Would I have been a Nazi?
I was reminded of this by a story in the Washington Free Beacon regarding Gen, John Kelly, who will likely be our next Secretary of Homeland Security, and his "troubling quote":
“Their struggle is your struggle,” Kelly said, according to a video of his remarks. “They disdain those who claim to support them but not the cause that takes their innocence, their limbs, and their lives. As a democracy … we must support them. I know it doesn’t apply to anyone in this room today, but if anyone thinks you can somehow thank them for their service, and not support the cause for which they fight–our country–then these people are lying to themselves and rationalizing away something in their own lives, but, more importantly, they are slighting our warriors and mocking their commitment to this nation.”Gen. Kelly, it is noted, made this speech four days after his Marine officer son Robert was killed in action in Afghanistan.
In the United States of America everyone, under the law, is entitled to criticize, belittle and/or savage the government in pretty much any terms they desire, as long as they don't advocate assassination or something similar. There's no requirement to "support" the government--and you'll notice Gen. Kelly wasn't calling for any such thing; he states that "these people are lying to themselves and rationalizing away something in their own lives, but, more importantly, they are slighting our warriors and mocking their commitment to this nation." He does not demand that they be fired from their jobs, that their children be seized by the state, that they be banned from Facebook and Twitter, unlike "liberals" do with "racists."
By now you may be asking, and rightly so, what this has to do with Nazis?
I have always felt a primal urge to support the United States in what it does, ever since I was a young boy and the nation was involved in the Vietnam War. In 2001 and after I believed that almost anything was proper in attempting to locate and destroy our enemies. Now, 15 years later, a cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis might well say that the wars weren't "worth it," though that all depends on what you assess to be the current and future benefits. Anyway, the General's statement brought me back to a question I've pondered occasionally over the years:
Would I have been a Nazi?
It happens that I have read very extensively about the history of the 20th century, of the World Wars I and II, and the biographies of every major figure, from Bismarck to Churchill, Hitler, Eisenhower, Patton, Marshall, Rommel, and many others. I know a good deal about the era, the mood, the headlines, the zeitgeist.
I imagine myself a boy, perhaps born in the dismembered Germany of 1920 after my father had returned from the Front, my mother grateful that he hadn't been dismembered like her cousin or killed at the Marne like her best friend's husband. I imagine reading the headlines of the newspapers in the late '20s as I become interested in politics and government. I imagine the street battles between the Communists and the National Socialists. I imagine the sudden shock of the Depression and the rapid unraveling of whatever prosperity had slowly returned as I grew. I imagine Hitler being raised to the Chancellorship, the series of diplomatic successes and sudden reoccupation of the Rhineland.
What to make of it? I am German. Perhaps I'm Catholic, as I am now today in "real life." In Spain, Catholics are being killed by the thousands by the socialists, statutes of Christ battered with artillery, priests shot in the face, nuns raped...of course I support Franco! One occasionally hears about how the government has been rounding up traitors and spies--of course that's necessary. I've been in German schools all my life. Do I join the National Socialist Party Youth group? Perhaps. My parents are Christian people and they have some reservations about what's happening to the nation, but I'm sure I know better about the kind of future the Greatest Race the planet has ever seen is building...perhaps I don't actually join the Party, but as soon as I'm of age I join the Werhrmacht and fight for my family, my nation, my soul, my blood...
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I come back to Present Day, all these years later. My goodness, Nazis are surely the worst people ever, racist/sexist/antisemitic/homophobes who killed tens of millions. And most especially, xenophobic. Word of the Year, 2016!
Anyone who wants to stop the flood of Muslims into the nation is literally Hitler! I am of course, not like that. It's troubling that a General says you can't "support the troops" without supporting the nation. I've been in American schools all my life, and as I've been reminded a thousand times by school teachers and leftist, peace-loving professors, dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
I'm quite smug that given my current superior education/programming, I would never be a Nazi. I never would have believed anything like that.
It's [Current Year], people. We're better than that. Now.
To be clear the Nazi's were National SOCIALISTS. They were so far left they've been called right wing. Or perhaps more reinterpretation of history?
ReplyDeleteAs for supporting the country that is not entirely correct. The oath of enlistment is to 'uphold and defend the Constitution'. A small but very real and defining difference. One may defend and support the Constitution without supporting the country. Ask any Johnny Reb.
I've read a few first-person accounts of German guys who joined the Wehrmacht. One pair were just kids on the farm who wanted some adventure. All were patriots. Marie Vassiltchikov's Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945 is a great account of wartime Germany and it's crystal clear that there were many Germans who were not Nazis either in the actual sense or in the distorted American movie sense. There is a decades-long, dishonest effort to portray Germans as Nazis and complicit and morally debased to a man but to ignore the crimes of the left, astronomically worse than those of the Nazis.
ReplyDeleteIt's a given that most people will rise to defend their country. Even in our own time of alternate media, it's often hard to discern the truth of any matter.
A more useful inquiry is to examine all human behavior and draw useful lessons therefrom about the danger of untrammeled state power. Those who demonize one particular people conceal the useful lessons of existence.
In our idiotic, befuddled, sappy times we also see the reverse -- the adulation of Muslims and blacks as mankind's perfect persons.
Nothing critical in this, in case it's not clear.
Anonymous, those who say traveling far to the left is to meet up with the far right are wrong. It's a sloppy concept (which you did not state was your own view).
ReplyDeleteIf one is an ultra-leftists, one believes in total state power untrammeled by law or custom. Everything is for the state.
To travel far to the right is to enter territory inhabited by people who have no use for, or are deeply distrustful of, the state who would rather govern their affairs by affirming liberty as the highest good limited only by the so-called non-aggression principle or the minimum numbers of laws possible.
"A more useful inquiry is to examine all human behavior and draw useful lessons therefrom about the danger of untrammeled state power. Those who demonize one particular people conceal the useful lessons of existence."
ReplyDeleteWell put Sir. Thank you for the feedback as I find my way around here.
My pleasure. I look forward to more of your posts.
ReplyDeleteWere dissent the highest form of patriotism, traitorousness would also be the highest (de)form of patriotism.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
ReplyDelete'Are we the Baddies?' Mitchell and Webb Funny Nazi Sketch.