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July 17, 2018 · 00:09

Adhering to or Aiding the Enemy: the President and Putin at Helsinki

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am more concerned than ever about the fate of our country and the world. I have written much about the public statements, tweets, and policies of President Trump. I have written much about his lack of character, his relentless lying, his cruel policies, his unrequited racism, his penchant for preferring dictators to democrats (not the American political party but those who abide by its principles) his distain for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the fundamental premise of the Declaration that “All men are created equal.”

I began writing about my concerns in 2015 not long after he announced his candidacy. I have not stopped doing so even though after his inauguration I really did hope that realization of the gravity of his office would at least provoke a bit of change in him. However, that did not happen, instead the power of the office emboldened him to allow his very worst character traits to become even more corrosive and toxic.

If this was merely an argument between Democrats and Republicans on matters of policy, even hard fought and divisive policies it would be one thing, but this is different. It is a blatant denial of his oath of office and by its very nature involves the very real possibility that the President is committing treason before our very eyes. This isn’t about policy or party politics; it is about the President of the United States openly siding with the leader of a hostile power. A leader whose military intelligence agency, the GRU has been identified by every United States intelligence agency and the FBI as being behind multiple attacks at multiple levels on the United States election system. In fact these attacks are ongoing even today and the President defended Putin and attacked U.S. intelligence services as well as Special Prosecutor Robert Muller who last Friday added the indictments of another dozen Russian GRU officers to his tally, which is now up to 26 Russian officers. When questioned about a tweet in which he blamed the United States and especially the Muller investigation for the poor relationship with Russia in which the President said:

Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!

President claimed that Miller’s investigation was “is a disaster for our country.”

Shortly after the President’s defense of Russian President Putin and attacks on U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the free press, and his domestic political opponents the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats a Republican and former Senator from Indiana who had briefed the President about this before the summit issued the following statement:

“The role of the Intelligence Community is to provide the best information and fact-based assessments possible for the President and policymakers. We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.” https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/itemlist/category/285-press-releases-2018

Former CIA Director John Brennen tweeted today:

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin…”

He is correct. The U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3 states: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

The U.S. Code amplifies Article III. It states:

18 U.S. Code § 2381 – “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

It could not be clearer. The President’s actions and words over the past two years regarding Russian attack on our election system have left all Americans a choice. By all measures the President is either a completely self-absorbed imbecile who incapable of dealing with facts and in doing so inadvertently aiding the Russians; or he has something to hide and is knowingly working with the and for Russians who he has previously admitted were behind the attacks on our election system.

I don’t know which it is, or even if it is a combination of all of that. All I know as an old Cold Warrior is that the Russians are not our friends and that trampling American institutions and allies to cozy up to them is very close to the definition of treason as it it defined in the Constitution and the U.S. Code. I would say the same of any President who did as this President has done and I wouldn’t give a damn about what party they belonged.

This is very serious and cannot be swept under the rug of the next scandal or diversion by The Administration. It is the responsibility of Congress and the Courts to retrain an unchecked Executive who appears to likely to be committing treason regardless of if it is intentional or not. If they do not they are complicit in that crime and history will judge them accordingly.

General Ludwig Beck who resigned his office as the head of the German Army over Hitler’s plan to invade Czechoslovakia in 1938 and who died in the failed attempt to kill Hitler on July 20th 1944 said:

“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.”

I will leave you with that. Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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July 10, 2018 · 00:46

A Troubling Supreme Court Nomination on the Anniversary of the 14th Amendment

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today was the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the 14th Amendment, that is something to celebrate because the amendment corrected one of the most glaring omissions from the Constitution that put it at odds with the very principles of the Declaration that “all men are created equal.” The amendment struck down the Dred Scott decision which denied that Blacks could ever be citizens and had no constitutional rights. Section One of the amendment stated:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

It was the amendment which extended the promise of the Declaration first to Blacks and that would later be the basis of subsequent amendments and court decisions which extended those rights and that promise to other racial minorities as well as women and Gays. In that sense it is the amendment helped all Americans have a constitutional basis to have a chance to realize the revolutionary idea of the Declaration that “all men are created equal…” 

Tonight President Trump nominated Federal Appeals Judge  Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court vacancy left by the resignation of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Since Kavanaugh was suggested as a favorite in the President’s nomination process I have taken the time to read a number of short biographical articles from a number of sources on Kavanaugh’s life, read a number of his legal opinions, decisions and an article on the Separation of Powers and Executive powers in a 2009 Article in the Minnesota Law Review. All that being said I don’t know exactly what he would decide from the Supreme Court even though if I look at his previous opinions from the bench and the Minnesota Law Review article give me pause to be concerned both about the protections of the 14th Amendment as well as the Constitutional separation of powers. The later is especially concerning in light of his remarks in the Minnesota Law Review review article that:

“Congress might consider a law exempting a President—while in office—from criminal prosecution and investigation, including from questioning by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel. Criminal investigations targeted at or revolving around a President are inevitably politicized by both their supporters and critics. As I have written before, “no Attorney General or special counsel will have the necessary credibility to avoid the inevitable charges that he is politically motivated—whether in favor of the President or against him, depending on the individual leading the investigation and its results.” The indictment and trial of a sitting President, moreover, would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility in either the international or domestic arenas. Such an outcome would ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis.”

He said this despite having served on the staff of Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr during the investigation and impeachment of President Clinton and that he noted that the same article quoted above regarding the decision of the Supreme Court in Clinton v. Jones “that presidents are not constitutionally entitled to deferral of civil suits.”

I think this is the most important issue in regard to Kavanaugh’s nomination. Yes I know the concerns many have for so many other vital issues but I think this one is the most concerning and it overshadows every other potential decision that he could be the deciding vote on, for all of those issues because this is the only one that could allow the President to establish an authoritarian regime.

It is so because that the President who nominated him is himself embroiled in multiple civil proceedings as well as potential criminal charges. The latter are dependent on what Special Prosecutor Robert Muller uncovers in his investigation of the President and his campaign’s connection to Russian agents during and after the 2016 election. However, the number of guilty please, convictions, and indictments racked up by Muller are greater in a shorter time than any other special prosecutor, and they include some of the highest ranking and closest advisors to the President during and after the campaign. If the President can circumvent that and have his actions upheld by the Court it would be the end of the Republic and the other issues no matter how important would become moot because for the duration of his term the President would be above the law and it would take a two thirds majority of the Senate to convict him of crimes in an impeachment trial. Even if the Democrats gain a majority in the House and the Senate I cannot see 15 or 16 Republican Senators to join 51 or 52 Democrats voting to impeach.

Based on Judge Kavanaugh’s writings one has to wonder what he would do if moment of national crisis coincided with a civil trial, an indictment of the President, or his impeachment. That is a real concern, especially when the President talks about removing First Amendment protects from the press and frequently refers to his political opponents enemies of the people and proclaims that he is above the law. Would not the opinion of a Supreme Court Justice who has written that the President should at enjoy temporary exemption from civil suits or criminal prosecution while he is in office not endanger the Constitution and the Separation of Powers itself. That is certainly something that the Founders never intended, nor the authors of the 14th Amendment who actually ended up impeaching President Andrew Johnson for his dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton for not disregarding the authority of Congress in the matter of Reconstruction. Johnson’s actions were designed for him to use his power as Commander in Chief to ensure that the military did not comply with the laws of Congress.

The fact that the President has nominated a man who believes that a President should be above the law during his term in office is extremely troubling. If confirmed Kavanaugh may be the man who uses his position to end the Republic as we knew it by elevating the Executive to a level never intended by the Founders by judicial fiat. Senator Edward Kennedy rightly noted:

“The Supreme Court must serve as an independent check on abuses by the executive branch and the protector of our liberties, not a cheerleader for an imperial presidency.”

I am afraid that the elevation of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court along with Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts could well become that cheerleader for an imperial presidency that knows no restraint and disrespects justice. President Trump advocates on a daily basis for an authoritarian presidency that does not respect the law, the Constitution, or the civil rights of most Americans.

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

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July 4, 2018 · 00:05

The Ring-Bolt to the Chain of Our Nation’s Destiny: The Declaration of Independence at 242 Years

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It is July 4th and the 241st anniversary of the declaration by the leaders of 13 colonies of their independence from Britain and the founding on a new nation. It was a nation founded on a principle of the Enlightenment, the principle that all men are created equal, and as their Declaration of Independence noted that as such are “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

Seventy-six years later the darkness of 1852 not long after the passage of the Compromise of 1850 which included an enhanced Fugitive Slave Act, it would be Frederick Douglass, the foremost Black abolitionist leader and himself an escaped slave would speak. The laws dictated that Northerners had to cooperate in the recapture and re-enslavement of blacks residing in their own states, regardless of their own state and local laws. While the Southern majority that crafted these laws always played the part of the aggrieved minority whose “states rights” were being threatened. But the reverse was true, with their majorities in the House and Senate which also included some Northern Congressmen and Senators, an always compliant White House, and a majority on the Supreme Court the Southerners used the threat of secession and civil war to enforce their mandates on the Free States.

On July 5th 1852 Douglass spoke these words these words to people who at the time were refused citizenship and who were enslaved:

“I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”

Douglass understood this far better than many Americans in the South or the North. It would take a great and bloody war for most Americans to realize just how important the Declaration was to the destiny of the nation.  It would take far longer for the principle of an ever expanding understanding of liberty that included Blacks who were considered in law and statute as less than fully human.

One of the most notable of the apologists for White Supremacy was George Fitzhugh, a major Southern slaveholder and apologist for not only slavery but the inequality of poor whites and women. Fitzhugh spoke for many when he wrote against the principles of the Declaration:

“We must combat the doctrines of natural liberty and human equality, and the social contract as taught by Locke and the American sages of 1776. Under the spell of Locke and the Enlightenment, Jefferson and other misguided patriots ruined the splendid political edifice they erected by espousing dangerous abstractions – the crazy notions of liberty and equality that they wrote into the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Bill of Rights. No wonder the abolitionists loved to quote the Declaration of Independence! Its precepts are wholly at war with slavery and equally at war with all government, all subordination, all order. It is full if mendacity and error. Consider its verbose, newborn, false and unmeaning preamble…. There is, finally, no such thing as inalienable rights. Life and liberty are not inalienable…. Jefferson in sum, was the architect of ruin, the inaugurator of anarchy. As his Declaration of Independence Stands, it deserves the appropriate epithets which Major Lee somewhere applies to the thought of Mr. Jefferson, it is “exuberantly false, and absurdly fallacious.

Fitzhugh also wrote:

“We conclude that about nineteen out of twenty individuals have “a natural and inalienable right” to be taken care of and protected, to have guardians, trustees, husbands or masters; in other words they have a natural and inalienable right to be slaves. The one in twenty are clearly born or educated in some way fitted for command and liberty.

A greater contrast of views regarding the Declaration is hard to be found. Abraham Lincoln would say about the contrasting views of liberty at a speech in Baltimore on April 18th 1864:

“The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names–liberty and tyranny.” 

Unfortunately these starkly contrasting views of liberty are still on display today. The President called Mexican and Central American refugees an “infestation” using a word that would to describe rats, insects or other disease carrying species. Members of his administration, Republican Congressmen and State Representatives, and members of various “conservative” media outlets, including their allies in the Alt-Right use the same language as Fitzhugh to declare for the superiority of the White race, to dehumanize Blacks, Mexicans, Arabs, and various dark skinned Asians and argue that darker skinned people are less than human and not entitled to liberty, equality and justice. A constant barrage of what quite literally amounts to state sponsored propaganda demonizes minorities, women, gays, the media, long term allies and alliances, and any potential political opponent.

Our Republic, its institutions and our freedom hinge on what Douglass called “the rig-bolt to the chains of our nation’s destiny,” and its principles “saving principles.” We must be dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal” or submit to tyranny.

The proposition in the Declaration that all men are created equal is essential to understanding or appreciating liberty. If we view others as below us, as even less than human then we cannot say that we believe in liberty. If we decide to limit the right of citizens to speak out because of their color, their national origin, their race, their religion, their gender, or sexual identity then we are not for liberty, we are no better than George Fitzhugh or others, even the Nazis, who enslaved, imprisoned, and exterminated others in the name of their power, and their right.

If our concept of liberty is so limited by our ideology that we cannot accept others having it or being equal to us then we stand against the very proposition that the United States was founded and we should bury the American experiment and stop lying about a proposition that we no longer believe in. The eminent American jurist wrote these words, which for me are like the Declaration, the Preamble of the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech are secular scripture that are sacred to my understanding of being an American, and something that I will never yield. Judge Hand said:

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. The spirit of Liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of Liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of Liberty is that which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.”

With that my friends I wish you a happy Independence Day,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 28, 2018 · 00:07

By Then It Was Too Late: Reflections on a Supreme Court Retirement

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

In his book They Thought they Were Free Milton Mayer wrote of his conversation with a German university professor colleague after the Second World War:

“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.

“Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late.”

I feel that if we already haven’t reached to point of things being too late that we are not far from that point and we are closer now with the Justice Anthony Kennedy’s announcement of his retirement from the Supreme Court.

Kennedy announced his retirement yesterday after siding with so-called conservatives on President Trump’s Executive Order targeting Muslims primarily from Iran as supposed security threats. It was an ignominious exit from the Supreme Court for a man who though certainly conservative often acted as the conscience of the court who wrestled with difficult issues and sometimes sided with liberals such in the Obergfell v. Hodges case that at least for now legalized marriage equality.

The decision regarding the Executive Order overturned the decision of Korematsu v. United States which upheld the military orders to send Americans of Japanese descent to detention centers, what in were effect American Concentration Camps. JThat ruling along with Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson is considered one of the most unjust in American history. Justice Robert Jackson who later presided as the organizer and chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials wrote in dissent of that ruling:

“A military commander may overstep the bounds of constitutionality, and it is an incident. But if we review and approve, that passing incident becomes the doctrine of the Constitution. There it has a generative power of its own, and all that it creates will be in its own image. Nothing better illustrates this danger than does the Court’s opinion in this case.” 

That is the danger of the Executive Order that the Court upheld. Justice Roberts used the twisted logic of Korematsu to uphold the ruling even as he overturned Korematsu. Justice Kennedy concurred and then retired from the Court leaving a vacancy that will almost be certainly filled by a young, aggressive, and doctrinaire conservative of the new order, unrestrained by precedent or principle. Unless the Democrats go Full Bork Jacket and at least two Republicans grow a set of balls civil rights, civil liberties, and the Constitution are doomed.

The man that nominates Kennedy’s successor is even now under investigation for actions that could be considered by a reasonable person as treason against the United States. That man is the President and almost every day he uses power of his office to demonize any opposition and to dehumanize racial, ethnic, and religious minorities while attacking the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution to free speech and the freedom of the press by referring to his critics as “enemies of the people.” 

The President has invoked violence against his opponents since he was a candidate and then cries foul when political opponents urge non-violent resistance to include the public shaming of his staff members and Cabinet officials who plan (Stephen Miller), execute (Kirstjen Nielsen), and defend (Sarah Huckabee Sanders) his actions against helpless people who he labels as murderers, rapists, and criminals.

Sadly most are refugees from political and criminal persecution and violence in their countries, countries that since the 1840s Americans or the United States Government have treated as subhumans. What is happening now is the result of our past polcies coming home to roost.

Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor Recipient Smedley Butler wrote in his book War is a Racket:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Despite the fact that the United States has been interfering and exploiting their countries for almost two centuries they are criminals because they want to be free. Their crime is being refugees after the United States instituted race based immigration policies in the early 1900s. These policies were later used to deny Jews fleeing the Holocaust from coming to the United States.

Justice Kennedy left after a series of rulings which seemed to undermine his past judicious behavior on the bench. Maybe at 82 years old he simply decided to punt and place his vote in the column of men who gut the Voting Rights Act, support gerrymandered Congressional districts, and support Executive Orders that while refuting the notorious Supreme Court Decision of Korematsu v. United States used the same logic as that majority used to uphold the President’s third attempt at a travel ban directed a Muslims, primarily Iranians. Japanese Americans who suffered under the military orders enforced by civilian courts and upheld by Korematsu were appalled with good reason.

I am going to leave it there for the night.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

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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 21, 2018 · 00:30

Executive Orders and Final Solutions: the Hidden Evil of Trump’s Immigration Executive Order

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Holocaust survivor Primo Levy wrote:“ Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”  

From any kind of moral, humanitarian, or for that matter Christian viewpoint is hard to stomach the actions and words of President Trump and his administration regarding the enforced separation of children from their parents.

Over the past few weeks and particularly over the past few days we have seen the Administration state fourteen different official positions on the policy. Almost all were bold-faced lies or were the telling of falsehoods with just a kernel of truth. Among those untruths were that the policies were based on court decisions, notably Flores v. Reno and the subsequent Flores Settlement; that it was based on laws enacted by Democrats and that Congress needed to change those laws; that the President could do nothing as his hands were tied by law and court decisions; that the policy was designed to use the children as bargaining chips to get funding for the border wall with Mexico; and even a claim by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security just yesterday that there was no policy directing the separation of children from their parents and housing them in cages.

Those claims including the repeated claims of the President himself were all destroyed by the President’s Executive Order ending the policy of separating migrant children from their parents. On the surface that looks like a win for the critics of the President and DHS, but it is not.

The Executive Order is designed to enable the Administration to indefinitely detain and imprison families and to hold the children of those families longer than the twenty days that Flores Settlement allows. The order instructs the Justice Department to:

The Attorney General shall promptly file a request with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to modify the Settlement Agreement in Flores v. Sessions, CV 85-4544 (“Flores settlement”), in a manner that would permit the Secretary, under present resource constraints, to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.

The DHS has stated that it no plans to reunite the children already detained and separated from their parents including infants and toddlers. The President has directed the Department of Defense to:

The Secretary of Defense shall take all legally available measures to provide to the Secretary, upon request, any existing facilities available for the housing and care of alien families, and shall construct such facilities if necessary and consistent with law. The Secretary, to the extent permitted by law, shall be responsible for reimbursement for the use of these facilities.

It was announced tonight that the DOD is to provide 21 military Judge Advocate General Corps Officers with trial experience to serve as Assistant U.S. Attorneys to adjudicate the cases of these families.

The fact is that these actions of the administration will soil the military with the execution of laws that are all too similar to authoritarian regimes that use race, ethnicity, and religion to persecute, imprison, or expel people who belong to undesirable groups.

Likewise the Executive order directed other departments to cooperate with DHS:

Heads of executive departments and agencies shall, to the extent consistent with law, make available to the Secretary, for the housing and care of alien families pending court proceedings for improper entry, any facilities that are appropriate for such purposes. The Secretary, to the extent permitted by law, shall be responsible for reimbursement for the use of these facilities.

I cannot help but see the warning flags, the order reminds me of Hermann Goering’s directive to SS General Reinhard Heydrich which brought about the Final Solution to what the Nazis euphemistically referred to as the Jewish Problem. Goering wrote to Heydrich on July 31st 1941.

Supplementing the task assigned to you by the decree of January 24th 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of evacuation and emigration in the best possible way by according to present conditions, I hereby charge you to carry out preparations as regards organizational, financial, and material matters for a total solution (Gesamtlosung) of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation.

Where the competency of other organizations touches on this matter, the organizations are to collaborate. 

I charge you further to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for the carrying out the desired final solution (Endlosung) of the Jewish question.”

In March of 2016 I wrote an article entitled Wannsee, Problem Solvers and Trump

The article pondered who would be the people who would implement the then candidate’s immigration policies. We now know. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said yesterday that the Nazis “did not deport Jews” as he defended the administration’s policies. Acting ICE Director Holden said without any sense of irony that “comparisons to the Nazis were unfair because” his agents were “just following orders.” The President has referred to immigrants as “animals” and this week referred to Democrats allowing immigrants to “infest” our country. The use of the word infest equates all immigrants with

But we are not limited to Hitler, we can go back to our own history as Steven Schmidt, a long time conservative Republican wrote;

“This child separation policy is connected to the worst abuses of humanity in our history,” Schmidt wrote on Twitter. “It is connected by the same evil that separated families during slavery and dislocated tribes and broke up Native American families.”

The fact is that policies like those of the Trump administration are inherently evil and never fail to be the progenitors of even more evil policies. In 1917 most Russians would never thought that the Soviets would enact terrible measures to murder or starve tens of millions of Soviet citizens. In 1933 the vast majority of Germans, even the most anti-Semitic could have ever believed that their nation would be guilty of the premeditated extermination of about 6 million Jews and millions of others. The fact is that our history shows that as a people we are little different than the citizens of the Third Reich or the Soviet Union who either cooperated with or turned aside as their governments exterminated millions of people.

I could continue to go on, but the policies policies of the Trump administration and even the Executive Order are immoral, and while clothed in the veneer of enforcing the law go against every principle of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, they are abhorrent and must be condemned, resisted and fought in court, in the media, and at the ballot box.

But that is all for now,

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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