Tag Archives: donald trump supporters

February 18, 2019 · 01:06

The Crossing Of an American Rubicon: The Trumped Up National Emergency

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It has finally happened. President Trump finally declared his National Emergency because Congress did not give in to him, and because when he had solid House and Senate majorities he couldn’t garner a deal that would pass because of his own intransigence and stupidity ensured the inability to make a deal.

So here we are with a National Emergency that is based on his lies, and his inability to compromise the slightest to get a deal. After failing time and time again he shut down the Government for over a month, endangering the economy and national security in the process, even as the Mueller investigation indicted more of his close associates who appear to have quite extensive dealings with Russian agents, collaborators, and government officials. So in my view he is getting desperate, and more dangerous bit the minute.

I honestly expected that the President would use the cover of a major terrorist attack or war as cover to make his power grab. Right now al, he has done is offer a befuddled series of lies and excuses wrapped in a worthless, and plainly unconstitutional piece of paper as has ever been signed by an American President. Winston Churchill said of Russian intentions:  “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” For Trump one can say that his intentions are clear, selfish, and washed with an enema. The key is Trump’s personal interest.” The irony is that his interests are all backed by the Russians.

It is sickening to watch as the Acting Secretary Of Defense is attempting to find the money and manpower needed for Trump’s Wall from military construction, MILCON accounts which includes everything from training facilities to tarmacs, runways to railheads, shipyards to firing ranges, drydocks to aircraft hangers, and everything that make the bases which support the troops in the field operating. Military family housing, medical facilities, schools operated by DOD which service military kids, and base security designed to protect bases from of all things, actual terrorists. Then he’s going after the DOD part of our nation’s drug interdiction programs, which is ludicrous in light of his rational that the Trump Wall is to keep out illegal drugs.

I will not compare Trump to Hitler because that would be an insult to the genocidal criminal dictator that Hitler was, not because Hitler was a good human being or worthy of any praise, but because he was a far better politician than Trump could ever hope to be. Hitler took advance of his opponents missteps, be they the political opponents, those in his own party, and European governments. But unlike Hitler, Trump delivers unforced error after error and claims to be a brilliant leader even while he is being rolled by men like Kim Jun Un, Vlad Putin, and so many others.

His only salvation is that some 35% of the American electorate, including the vast bulk of Republican legislators, are what he calls the most loyal followers, who in his words would vote for him even if he shot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue. I guarantee that if he called on them to kill that thousands would heed the call to kill his opponents, just like his Stormtroopers would before his accession to power; and how his SS, acting in concert with the Army and Police would decapitate the leadership of the SA Stormtroopers, including some of his earliest friends and allies during the Night of the Long Knives. Like Hitler, Trump’s only loyalty is to himself, all others are fungible, even his family if need be.

Now is a dangerous time. Declarations of National Emergency give the President great powers above what Article II of the Constitution normally permit. Unlike any other point in our history we now have a President is prepared to use those powers for his political survival and personal gain, sadly his GOP majority in the Senate has all but surrendered their Article I powers to the imperial President.

I do not know what will happen next. The State Of California has already sued to block the effort, the Democrats in the House Of Representatives are planning legislative and possible legal moves against it. Likewise, Trump’s move has divided Republicans. So obviously this will not be enough to cement his power, it is a ploy to distract as the Mueller Eagle circles its prey.

An animal that acts purely on instinct is most dangerous when cornered. It has become apparent that Trump does not act or live within the confines of reason or legality. His business and personal life has always shown that he is a predator speaking his own engorgment, even at the expense of wives, business partners, contractors, customers, or employees. It is the world that he lives in. It is the world that he imbibed from his father Fred Trump.

So my friends, do not let your guard down. We are in completely untested waters for Americans. What will happen tomorrow we don’t know, and we would be fools to prognosticate about. Thus we have to look at history and how other human beings have behaved in similar situations.

Milton Mayer wrote in his book They Thought They Were Free about a German colleague during the 1950s that had lived through the Hitler years as an academic. The man tried to explain how changes were so gradual that people like him who should have known better did not take action, if they did at all until it was too late. The man asked Mayer:

“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.”

To forsee the end of the Trump gambit is not hard. We have the benefit of seeing tyrants of history, including Hitler, with today’s authoritarian leaders. Trump has already deployed Federal troops to the U.S. Mexican Border in what most people, including many Republicans viewed as a political stunt. In the aftermath of his declaration he again went to Twitter and attacked the media as “enemy of the people” and demanded retribution against his opponents. How long will it be until one of his militarized and propaganda filled believers goes on the attack. One did last week in El Paso, but thankful they were not armed. What is to keep Right Wing Trump supporters who have concealed carry permits to walk into any place and kill someone they believe to be an enemy of the people? 

The fact is there is that there is nothing that will keep this from happening. This makes me glad that I served in Iraq and on Naval boarding teams in the Persian Gulf completely unarmed, and also in a certain way for the PTSD that I suffer, because one of the afflictions if it can be called that is being very hyper vigilant. I won’t be caught by surprise if I can help it, and even unarmed I know enough how to disrupt and confuse an attacker to at least equalize a situation. After having credible threats to my life in 2009 and 2010 from a neo-Nazi long before I became outspoken in my beliefs I always remain alert, sadly, even on base, because I do take notice of the rather violent political messages on the bumper stickers and window decals of many fellow sailors, marines, and soldiers, active and retired.

I don’t want to be considered a pessimist, but I do forsee the end, unless a sea change that I don’t think will happen occurs. I fully expect something else to happen that allows Trump to expand his powers, an event that even many opponents would find hard to oppose. A Reichstag Fire moment, maybe, but possibly worse.

So with all those happy thoughts in mind, have a good night.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

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January 31, 2019 · 00:06

The Closet Of Anxieties

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today has been a pretty crappy day. I have been anxious and a bit depressed. A couple of months ago I found an old friend on Facebook. When I found him I was excited. In addition to being my supervisory chaplain, he was a mentor. I lost contact with him after I entered the Navy in 1999. But that initial joy was turned to pain when on an almost daily basis he intruded on my Facebook page, attacked my beliefs, and my character. He had become a complete Trumpite, with no regard for my beliefs, except to attack nearly every day. Most of those attacks involved issues of race and social justice. It seemed that he hadn’t met a White Supremacist that he couldn’t defend or member of a minority group that he couldn’t blame.

So I dropped him and blocked him, I also tightened my privacy settings, and I did receive a lot of encouragement and love from other friends.

Of course I am also anxious about the Platelet Rich Plasma treatment that I will be getting on my right knee tomorrow. I’m not afraid of the procedure, but I’m afraid that it won’t help with the pain that I have in that knee. I am less anxious and more confident in the arthroscopic surgery I am having next Thursday to repair the meniscus on my left knee. I am tired of having to walk with the assistance of a cane and not to be able to run, power walk, or even go for a leisurely stroll. I get jealous and upset when I see people my age out jogging. I feel useless and crippled.

So anyway, I’m tired and going to read some uplifting book about the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Of course, that last part is sarcasm. I hope that I don’t have another of my more frequent crazy dream or nightmares and go crashing out of bed. I don’t need another ER visit.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 27, 2019 · 23:37

Holocaust Remembrance 2019: “To Forget a Holocaust is to Kill Twice”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Seventy-four years ago today the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Although Auschwitz was liberated, the Nazis continued to exterminate Jews at other camps and conducted forced marches in freezing winter weather to keep them from being liberated, marches which were both deadly and inhuman. Actions that even Heinrich Himmler had forbidden. Many of these actions were the work of Adolf Eichmann.

Even Rudolf Höss the former Commandant of Auschwitz, who admitted to killing over one and a half-million Jews, was appalled by the senseless brutality of what he saw. Höss, the meticulous killer of millions, was shocked by the columns of emaciated and Jews, with no winter clothing or in many cases not even shoes that Eichmann marched from Budapest and other cities and camps to Austria and Czechoslovakia in late 1944 and 1945 to keep the Russians from liberating them, even against the orders of Himmler.

There have been many episodes of genocide in human history, but none were more pointedly directed at a single group of people based on race hatred than the Holocaust of the Jews. While it is true that the Nazis exterminates millions of people than the nearly six million Jews they dispatched during the Holocaust. This is important, as the late Christopher Hitchens noted:

“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.” 

Hitchens was right, without the primary Nazi hatred and determination to obliterate the Jews from the face of the earth, their other atrocities would never occurred. Today, that rabid anti-semitism is again raising its evil head in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and even in the United States.

It is impossible for an objective person to deny this fact. Hate crimes against Jews are blossoming around the world like toxic mushrooms. The new perpetrators are the descendants of the former perpetrators, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and secularists who embrace the same social Darwinism that motivated many of the Nazis.

Or course the non-Muslim opponents of the Jews today also despise dark skinned minorities, non-Christians, not to mention atheists and secularists; thus what Hitchens says is still as accurate as it was when he wrote those words.

So here we are, Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2019. The question is, will we allow it to happen again? The late Iris Chang, who documented the Rape Of Nanking noted: “to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” Sadly, I believe that without a sea change in public opinion and knowledge about the Holocaust, genocide, and anti-semitism we will see it happen again.

But will we allow it to happen again? I would hope not, but I have to say that human nature and the course of events is leading me to believe that it will happen again, maybe even in our lifetime.

That may be difficult to accept, but it is reality. What is the alternative to telling the truth? Except to perpetuate a lie, except to take the side of the perpetrators, and those who would do the same today. That includes many of President Trump’s most loyal supporters, Evangelical Christians who while outwardly allying with Israel, only do so in that their interpretation of Biblical prophecy might be fulfilled. That interpretation is that Christians will be raptured from the earth, and during a seven year Great Tribulation the Anti-Christ will conquer his foes and that in the end over two-thirds of all Jews will be killed, while the survivors convert to follow Christ.

Honestly, I cannot deem such politicized and racist theology to be Christian, or respectful and considerate of the elder brother of the Christian faith, Judaism, without which Christianity wouldn’t exist. Let me repeat that. Without Judaism Christianity would not exist, and the treatment of the Jews by the Christian Church has been shameful for the majority of its existence. I say that as a Christian.

In the 1930s and 1940s the Nazis created the euphemism the Jewish Question in order to remove the aspect of humanity from their policy. It wasn’t about human beings, it was about people that they considered sub-human minority that they were able to demonize to expedite their elimination. Hitchens wrote:

“Die Judenfrage,’ it used to be called, even by Jews. ‘The Jewish Question.’ I find I quite like this interrogative formulation, since the question—as Gertrude Stein once famously if terminally put it—may be more absorbing than the answer. Of course one is flirting with calamity in phrasing things this way, as I learned in school when the Irish question was discussed by some masters as the Irish ‘problem.’ Again, the word ‘solution’ can be as neutral as the words ‘question’ or ‘problem,’ but once one has defined a people or a nation as such, the search for a resolution can become a yearning for the conclusive. Endlösung: the final solution.”

Thus, once one labels the Jews, or for that matter any other despised minority a question, or a problem, we place ourselves on the path to Trump administration and his followers have done that since 2015 regarding Mexicans and other Hispanics, Arabs, Haitians, Sub-Saharan Africans, and too many others.

That is why I cannot be silent. I have to proclaim the words of Ellie Wiesel:

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Silence it not an option, and to again quote Wiesel: “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

We must bear witness, for if we do not it will happen again. Humanity is the one constant in history, and there are no exceptions once one begins down the path to labeling the fate of races, nations, and peoples a question or a problem which they can resolve with a solution, the more comprehensive, total, or final, the better. There are certainly plenty of people, including Trump’s closest advisors who would make draconian laws in order to enable the government to commit genocide.

Yehuda Bauer wrote:

“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.”

In the wake of an number of situations that I have seen and have watched in morbid fascination be debated on my Facebook timeline, I realize that with the prevailing attitudes being stoked by men like President Trump, his media supporters, and sadly, far too many Conservative Christians, that it will quite probably happen again.

I will fight it, butI have no doubt of the power, passion, and petulance of people consumed by race hatred under the guise of patriotism.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 20, 2019 · 00:00

So Far Yet to Go, Overt Racism on Display Yet Again: Catholic Youth Accost Native American at the Lincoln Memorial

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Tomorrow is the official observance of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In the past I have been content to post variations on the theme of Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech. In some of those I have also mentioned Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I will address his I have a dream speech in a future post, probably near the anniversary of his assassination.

Today I decided to read the Letter from a Birmingham Jail again  and contemplate Dr. King’s words in the light of the overt racism that has become fashionable in Donald Trump’s America. Today I saw videos of a gang of white male Catholic High School students from Covington Kentucky accosting Native America Vietnam Veteran Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial. The students were in Washington DC for the annual March for life, but clad in Trump’s Make America Great Again hats and shirts they had surrounded and were shouting at the man and a few other Native Americans gathered there. One young man stood directly in front of Mr. Phillips giving him a mocking and menacing look. It was like watching Hitler Youth mock Jews in the 1930s, and they call themselves Christians, and I knew that I would not take much to turn these young men into killers. Historian Timothy 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.”

The actions of such people are so far out of the prophetic tradition of the Christian church and its ancestors the great Jewish prophets of the Old Testament that it makes my mind spin. I could see them in time standing over death pits with guns in their hands.

I wonder what they are learning from their parents and the school that they attend. While I was already planning on writing about Dr. King I realized just how far we have to go to see his dream come true.

The fact is that as much as anyone would like to deny it, the American President not only is a paranoid and narcissistic sociopath, but also a racist as well. He is all too much like the men and their supposedly Christian supporters who did all that they could to stop the civil rights movement and to fight against every evil cause that Dr. King stood to oppose. The sad thing is that as banal and abhorrent as the racism of President Trump is, that of his defenders is far worse, for they, at least his Christian supporters should know better.

The fact is that instead of speaking a few well meaning yet conscience salving platitudes about Dr. King we really have to remember who he really was and what his message spoke to, and no it was not his acknowledgement of American Exceptionalism. That being said he embodied all that was good about the ideal of the United States of America and the message of Jesus and the prophets; and he was killed for it. Dr. King understood the implications of following Jesus, the depths of Christian theology and the its prophetic past. When I hear and read Dr. King’s words I am reminded of the Sermon on the Mount as well as the messages of Jeremiah and the other great Old Testament prophets.

A year after I returned from Iraq I struggled with what I was becoming. Before Iraq I had always considered myself to be a conservative, but though I was already on the path to becoming a liberal and progressive I could not identify myself as such, so I called myself a “passionate moderate” and the site “Musings of a Passionate Moderate.” A few years ago I owned the fact that I am a liberal and progressive, but also a realist. I came to realize that while moderation is an important part of civic life, it is not redemptive if it stands in silent opposition to justice in the name of order. As my journey continued I began to understand the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who 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.”

Dr. King wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail: 

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” 

Dr. King’s words in that letter are timeless and their implications should be contemplated by anyone who truly believes in that proposition in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” That is something that Dr. King certainly believed, but like those who sat on the fence in his day so many today choose to believe, but not to act upon. That is why that I continue to make my stand in the name of Jesus the Christ, the Gospel, and yes, the proposition of the Declaration that all men are created equal. If the President and his Christian supporters don’t get that then there is no hope for them as long as they continue down that path, but as I wrote yesterday, I still believe that people can have epiphanies.

I encourage all of my readers to read Dr. King’s letter. You can read it here:

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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January 16, 2019 · 00:00

“Our Civil Rights Have no Dependency on Our Religious Opinions…” Celebrating the 233rd Anniversary of the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On this day, 233 years ago, the the legislature of the Commonwealth Of Virginia ratified a law written by Thomas Jefferson. It was the precursor to the Establishment and the Free Exercise Clauses Of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

It is the antithesis of, and the antidote to all theocratic movements, to include contemporary Christian Nationalism and it’s close cousin Christian Dominionism, or as it is sometimes called Seven Mountains Theology.

Jefferson, James Madison, and their Virginia Baptist ally, John Leland understood the threat to a republic such as ours posed by religious theocrats of any type, to include Christians.

The Virginia statute was necessitated by militant Anglicans who desired to re-establish themselves as the state religion in Virginia and had gone about using physical violence against various dissenters, especially Virginia’s Baptist minority. It is fascinating, in a frightening and grotesque sense of the word to see Virginia Baptists like Jerry Falwell Jr., and other Evangelical leaders of the Free Church tradition interpreting Religious Freedom in a manner similar to the Anglicans of Virginia in the 1780s, or in the manner of all Christians who follow the path of Constantine.

Such was the warning of the great Southern Baptist Pastor and seminary president George Truett, who wrote:

“Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor’s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world…. When … Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars…. The long blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.”

The Virginia Statute stood in complete opposition to theocratic minded Americans then, and now. The statute which I post below in its entirety is must reading for anyone who thinks that they understand what the founders of the United States believed about religious liberty:

An Act for establishing religious Freedom

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;

That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,

That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;

That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions, which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;

That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;

That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry,

That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right,

That it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it;

That though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;

That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;

That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;

And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:

Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

Please, take some time to let those words sink in, especially if you think that religious liberty is only for people of your favorite religion, or the one that you belong to. The fact is, that those who established religious liberty in the United States, many of them like John Leland, professing Christians, did not think that religious liberty was for the powerful, or those who wanted to dominate others on the basis of religion wedded to government and political power.

Leland wrote:

“The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. … Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.”

With that I bid you a good night.

Until tomorrow and another day of Trump’s Evangelical supported Shutdown,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 12, 2019 · 01:28

The “Banner Of Critical Independence” and Modern Anti-Intellectualism

Richard Hofstadter

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

In July of 2017 the Pew Research Center published a detailed study of the current views of Americans regarding various institutions. One of those was higher education. The results showed that since 2015, Republicans, particularly Conservative Republicans place much less value on higher education and even that higher education has a negative effect on the country.

This should not be too surprising to anyone who studies American History. Our history is filled with anti-intellectual movements which are quite often tied in with conspiratorial world views, isolationism, and anti-immigrant or foreigner movements such as the Know Nothings, the Ku Klux Klan, and the original “America First” crowd. This has been a consistent drumbeat in American History, and yhe late historian Richard Hofstadter wrote:

“As a consequence, the heartland of America, filled with people who are often fundamentalist in religion, nativist in prejudice, isolationist in foreign policy, and conservative in economics, has constantly rumbled with an underground revolt against all these tormenting manifestations of our modern predicament.” 

But simple native prejudice and religious fundamentalism are only part of the problem. Throughout much of our history Americans have as Susan Jacoby has noted “only in terms of its practical results.”  He notes that this phenomenon has:

 “reasserted itself strongly in the “no frills” decisions of many local and state school boards. That the eliminated frills had once provided children with some exposure to a higher culture than pop was a matter of little concern to the public.”

The prevailing opinion, especially among conservatives is that education is only valuable if it produces jobs. In other words it’s training, not education and if you don’t know the difference between the two you are probably not really educated. In a number of states, important liberal arts colleges are slashing their core liberal arts programs in favor of STEM, business, or sports programs. Major universities whose programs are funded and legislated by now conservative State legislatures are doing the same thing.

Yet the fact is that educators, especially those who teach formal higher education should pursue truth more while students are in school, and encourage their students to study and seek truth, long after their formal schooling ends. I can thank my teachers and professors at every level for inspiring me to do that.

Yet, today we see, politicians, legislatures, university boards of governors, hacking away at the programs and courses of study most likely to lead their students to the truth. Sadly, more many, if not most Americans have been deluded to share the view that education at any level is simply a way to punch a ticket to get a job, but I digress…

In 2015 Pew noted that 54% of Republicans held a positive view of higher education, while 37% viewed universities, colleges and higher education negatively. That shifted in 2016 to a plurality of 45% positive and 45% negative. Their 2017 survey showed a much more pronounced shift, 58% negative and only 39% positive. Of the Republicans those who considered themselves “conservative” views were even more pronounced with 65% saying that higher education had a negative impact.

A change of such magnitude regarding what Americans have almost always universally valued as a societal good does not happen in a vacuum, the ground has to be prepared for it. Since a large portion of the GOP conservatives are Evangelical Christians one has to look at what has been going on in Evangelical Church and its politics for the past 50 years. whole denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention experienced splits as moderates were drive from the denomination and its educational institutions during the Fundamentalist takeover of it and its institutions.

The growth of Evangelical power centers that any type of education that comes from secular institutions have created their own educational centers to propagate their fundamentalist and radically right wing political views. Institutions like the American Family Association, the Eagle Institute, and others mimic traditional think tanks but are nothing more than propaganda outlets covered with an academic veneer in order to fool people into thinking thaxacceptance of fake history by faux “historians” like David Barton has led to a devastating decline in the willingness of Evangelicals, and hence Republicans to care about the truth and to rail at institutions which they despise out of the fundamentalist lworldview.

Non-intellectual virtues such as patriotism, loyalty, faith, prosperity, and power have supplanted the intellectual quest for truth. Expertise of any kind is disregarded but particularly that of academics. Even on college and university campuses academics and the pursuit of academic and intellectual questions is being subsumed by bloated bureaucracies which treat instructors and professors as chattel while seeking profits which usually come at drdfrfld cost of academics, but again I digress…

The fact is that American society as a whole is hostile towards intellectuals and academics. As Hofstadter wrote:

“All this is the more maddening, as Edward Shils has pointed out, in a populistic culture which has always set a pretty on government by the common man and through the common judgement and which believes deeply in the sacred character of publicity. Here the politician expresses what a large part of the public feels. The citizen cannot cease to need or to be at the mercy of experts, but he can achieve a kind of revenge by ridiculing the wild-eyed professor, the irresponsible brain truster, or the mad scientist, and by applauding the politicians as the pursue the subversive teacher, the suspect scientist, or the allegedly treacherous foreign-policy adviser. There has always been in our national experience a type of mind which elevates hatred to a kind of creed; for this mind, group hatreds take a place in politics similar to the class struggle in some other modern societies. Filled with obscure and ill-directed grievances and frustrations, with elaborate hallucinations about secrets and conspiracies, groups of malcontents have found scapegoats at various times in Masons or abolitionists, Catholics, Mormons, or Jews, Negroes, or immigrants, the liquor interests or the international bankers. In the succession of scapegoats chosen by the followers of this tradition of Know-Nothingism, the intelligentsia have at last in our time found a place.” 

The American President has shown that he is exactly that kind of leader, and he is supported by followers who lap up everything that he says. Fed by the lies of pundits and radio talk show hosts who a re college dropouts that despise anything that might be considered intellectual the President has added his voice to the cacophony of anti-intellectual thought that characterizes current what proportion to be called American conservatism, in which men like William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater would be hard pressed to find a home. For that matter there are quite a few American conservatives who not only oppose President Trump, but who have left the Republican Party because of its blind obedience to him?

To his loyal supporters, the policies don’t matter, so long as the right people are punished or suffer. That has been the case during the current government shutdown, which is hurting many people, including what may be a disproportionate number of Trump supporters. Those people include one that I mentioned a couple of days ago who said that he “wasn’t hurting the right people.”

There is a cost to such beliefs and attitudes. The United States is not unique and such cultural trends do have consequences that many people do not think could happen here. But the non-intellectualism of our time, espe cially that of the militant and often fundamentalist Christian Right that predominates American conservatism is dangerous. Milton Mayer wrote of his experience with or dinary Germans in the years after the Second World War in his book They Thought They Were Free: 

“As the Nazi emphasis on no nintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk-ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own hea d off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the acade mics as the most insidiously situated.”

The Nazis loved educated men who were able to subordinate themselves to the Party and the State to get the job done. There were quite a few academics, particularly lawyers and doctors who were willing to put their education to use in service of the regime. Real intellectuals, men who thought and fought for truth and freedom were removed from academia or their positions in government. They were replaced with men willing to sacrifice their integrity and honor to further their own interests or to serve Nazi ideology and the Party.

It is my view that regardless of what happens with the Trump Presidency that the assault on intellectuals, knowledge, education, and ultimately truth will continue unabated. Irving Howe wrote in his essay The Age of Conformity: 

“The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate, ready to stand alone, curious, eager, skeptical. The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have.” 

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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January 11, 2019 · 01:21

Waiting for the National Emergency

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am musing about President Trump’s treat to declare a National Emergency if Congress does not bend the knee and surrender it’s Constitutional powers under Article One of the Constitution by not appropriating funding for the construction of his border wall, the one that he promised that Mexico would pay for on many occasions.

Honestly, I have always believed that Trump will declare a National Emergency to consolidate dictatorial powers. However, I did not believe that he would use such a poorly concocted plan to do so. I realize that his contempt for the Constitution, our system of government, the Congress, the Courts and all of our institutions runs deep in him, but if he attempts an end run around Congress by doing this I am positive that the Court challenges will doom it, were emergency powers restricted to finding a way to build his Wall, however, a state of emergency proclamation gives the President nearly dictatorial powers should he or maybe in the future, she decide to use them. Congress needs to reign those powers in, but that won’t happen anytime soon.

Declaring a state of emergency simply to bypass Congress for a pet project will create a Constitutional crisis, and if you can imagine it, throw the country into chaos.

It is not enough that the government shutdown has been going on three weeks. It is not if that the global and the United States economy is not showing signs of weakness.

It is not as if foreign powers, real enemies such as Russia are continuing to attack our institutions at home and interests abroad.

It is not as if authoritarian regimes are taking over power in former democracies, with President Trump’s full approval.

Likewise, it’s not as if that the administration is not in chaos, that the resignation of the last remaining adults in the room, and the indictments, or coming indictments of Trump allies by the investigation of Robert Muller, and the coming hearings in the House Of Representatives will not cut the President’s feet out from under him.

He will be fully revealed for what he is and always has been, and what his most faithful supporters have excused and ignored.

The President is habitual liar, a narcissistic sociopath with delusions of Godhood, and a two bit owner of a family business who has destroyed every business he has led, bamboozled and defrauded and every investor or contractor who put their faith in him, and betrayed every one of his wives. Though he avoided military service, he has derided and mocked honorable military men, men who fought in combat, put their lives on the line, and even were wounded or taken prisoners. To Trump, men like James Mattis, John McCain, Stanley McChrystal, William McRaven, John Allen, John Kelly, H. R. McMaster, John Kerry, and so many others were failures, and he, who dodged the draft, bragged that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases was his personal Vietnam.

So I await his declaration and I hope that the Republicans in the Senate will finally grow a set of testicles and remember that their oath is to the Constitution, not the President. I hope that the courts will stop it, and I hope that military leaders will put their feet down and not obey an unconstitutional and unethical order.

Again, let me reiterate that I have always believed that Trump will try to use a state of emergency, his Reichstag Fire moment, to secure his hands or on power, but I thought he would use a war, a major terrorist attack, financial collapse, or natural disaster to do it. In those kinds of events he would probably have the support of the majority of Americans and Congress, but for this ham fisted attempt to bypass Congress and defy the Constitutional separation of powers should be his undoing if he actually tries it.

Regardless of if he does it or not, it is important for every man and woman who has sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic also applies to defending it against a rogue President who defies the Constitution and collides with foreign powers against his own country. Until Trump such was unthinkable, no President, even the most callous or criminal has ever sank to the moral, legal, and ethical depths of this President.

So, I wait to see what happens. As I do I remember and reflect upon the words of German General Ludwig Beck:

“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.”

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 10, 2019 · 09:44

“He’s Not Hurting the People He’s Supposed to Be Hurting” The Malevolence of the Trump Base

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I would have to say that for pure malevolence sake that President Trump, notwithstanding the fact that he is undoubtedly a petulant child, and a narcissistic sociopath with delusions of Godhood who is incapable of empathy, that many of his followers are just as bad and quite possibly worse. However, none of them have an iota of the power that Trump wields as President. That is a good thing, but it is also quite troubling, because such people may be your neighbors, your coworkers, or God forbid, family members.

Gustave Gilbert, an American Army Psychologist at the Nuremberg Trials wrote:

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949)
I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the
defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. 

Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

An example of such a evil was displayed this week when a women in the Florida Panhandle, who while complaining about the effect that the Trump Shutdown is having on her family told a New York Times reporter “he isn’t hurting the people he’s supposed to be hurting.”

Now let that sink in a moment. Think about it. Someone voted for and supported President Trump because he would hurt people. Now, when reality hits and the person is confronted with the fact that Trump doesn’t care if he is hurting his followers, she now complains that “he’s not hurting the right people.” In other words it’s okay for the leader you support to harm others so long as it doesn’t hurt you.

Trump, as horrible as he is, is not the cause of this. The preparation for him has been going on for decades, and people like the woman in Florida are prima facia evidence of a moral and ethical rot that has turned otherwise normal, decent people into fear driven narcissistic sociopaths incapable of having feelings for anyone but themselves. Trump is not the cause, he is the symptom of something far worse than he could ever be.

Unlike his most faithful followers, the people who he understood would follow him even if “shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue,” Trump never claimed to be a moral man, or for that matter someone who followed the teachings of Christ, but his most faithful followers do.

Now, those people are finding out that Trump for all of his bluster doesn’t really give a damn about them are lost. Like the woman in Florida, they are angry because they are suffering because of his policies, but unlike people who have not sold their souls, they cry out in disbelief, “he isn’t hurting the people he’s supposed to be hurting.” They cannot believe that he lied to them, that he used them, and that his policies are harming them, but rather that he isn’t hurting the right people.

My friends, please tell me how such an attitude is anything less than evil. Please tell me how it is different from the men of the SS Totenkopfverbande who profited from the mass murder and genocide of others, but when called to account for their crimes, cried out that they were victims because they had believed Hitler? The difference is simply a matter of degree. These disappointed Trump followers would still follow him and do anything he says, but they are suffering and cannot believe that he is letting making them suffer, without comprehending that they mean nothing to him.

Deluded by decades of propaganda, such people are finding out that they don’t matter to Trump, or the GOP. Maybe someday they will realize that they have been complicit through their tacit support, agreement, and help in crimes against humanity, crimes against the Constitution of the United States, and attitudes that but I doubt it. They have no empathy for people,they despise, only self-pity when they find that the man that they sold their souls to support and defend despises them as much as the people they think they should be punished.

The irony is that they are not being punished by those that they despise, but by the man who they treat as a savior, a secular Messiah.

So, until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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December 29, 2018 · 00:01

Study the Past, Don’t Live in It

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Friends at Padre Steve’s World

I tend to become somewhat reflective as the New Year approaches. I am reminded of Peter Benchley, who wrote, “The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future.” Likewise, St Augustine of Hippo once asked “How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet?”

Augustine’s question is interesting, but I think that his question is flawed. I think that the past lives in the present much more than we would like to think and that our future, though unwritten can unfold in a multitude of ways and possibilities.

Many of us live in the past as if it were today. We, individually and collectively, as individuals and nations live in the past and look to it much more fondly than when it was our present. I think that historian Will Durant possibly said it the best: “The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.”

As a historian myself I value the past and seek answers and wisdom from it to use in the present because what we do in the present does, for better or worse defines our future. Confucius said “study the past if you would define the future.” He was quite wise, he said to study the past, did he did not say to live in it.

That is something that I have been learning for over 20 years now when my Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor, used a Star Trek Next Generation metaphor from the episode A Matter Of Time in order to teach me how my past was influencing the way I was living my life.In the episode a shadowy visitor who claimed to be from the future refuses to help the crew of the Enterprise save an endangered world, claiming that if he were to help them, that his “history – would unfold in a way other than it already has.”

Finally, after other all other possibilities were exhausted, Captain Picard was forced to make a decision and confronted the visitor, who as it turned out to be a thief from the past, using time travel to collect technology to enrich himself by bringing it back in time. Picard makes a comment which I think is pertinent in a time like ours.

“A person’s life, their future, hinges on each of a thousand choices. Living is making choices! Now, you ask me to believe that if I make a choice other than the one that appears in your history books, then your past will be irrevocably altered. Well… you know, Professor, perhaps I don’t give a damn about your past, because your past is my future, and as far as I’m concerned, it hasn’t been written yet!”

When my supervisor told me that my past did not have to be my future, it opened a door of life and faith that I had never experienced before and which showed me that life was to be boldly lived in the present. While it meant a lot then, it means more now for the past according to William Shakespeare “is prologue.”

We cannot help being influenced by the past. We should indeed learn from it, but we cannot remain in it or try to return to it. Kierkegaard said that “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Since I am a Christian, at least by profession, my faith in that future is in the God who is eternal, the God of love. Victor Hugo in Les Miserables said “Love is the only future God offers.” That is the future that I want to envision.

Unfortunently there are many people who claim the same Christian faith that I claim who attempt to return to an imaginary past and to try to legislate that past onto others who do not share their beliefs, if necessarily using the police powers of the state to do so. Such is neither honest because it attempts to enforce a mythologized past on others, nor Christian, because ultimately the Christian hope is focused on the yet to be realized future and not the past, it has nothing to do with establishing some kind of theocratic Christian state that denies rights and a future to all but like minded Christians.

Living is making choices and the future hinges on thousands of them. Many of these choices we make automatically without thought simply because we have always done them that way, or because that is how it was done in the past. However, if we want to break the cycle, if we want to live in and envision that future of the God of love then we have to live in the present though the past lives in us.

T.S. Elliot penned this verse:

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

The coming year promises to be challenging, and the tensions between those who want to return to the past, especially the predominantly Christian cult  devoted to President Trump and making America great again and those who believe in an inclusive hope and future for all will be on full display.

As for me, I choose the path of Picard; because my future, and our future, hasn’t been written yet, and cannot be surrendered to those who want to return us to a mythologized past that never existed in history, but which they want to legislate today.

My choice in our time is to resist, and to fight for a future that includes everyone.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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December 15, 2018 · 21:26

The Banality of Criminality: Complicity and Dishonor in the Age of Trump, the Example of Michael Flynn

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Dwight D. Eisenhower noted:

“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.”

It is becoming more clear every day that the wheels are coming off the Presidency of Donald Trump, and that as a man and as a person that he is losing any grip on reality and lives in a cloud-Cuckoo land of lies, untruths, and alternate facts. He has shown throughout his life and career that he has no integrity, especially while serving as President, which makes Eisenhower’s words relevant to our present crisis.

Likewise it is quite clear now, that the President has been implicated in what the founders of the country and the writers of our Constitution would understand to be high crimes and misdemeanors. The banality of his and his administration’s criminality is buttressed by the cult of personality that surrounds him. The latter would not be possible without the fifty year process of the moral and ethical disintegration of the Republican Party. Eisenhower wouldn’t recognize the GOP of today.

However, the President has not been indicated in Federal Court, nor charged with crimes and impeached by the House of Representatives yet, but the writing is on the wall. It is only a matter of time before Robert Mueller indicts the men closest to the President; his son Donald Jr., and son-in-Law Jared Kushner. The evidence is mounting of their premeditated attempt to collude with Russia for both political and financial gain. The revelations of the past week would be the beginning of the end for the President and his lawless administration if only the GOP members of the Senate would have the courage to do what Barry Goldwater did in 1974 to give Richard Nixon an ultimatum.

Over the past week we have seen countless GOP leaders excuse the blatant lies of the President, and ignore the complicity of him, his family, and his closest collaborators as “they didn’t happen”, “if they did happen they weren’t criminal”, ” they happened and they were against the law, but they are not really Crimes because it’s a bad law”, or “people do them all the time”, and “what about Hillary?” Of course none of these defenses call for personal responsibility or defense of the law and Constitution, it is all about holding onto power.

But even more troubling than the President and his conditorei of putrid family members, bankers, investors, shyster lawyers, and incredibly compromised and often incompetent individuals he has appointed to cabinet positions, are some of the former military men in the cabinet who served in the cabinet. The most notorious of these is the convicted felon and retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who after getting a gift in the form of sentencing accused the FBI of tricking him into lying. I won’t even go into Ryan Zinke, John Kelly, or Mike Pompeo.

Flynn’s film-flam act is maddening to me because as an officer he should have known better. He lied to investigators and he certainly knew that lying to them was wrong. I know this because I enlisted the same year that he was commissioned, and was just two years behind him when I was commissioned. We come out of the same post-Vietnam pipeline of Army officers. We both were commissioned from the ROTC program, albeit from different universities. But we knew the rules, our programs were similar in that Ethics was taught, and after Vietnam it was considered a big deal. I don’t know about Flynn, but I had to take a course on military law while in ROTC. We went through officer basic and officer advanced courses that contained a common core of classes, We served as platoon leaders, company executive officers, company commanders, as well as battalion and brigade staff officers.

As officers we both administered the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and both took sworn statements, administered Miranda Rights, conducted 15-6 investigations, Reports of Survey, and as commanders administered non-judicial punishment under Article 15. When doing that we served as prosecutor, judge, and jury over the soldiers charged with violating the UCMJ. There is no way that Flynn didn’t known that lying to an investigator wasn’t wrong. He lied and knew that it was wrong.

My career path veered from his when I returned to the National Guard to attend seminary full time to become a Chaplain. My senior positions have all been served as an Army or Navy Chaplain. Like him I served in combat, except I did so unarmed, far away from big battalions that could protect me.

But maybe I embraced an ethic that Flynn didn’t, let’s call it The Code. Let me explain.

My thirty-seven plus year military career began in the Army. I enlisted in the California Army National Guard when I entered the senior ROTC program at UCLA. Though I never attended West Point, Annapolis, or any of the other military academies, I always embraced the Cadet Code of the United States Military Academy at West Point. It states:

“A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

Likewise I have always subscribed to and tried to uphold the motto of West Point, which General Douglas MacArthur put into such moving words in 1962:

“Duty, Honor, Country” — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease.

They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman…”

The code may sound old fashioned, a bit puritanical, or even pharisaical to some, including many current and former officers. I actually had a friend, a retired Army Chaplain who retired at a grade higher than I will ever hold told me that in my criticism of the President and his high ranking supporters that he saw “my inner Pharisee” come out. I told him that it wasn’t my “inner Pharisee, but my inner Army company Commander.” I subscribe to a code of honor that far too many people across the political spectrum despise and ridicule, especially those of the Christian Right who defend the President as if he is the Messiah. Sometimes I feel like Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men, except I wouldn’t order the code red.

The concept of honor may be a punch line to many people but for me it has been a way of life. That honor includes telling the truth, even as an officer to commanders and those that outrank me. Doing this has cost me dearly many times in my career in both the Army and Navy. I cannot shut up an be silent when I see superiors lying, cheating, and tolerating those who do. To enforce such ideas on junior personnel is expected, but to speak those words in a prophetic voice to those in power is dangerous, but I have often lived dangerously, and truthfully I have been lucky. Only once has someone tried to have me tried by Court Martial, and that was a retired officer last year who made a written complain to my commanding officer for a sermon that I preached, but I digress…

The reality is that throughout my life I have tried to live up to the Cadet Code, and the motto of Duty, Honor, Country my whole life and for doing somI have often been treated as an anachronism, out of step with the world, even at times from senior military officers.

I could tell you stories, but only over a beer in a bar about those instances, without any recording devices at hand. That being said, if I ever ran into the people that I am talking about, I would confront them in person and give them a chance to defend their actions. I would then walk away, satisfied that my honor was still intact.

But what bothers me now mor than anything is watching men and women who I once respected, defend the indefensible, excuse the inexcusable, and accuse the already acquitted for actions of the President and those around him who if he had been a Democrat they would have already voted to impeach. But my standard has been consistent regardless of who the President is and what his party affiliation. I wanted to see Bill Clinton impeached, I couldn’t support John Edwards because of he cheated on his wife when she had cancer, and as much as I liked and admired him, I thought it was right that former Senator Al Franken resigned, as much as I liked and respected him as a Senator. I have no respect for Newt Gingrich in part for having an affair, and divorcing his wife while she was fighting cancer. Likewise,as much as I like him as a person, I still believe that George W. Bush was a War Criminal for invading Iraq.

The office of the President, the Constitution, and our system of government mean much more to me than my party affiliation. Frankly, that has always been the case for me.

I spent the vast majority of my adult life as a Republican for God’s sakes, but after returning from Iraq, and seeing the claims of the Bush Administration for the war, which I had believed, turn out to be lies on the order of the crimes that we prosecuted at Nuremberg, just couldn’t remain in the party.

When I see people who I know and consider to be friends throw ethics, morality, and faith under the bus to defend the indefensible acts of this President I do get worried, and all of us should be because it is happening all the time.

I was raised to believe that military officers are to hold to a higher moral code than politicians, lawyers, businessmen, or even priests or preachers; I was an officer long before I was ordained. For me it all goes back to the West Point Cadet Code.

So when I see Michael Flynn attack the FBI for “tricking him to lie” after he was cut a huge deal for his testimony, I have to wonder where he was in the classes about military ethics. But then maybe his Professor of Military Science hadn’t been assigned to the Task Force that investigated the My Lai Massacre, or whose primary history professor at California State University Northridge, Dr. Helmut Haeussler, who served as an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials. I know what happens when military officers sacrifice their integrity to serve leaders that have none, or in wars where they abandon all the principles that they were supposed to uphold.

But then, just maybe in the words of my friend, mentor, and former superior, maybe I am a Pharisee because I value honor over political expediency, or what helps me the most right now.

So for today I will leave you with the words of General Ludwig Beck who lost his life during the abortive attempt to kill Hitler 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.”

That is what I consider to the moral failure of the officers cannot see anything wrong in the actions of this President and his administration; they place their party and ideology over the Constitution, the law, and the people. They not only tolerate, but they defend those who lie, cheat, and steal to gain political power.

For me it always comes back to that code of honor.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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