake the Union in a way that Jefferson Davis and his band of traitors failed to do. As a historian of the period with a book awaiting publication the fact is that in the end it comes down to the fact that King, many of the President’s supporters and quite probably the President himself are all White Supremacists. They want a full and complete return to White Man’s Rule and the subservience of all non-white races and non-Christian religions to it. They are the Know Nothings of the North and Slave Power Secessionists of the South rolled into one package of ignorance, incivility, and hatred.

I write often about comparisons of the attitudes and actions administration and its supporters to Nazi Germany, but truth be told there is a lot of dirty laundry in our own history that sheds light on Trump and his supporters.

The fact is that for nearly three decades the vast majority of Northerners were too polite to criticize the egregious actions of the Know Nothings in their midst or the Southern Slave Power Block that dominated the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court for the three decades prior to the War of the Rebellion, also known as the American Civil War, or the War Between the States. Honestly, I think that the term ascribed to it by many Union Veterans in the Grand Army of the Republic after the war, the “War of the Rebellion” is the best.

Those opposed to the Know Nothings and Slave Power Block were condemned as being rude, impolite, and worse. Some were physical assaulted. In 1856 Senator Charles Sumner was attacked by Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina on the floor of the Senate for his speech against the Kansas Nebraska Act. Sumner was beaten until he was unconscious and Brooks’ heavy cane which he used to conduct the attack broke. Brooks continued to beat Sumner aided by Representative Lawrence Keitt also of South Carolina who brandishing a pistol threatened Senators coming to his aid. Sumner has proclaimed no threats of violence but only spoken the truth about the Act and those that supported it. So much for civility and now.

The scurrilous and overtly violent threats against minorities and civil rights advocates by conservatives, especially White Christian conservatives have continued unabated since from the ante-Bellum South and the Know Nothing North, through the War of the Rebellion, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, to the modern day. Whole political campaigns including that of George H.W. Bush run by Lee Atwater turned on the demonization of African Americans. The same is true regarding the Republican revolution led by Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, and again even more so from the time that Candidate Donald Trump descended to the lobby of Trump Tower in 2015 until now. The President proclaims that White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis are “very fine people.”

The President and many of his followers including administration officials like Stephen Miller set the tone while Presidential spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies and denies the President’s words and vilifies anyone that dares to question her. So when she is asked to leave a restaurant, or when Miller or DHS Secretary Nielsen are shamed when trying to enter Mexican restaurants it makes makes my heart bleed. People who have no compassion, no sense of empathy and behave as sociopaths and then act the victim when the tables are turned only deserve scorn.

Their anti-immigrant and often blatantly racist tropes of the President, his administration, and his supporters on the Fox Propaganda Network, the Right Wing media, the Putrid Princes of the Captive Conservative Church, and his assorted sordid supporters should be condemned and opposed around the clock. If they are not then any of us who remain silent knowing the evil of these policies is as guilty as anyone that turned their backs on the Jews in Nazi Germany. The higher the office the greater the guilt and culpability.

That being said if had the chance to see any one of them in a public setting I would not resort to public shaming. I do not own a restaurant or business so I could not ask them to leave. However, that being said if any of them the President himself presented themselves to me at my chapel or any civilian church that I might be celebrating the Eucharist I would deny them communion which from a Christian point of view is “a fate worse than a fate worse than death.”

Bonhoeffer wrote:

“Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christian should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong.”

As for me I must tell the truth and protest against the violence and the arbitrary pride of power exhibited by the Trump administration and its supporters. I could not live with myself if I didn’t do so. Some might think this political and in some sense it is, but it is entirely based on my understanding of the Christian faith and the very premise of the founders of this country, that phrase in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

If need be I would die for that faith and that proposition and I will not be silent in the face of evil.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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June 23, 2018 · 01:03

Reflections on Life as an Authoritarian State Arises

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

We are visiting friends in the Washington DC area as we get ready to celebrate our wedding anniversary Monday. It is nice to be relaxing with each other, another friend who is down from Pennsylvania and combined flock of 12 Papillon dogs, three of which are ours. Everyone but me has now gone to their bedrooms while I sip a glass of McClelland’s Highland Single Malt Scotch Whiskey with my little boy Pierre at my side, all 4.8 pounds of him. That’s a good thing.

Since tomorrow’s weather forecast is for continued rain I will probably watch World Cup games, read and spend time with Judy, our friends and the Papillons. If the weather is good Sunday Monday hope to take Judy to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Monday night we will celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary with our friends. Depending on the weather I hope to get some decent runs and walks in along the Potomac River.

Likewise, despite all that is going on try to take a break from the incessant pounding of crises manufactured by the President and the chaos that he uses to increase his personal power over his administration, the Congress, the media, and yes all of us. Sadly, none of this is going away anytime soon and it will likely become much worse before it gets better; such is the nature of fledgling dictatorships. Even today he demonized all immigrants as criminals and their supporters as being against the rule of law and his supporters applaud as the leaders of his political party cower before him. Eric Hoffer wrote:

Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.

The words and actions of the President and his supporters bear this out, they claim to be making America great again but they are destroying the very fabric of the ideals on which the nation was founded.

He did this as his administration and immigration agencies imprisons thousands of children, refuses to reunite them with their families, makes plans for camps on military bases to house nearly 150,000 immigrants, sets up checkpoints on American highways demanding that travelers have proof of citizenship, details military JAG officers with no experience in immigration law to serve as Acting US Attorneys to prosecute immigrants.

At a publicity stunt Friday the President compared all immigrants from south of the border to criminals by parading the survivors of people killed by illegals and spouting absolute lies about the number of crimes committed by immigrants, legal and illegal alike. He then took the time to sign his name on the pictures of the victims of those crimes.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a tremendous amount of compassion for the victims of any violent crime. I have stood over the bodies of men, women, and children killed by the bullets of criminals and tried to console their survivors. I did that so many times that I have lost count of the number.

Likewise I have been the victim of violent crime. I was held up at gunpoint with my wife and her family when we were dating and had a pistol pointed at my head as I sat in the back seat of a car unable to go after the gunman without risking the lives of Judy and her parents. I have also had my liefe threatened by White Supremacist for things that I have written, one that was so specific that I reported it to both the local police and the FBI. But in all cases the people who attacked or threatened me were native born Americans.

In the President’s view if you are killed by a dark skinned immigrant your families are called “Angel Families” but if you are killed by an American you and your family do not exist because you serve no political purpose. That my friends is a fact and the statistics show that far more violent crimes are committed by Americans than all immigrants and most actual cases of domestic terrorism in the United States are committed by White Supremacists, and mass murders including those at schools, businesses, entertainment venues, churches or other places of worship are committed by White people, not immigrants. But those go largely unheralded by the President, except for incidental tweets that express thoughts and prayers and praise of law enforcement.

But that is how incipient dictatorships behave. Certain groups are targets, demonized and compared to the worst examples. In the parlance of Trump they are all murderers, rapists, terrorists, gang members, and drug dealers. This behavior runs rampant in dictatorships and authoritarian states. The President has persistently and insidiously invoked that immigrants are evil. Hoffer wrote:

“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.” 

That has been happening since the day that President Trump announced his candidacy for President and it is no secret. Mexicans were the first devil of his campaign, and he called them criminals, murderers and rapists on the day that he announced his candidacy. The videos of his speeches, his manifold number of Tweets, and the actions of his administration are all too widely available not to be found by anyone seeking the truth about him, but for his most fervent supporters all of those facts are fake, even if he said them in front of millions of people.

Now, events in the United States and at our borders have shown that the President was absolutely correct about his followers when he said that they would continue “to follow him even if he shot somebody on 5th Avenue.”

My friends, it is not going to get any better and we better be ready for what comes next or we will be swept away in the flood of lies and evil to come. Despite his buffoonery, one cannot underestimate the potential evil of the President and his followers. Likewise do not assume that a Blue Wave will happen in November because there may be events that occur which will allow the President to use executive orders enacted by his predecessors during the height of the Cold War and the potential of nuclear war to postpone elections or rule by decree. I refer to this as a Reichstag Fire moment.

Historian Timothy Snyder wrote in his book On Tyranny:

“Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.”

We live in a very perilous time where the vision of our founders could be overturned in the blink of an eye and our Republic, as flawed as it is, but always has embraced the ideal of building a more perfect union will perish from the face of the earth. The nation and people may remain, but the ideal will be gone and with it the Republic.

So until tomorrow or the next post, have a good day.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 22, 2018 · 02:07

Resist the Dystopian Law and Order of Trump or be Condemned by History

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I love the virtues of the law. When I was in seminary I had friends who asked me why I wasn’t in law school and they didn’t mean it as a compliment. In high school and college debate classes I could be assigned to debate for positions that I abhorred and destroy my opponents by using precedent, history, and even appealing to emotion. Honestly had I not felt a real call to the ministry and later the priesthood I would have become a lawyer, which is something that I occasionally think about doing but at my age I find little motivation to follow, I think that as a priest, historian, and stand-up philosopher and ethicist I can do more with the time required to become a lawyer at my age, but I digress…

The problem is that I see far too many people, especially those in power to be all in favor of being for “law and order” and harsh actions against those alleged lawbreakers while not only excusing, but wholeheartedly supporting the most lawless of Presidents and his policies, almost all of which are based on the most unconstitutional, undemocratic, and inhuman ideas seen in a Western nation since the time of Hitler. To be a “law and order” supporter of President Trump one must subscribe to racism, sexism, homophobia, paranoia, nationalism, and scorn for humanity and even the law itself. If you do not subscribe to that, if you dissent in any way you are an enemy of the President and since the President equates personal loyalty with patriotism an enemy of the state.

Let’s revisit a little bit of history.

The founding fathers of the United States were considered lawbreakers, traitors, and rebels by King George III and his government. One of my distant ancestors. Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, then serving as Lord Advocate and a member of the House of Lords called them traitors to the Crown. He actually coined the word starvation because he recommended that the rebellious colonies be starved into submission, earning him the nickname of Starvation Dundas. But he was a law and order kind of guy.

In the years after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 people living in Free States could be prosecuted for harboring escaped slaves in the name of the law, even if they were in complete obedience to the laws of their home state. The fact is that at that time States rights only mattered if you were supporting the rights of Slave owners and Slave states. The Dred Scott decision showed this to be fact. To be law and order at that time one had to support white supremacy and the institution of slavery, even if you lived in a Free State. Please don’t get me started on the post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, you can read all of that in my book Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory’s: Race, Religion, Ideology, and Politics in the Civil War Era when it eventually gets published.

Let’s go now to an even more uncomfortable subject, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. To be law and order in the Nazi State was to support its racist laws. If you defended or harbored Jews, or for that matter even criticized the policies of the Nazi State you were a criminal. That was the case in Germany as well as the counties that it conquered or occupied. If you harbored or protected Jews you were a criminal. Conversely if you turned in a Jew or informed on their protectors you were obeying the law, thus those who hid and protected people like Anne Frank were criminals while those who turned her and her family in were obeying the law.

In our day President Trump, his administration, and his supporters have turned U.S. law, international law, and basic humanity and I dare say Christian morality on their head in regards to immigrants, legal and illegal alike; racial and ethnic minorities, women, LGBTQ citizens, the free press, and political opponents. Most egregiously this is happening on the Southwestern border of the United States where thousands of children have been separated from their parents who are being prosecuted simply because they are seeking asylum and freedom in a country that they believe stands higher than the countries that they are fleeing.

The policies of the Trump administration are even worse than those of previous administrations, Republican and Democrat, none of which can be called truly humanitarian or in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Instead our government and most Republicans have adopted the ideology of King George III and Starvation Dundas; that of the Know Nothings, that of the slaveholder, that of the Jim Crow segregationists, and worst of all that of the Nazi State.

To obey the law is to stand against the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Four Freedoms, as well as the principles laid down by the United States and its allies at Nuremberg where Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson stated before the trials ever started:

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

Jackson’s words do not matter to this President or his loyal followers, nor of the words of the Declaration or the Constitution.

I do not recognize my country anymore and I hope almost beyond hope that something will stop our slide into the abyss that Trump and his supporters are bringing upon us. I have to agree with Major General Henning Von Tresckow, a Plotter against Hitler who died in the aftermath of Operation Valkyrie:

“I cannot understand how people can call themselves Christian and not be furious opponents of the Hitler regime.”

He also wrote:

“We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.”

Today we simply have to change one word in either of Von Tresckow’s quotes, Trump for Hitler and we also must seriously consider the words of Von Tresckow:

“A man’s moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give up his life in defense of his convictions.”

All of us have to show the world that we are not Trump’s America. If we do not we will most deserving of the condemnation of God and history on the United States.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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June 19, 2018 · 23:53

I Will Support and Defend… Reflections on 35 Years of Commissioned Service in the Age of Trump

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Thirty-five years ago today I swore an oath as a newly commissioned officer in the United States Army. It is an oath that along with my baptismal, confirmation, marriage, and ordination vows is the most important in my life. Almost two years before that I swore an enlistment oath on August 25th 1981.

It was a hot and smoggy summer day in Van Nuys California when drove into the parking lot of the old Armory on Van Nuys Boulevard in my 1975 yellow Chevy Monza with a black vinyl top. That night the San Francisco Giants defeated the St. Louis Cardinals by a score of 4-2 and the Baltimore Orioles defeated the Seattle Mariners 6-5 in 12 innings.  In less important news the Voyager II space craft reached its lowest orbit around Saturn.

Getting out of the car I walked into the offices of the Headquarters, 3rd Battalion 144th Field Artillery of the California Army National Guard.  I had in my sweaty hands the paperwork from the Army ROTC detachment at UCLA the “Bruin Battalion” accepting me into the program and allowing me to enlist simultaneously in the National Guard.

I was met by the Headquarters Battery Commander, Captain Jeff Kramer who after my commissioning would allow me to borrow his sword and sword belt to wear at my wedding with my Dress Blue Uniform.  Jeff finished his career as a full Colonel in the California National Guard. He took me to Major Charles Armagost the battalion S-1 who rapidly had a clerk type up my enlistment papers and administered the oath of enlistment below:

I, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the Governor of California  and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to law and regulations. So help me God.

That was the beginning of what has turned out to be a very long strange trip.

Renewing the Oath on my Promotion to Lieutenant Commander 2006

In June of 1983 I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and I took a different oath, an oath of office versus enlistment, I would repeat it again in February 1984 when I was promoted to First Lieutenant, March of 1987 when promoted to First Lieutenant, and in December 1995 when I was promoted to Major. I swore variations of it in both the Texas and Virginia Army National Guard as well before I commissioned as a Navy Lieutenant  February 9th 1999.  I renewed it in April 2006 upon my promotion to Lieutenant Commander and September of 2011 when I was promoted to Commander. That oath states:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Since I swore the oath the first time  I have served in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, at sea and ashore in war and peace.  I have served as a Company Commander and a Staff Officer before becoming a Chaplain. I believe that even today  that there is no greater honor than to serve this country.

Iraq 2007

It is hard to believe that it has been 35 years.  I do take the oath of office quite seriously especially the part about defending the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.  I have served 30 years I have served under six Presidents

I have not completely agreed with the actions or policies of each President and Congress that I have served. While I have deeply held political views they have never kept me from serving under administrations that I have disagreed with on major policies.  Officers may have strong political views but those must always be subordinated to our oath to support and defend the Constitution.

One of my favorite heroes of the American Civil War, General Winfield Scott Hancock said “We are serving one country and not one man.” Hancock was a states rights Democrat who remained in the Union because he did not believe that secession was legal.  He had no political friends in Washington and he served valiantly during and after the war.  When asked about his opinion on what to do when their home state of Virginia seceded from the Union by his friends and fellow officers George Pickett, Lewis Armistead and Dick Garnett before the war in California he said “I shall not fight upon the principle of state-rights, but for the Union, whole and undivided.”

This is not the case in much of the world. Many militaries swear allegiance to the ruler, the state, ruling political party or the majority religion.  The officers in many Moslem nations combine their oath with the Bya’ah which includes a personal oath to the King or Sheik and the Islamic statement of faith.

The British military swears an oath to the Queen and her successors:

“I  swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors and that I will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully defend Her Majesty, her heirs and successors in person, crown and dignity against all enemies and will observe and obey all orders of Her Majesty, her heirs and successors and of the generals and officers set over me.”

The Red Army of the Soviet Union swore an oath to “to protect with all his strength the property of the Army and the People and to cherish unto death his People, the Soviet homeland and the government of Workers and Peasants, also to respond at the first call from the government of Workers and Peasants to defend the homeland, the USSR.”

Germany has had a rather perilous history with oaths sworn by the military.  The Imperial Army swore an oath to the Kaiser but when the Kaiser abdicated and the Weimar Constitution was ratified German Officers and Soldiers took this oath: “I swear loyalty to the Reich’s constitution and pledge, that I as a courageous soldier always want to protect the German Nation and its legal institutions, (and) be obedient to the Reichspräsident and to my superiors.”  The history of the Republic shows that many officers and soldiers, especially those that had served under the Kaiser resented this oath.

In 1933 Hitler changed the oath to this  “I swear by God this sacred oath, that I will render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer of the German Reich and people, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will be ready as a brave soldier to risk my life at any time for this oath.” The current German military oath states: “I swear to serve loyally the Federal Republic of Germany and to defend bravely the right and the freedom of the German people. So help me God.”

All oaths hold potential dangers but those of the United States military officer corps is perhaps the best thought out oath in the world.  The oath is to the Constitution, not a person, political party or religion.  The efficacy of the oath is based on the honor of those that swear to uphold it.  In times of national turmoil it is important for officers and enlisted personnel to ensure that remember that fact.

 

I pray that I will be faithful to the oath and the people that I serve in the coming years.  It is an honor to still remain in the service of this country.  I have served under six Presidents but until 2017 I never believed that I would fear the actions of the President so much that I would based on my oath to the Constitution as well as my ordination vows that I would preach against those actions in a military chapel.

But I remember that my oath is to the Constitution and not any President. I also know that as a Chaplain that I uphold the faith and values of the church that has endorsed me to remain in service as a Chaplain. My call is to serve all of those in my care, and to provide for their rights to the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. That also extends to the rights of non-believers to not have a state religion shoved down their throats. It also means that I need to speak truth to those in power.  I also remember the words of German General Ludwig Beck who lost his life in the failed attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20th 1944:

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.” 

Beck had served 35 years before Hitler came to power and initially supported him and many of his goals, but five years later he realized that it was Hitler leading the nation to war and Germany to its destruction. His words are also something that I hold on to today and because of that I will continue to speak out when the President, his appointees, and supporters speak and act against the Constitution, the law, the American people, and against the principles that the country was founded upon, most importantly the words of the Declaration of Independence which states the most revolutionary concept ever promulgated:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

It then goes on to attack the actions of the British Crown, of which many are being repeated by President Trump and his administration.

I may not be a soldier in high command, but I do realize that my highest duty is not to obey without questioning or criticizing the actions of the President when they go against the Constitution, the law, international treaties that the United States has pledged to uphold, and basic human rights. Thus the oath that I first swore to uphold 35 years ago still matters.

Padre Steve+

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June 18, 2018 · 23:47

Breaking Precedent: Trump and Hitler Compared to their Predecessors

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I recently read German historian Joachim Fest’s book Inside Hitler’s Bunker: the Last Days of the Third Reich. The book is the basis for the German language film Downfall which depicted the last ten days of the Third Reich.

I don’t read books or movies about the Third Reich to find comparisons to the present day, I have been studying that period since my years as a college undergraduate and first year graduate student at California State University at Northridge. Most of my history major studies focused on modern German history beginning with Imperial German but really focusing on the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era through the major war crimes trials at Nuremberg. My professor, Dr. Helmut Heussler had served there as a translator.

That was nearly 40 years ago. I continued that study in seminary to some extent, individually during the times that I was stationed in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s, and during my second Masters degree. I have continued those studies since then and used what I learned teaching ethics to senior military officers at the Joint Forces Staff College. We dealt a lot with war crimes and I used the film about the Wannsee Conference, Conspiracy as our capstone exercise. I used it so my students could see how ordinary men, officers, lawyers, bureaucrats, and police officials could cooperate to coordinate their agencies actions in regards to implementing the Final Solution to what they referred to as the Jewish Question.

Since 2014 I have made yearly visits to Germany where I take the time to visit the sites and centers related to the study of the Holocaust and the Nazi period. Thankfully because I read, speak and write German I do pretty well navigating around these sites and many of the materials I have now are in German, but I digress, that was all to state my expertise regarding the subject before some troll comes by to say that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

So anyway going back to Fest’s book and one particular statement that Fest made about Hitler in the context of German history and the various leaders who preceded him. Fest wrote:

“What differentiated Hitler from any conceivable predecessors was the complete lack of sense of responsibility beyond the merely personal, of any clear-headed, selfless ethos of service, and of any historic morality.”

I had to stop reading at that point and go back and re-read the preceding section of that chapter to make sure that I had the context right. Hitler certainly absorbed the ideas of racism, anti-Semitism, racial purity and the superiority of the Aryan Race, which do have precedent in German history. They were part and parcel of ideas that he was exposed to while in Vienna before the war and the people that he socialized with in Munich following Germany’s defeat in 1918.

There are also examples of German military forces conducting what amounted to genocide in Namibia when it was a German colony, as well as very harsh measures being conducted against Belgian civilians during the First World War, but those knew limits, and there the comparison with his predecessors ends. Fest wrote:

“There would be a “New Man”who razed everything to the ground, resettled territories, and sought relaxation from his mission… It was a break with everything the world had ever stood for. Trying to invent an origin for this revolution – an origin it did not have – is to fall retrospectively for the regime’s own propaganda. The origins of this program were entirely self generated. No one had ever gone to such extremes, and with such utter madness….”

Then I began to think about President Trump in the context of his presidential predecessors and I realized that in the context of the American political system that what Fest said about Hitler is also true of the 45th American President. While he may represent some of the more isolationist, and racist parts of our history there is no real American Presidential precedent for him.

He has gone back and borrowed from the worst aspects of the American experience and mythology to create his personal cult of personality based on Making America Great Again. He blends crude ante-Bellum and Jim Crow racism, with the anti-immigrant and religious prejudices of the Know Nothings, as well as the Isolationist and Nazi supporting America First movement of the late 1930s and early 1940s. He tries to link himself to Ronald Reagan but that to is a fallacy based on the policies enacted by both men.

Like Hitler, Trump has been enabled by a cult-like following who themselves were ideologically and socially prepared to sacrifice themselves for him and his repackaging of their beliefs despite overwhelming evidence that he will lead them to ruin despite a veneer of success.

I really don’t try to go out of my way to find connections between our era and the early period of Nazi rule in Germany, but when they jump out like this I cannot ignore them. Such moments are epiphanies and should not be ignored.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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June 17, 2018 · 23:03

Preach the Truth: Silence in the Face of Evil is Itself Evil, Not to Speak is to Speak, Not to Act is to Act

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

We live in an unsettled world where almost everything that we had grown to accept as normal is being upended including basic understandings of societal responsibility and decency. Edward R. Murrow said in the days of the Red Scare and McCarthy hearings “that we are living in an age of confusion – a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria.”

What is morally abhorrent is now promoted by many Evangelical and Catholic Christians as being obedient to God by being obedient to the state which is the same as being obedient to President Trump. To them the State is Trump and Trump is the State, therefore the ease in which they invoke scriptures out of context in the manner of the Nazis and others who oppressed people who were deemed to be inferior according to race, ethnicity, religion, or political belief.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Yes, this does matter. It is a stain upon our nation, but even more for the Christian it is a profound witness against Jesus Christ, and a stain upon his Church. If those who profess the name of Christ cannot stand in the face of evil then what use are we? Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted: Bonhoeffer wrote: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Over the course of my life I have learned the terrible cost to one’s soul of remaining silent in the face of injustice. At this stage of my life I cannot do anything but tell the truth and be faithful to my baptismal, confirmation, and ordination vows. Likewise I cannot betray my oath to the Constitution. One place I can do this is in the pulpit and as I recall the First Amendment still applies to the pulpit even when one serves in the military.

So I today I preached in my chapel to give my Protestant pastor the day off. The text was the epistle lesson from the lectionary, 2nd Corinthians 5:6-17, which I extended to verse 20. The message was that the call to be ambassadors of Christ and his love for humanity is contrary to the support of the actions of the Trump Administration; especially and most notoriously the imprisonment of tens of thousands of would be immigrants seeking asylum in our country and the forced separation of thousands of children from their families.

The sermon became very political as I tied the words of scripture to the responsibilities of Christians as it applies to what is going on in this country. I condemned the complicity of Christians in the gross injustices being inflicted to immigrants and racial and religious minorities. I quoted Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, Dr. King, Niemoller and Sophie Scholl to condemn the actions of the Trump administration. I then quoted the President’s words of last month where he called immigrants animals and Stephen Miller’s words how the policy to forcibly separate children from their families being a simple decision. I mentioned that once you determined that any group of people were less than human such decisions were indeed simple.

I quoted pastor Robert Jeffress and his support for Trump and opposition to any candidate who would base his Presidency on the principles of the Sermon on the Mount. I compared his words to the words of Reichsbischof Muller who I think is a comparable figure about the Jews before Hitler came to power.

I also said “you cannot claim to be a pro-life Christian if you support ripping children from their parents and locking them in cages 22 hours a day to use them as a “bargaining chip” as President Trump did this week and I did not let up. I told the congregation that this Priest and Chaplain would pray for the victims of this administration’s policies and speak out against them.

During the sermon something happened that has never happened when I preached, about half a dozen people walked out. When you are preaching something After the service a number of other people, previously friendly were cold to me. But a number number of men, all African American Marine Corps or Navy retirees thanked me and wanted more of the history that I preached about.

Later I got a text from one of my Chaplains who told me: “Word on the street is that you brought it this morning, I quote “He raised his voice and it was if God was speaking” and they were squirming in their seats (in that good uncomfortable way).”

Anyway, pray for me, you never know when one of the disgruntled parishioners complains to commanding officers or even the media. But all that being said I will speak the truth.  Bonhoeffer wrote:

“For the tyrannical despiser of humanity, popularity is a sign of the greatest love for humanity. He hides his profound distrust of all people behind the stolen words of true community. While he declares himself before the masses to be one of them, he praises himself with repulse vanity and despises the rights of every individual. He considers the people stupid, and they become stupid; he considers them weak, and they become weak; he considers them criminal, and they become criminal. His most holy seriousness is frivolous play; his conventional protestations of solicitude for people are bare-faced cynicism. In  his deep contempt for humanity, the more he seeks the favor of those he despises, the more certainty he arouses the masses to declare him a god…”

Those words were written by Bonhoeffer about Hitler, but they can easily be applied to our President today and the actions of his administration and the acquiescence of his supporters.

Dr. King said “On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.”

Conscience demands that the truth be told. It is now more important than every to tell the truth from every promontory, from every pedestal, from every pulpit until it is heard throughout the entire land.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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June 16, 2018 · 23:44

A Thousand Years Will Pass and This Guilt Will Not Be Erased: How Genocide Begins

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World

I am posting late today because last night I was too tired to write and over the past few days I have been doing a lot of reading. Let me say up front that the title of this post will be condemned by some people as being hyperbolic, but I do not do hyperbole. I simply analyze current events in the light of history, sometimes unpleasant history.

I have been reading Neil Sheehan’s classic on the Vietnam War A Bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and the United States in Vietnam, Joachim Fest’s Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich, Guenter Lewy’s Perpetrators: The world of the Holocaust Killers, and Carry O’Connor’s book The Butcher of Poland: Hitler’s Lawyer Hans Frank, while skimming through the dairies of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

Now admittedly that is a lot of reading and it is important because it gives me a much wider historical view of the present crimes of President Trump and his administration.

What gets me is the vast amount of lies that were told by the leaders of Nazi Germany and the United States in Vietnam to justify murderous polices were in the case of Germany labeled and judged as war crimes, but never admitted by the United States in its misadventure in Vietnam, or for that matter the criminal war against Iraq, a war that I began with by supporting and came away from in 2008 realizing was illegal, immoral, and criminal by any sense of the indictments made by the United States against the leaders of Nazi Germany at Nuremberg.

Now I look at the policies being employed by the Trump administration on the border with Mexico I see the United States using tactics which are so similar to the early actions of the Third Reich that they stir up feelings of dread, especially when those responsible are not held to account by, but actually cheered by his party. The are frightening when officials in high office who allegedly disagree with them still carry them out. They are frightening when the President himself uses them as “bargaining chips” in order to get his agenda passed. They are terrifying when religious people including the Attorney General of the United States misapply Bible verses to support those polices just like was done by the religious leaders of the Third Reich.

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson who served as the organizer and Chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials wrote:

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

One day our nation will find itself at the dock of justice. No nation no-matter how powerful or how exceptional it believes itself to be ever escapes it. We ignore Justice Jackson’s words at our own peril. Frank declared at his trial:

“A thousand years will pass and this guilt of Germany will still not be erased.” 

Sadly the Trump administration is just getting started and our collective guilt will only multiply as he and his deputies become more aggressive and resort to far more brutal means than they are using today. It won’t be hard for them to do so. While he protests that he hates his administration’s policies but instead of invoking his authority to act against them he blames Democrats for them and says that he is simply obeying the law, but it is not a law. Since the beginning of his campaign in 2015 the President has used the language of dehumanization to describe Mexicans, Central Americans, Blacks, Africans, Arabs, and others. He “jokes” to the Japanese Prime Minister during a moment at the G7 Summit that he will ship 25 million of them to Japan.

Hans Frank

It is not too far of leap to understand that Trump staff member Stephen Miller said today said “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”

Of course this is a lie. There is no law dictating the separation of families and imprisonment of people who are not criminals, only people who hope for a better life, as most of our immigrant ancestors did. The fact is that Miller is carrying out Trump’s decrees just as Frank did in the 1930s and 1940s. Frank told his fellow jurists in 1936:

“The National Socialist ideology is the foundation of all basic laws, especially as explained in the party program and in the speeches of the Führer … There is no independence of law against National Socialism. Say to yourselves at every decision which you make: ‘How would the Führer decide in my place?’ In every decision ask yourselves: ‘Is this decision compatible with the National Socialist conscience of the German people?’ Then you will have a firm iron foundation which, allied with the unity of the National Socialist People’s State and with your recognition of the eternal nature of the will of Adolf Hitler, will endow your own sphere of decision with the authority of the Third Reich, and this for all time… ‘The law is the will of the Führer.’”

Under Trump and his supporters this is our future and we will all be condemned because we allowed it to happen. When it is all said and done I am sure than many, if not most of us will echo the words of Martin Niemoller “first they came for… and I said nothing.”

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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June 15, 2018 · 00:01

In Today’s Struggle for Principle with Trump there Will be No Republican Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen A. Douglas

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

As I watch President Trump’s administration attack the law, the Constitution, and violate the civil rights and human rights of citizens as well as people who have come to the United States to flee oppression and danger at home; to threaten freedom of speech and freedom of the press; to categorize political opponents inside and outside of his party as traitors; to legitimize the most repressive dictatorial regimes while attacking longstanding allies; even as he works to destroy the work of American Presidents and diplomats to build a world order that has brought great benefit to the United States and the world by defeating the Nazis, Imperial Japan, and eventually the Soviet Union. He has chosen the choice of being a rogue superpower rather than being the moderating and stabilizing force in the world that it has played since World War Two. Robert Kagan wrote in the Washington Post yesterday:

“The United States’ adversaries will do well in this world, for Trump’s America does not want war. It will accommodate powers that can harm it. It will pay them the respect they crave and grant them their spheres of interest. Those that depend on the United States, meanwhile, will be treated with disdain, pushed around and used as pawns. At times, they will be hostages to be traded for U.S. gain. The United States and the postwar liberal order protected them and helped them prosper, but it also left them vulnerable to any American leader willing to offer them up as sacrifices to appease aggressors. That is a kind of realism, too… It recognizes no moral, political or strategic commitments. It feels free to pursue objectives without regard to the effect on allies or, for that matter, the world. It has no sense of responsibility to anything beyond itself.”

The President and his administration show little regard for the Constitution and established law in this country and our treaties and agreements with other nations. He appoints men and women who had they been Germans after the Second World War would have been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity to high office. He defends White Nationalists and Neo-Nazis. He confounds loyalty to himself with patriotism and loyalty to the country.

He uses propaganda to demonize those who seek law and justice. In any normal time a cry would arise from his own party saying “no more,” but his party does nothing, and even those leaders who occasionally speak out against his policies take no actions because they are afraid of retribution. That happened to long time conservative Congressman Mark Sanford in South Carolina this week when the President tweeted his support for his primary opponent. During the primary season White Nationalists, self-proclaimed Nazis, and other Trump supporters advocating the most extreme, unconstitutional and abhorrent positions often swept the field against conservatives who themselves would have been considered extremists just a few years ago. The GOP is on the Party if Trump and it took less than two years to become so.

Barbara Tuchman wrote in her book The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam something that we are observing up close and personal as President Trump and his administration flounder in a sea of make believe, a cloud cuckoo land of alternative facts, alternative truth, and alternative history:

“Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”

To be true, the Trump administration is not the first in history, in fact not even in our own country to ignore facts when making decisions. However, it is remarkable in its ability not only to shun facts but to make up its own narrative that depends on denying reality while impugning the character, honesty, and decency of those who present facts and truth that is verifiable. To be sure, competence and prudence are not and probably will never be marks of President Trump, his closest advisors, or his enablers in Congress. My hope is that some Republican in either the House or Senate rises up to confront the ineptitude and folly being demonstrated on a daily basis.

President James Buchanan

In some ways the incompetence and refusal to deal with reality by the Trump administration reminds me of the administration of James Buchanan during the years before the American Civil War. Buchanan’s collusion with Chief Justice Roger Taney regarding the Dred Scott decision before his inauguration stained him from the beginning and poisoned his relationship with Congress by declaring that the Congress never had the right to limit slavery as it had in the Missouri Compromise. Buchanan’s presidency is considered by most historians to be the worst in American history, incompetent, arrogant, and ineffective.

Likewise, Buchanan’s attempt to jam the Lecompton Constitution through Congress as a reward to Southern Democrats blew up in his face. The Lecompton Constitution was a gerrymandered bill which ignored the will of the vast majority of Kansas’s settlers who were anti-slavery. The work of the pro-slavery element in Kansas was so onerous that it brought Republicans and Northern Democrats together for the first time as Southern Democrats threatened secession if Kansas was not admitted as a Slave State. Ignoring warnings that supporting a measure that would open the door to slavery in all the western territories would split his party, Buchanan pushed on. His intransigence on the matter brought Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois to the fore in opposing it. Nicknamed “the Little Giant,” Douglas was the odds on favorite to be the Democratic nominee for the Presidency. Douglas was not against the institution of slavery, and he was a racist, but he had no tolerance for those who would upend carefully crafted compromises to expand it through the whole country. Thus he  took his case to the floor of the Senate and to the President himself.

The Confrontation between the Senator and the President was unparalleled. Douglas recalled, “The Lecompton constitution, I told Buchannan bluntly, was a blatant fraud on the people of Kansas and the process of democracy, I warned him not to recommend acceptance of it. With his head titled forward in that bizarre habit of his, he said that he intended to endorse the constitution and send it to Congress. “If you do,” I thundered, “I’ll denounce it the moment that it is read.” His face turned red with anger. “I’ll make Lecompton a party test,” he said. “I expect every democratic Senator to support it.” I will not, sir!”

Angry and offended by the confrontation of Douglas, Buchanan cut the senator off and issued his own threat to Douglas and his political career saying, “I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet differed from an administration of his own choice without being crushed….Beware of the fate of Tallmadge and Rives,” two senators who had gone into political oblivion after crossing Andrew Jackson.” The redoubtable Senator from Illinois was undeterred by the President’s threat and fought back, “Douglas riposted: “Mr. President, I wish to remind you that General Jackson is dead, sir.”  It was an unprecedented action by a sitting Senator, to confront a President of one’s own party and threaten to oppose him in Congress was simply not done, but now Douglas was doing it, but doing so to his President’s face, and the consequences for him, his party, and the country would be immense.

Undeterred by facts, Buchanan and Southern Democrats fought for the bill’s passage. When Buchanan’s supporters pushed for Lecompton’s approval and the admission of Kansas as a Slave State, Douglas fired back, warning “You do,” I said, “and it will lead directly to civil war!” I warned the anti-Lecompton Democrats of the North that the President intended to put the knife to the throat of every man who dared to think for himself on this question and carry out principles in good faith. “God forbid,” I said “that I ever surrender my right to differ from a President of the United States for my own choice. I am not a tool of any President!”

Under Douglas the Northern Democrats joined with Republicans for the first time to defeat the admission of Kansas as a Slave State. Douglas recalled the battle:

“After the Christmas recess, the Administration unleashed its heavy horsemen: Davis, Slidell, Hunter, Toombs, and Hammond, all southerners. They damned me as a traitor and demanded that I be stripped of my chairmanship of the Committee on Territories and read out of the Democratic party. Let the fucking bastards threaten, proscribe, and do their worst, I told my followers; it would not cause any honest man to falter. If my course divided the Democratic party, it would not be my fault. We were engaged in a great struggle for principle, I said, and we would defy the Administration to the bitter end.”

Douglas and his supporters did just that, Buchanan and his supporters were outfought and outmaneuvered by Douglas’s Democrats and their Republican allies. The bill was sent back to Kansas where in a new election the people of Kansas voted solidly against the Lecompton Constitution. In the following Congressional elections the thoroughly discredited Democrats lost their majority, their party now hopelessly divided with Southerners determined to destroy Douglas at any cost, even if it meant losing the presidency, the conflict opened the door for the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

I wonder if there will be a Republican in the Congress with the courage that Stephen A. Douglas displayed in confronting the incompetent and vindictive President Buchanan during the Lecompton Crisis. Will there be a Republican with enough courage to stop the insanity of the Trump administration even if it means in the short term to divide the party and doom their political future? Honestly I doubt it as does conservative Republican political strategist Rick Wilson. Wilson wrote:

“Nothing you do matters to this Congress. No matter what damage you inflict on our economy, our alliances, trade, our stature in the world, our role as an exemplar of democratic values, our ability to serve as an honest broker in the international community, and our security, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell will lay supine before you.” 

But if Trump’s march of folly is to be stopped, someone in the Republican Senate or House will have to have the courage to stand up and defend the necessity of thinking for themselves, and doing what is right, sadly there is no Stephen Douglas in today’s GOP.

Have a great day.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 13, 2018 · 19:16

Handshakes, Betrayals and a Piece of Paper: Trump Outdoes Neville Chamberlain as Appeaser in Chief

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am an old Cold Warrior. I have served for almost 37 years in the military including tours or deployments on the intra-German border in the 1980s waiting for the Soviets to come pouring across the Fulda Gap, being on the Korean DMZ in 2001, and to complete the Commie Trifecta a bunch of time at Guantanamo Bay Cuba at the Northeast Gate. In those 37 years I have served under six Presidents and never did I believe until now that a President of the United States betray every longstanding ally and then to add insult to injury has very likely surrendered South Korea to the North Korean dictator with no conditions. It reminds me of how Neville Chamberlain sold out Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler in 1938.

In 1938 Chamberlain was the supposed leader of the democracies and in order to curry favor with Hitler and to “bring peace to Europe” made a deal which surrendered Czechoslovakia to Hitler. As bad as that was and as horrific the consequences were for Europe and the world Chamberlain actually believed that his actions were required for peace. He believed that he could appease Hitler at the cost of a small multi-ethnic democracy, after all what did the Czech’s really matter?

When Chamberlain flew back to London he alighted from his aircraft holding a piece of paper and said:

“The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: ” … We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.”

Chamberlain realized that his trust in Hitler and his word had been mistaken when Hitler overran the remainder of the Czech state just five months later. Having given up the only democracy in Eastern Europe which was also industrialized and militarily strong to the Nazis, Chamberlain went to war with Hitler over Poland, a authoritarian military dictatorship whose military and geographic position doomed her to the Nazi onslaught. Chamberlain finally did stand up to Hitler when it was too late. He was naive and in the case of Czechoslovakia he acted horribly, but he did recover some sense of honor by not appeasing Hitler in regard to Poland but by then it was too late and he has been forever remembered as an appeaser of Hitler.

Before Chamberlain surrendered Czechoslovakia to Hitler, General Ludwig Beck, Commander of the German Army wrote to the General Von Brauchtisch the War Minister to oppose the planned invasion:

“Now at stake are final decisions regarding the fate of the nation. History will burden these leaders with blood guilt if they do not act according to their professional and statesmanly principles and knowledge…. If a soldier in a position of highest authority in such times sees his duties and tasks only within the limits of his military responsibilities, without consciousness of his higher responsibility to the whole people, then he shows a lack of greatness, a lack of comprehension of responsibility. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary actions!”

That will not be the case for President Trump. He too has touted his “triumph” as something that will bring peace, but in the process he has betrayed an American ally whose freedom was purchased with the lives of close to 40,000 American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen and I do not see anyone in high command

Unfortunately the current American President has made war much more likely because he has not only sacrificed military exercises that strengthen the American-South Korean alliance with no actual concessions by Kim Jung Un. His actions not only strengthen the North Korean dictator but also strengthen Kim’s allies, the Russians and the Chinese. The Chinese have been actively working against the United States in the military and economic reams in Asia and Africa while Vladimir Putin’s Russia has actively pursued undermining democratic processes in the United States and Europe.

When Donald Trump returns from Asia he will hold up a piece of paper signed by Kim Jung Un and claim that he has brought peace to the world. He may even get a Noble Prize for doing so, but in the end he will sacrifice allies and bring war to the world while making the United States weaker and more vulnerable to our enemies. His actions are not those of a patriot, but a Quisling. His followers will never admit that and like Hitler’s true believers they would much rather die with him in their bunker than admit that they were wrong in the first place.

This is a dangerous time in history and the American Republic is in danger, our alliances which have been crafted with great skill since Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill announced the Atlantic Charter, by Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barak Obama over a period of 77 years have been shredded in less than a year and a half by President Trump.

The actions of the American President in the past 72 hours have endangered the United States and its allies. French Historian Marc Bloch wrote in his book Strange Defeat:

“A genuine alliance is something that has to be worked at all the time. It is not enough to have it set down on paper. It must draw the breath of life from a multiplicity of daily contacts which, taken together, knit the two parties solidly into a single whole. That truth had been too long forgotten at First Army H.Q., and we suffered terribly as a result of our negligence.”

Bloch, who served in the First World War and volunteered to serve in the Second World War would die at the hands of the Nazis while working with the French resistance understood what a minority of Americans do today,

I want peace on the Korean Peninsula, I have served there and been on the DMZ. That being said I do not want that peace to come at the cost of the freedom of South Koreans. Likewise, the President has praised the murderous dictatorship of Kim Jung Un and given that dictator a legitimacy that he does not deserve for a minute. Less than two days before he destroyed the G7 Summit and undermined the nation’s who have stood beside the United States throughout the Cold War and then with diplomacy, economic, and military assistance stood with us when we were attacked on September 11th 2001 to the present day.

On Tuesday the President endorsed Concentration camps, re-education centers, slave labor, and human rights violations by North Korea. Today he has claimed that North Korea no longer is a nuclear threat. His decision to end joint military exercises just happens to coincide with the public demands made for years by North Korea, Russia, and China. Do not expect for one moment that he will not do the same in this country, he has already started with immigrants. One should ask who will be next?

In 1938 Winston Churchill told the House of Commons:

“We have sustained a total, unmitigated defeat…. Do not let us blind ourselves. We must expect that all the countries of central and eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi power…. The road down the Danube… the road to the Black Sea and Turkey, has been broken. It seems to me that all the countries of Mittel Europa and the Danube Valley, one after the other, will be drawn into the vast system of Nazi politics, not only power military politics, but power economic politics, radiating from Berlin.”

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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