Tag Archives: president donald trump

August 3, 2020 · 02:21

Their dislike for the law which condemns them is not original. It has been remarked before that: “No thief e’er felt the halter draw with good opinion of the law.” Robert Jackson’s Closing Argument at Nuremberg and Trump: Part One

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Yesterday I introduced a segment of Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson’s Closing Arguments at Nuremberg. This article, which is actually the first section of that argument without the allusions to the films Nuremberg and Judgment at Nuremberg. Instead it is simply the first part of Jackson’s argument taken directly from the trial records.

Jackson’s closing occurred 178 days after his opening address, after nearly nine months of testimony, with evidence was presented by the prosecutors and the defense. It was The Nazis own records provided the massive amounts of damning evidence by which the prosecution had to present in such a skillful manner that it couldn’t be denied by defendants or history.

Jackson was masterful as he made his synopsis of the evidence and testimony presented over those nine months. To do so he had to come back after a poor performance against the former Nazi Reichs Marshal Hermann Goering. It was a day that shook his confidence, but after Jackson’s performance, British prosecutor Maxwell Fyfe destroyed Goering on cross. Many in the media believed that Jackson could not come back, in fact he wanted to resign as Chief Prosecutor. But he remained and delivered his second masterpiece of the trial.

His words should give us all pause when we think that we view the events of the past in a patronizing manner, thinking that we are too advanced to be capable of such such behaviors. We trust in technological advances and affluence but human nature remains unchanged and the crimes of the Twentieth Century which Jackson detailed in his summation could be eclipsed by worse today. There are plenty of monsters in the United States and the world all too willing to reprise the crimes of the Nazis. I sincerely believe that President Trump and many members of his administration, and his supporters are capable of doing worse than the Nazis and would do the same if he is elected to a second term, or refuses to leave office. Let the reader understand.

So we begin where Jackson began on the Friday, July 27th 1946.

Mr. President and members of the Tribunal:

An advocate can be confronted with few more formidable tasks than to select his closing arguments where there is great disparity between his appropriate time and his available material. In eight months -a short time as State trials go -we have introduced evidence which embraces as vast and varied a panorama of events as has ever been compressed within the framework of a litigation. It is impossible in summation to do more than outline with bold strokes the vitals of this trial’s sad and melancholy record, which will live as the historical text of the twentieth century’s shame and depravity.

It is common to think of our own time as standing at the apex of civilisation, from which the deficiencies of preceding ages may patronisingly be viewed in the light of what is assumed to be “progress”. The reality is that in the long perspective of history the present century will not hold an admirable position, unless its second half is to redeem its first. These two-score years in this twentieth century will be recorded in the book of years as some of the most bloody in all annals. Two world wars have left a legacy of dead which number more than all the armies engaged in any war that made ancient or medieval history. No half-century ever witnessed slaughter on such a scale, such cruelties and inhumanities, such wholesale deportations of peoples into slavery, such annihilations of minorities. The terror of Torquemada pales before the Nazi Inquisition. These deeds are the overshadowing historical facts by which generations to come will remember this decade. If we cannot eliminate the causes and prevent the repetition of these barbaric events, it is not an irresponsible prophecy to say that this twentieth century may yet succeed in bringing the doom of civilisation.

Goaded by these facts, we were moved to redress the blight on the record of our era. The defendants complain that our pace is too fast. In drawing the Charter of this Tribunal, we thought we were recording an accomplished advance in International Law. But they say that we have outrun our times, that we have anticipated an advance that should be, but has not yet been made. The Agreement of London, whether it originates or merely records, at all events marks a transition in International Law which roughly corresponds to that in the evolution of local law when men ceased to punish crime by “hue and cry” and began to let reason and inquiry govern punishment. The society of nations has emerged from the primitive “hue and cry”, the law of “catch and kill”. It seeks to apply sanctions to enforce International Law, but to guide their application by evidence, law, and reason instead of outcry. The defendants denounce the law under which their accounting is asked. Their dislike for the law which condemns them is not original. It has been remarked before that:

“No thief e’er felt the halter draw with good opinion of the law.”

I shall not labour the law of this case. The position of the United States was explained in my opening statement. My distinguished colleague, the Attorney-General of Great Britain, will reply on behalf of all the Chief Prosecutors to the defendants’ legal attack. At this stage of the proceedings, I shall rest upon the law of these crimes as laid down in the Charter. The defendants, who except for the Charter would have no right to be heard at all, now ask that the legal basis of this trial be nullified. This Tribunal, of course, is given no power to set aside or modify the Agreement between the Four Powers, to which eighteen other nations have adhered. The terms of the Charter are conclusive upon every party to these proceedings.

In interpreting the Charter, however, we should not overlook the unique and emergent character of this body as an International Military Tribunal. It is no part of the constitutional mechanism of internal justice of any of the signatory nations. Germany has unconditionally surrendered, but no peace treaty has been signed or agreed upon. The Allies are still technically in a state of war with Germany, although the enemy’s political and military institutions have collapsed. As a Military Tribunal, this Tribunal is a continuation of the war effort of the Allied nations. As an International Tribunal, it is not bound by the procedural and substantive refinements of our respective judicial or constitutional systems, nor will its rulings introduce precedents into any country’s internal system of civil justice. As an International Military Tribunal, it rises above the provincial and transient, and seeks guidance not only from International Law but also from the basic principles of jurisprudence, which are assumptions of civilisation and which long have found embodiment in the codes of all nations.

Of one thing we may be sure. The future will never have to ask, with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favour. History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of a trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man.

But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength. The prosecution’s case, at its close, seemed inherently unassailable because it rested so heavily on German documents of unquestioned authenticity. But it was the weeks upon weeks of pecking at this case, by one after another of the defendants, that has demonstrated its true strength. The fact is that the testimony of the defendants has removed any doubt of guilt which, because of the extraordinary nature and magnitude of these crimes, may have existed before they spoke. They have helped to write their own judgement of condemnation.

But justice in this case has nothing to do with some of the arguments put forth by the defendants or their counsel. We have not previously and we need not now discuss the merits of all their obscure and tortuous philosophy. We are not trying them for the possession of obnoxious ideas. It is their right, if they choose, to renounce the Hebraic heritage in the civilisation of which Germany was once a part. Nor is it our affair that they repudiated the Hellenic influence as well. The intellectual bankruptcy and moral perversion of the Nazi regime might have been no concern of International Law had it not been utilised to goose-step the Herrenvolk across international frontiers. It is not their thoughts, it is their overt acts which we charge to be crimes. Their creed and teachings are important only as evidence of motive, purpose, knowledge and intent.

We charge unlawful aggression but we are not trying the motives, hopes, or frustrations which may have led Germany to resort to aggressive war as an instrument of policy. The law, unlike politics, does not concern itself with the good or evil in the status quo, nor with the merits of the grievances against it. It merely requires that the status quo be not attacked by violent means and that policies be not advanced by war. We may admit that overlapping ethnological and cultural groups, economic barriers, and conflicting national ambitions created in the 1930′ s, as they will continue to create, grave problems for Germany as well as for the other peoples of Europe. We may admit too that the world had failed to provide political or legal remedies which would be honourable and acceptable alternatives to war. We do not underwrite either the ethics or the wisdom of any country, including my own, in the face of these problems. But we do say that it is now, as it was for some time prior to 1939, illegal and criminal for Germany or any other nation to redress grievances or seek expansion by resort to aggressive war.

Let me emphasize one cardinal point. The United States has no interest which would be advanced by the conviction of any defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the counts charged against him in the Indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgement of posterity would pronounce unjust would not be a victory for any of the countries associated in this prosecution. But in summation we now have before us the tested evidences of criminality and have heard the flimsy excuses and paltry evasions, of the defendants. The suspended judgement with which we opened this case is no longer appropriate. The time has come for final judgement, and if the case I present seems hard and uncompromising, it is because the evidence makes it so.

I perhaps can do no better service than to try to lift this case out of the morass of detail with which the record is full, and put before you only the bold outlines of a case that is impressive in its simplicity. True, its thousands of documents and more thousands of pages of testimony deal with an epoch and cover a continent, and touch almost every branch of human endeavour.

They illuminate specialities, such as diplomacy, naval development and warfare, land warfare, the genesis of air warfare, the politics of the Nazi rise to power, the finance and economics of totalitarian war, sociology, penology, mass psychology, and mass pathology. I must leave it to experts to comb the evidence and write volumes on their specialities, while I picture in broad strokes the offences whose acceptance as lawful would threaten the continuity of civilisation. I must, as Kipling put it, “splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of camel’s hair”.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

Final Solutions: Hitler, Trump, COVID19 and Race Wars

Herman Goering

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On July 31st 1941, barely over a month into the Nazi invasion of Russia, which at the time looked to be another sure win in the Nazi column. The Red Army had suffered immense losses. Hitler and the German High Command could sense victory in the offing, and on that day Hermann Goering, Hitler’s deputy sent a message to the head of the Reichs Security Main Office, SS Lieutenant General Reinhard Heydrich giving him express orders to plan for what the Nazis referred to as the Endlösung, or the final/total solution to what they called the Jewish problem.

Georing wrote:

“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.”

It was an order that Heydrich and his successors following his assassination by Czech partisans in 1942 would follow with deadly consequences to the Jews of Europe.

Reinhardt Heydrich

But the reality was set many years before when Adolf Hitler and other anti-Semites declared the Jews to be vermin, and sub-human. The German word is more sinister sounding, untermenschen. They simply refused to admit the Jews were fully human, and instead believed that the Jews were an alien subspecies, an infestation that had to be eradicated. In fact the very same kind of language that President Trump and many of his followers use to describe racial and religious minorities today: American blacks, Mexican Americans, Asians, Arabs of all religious beliefs, even Jews when they desire. They also use such language to describe political opponents.

The late Christopher 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.”

Hitchens, an Atheist was absolutely correct, when so many modern Christians, and other religionists of various types fail to see the danger. In fact, many of Trump’s most devoted religious followers, especially some supposedly conservative Christians blissfully embrace that ideology as would the members of any cult of death.

So much for their insistence of being pro-life when they join heavily armed White Supremacist and Neo-Nazi Groups, or at the minimum do nothing to condemn their overt acts of racist violence against Blacks, immigrants of all types, and LGBTQ people. They follow conspiracy theories blindly, reject science but not necessarily technology. Many deny the Coronavirus and refuse to comply with measures that could minimize the spread of the pandemic and treat it if it is a hoax. If I wasn’t a Christian there is nothing that these malignant sociopaths could ever do to make me follow their “no-god,” because their God is not Jesus the Christ but Donald the Deceiver, a man with more traits of an Anti-Christ than any American leader in history, with the possible exception of Jefferson Davis. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Said of such alleged Christians:

“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.”

Bonhoeffer’s words are a warning to everyone who abandons the Gospel in order to gain political, economic, and even police power to achieve their goals.

The fact is that once a people, be they Germans, Americans, English, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Turks, Persians, or so many others throughout history determine that any racial, religious, or political group, that they loath is less than human, that in time their words will express their thoughts, and direct their actions. That my friends is a historic, religious, psychological, and sociological truth.

I hate to keep shouting this warning, of Yehuda Bauer who 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.”

With every, tweet and every statement the American President continues to stoke the fires of race hatred, just as he did the past three days as Civil Rights hero lay in state at the U.S. Capital, as he crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge for the last time and as he was laid to rest. Sadly, his followers seem to feed on it. I will not ever be a perpetrator, or a bystander, but it is possible that for speaking my views, I may someday be a victim, but I will go down fighting.

I hate cowardly bullies like the President, who dodged the draft five times, denigrates combat wounded, former POWs, and those suffering TBI, PTSD and Moral Injury as weak, while pardoning convicted war criminals. I show honor to the office that he holds, but have no respect for him as a person because he is worth of no respect.

In 2015 I realized exactly who he was and what he would do if he ever became President and I lost a lot of people who I thought were friends over it. He is an unrepentant racist, a White Supremacist, and a malignant narcissistic sociopath who has no empathy for anyone. He is his father’s horribly damaged child. Everything I said about him before he was elected in 2016 has proved to be right. My Oath of Office is to the Constitution, not him. He may occupy the office but he has ripped up and pissed on his oath to support and defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. When he took that oath he lied and followed it with a dystopian Inaugural Address that was fictional when he spoke it but has become fact during his reign of terror and death. As of today over 155,000 Americans have died of COVID 19, our Gross Domestic product declined by the most it ever has, and tens of millions of Americans are out of work as he overturns Civil Rights laws, sends DHS storm troopers to kidnapp American citizens off the street with no probable cause and no chargers. He attacks peaceful demonstrations using massive force in order to get a photo op, he intentionally repeats conspiracy theories, and debunked cures for Coronavirus, and he sells out American national security to Vladimir Putin, the former Soviet KGB Agent who is now President of Russia for life. He is worse than Vidkun Quisling, Henri Laval, Marshal Petain, and every other traitor who ever lived.

Gustave Gilbert, the American psychologist to the major Nazi War Criminals wrote of them words that could be equally applied to President Trump, his Administration, the vast majority of elected GOP representatives and senators, at Federal and State levels:

“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.”

Gustave Gilbert and Christopher Hitchens words are as true today as when they were written, as are Yehuda Bauer’s.

However, I think that the most damning indictment comes from the First Pamphlet of the White Rose Resistance to Hitler written by a twenty-two year old German University student named Sophie Scholl. She wrote:

“Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes – crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure – reach the light of day.”

One day we will see them all in their horrible and inhuman reality. The sooner the better. If not anyone who opposes Trump might end up disappeared in a Nacht und Nebel or Night and Fog operation, or end up in a camp without any charges, and with an indefinite sentence, purely based on the whim of an amoral malignant narcissistic sociopath President and his equally sadistic Administration, Party, and Cult.

I have to tell to truth, it is my first duty to my faith and to my oath to the Constitution. General Ludwig Beck who resigned his post as the Chief of Staff of the German Army in the face of Hitler’s planned invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and died in the failed attempt to kill Hitler and end Nazi rule 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.”

And as Major General Henning Von Tresckow said:

“I cannot understand how people can still call themselves Christians and not be furious adversaries of Hitler’s regime.” One could easily substitute the name of Donald Trump for Hitler and it would not be much different. He also said “We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.” The same is true today. But do we have the courage to stand?

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under Loose thoughts and musings

Tagged as christopher hitchens, civil rights, Colonel Henning Von Trescow, dietrich bonhoeffer, final solution, general ludwig beck, Hermann Georing, president donald trump, Reinhard Heydrich, sophie scholl, the white rose, Vladimir Putin, wansee conference

July 30, 2020 · 03:02

Trump, COVID19, Authoritarianism Against Truth and Freedom

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

With every death from COVID19 and every lie, distortion, or amazing conspiracy theory about it, promoted by the President and his advisors I grow more and more frustrated and angry. I have gone from the point of simply disliking the man and those who tell whoppers of lies in his defense that I want them to die, the same kind of slow and painful deaths that he and his administration Have allowed to happen to almost 154,000 Americans. I hate them because of their violence and racism, that tries to masquerade itself under the banner of Christianity. That is an affront to me as a Christian and as a Christian I have to ask like Major General Henning Von Tresckow, a key planner of the attempt to kill Hitler on July 20th 1944 who died in that attempt: “I cannot understand how people can still call themselves Christians and not be furious adversaries of Hitler’s regime.” However, I would change it to Trump’s Regime. I hate them because they dispatch the equivalents of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen to American cities, uninvited by local or state governments to conduct brutal operations against protestors who until attacked had been peaceful, even kidnapping people off of the street out of their legal area of operations in rented vehicles.

I could go on and on and on, but the actions, lies, and violence of this administration against American citizens and immigrants, those here on valid entry visas, or those fleeing violent regimes and dictatorial regimes South of our border, including exposing them to COVID19 in confinement at the border and sending them back, sick or infected to their countries of origin to die or to infect others. Such actions would have been classed as Crimes against Humanity at Nuremberg.

I am angry because I am seeing my President defying the defying his oath and subverting the Constitution, and pissing on the ideals of the declaration as he allies himself with enemies abroad like Vladimir Putin, and at home with White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and Neo-Confederates. In other words he is putting the national security of the United States in danger against foreign enemies, but also deploying the police power of the State against his domestic political opponents, often in the most unabashedly racist ways possible.

Unfortunately, few in his party leadership dare oppose him because they are afraid if his often heavily armed and dangerous cult followers, people willing to attack state capital buildings and legislators to fight against political opponents of Trump who support science and public health in terms of COVID19 and those who oppose his overtly racist policies which harken back to Jim Crow. I fully expect that in the next few months leading to the November election that Trump and his cult, including the Attorney General, and Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security will do all that they can to take complete control even if it leads to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The President is a malignant narcissistic sociopath and he will stop at nothing because only he matters.

I do hope and pray for the best but now I expect the worst, because our President, his closest advisors, and his loyal cult followers see him as their messiah, though he is an Anti-Christ figure if one ever existed in American politics.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was murdered on the person order of Hitler 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 … 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.“

He also wrote:

“We must finally stop appealing to theology to justify our reserved silence about what the state is doing — for that is nothing but fear. ‘Open your mouth for the one who is voiceless’ — for who in the church today still remembers that that is the least of the Bible’s demands in times such as these?”

For me this is not about politics, though politics has to be included. It is about an Oath of a Military Officer that I took to Our Constitution over 37 years ago, and my faith which does not deny the rights I have to others based on their skin color, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or anything else.

Another German Officer who died on July 20th 1944 was General Ludwig Beck, who resigned his post as the head of the German Army over Hitler’s planed invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. He remained connected to the German resistance and wrote something that I fully believe that all military officers, or government officials who swear an oath to the Constitution must fully understand and live by, or die as traitors and hypocrites.

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

Beck also said: Final Decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history will not acquit these leaders with blood guilt if they do not act according to their specialist and political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience ends when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid them from carrying out an order.”

I finally finished my book Mine Eyes Have Seen They Glory! Racism, Religion, Ideology, and Politics in the Civil War Era until Today, and Why They Matter Now. In researching and writing it I have become radicalized about fighting for those words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

While the founders of the country knew that be preserving slavery that they were being hypocrites, the fact of the matter that this phrase is always to be interpreted in an ever expanding manner until it is true for every human being. In that same declaration, those writers and editors also noted: “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

I cannot think of an American President who these were more pertinent to, then Donald Trump. He is the man who Alexander Hamilton warned us in his words and in the Federalist Papers.

“Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

These are harrowing times, and if we are to retain our freedom and liberty for all Americans, and defend their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness we cannot allow ourselves to be bystanders in the face of evil by hiding behind our theology, ideology, or some grotesque imagination of what patriotism means. Judge Learned Hand, one of the most brilliant judges in American history never to sit on the Supreme Court spoke at a swearing in of thousands of new citizens before a crowd of over a million and a half people in New York’s Central Park two weeks before D-Day. His words then are as true today as when he first spoke them:

What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it… What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.

What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. 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 the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”

But the President does not believe any of this. As historian Timothy Snyder wrote in his little book On Tyranny wrote:

“The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,” wrote Orwell, tends to be “uninterested in what happens in the real world.” Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.” A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better.”

So I leave you with that. This is not a joke, it is an existential matter for us as individuals and a nation.

Until Tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under authoritarian government, civil rights, civil war, faith, History, laws and legislation, leadership, Military, national security, News and current events, Political Commentary, racism, Religion

Tagged as Colonel Henning Von Trescow, crimes against humanity, dietrich bonhoeffer, general ludwig beck, learned hand, nuremberg trials, operation valkyrie, president donald trump

July 29, 2020 · 03:08

DHS: The Perfect Organization to Build an Authoritarian Militarized Secret Police

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It has been a while since I posted an new material, mostly I stuck to revised and edited versions of a older stories. This was in mostly due to my need to complete my book “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory! Racism, Religion, Ideology and Politics from the Civil War Era to Today and Why they Matter Now.”

I can now thankfully say that it is in the hands of my agent. However, in the last few weeks I have began to what a state sanctioned and militarized Secret Police might look like, and it looks an awfully like the Department of Homeland Security. The Department, was established as a cabinet level agency in 2002 following the 9-11-2011 attacks and the passage of the Patriot Act, in order to better coordinate response to foreign (read Islamic) terrorist attacks. The idea was not bad, in a changing era where terrorist could kill 3,000 people in a day using highjacked airliners as modern Kamikazes.

The attacks proved that better airport security was needed, as well as coordination with other Federal and State agencies. That was not a bad idea but it grew into an organization that controlled border and internal security with its own Navy and Organic air units. It is organized for operational purposes with civilian named directorates that correspond to a military staff. Its operational agencies include:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
U.S. Coast Guard
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
U.S. Secret Service
Transportation Security Agency

It also has its own Intelligence and Analysis Unit, a Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, and Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. It also absorbed a good number of other agencies from different Federal Departments. These include the Federal Protective Service, the National Strategic Stockpile National Disaster Medical System, Nuclear Incident Response Team, Domestic Emergency Response Team, Center for Domestic Preparedness, CBRN Countermeasures Programs, National Biological Warfare Response Center, Plum Island Animal Disease Center, Nation Computer Incident Response Center, National Communications Center, National Infrastructure Protection Center, and the Energy Security and Assistance Center. All had previously been part of the FBI, the Justice Department, Department of Energy, GAO, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Transportation, Treasury, and the Department of Defense. It was the most massive take over of government agencies in the history of the United States.

All of these agencies have wide ranging law enforcement authority in the United States and sometimes outside of it. Under normal circumstances most of these agencies missions are supportive of the protection of the rights of Americans, resident aliens, and immigrants. But politicized in the hands of a racist and authoritarian President they can be weaponized as quickly as the Nazis weaponized the German and Prussian Interior Ministries and their federal and state police organizations. These were augmented by and then taken over by the Nazi Party’s SS and SD security departments. Interestingly, the Customs and Border Protection Service has began a six week weapons and defense program to provide a ready reserve force of civilian auxiliaries. It reminds me of how the Nazi SS and SA were deputized by the Prussian Interior Ministry under the command of Herman Goering, Hitler’s Second in Command, following the Reichstag Fire.

All together the staff and operational units of DHS comprise some 240,000 employees and law enforcement personnel. To put that in proper perspective the DHS has more personnel that the U.S. Marine Corps, and their authority extends across the United States, its territories, and in some cases worldwide. In the hands of an authoritarian leader and willing allies such an organization can become a weapon of domestic terror. Already, U.S. Marshall’s, and Customs and Border Patrol Agents have been used by the Trump Administration against U.S. Citizens exercising their First Amendment Rights to free speech and freedom of assembly and protest. These attacks occurred outside of their assigned jurisdictions, and included seizing people off the street in rented vehicles with no identification as to which agency they belonged.

Die groﬂe Reichstagswahl am 5. M‰rz 1933.
Nationalsozialistische Hilfspolizei im Verein mit Schutzpolizei Beamten sorgen in den Straﬂen Berlins f¸r Ruhe und Ordnung am Wahltage.

My friends, this is a prelude to dictatorship, especially if the Republican Senate does nothing to reign the Administration and the acting Director of DHS and the Attorney General in. These organizations are now being joined by self-named and appointed militias that are neither Constitutional or legal to intervene in legal protests, largely in support of the legal rights of American Blacks, in a grotesque reenactment of the brutality of state forces and racist paramilitaries such as the Ku Klux Klan, Red Shirts, White Leagues, and White Liners, during Reconstruction and after. Thousands of Blacks and their White supporters were lynched by these paramilitaries supported by state and local law enforcement, in defiance of the Constitution and law for decades.

Such criminal behavior in the name of law are disgusting repetitions and reminders of some of the worst instances of race hatred and genocide in history. To this we must all rise in defiance and demand that such actions stop, or we too will be condemned by history and any just God.

This isn’t history confined to the past, it is happening now. We must say NEVER AGAIN! And with our lives prevent it from happening again. Yehuda Bauer said:

Bauer also wrote: “Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”

I refuse to be a perpetrator or bystander. What will you do?

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as dhs, ku klux klan, Patriot Act of 2001, president donald trump, red ahirts, white leagues, white liners, yehuda bauer

July 23, 2020 · 01:09

“They knew that to put God in the Constitution was to put Man Out” Religion and State: The Further Apart the Better

Virginia Anglicans Persecution Baptists in the 1780s

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Robert Heinlein wrote that, “Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.” His words are quite relevant and in a way consistent with the desires of the founders of the United States.

Since I am still working to finish Mine Eyes Have Seen to Glory, in order complete it as soon as I can, I figured that I would publish a slightly edited older post about the the separation of church and state. They are not really original to me, but they are born of reflection on the palpable political anger of the politicians, pundits and preachers of the political-religious movement that I refer to as the “Christian Right.”

In order to be clearly understood it is important for my readers to understand that I am not lumping all “conservative Christians” into the political Christian right. In fact some conservative Christian traditions and their followers are diametrically opposed to the political theology of the Christian Right, which has as its heart the theology of Christian Dominionism, something I have written about many times. This is a modernized understanding of political Calvinism, which has sometimes known as “Seven-Mountain” theology, as such I make a profound distinction between such groups and the political movement which calls itself the Christian Right and assumes that as such it speaks for all conservative Christians.

Gary North, a prominent ideologue of the movement who has advised many of the current Christian Right leaders of the Republican Party, and whose ideas are widely promulgated by the politicians, pundits and preachers of the Christian Right was quite clear in what this movement desires. “The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.” Thus, every time you hear the words “religious freedom” or “religious liberty” being uttered by them, please understand that they are talking about their religious liberty only, and that that liberty has at its heart the desire to establish their political-religious dogma as law of the land. Thomas Paine, the author of the amazing little book “Common Sense” which was so much a part of the thought of our founders noted, “Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.”

Robert Ingersoll, one of this first prominent skeptics in this country and acknowledged atheists wrote something quite profound in understanding the nature of what our founders intended and why there were protections both for and from religion in the Constitution:

“They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping or in the keeping of her God the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all to prevent the few from governing the many and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.”

Ingersoll correctly reflected the thoughts of Jefferson, Madison, Adams and even George Washington as well as early Virginia Baptist John Leland, and other pioneers of religious liberty like Roger Williams, the founder of the colony of Rhode Island.

According to every scientifically based survey of Christians and non-Christian attitudes toward the church and its religious involvement show that ever-increasing numbers of Christians are fleeing the church. Likewise, increasing numbers of non-Christians want nothing to do with it, even if they are favorably disposed to Jesus and his teachings.

In light of this fact, maybe it is time for Christians to get off their high-horse expecting that they should hold the rights to the political franchise and remember the words of James Madison who said, “Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

Finally, I want to add two quotes from the great Virginia Baptist leader who helped Jefferson and Madison in drafting the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty, and the First Amendment.

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.”

And this:

“Is conformity of sentiments in matters of religion essential to the happiness of civil government? Not at all. Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear–maintain the principles that he believes–worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i.e., see that he meets with no personal abuse or loss of property for his religious opinions. Instead of discouraging him with proscriptions, fines, confiscation or death, let him be encouraged, as a free man, to bring forth his arguments and maintain his points with all boldness; then if his doctrine is false it will be confuted, and if it is true (though ever so novel) let others credit it. When every man has this liberty what can he wish for more? A liberal man asks for nothing more of government.”

I have to say these things because I refuse to be driven underground by a cult that neither believes or practices what it says, except in promoting their political and economic power at the expense of others, even if it means their subjugation and elimination of their Constitutional rights.

I especially say them for my Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and other friends from smaller religions and traditions, as well as my friends who are Atheists or Agnostics.

With that I say Amen, and wish you a good night and day.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as bystanders, christian faith, declaration of independence, dominionist view of jewish faith, james madison, Jewish faith, john leland, perpetrators, president donald trump, robert heinlein, robert ingersoll, roger williams, secular government, thomas jefferson, thomas paine, victims, yehuda bauer

July 21, 2020 · 02:08

The 76th Anniversary of Operation Valkyrie: A Meditation from Henning Von Tresckow

Major General Henning Von Tresckow

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

There are times that resistance seems almost hopeless. Today, with DHS officers in combat gear sweeping the streets of cities in which the were not invited, I am watching events that I never thought possible in our country. The whole action seems reminiscent of Hitler’s Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) order which disappeared people all over Europe being re-enacted here. Now some 76 years today a group of German military officers and civilians attempted to kill Adolf Hitler and end the Nazi dictatorship, patriotic Americans are having to chose between serving a criminal administration which despises the Constitution, our laws, and our institutional guardrails that prevent any one branch of government or agency can establish itself as an authoritarian dictatorship.

Many people forget that the Nazis took power through Constitutional means and once they had it never gave it up. Hermann Goering said:

British Historian Laurence Rees wrote:

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

One of the problems is that throughout history, resisters frequently fail to unify in the face of their primary adversary and instead look for the faults among their own potential leaders. That my friends is the way to failure. So tonight, or as it is early this morning I will leave you with a few thoughts of one of the key German resistance leaders against Hitler during the Second World War. That man was Major General Henning Von Tresckow, a key member of the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Tresckow said a number of things that I will quote in the way he said or wrote them. But for every time Tresckow writes or says Hitler, substitute Trump, and when he says Germany, substitute the United States.

In reality that is now where we find ourselves. We are on the verge of a dictatorship of a man who can barely be called sane. Yet, he has a core Cult, of committed followers who will through their own willful avoidance of the truth would support him even if he overthrew the Constitution, and proclaimed dictatorial powers, and unleashed violence against every domestic opponent. He routinely makes those kinds of threats, to the cheers of his Cult. In one of his speeches from March 14th of this year Trump declared:

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

That is not a comfortable thought, but it is the new normal, especially among his supposedly Christian supporters, who include some of the most powerful religious leaders in the country.

Tresckow noted:

“I cannot understand how people can still call themselves Christians and not be furious adversaries of Hitler’s regime.”

I feel the same way about Trump, whose most fervent and loyal supporters are conservative or Evangelical Christians. Honestly, when I read their writing, hear the speeches, and listen to their defense of Trump I see little difference in them and the German Christian movement that turned the Churches into a key part Hitler’s political base. Honestly, I cannot understand how any Christian cannot be a furious adversary of the Trump regime. This is not based on politics at all, but the demands of the Gospel itself. As Jesus taught in Matthew 24:24:

“For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”

Trump is an unbeliever in the greatest sense of the word. Though he presents himself as a defender of Christianity; in thought, word, and deed has made himself a cult-like messiah figure to conservative and Evangelical Christians. He has played on their fears, their racism, their misogyny, their homophobia, and their fear of something that they call socialism. Of course the early church was much more or a practitioner ethics that bordered on socialism, though the term was not yet in use, than the post-Nicea imperial church that has been the face of Christianity in most “Christian” countries since Constantine. This Trump Cult is not Christian: it is an anti-Christian, and anti-humanity personality cult.

Unlike the Third Reich, the situation has not reached the point for any resistier to resort to political violence in response to Trump or his Cult. Instead we must speak the truth and seek to win elections, and not build cult like followings of any of our candidates, and destroy any sense of unity. We have to win with ideas and truth. Even so there is a possibility that we could fail, that is a possibility, and that failure would be the certain end of our Republic, its institutions, and its Constitution as we know it.

Tresckow also said:

“It is almost certain that we will fail. But how will future history judge the German people, if not even a handful of men had the courage to put an end to that criminal?”

We have to put an end to the Trump regime at the ballot box, and even that may not cause him give up without a physical fight. His former attorney, Michael Cohen has said exactly that. Trump is destroying the hard work of Americans and our allies to build a better would, and in almost every country, Trump is destroying the image of the United States, like Tresckow said in his time:

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

Those are import words, but just substitute the name Trump for Hitler. Tresckow was no socialist or liberal, but he believed in freedom. In fact he wrote regarding the Prussian political tradition and how it could be subverted to support evil:

“The idea of freedom can never be disassociated from real Prussia. The real Prussian spirit means a synthesis between restraint and freedom, between voluntary subordination and conscientious leadership, between pride in oneself and consideration for others, between rigor and compassion. Unless a balance is kept between these qualities, the Prussian spirit is in danger of degenerating into soulless routine and narrow-minded dogmatism.”

Truthfully that is a spirit much like the United States that which is engulfing the United States today, soulless routine and narrow minded dogmatism. The tension that exists in the key ideal of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and the words of Trump and his supporters men who desire to rule by fiat and by extra-Constitutional means, cannot be more marked than it is today.

In the movie adaptation of the plot to kill Hitler Valkyrie: Tresckow is quoted:

“God promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if he could find ten righteous men… I have a feeling that for Germany it may come down to one.”

To be sure, Trump is no Hitler, though his words sound more and more Hitlerian every day. I will not call the President a Nazi, though he has give tacit support to Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups and frequently engages in racist diatribes. He is certainly acting as any authoritarian leader would, and we have to heed the warning of Russian dissident Gary Kasparov:

“dictators & would be autocrats do not ask “Why?” when it comes to using power for their advantage. They ask “why not?”

To go back to the words of Tresckow in Valkyrie, in noting it may come down to the actions of one man or woman, my friends, that “one” may come down to you or me. We cannot sit silently by as more and more actions that would have been considered as criminal are perpetrated by the President and his followers.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as adolf hitler, authoritarian leaders, authoritarian states, christian faith, christian right, Constantine the Emperor, declaration of independence, donald trump supporters, gary kasparov, henning von tresckow, History, laurence rees, nazi germany, personality cults, political christianity, Political Commentary, president donald trump, resistance

July 11, 2020 · 20:31

To Kill a Mockingbird at 60: Yes, the Bible in the Hand of One Man is Worse than a Bottle in the Hand of Another

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today marks the 60th the anniversary of the release of Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. I have read the book, and seen the film many times. Sadly, it is all too relevant in our time. Race hatred and a belief in the absolutes of aberrant forms of Christianity which bless White Racism are rampant in the United States and Europe, many of these groups are overtly Fascist and Authoritarian. Sadly, with the looming 2020 General Election, many of President Trump’s base is Cult of Christians who have forgotten what the Gospel is in their slavish devotion to Trump.

That alone is to make the novel and the film worth reading and watching, especially if you haven’t read the book or seen the film.

Sadly, such people would “kill the Mockingbird” to ensure that they keep their privileged position in society. The Mockingbirds are those that they have condemned to social inferiority and discrimination and eternal punishment, especially gays and the LGBT community, but others as well.

This is especially the case of the preachers, pundits and politicians that crowd the airwaves and internet with their pronouncements against Gays, immigrants, Arabs, poor blacks, political liberals, progressive Christians, and for that matter anyone who simply wants the same rights enjoyed by these Christians.

In the book there is a line spoken by Miss Maudie Atkinson, a neighbor of Atticus Finch and his children. She says to Atticus’s daughter Scout:

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of another… There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

As I survey the world of Christian conservatives I become surer of this every day. I’ve often wrote about my own fears in regard to dealing with such people as well as the troubling trends that I see. Last week I wrote five articles on the trends that I see in the church, trends toward greed, political power, social isolation and the active campaign of some to deny basic civil rights to people that they hate on purely religious grounds.

The language of some like Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel, Tony Perkins of the American Family Association and a host of others describe actions of governments and courts to ensure equal treatment of all people under the law as threats to Christians, affronts to them and of course to God. Their words are chilling. Matt Staver commented a few years back that if the Supreme Court upheld marriage equity for gays that it would be like the Dred Scott decision. Of course that is one of the most Orwellian statements I have ever heard, for the Dred Scott decision rolled back the few rights that blacks had anywhere in the country and crushed the rights of people in non-slave states.

Again, as a reminder to readers, especially those new to the site, I spent a large amount of my adult Christian life in that conservative Evangelical cocoon. I worked for a prominent television evangelist for several years, a man who has become an extreme spokesman for the religious political right. I know what goes on in such ministries, I know what goes on in such churches. I know the intolerance and the cold hearted political nature of the beast. I know and have gone to church with Randall Terry, the former head Operation Rescue who once said: “Let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…” I have walked in those shoes, I have been whipped up by those preachers. I fully understand them, and because I do I am in a unique position to critique their words and actions, especially as the supposedly moral majority snuggle up with one of the most amoral men ever to become President, solely to protect and crease their political power. They have surrendered their claim to being a party of morality, and embraced evil for the sake of their power. Without empathy, they judge and condemn others not like them. They are incapable of understanding anything that conflicts with their visions of White Power, racial superiority, and an interpretation of Christianity which needs state support in order to survive.

As Atticus Finch told his children:

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

They cannot, thus I total reject the message of such people now, not out of ignorance, but because I have walked in their shoes. At times I supported their causes, not to any extreme, but all too often my crime was simply said nothing when I knew that what they preached, taught and lived was not at all Christian, but from the pits of Hell.

As far as them being entitled to hold whatever opinion they want, even if I disagree, yes that is their right. But as Atticus said:

“People are certainly entitled to think that I’m wrong, and they are entitled to full respect for their opinions. But before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The only thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

My conscience will not allow me to be silent when I see men like Staver, Perkins, Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Pat Robertson, and so many others preach hatred towards those who are different than them. Their reach and power has only increased with their support of President Trump.

In the movie and the book the Mockingbirds were Tom Robinson, the black man falsely accused of rape and assault and Boo Radley, a shy recluse feared by his neighbors, a man who stories were made up about; stories that turned a simple man into a monster in the eyes of people who did not know him. Today they are others who fit the Mockingbird role, people who just want to get along and live in peace, but who endure discrimination and damnation from those who call themselves Conservative Christians.

Jem Finch, the son of Atticus asks his sister a question in the book and the film:

“If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other? If they’re all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other?”

I ask the same question on a daily basis.

So until tomorrow I wish you a good night.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as atticus finch, boo radley, christian right, civil rights, conservative christians, Donald trump followers, frankln graham, harper lee, lgbtq rights, matt staver, president donald trump, racism, robert jeffress, to kill a mockingbird, tony perkins

July 11, 2020 · 02:10

A Higher Standard: I condemn those that Deny Reason, Science, and Facts to push a Theocratic Agenda during a Pandemic

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

i didn’t get a chance to write last night because I left my iPad in my office and it took forever to do my updates to and get my MacBook Air updated, and my maxed out email storage brought under control. But I’m back and Friday is a good night for Fighting.

Over the past few weeks I have become more and more incensed and angry at the theocratic Christian Conservatives who deny reason, science, and even their own faith to enforce their political culture war agenda of reopening churches. Where allowed, many of the churches that restarted services and claimed to be obeying rules on social distancing and masked, didn’t really do it, just like a lot of bars, restaurants, and businesses. Now the pandemic has exploded across the country and many pastors and Christian leaders are playing the Christian persecution card to the hilt, though they are the ones applying for millions of dollars of government hand outs that they take while fighting against The rights of citizens that they hate politically, religiously, racially, of for their sexual identity or gender, and willingly serve a President who is willing to carry their water for them. President Trump and his theocratic supports is willing to use the police power of the state against their opponents to ensure his political survival. His Attorney General Bob Barr is the key to ensuring that happens.

Likewise, this supposedly “pro-military” President and his followers who proclaim that they “support the troops” have no problem demonizing and attacking military officers like Army LTC Alexander Vindman who in obedience to the oath he took to the Constitution and duty to the American people to testified to the truth of Trump and his administration’s collaboration with Russia and against both the United States and the Ukraine during his testimony during the House impeachment hearings.

Tonight on my Facebook Page I posted these words in response to an article about a pastor of a church in Sacramento California complaining that restrictions on signing during worship were discriminatory and infringements on his congregation’s right of worship and the against the Free Exercise of Religion of the First Amendment. Of course the arguments are spurious, because as our Founders and the Supreme Court have stated that all have limitations, especially when the cost is innocent human lives. I wrote:

I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of me but I am going to be blunt as hell about this. All the preachers of whatever church denomination who protest about their religious liberties being more important than the lives of a deadly pandemic that is blazing out of control, because governments are putting restrictions on their rights to gather are malevolent and need to be called what they are, “evil people” masquerading as saints. The Christian ones especially who claim to be “pro-life” are ministers of death who despite their pious words the the contrary. They don’t give a damn about the lives of their parishioners, those people’s families, friends, or coworkers, They have no problem using government to deny the rights of other citizens using their massed ranks of highly paid and funded lawyers and legal organizations, but want the government to support them with financial hand outs, while fighting against the civil rights of people whose lifestyles, genders, politics, religion, or even race and ethnicity that they hate. They do this for the sake of their political power, to turn the government into a wretched theocracy so they can persecute who they will, when they want to using the police power of the government. I will fight these ministers of death to the death. They eschew reason, science, and facts to claim that they are being persecuted. Well friends, there is religious persecution going on in this country, but it is the radical, politically motivated, and well off Christian Conservatives that are doing it. I will fight them because I believe in true freedom of religion, not their right to subjugate others like previous Christian leaders did from Constantine on. I also believe in the Gospel that they so blatantly deny with their actions. I close with this: “As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.” Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) Inherit the Wind.

By the way if you do not like it, don’t even try to engage me on it here. Too many people are dying because they went to church and spread the virus. Those churches are referred to as “super spreaders” because even the ones who supposedly were practicing social distancing and wearing masks were letting their choirs sing, and not enforcing masks, even if they limited numbers. I say these hard words because I give a damn about human lives, and place them above the right to gather inside a church and spread a killer disease, and I say the hell with anyone who values their right to gather unsafely, not just in church but anywhere, and bring sickness and death to others. However, I hold religious leaders, especially Christians that claim to be “pro-life” to a much higher standard.

I hate to say it but I will say that these Christian Theocrats who like a religious cult support a man whose words say that he is their “chosen one” but in his life and action shows him to be nothing more than a tinhorn wannabe dictator with no respect for the Christian Faith or religious liberty. The fact is that he realizes that gullible Christians whose only concern is taking over the government to establish a theocracy where they make the laws and heretics, dissenters, and skeptics who refuse to two their line are targets for retaliation, the Constitution, Declaration, and Message of Jesus be damned. If there is any threat to liberty or religious liberties in particular, they are at the center of it.

As Spencer Tracy playing Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind, the fictional version of Clarence Darrow during the Scopes Monkey Trial said: “As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.”

As far as these supposed defenders of religious liberty are concerned I also say the hell with them. That may seem harsh but if the God they supposedly represent takes his or her theology lessons from them, I need a set of asbestos water skis for my eternal vacation on the Lake of Fire. But as Henry Drummond said, said: “As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.”

So until tomorrow,

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as Christian theocrats, clarence darrow, Coronavirus 19, COVID19, cross of gold speech, donald Trump cult, henry drummond, Higher standards, inherit the wind, president donald trump, pro-life christians, spencer tracy, williams Jennings bryant

July 7, 2020 · 19:19

Thinking historically about Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech | the way of improvement leads home

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

This is a post from historian John Fea’s blog which is well worth the read.

Peace and blessings,

Steve

A lot of conservatives liked Trump’s speech on Friday night. I am told that The Wall Street Journal gave it a positive review. I commented on the speech here, but I thought I would say a few more things about Trump’s use of history. My comments are in bold. THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much. …
— Read on thewayofimprovement.com/2020/07/07/thinking-historically-about-trumps-mount-rushmore-speech/

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Tagged as History, president donald trump

June 28, 2020 · 11:51

Now or Never the Choice Between Freedom and Tyranny in the Last Months of Trump’s Regime

359212-1081074754-stauffenberg-nazi-germany-stauffenberg-demotivational-poster-1236884536

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today will be another day of working around the house to get it ready for our new puppy, which is also mid-COVID 19 belated spring cleaning. It’s going to be a full day of work.

This is an article about resisters and those that revisited the evil of the Nazi State. Many of these men and women sacrificed their lives in their efforts to resist Hitler. They included university students, military officers, civil servants, clerics, and ordinary citizens. This was part one of a series that I never completed. Over the next few weeks I will complete the series, after I finish my book.

Let me make it clear, despite the President’s despotic and narcissistic actions which have been so harmful to so many Americans, and which threaten the stability of the world and could end up in war; we are not living in 1930s Germany, and Trump is not Hitler. At the same time there are many troubling parallels. In my opinion it would not take much to bring us to a similar point, especially as the President doubles down on intentionally racist, sexist, and simply inhuman and cruel words, policies, and actions in the midst of a pandemic, an economic meltdown, and crashing poll numbers leading up to the November elections.

One wonders because on March 14th he said: “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,” then during the protests of the death of George Floyd he attempted to do just that in Washington D.C.

These are very dangerous times.

They are known and unknown but all resisted tyrants and all have become inspirational figures in my life. They are men and women, and many are soldiers or clergy, while others were civil rights leaders. Most were advocates of non-violence, but some due to the incredibly evil nature of the regime under which they lived and served resorted to violence. But all show me and I hope will show you that the path of resistance is not futile.

The problem is that far too many people become discouraged the longer the struggle lasts and end up accommodating themselves to the evil regimes under which they lived. That will probably be the experience of those who struggle against tyranny around the world today as authoritarianism under many guises becomes more entrenched. It is a world wide phenomena but if the classic understanding of democratic liberalism advocated by so many including the founders of the United States is to survive, authoritarians and their tyrannical worldview must be resisted.

Sophie Scholl, a young student at the University of Munich wrote:

“I’ve been thinking of a story from the Old Testament: Moses stood all day and all night with outstretched arms, praying to God for victory. And whenever he let down his arms, the enemy prevailed over the children of Israel. Are there still people today who never weary of directing all their thinking and all their energy, single-heartedly, to one cause?”

That my friends is important.

Yesterday, July 20th was the 74th anniversary of Operation Valkyrie, the attempt of conservative German military officers, diplomats, and others to kill Hitler and end the tyrannical and genocidal Nazi regime. Among the men who died in that attempt were Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, General Henning von Trescow, General Ludwig Beck, Lieutenant Colonel Mertz von Quirnheim, and General Friedrich Olbricht. Others were implicated and were murdered after kangaroo court proceedings at the hand of the Volksgericht, the “People’s Court” headed by Roland Freisler. Among them was Field Marshal Erich von Witzleben. While Freisler hounded and tried to humiliate him Witzleben remained calm and announced to the court:

“You may hand us over to the executioner, but in three months’ time, the disgusted and harried people will bring you to book and drag you alive through the dirt in the streets!”

General Henning von Tresckow

“We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.” He also wrote: “I cannot understand how people can still call themselves Christians and not be furious adversaries of Hitler’s regime.” When the attempt failed von Trescow was serving on the Russian front far away from Berlin. To avoid arrest and the possibility that under torture he could implicate others or cause harm to his wife and children von Trescow killed himself. Another participant wrote that before his death von Trescow said:

“The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in few hours’ time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler. God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if only ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope for our sake God will not destroy Germany. No one among us can complain about dying, for whoever joined our ranks put on the shirt of Nessus. A man’s moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give his life in defense of his convictions.”

Ludwig Beck

General Ludwig Beck

Beck, who had resigned his post as commander of the German Army in protest of the planned invasion of Czechoslovakia wrote something that has become a key part of my military and personal ethic: “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.”

Tresckow, a committed Christian also noted of Hitler’s supposedly Christian supporters: “I cannot understand how people can still call themselves Christians and not be furious adversaries of Hitler’s regime.”

220px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1979-013-43,_Wilhelm_Canaris

Admiral Wilhelm Canaris

There were other Christian resisters of the Hitler regime. Hans Oster was the son of a pastor and one of the senior officers in the Abwehr, the German military intelligence. His boss, Admiral Wihelm Canaris was also a resister. Both would be executed on the personal order of Hitler in April 1945 along with Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, all had been arrested for their involvement in anti-Hitler activities. For his part Canaris would note something that military, intelligence, or police officials who might be tempted to excuse the actions of modern day tyrants or would be authoritarians:

“One day the world will hold the Wehrmacht responsible for these methods since these things are taking place under its nose.”

bonhoeffer-prison2

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Pastor Bonhoeffer who died with Oster and Canaris at Flossenburg wrote:

hermann maas

Hermann Maas

Hermann Maas, another Lutheran pastor made his mark by speaking out in defense of Jews and Socialists. He angered the German political right including the Nazis by doing so. He aided Jews and other non-Aryans to escape Germany, and cared for the elderly Jews who could not. He was removed from his pastorate and imprisoned. He survived the war and would be the first German recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. Maas discussed the responsibility of all Germans for the crimes of Hitler and the Nazis, something that Christians and others in nations like the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America that are threatened by authoritarian leaders and racist regimes:

“Every German bears responsibility for Germany no matter who he is or where he stands, in the homeland or abroad, in public and at home. No one can absolve him of this responsibility. He can transfer it to no one.”

Sophie Scholl

But these men were not the only opponents of the Nazi regime. A young woman, a student at the University of Munich named Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were at the center of an anti-Nazi resistance called the White Rose. They published and distributed a number of anti-Nazi leaflets and were caught doing so in early 1943.

One of those pamphlets noted:

“Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be “governed” without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes – crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure – reach the light of day?

If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order in history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other God’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass – then, yes, they deserve their downfall.

Goethe speaks of the Germans as a tragic people, like the Jews and the Greeks, but today it would appear rather that they are a spineless, will-less herd of hangers-on, who now – the marrow sucked out of their bones, robbed of their center of stability – are waiting to be hounded to their destruction. So it seems – but it is not so. Rather, by means of a gradual, treacherous, systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual prison. Only now, finding himself lying in fetters, has he become aware of his fate.

Only a few recognized the threat of ruin, and the reward for their heroic warning was death. We will have more to say about the fate of these persons. If everyone waits until the other man makes a start, the messengers of avenging Nemesis will come steadily closer; then even the last victim will have been cast senselessly into the maw of the insatiable demon.

Therefore every individual, conscious of his responsibility as a member of Christian and Western civilization, must defend himself against the scourges of mankind, against fascism and any similar system of totalitarianism. Offer passive resistance – resistance – wherever you may be, forestall the spread of this atheistic war machine before it is too late, before the last cities, like Cologne, have been reduced to rubble, and before the nation’s last young man has given his blood on some battlefield for the hubris of a sub-human. Do not forget that every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure.”

She wrote:

“It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

I think of all of these people that I admire young Sophie Scholl the most. She had no power. She was not an officer, a government official, a businessman, or a pastor. She was simply a young woman who was informed by her faith and her concern for basic human morality and ethics.

While the Nazi State was consumed by the flames of Hitler’s Götterdämmerung, the lives and message of those few who resisted still redounds to us today. And yes, in comparison to the majority of Germans of the Hitler era, they were a tiny minority, Of over 2000 German General and Flag officers a mere 22 were involved in anti-Nazi activities and the same is true for most professions in the Third Reich.

Milton Mayer wrote the words of a German University Professor and colleague after the war was over. The professor was reflecting on how people ended up going along with the Nazi regime. Mayer wrote his friends words:

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

“You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

“Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

“What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know.”

I think this is something for every American to ponder in the age of Trump.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under christian life, civil rights, ethics, faith, germany, History, laws and legislation, Military, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary, racism

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