When I was a boy, I developed a keen interest in World War II history, particularly the European theater. The unparalleled scale and drama of that tumultuous time captivated me. I can remember as a fourth grader purposefully seeking out every book on the subject made available in the public and school libraries and absorbing them with an intensity that certainly would have served me well were I to have applied it to the areas of study that were actually assigned to me in those early days. This infatuation grew over time and blossomed into a deep, relentless sort of fascination that has held sway to this very day.
I often wondered what it must have been like to live in Germany in the 1930s during the ascent of the political savior Adolf Hitler. I pondered the dire economic situation, the crushed national pride, and the desperate longing for restoration to greatness that had permeated the nation’s psyche and paved the way for its enthusiastic embrace of a messiah. How wonderful must it have been to see one’s cherished homeland redeemed and restored to prominence all through the iron will and masterful execution of one great man!
I also found it intriguing to imagine what life might have been like on the allied side of the fence in late 1941 and early 1942 as the black forces of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were on the march with the wind at their backs. Nation after nation had fallen under the relentlessly advancing jackboot of fascism in Europe and it surely must have seemed then as though the ultimate victory of evil was something frighteningly close to inevitable. The world was coming to an end.
What must it have been like to awake from this horror having achieved what once seemed to be an impossible triumph over evil only to find the ensuing rapture and thrill of victory so profoundly tainted by the unfathomable revelations that were to follow? Those first post-war glimpses into the minds and souls of brothers and sisters in the Third Reich must surely have inspired a dread on par with and quite possibly worse than the nightmarish prospect that had loomed over the collective consciousness of the allied powers during the darkest nights of 1941.
In reading of and grappling with these heavy things, two predictable, recurring questions perplexed me to a point so far beyond frustration that I resigned myself at an early age to the notion that these answers were simply not to be known. They were not to be had. These were sure to be eternal mysteries for any rational mind, since to believe otherwise would be to acknowledge a logic or sensibility of some sort that would or could somehow make sense of it all and therefore bring to the table a form of justifying rationale.
Yet this resignation could not silence the questions.
How?
Why?
How could such a thing as Hitler’s Nazism rise to dominance in a once Christian nation on the very cutting edge of civilization?
Why would an imminently rational, scientifically inclined people come to embrace a worldview so overtly evil and utterly devoid of positive philosophical substance?
How could a people so renowned for their intellect and work ethic find themselves so completely enslaved to group-think and plunged into oblivion?
Why did sharp minded men become programmable lemmings?
How did the purpose of life come to require the pursuit of death?
Why did the most vile and vulgar sorts of evil become such beautiful things?
How?
Why?
These are questions that I contemplated over and again in endless forms for many years. These are questions that I no longer ask.
As a man now in my thirties, I have no need for them. At long last, I have found the answers.
The people of Martin Luther’s Reformation became the nation of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich in much the same way that the people of the American Revolution have become the nation of Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can [insert whatever you like here]!”
Today holds all of the answers to what I once considered the dark mystery of history that was Nazi Germany.
I now know how it is that a nation flush with pride over its technological advancement and material accomplishment can enthusiastically surrender its humanity for the sake of bettering mankind. I now know that it is a relatively simple and easy thing to define the inconvenient or unattractive life out of existence figuratively and rhetorically so that it might one day be done away with literally. I now know that a nation that is Christian in name only is no farther from hellish barbarism than that which openly professes allegiance to a pagan god or no god at all.
The reason for these once illusory keys coming into focus and grasp is perhaps the most terrifying part of it all, in that the reason is reasonable.
It is logical.
It makes sense.
Perfect sense.
However impossible this may have seemed in my youth, I now know that the paths of historic Germany and contemporary America are founded on a solid, clear and powerful line of logic. It all begins with one simple, all-encompassing and worldview defining principle:
There is no God.
If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It’ll either be megalomania or erotomania; the drive for power or the drive for pleasure.
Malcolm Muggeridge
____________________
See also: “Embrace the Marxist Rebellion Against God? YES! WE! CAN!”
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We are not a Christian Nation Read when your ready we been lied to our whole life http://www.smu.edu/News/2010/edward-countryman-au…
History is Powerful
Why the Christian Right Distorts History and Why it Matters
By Frederick Clarkson
The Public Eye Magazine – Spring 2007
The notion that America was founded as a Christian nation is a central animating element of the ideology of the Christian Right. It touches every aspect of life and culture in this, one of the most successful and powerful political movements in American history. The idea that America's supposed Christian identity has somehow been wrongly taken, and must somehow be restored, permeates the psychology and vision of the entire movement. No understanding of the Christian Right is remotely adequate without this foundational concept.
But the Christian nationalist narrative has a fatal flaw: it is based on revisionist history that does not stand up under scrutiny. The bad news is that to true believers, it does not have to stand up to the facts of history to be a powerful and animating part of the once and future Christian nation. Indeed, through a growing cottage industry of Christian revisionist books and lectures now dominating the curricula of home schools and many private Christian academies, Christian nationalism becomes a central feature of the political identity of children growing up in the movement. The contest for control of the narrative of American history is well underway.
History is powerful. That's why it is important for the rest of society not only to recognize the role of creeping Christian historical revisionism, but our need to craft a compelling and shared story of American history, particularly as it relates to the role of religion and society. We need it in order to know not how the religious Right is wrong, but to know where we ourselves stand in the light of history, in relation to each other, and how we can better envision a future together free of religious prejudice, and ultimately, religious warfare.
We've seen how religious beliefs (and other ideologies) inspire people to view others as subhuman, deviant, and deserving of whatever happens to them, including death. It is the stuff of persecution, pogroms, and warfare. The framers of the U.S. Constitution struggled with how to inoculate the new nation against these ills, and in many respects, the struggle continues today. The story goes that when Benjamin Franklin, a hometown delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, emerged from the proceedings, people asked him what happened. His famous answer was "You have a republic, if you can keep it." To "keep it" in our time, we must appreciate the threat and dynamics of Christian nationalism, and the underlying historical revisionism that supports it. Then we can develop ways to counter it.
Meanwhile, the historical revisionist narrative has been fully integrated into the "biblical worldview" of a wide theological and political spectrum of the Christian Right. Christian nationalists include such familiar figures as Left Behind novelist Tim LaHaye, as well as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy and James Dobson, and the late theologian R.J. Rushdoony.
Indeed, the general approach Rushdoony outlined has become widely accepted among Christian nationalists, specifically that God actively intervenes in and guides history, and that God's role can be retroactively discerned, from creation to the predestined Kingdom of God on Earth. Historical events described as "God's providence" are then interpreted in terms of what God must have been up to. This is how Rushdoony arrives at what he called Christian history, based on "Christian revisionism."1
Here are a few examples of how Christian nationalism and revisionism permeate the Christian Right and affect American political life. They should lend a sense of urgency to the project of contending for the story of the origins of American democracy and the rights of individual conscience.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Schopenhauer
Why use Germany at all. There should be references to the USA and it's history of putting Native Americans on reservations, it's shameful history of slavery, keeping women from voting, jim crow, etc. All of the aforementioned were wrong then. Thank God for the Christians who had the adaucity to step in and do what God wants us to do-"love ye one another".
I don't understand exactly how you tie in god with your complaints against the Obama administration.
I can see how you could link Obama and Hitler, through their mutual ascensions as cults of personalities, but that's where it ends. Hitler created a party, he completely restructured the German parliament, and permanently instated himself as supreme ruler within his first years as chancellor.
Obama is using the system we currently use, to address many of the issues that have arisen from said system. Such as ZERO accountability in our financial sector, and absolutely disgraceful amounts of our population that are without healthcare.
Personally, i don't see god as having much to do with anything in our political process, but i would be interested to see exactly where his influences have been in the past, and where they should be in the future.
This post was excellent! I have studied the Third Reich and the holcaust for over thirty years now and everything you have said is right on! Most American Christians don't understand the role of the Lutheran church (except the few in the Confessing Movement) in Germany in the early 20th century. It had gotten so liberal and anti-semitic that by the time of Hitler's ascent, it would embrace anything. With this in mind, check out the emergent movement and tell me they aren't doing the very same thing.
Big Government (read the governments of men) has been trying to replace the Living God for the last 6000 years. Of course this has something to do with Satan and the fallen nature of man.
In the Western world there has been a great falling away from the true faith in Christ Jesus mainly since the end of World WarII.
What we see now are the death throes of the governments of men and Satans last assualt on Gods people.
The times of the Gentile nations are over.
Pray for the Body and Bride of Christ to come to it's full preparation for His coming. There is a new Government forming on Earth and a righteous one that will last forever. God bless you all.
FBC, I don't know whether to laugh, applaud or cry out loud. Your post, your name and your premise are both refreshing and yet depressing.
I see the same correlations, yet there are so few that can see it: we are diving head first without a parachute into the collapse of all that is great about America to pursue a repeat of all that has been failure ever so many times in the past.
God, be merciful to us – a sinful nation.
LeapingBuck
Looking forward to following you, firebreathingchristian. I am beyond fatigue with those pursuing global governance and timid so-termed 'christians' who can muster no response to the rapidly advancing darkness. Darkness, in all its expressions, must be called out. The body of Christ at large is woefully ignorant of prophecy. All but a remnant have a clue. Go forward, my brother. May the Lord bless your endeavor.
Sorry, must correct my own comment. NONE, but a remnant have a clue. Should proof-read before I post.
One thing that I think folks need to understand also is African Socialism. And how Socialism itself in all forms ends up devaluing human beings instead of doing what it claims it wants to do as far as humaneness goes.
It's more than just Hitler-esque build up and destruction.
Fire Breather, your piece is more a provocation than an argument. But this turns out to be fortunate for you, since your arguments fail miserably. Unfortunately for you, another artless reductio ad Hitlerum may appeal to the emotions of some, but it won't bring you any closer to observable truth.
You take a dozen paragraphs to restate Woody Allen's famous syllogism: “Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates.” But I'm guessing you don't know what a syllogism is, otherwise you would have recognized it in your "essay".
In the unlikely event you should become interested in observable truth, I'll leave you with something to think about. Historian Robert Paxton's definition of fascism:
"a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
By this definition, your ideas are closer to Naziism than those of atheists.
Simiotexter, you have actually MADE FBC's argument. The definition of Fascism you have listed is exactly the culture of the Bill Ayers society of mentors behind the "Fearless Leader" known as President Obama.
We are abandoning individual liberties and personal responsibility to give the state control over failed businesses which the state will develop into monopolistic enterprises propped up by legislation.
If community deline and victimhood, with compensatory cults of unity and a mass-based party of the committed militants do not define the beliefs and support structure of this current government, then no one can ever be defined that way.
Do you really feel this way? I will pray for you everyday so you can see the truth as it is.
I am a FIRST GENERATION AMERICAN. My parents and grandparents came to the U.S. in the 1940's to escape communism in Yugoslavia. My mother, who is now in her 70's, knows what it's like to have the government take your home and kill family members for their christian beliefs. As a child, my mother escaped overhead planes shooting down at her. She lived in a deportation camp with some family members for three years. It was because of her "strong Christian" beliefs that she is alive today.
My parents taught me to respect God, life and eachother. I thank both my parents for instilling the importance of values and morals. Todays society seems to be GREATLY lacking both of these. I have never, nor will I ever, try to impose my religious beliefs onto others. IN RETURN, I ask non-believers to do the same.
It is an individuals choice to believe or not to believe in a greater being. (I'm sorry, but Pres. Obama is by no means this being). I respect all religions, but I do not respect anyone who tries to force their beliefs onto me. Liberals seem to have one agenda, and that is to degrade, put down and criticize anyone who is a conservative. (I am not a racist, nor a homophobe — to each his own. But, GOVERNMENT DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO IMPOSE another person's beliefs onto other free-thinking Americans). I AM AN AMERICAN, WHO HAS BEEN BORN WITH THE RIGHTS TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
GOD BLESS AMERICA!!
I will oppose you with Christ's love as my strength and guide.
BigSlick
Scott Alan Buss,
Shame on you.
Your comparisons of the POTUS to Hitler, of the USA to Nazi Germany, they are somewhat intriguing but they are distorted summaries of history coupled to an assumptive prediction of the future.
To be honest, Bush's actions post-9/11 are a much better simile to the rise of Nazism — but the strength of the USA is that our Founding Fathers handed down a Constitution that provides a balance that the Germans never had. The swing back to the left — the conscious choice of this Great Nation the United States of America – has resulted in President Obama's election. The move to the left that you fear and hate so much in your blog here and Free Republic posts is actually the salvation of our Nation. Obama is not the Messiah. But Obama's leadership IS exactly the instrument by which we have been pulled back from the brink of Totalitarianism orchestrated by the Right Wing fascist credo of Bush/Cheney.
I can sympathize and pray that the hate that drives you today to call for revolution and killing of your political opponents is replaced by love for your fellow human beings — the true love of Christ.
But as long as you advocate murder and revolution as vehicles to promote your theo-political agenda, I will oppose you.
Keep up the good work, studying history that is, mid thirties you said, reading WWII since 4th grade. Please keep reading more before you theorize, I also have been reading same subject since 5th grade, I am now 59 years old and did not get a thorough, somewhat, understanding until late 40’s. Hitler did promise a Jew free Europe to his German Christians in 1945, if you know German it will help you to better understand 1940’s Germany. You will know what he is saying in his speeches and not relying on bias translators. How, why, did Hitler align with Mussolini, catholic and not with Stalin, atheist. We generally do not follow the historic theologians of 30 something’s; perhaps this is an insight for you. Please never know the Why or How, that justifies the end to the learning process. Keep reading is all I am saying, you can never know too much.
Howdy Dan and thanks for the thoughtful comments.
Just a few quick points as I prep to head to the park…
1) Claiming Catholicism (or Christianity) hardly makes one a Catholic. Mussolini clearly was not a Christian in any genuine sense.
2) I did study German for years and so far have not found any problems with bias in translations that would somehow compromise any of the points made in my piece, though I am always open to correction. Please feel free to post your views in detail along with references and I will have a look when time permits.
Thanks again, Dan! Your interest and, more importantly, your willingness to read, study and learn, is an inspiration!
Have a good one!
Best,
Scott
Many so-called athiests come to a different oppinion on thier deathbeads.
Unfortunatley by then its too late !??!
But as most of us know our God is a forgiving God and will forgive even the most foolish of humanites flaws…
God certainly can and does claim whomever He wishes whenever He wishes. His grace is not bound by human hands.
Thanks for the cool thoughts, dontbefoolish, and have a good evening!
Yea, Matt. They're SOOOO happy in China and North Korea. Get a clue.
Mike, instead of being cursed with BDS, step back carefully from your keyboard, and read up on Facism so you won't sound like a fool. I'm only trying to help you here. Bush was not a Facist, nor is Obama. The two of them are more Statist than anything else, Obama more so than Bush. Bush expanded Government, and Obama is going further. Maybe it's a waste of time, but it's worth it if it can help those like you to wake up. Big Government is NO ONE'S friend. It exists only for more power. As long as Democrats and Republicans in Congress continue to ignore the Constitution, the whole country is at risk. Wake up.
Yes, if only we could all be eating the bark off of trees in order to "exist", a la those blessed North Koreans…
Excellent post. Thank God for all the Grammas and Grampas out there still praying for our country and all the spiritually blind. Keep the faith.
Thank you so much for the kind words, ravenwing!
Keep fighting the good fight!
We just got rid of the biggest facist the US has ever had, bumbling Bush. Thank God for Obama.
Yes, Thank God for Obama.
He will do more to destroy American Statism (which is very, very Nazi-like in many of the most profound ways possible) than any conservative opponent currently on the scene.
Soli Deo gloria and woohoo!
I am so tired of hearing this excuse from people defending Obama. And I'm not gonna say Bush was a good President he wasn't plain and simple Ronald Reagan he is not. People like to blame the economy on Bush….. Lets dig a little deeper and look to Clinton and a little thing he pushed Thu in his last days in office called..NAFTA this is what sent all of our work and jobs overseas. Thanks Bill. And lets look to another fact the national debt has doubled no tripled in 8 months. Can you defend that I wonder? Maybe change the subject which is the plan of the day for most latly… Sad but true..
What is wrong with a godless nation? The most godless countries on the planet are also the happiest, have the lowest crime rates and pretty well beat the pants off the US in every measurable field.
I hope we get a godless nation ASAP but Obama is more of your friend than you realize on that front.
Hey there Matt,
Thanks for the heads-up!
With what you said being trut, you should be able to provide for us a short list of nations that are godless and "beat the pants off the US in every measurable field".
I really look forward to seeing that one…and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.
Have a good one, Matt, and enjoy the unique beauty that is the United States of America.
Best,
Scott
Well said. It's the old saying, "It can't happen here". Simply put, too many have failed to study the past, much less learn from it. The wheel turns once more, yet few have the vision, or the interest, to see it. I'm quite glad that I stumbled upon your site.
Thank you Billiam,
I am honored and grateful to have made this connection with you as well. Nothing happens by accident! (God is cool that way.)
Have a great labor Day!
S