Debunking The Political Myth That America is Responsible For Creating Israel

It’s fascinating when true history peels away the traditions and lies that build a belief system.

Here’s some true history about the creation of the state of Israel, debunking the myths about everything from who supported it’s establishment, to why Israel is used as a crutch to denounce America by both Jihadists and self-loathing Americans.

The Most Widely Believed Political Myth

by Norman Berdichevsky (Dec. 2007)

Having just taught a course on the Cultural Geography of the Middle East at a community college in Florida for “seniors” (over 55 years of age), I again encountered a unanimous belief among my students in what I would call the Most Widely Believed Myth of the political and military conflict between Israel and the Arabs. This universal belief, never challenged by the media, is that the United States was wholly or largely responsible for fully supporting Israel on the ground from the very beginning of its independence in May, 1948.

The world has been inundated with a tsunami of Arab propaganda and crocodile tears shed for the “Palestinians” who have reveled in what they refer to as their Catastrophe or Holocaust (“Nabka” in Arabic). Their plight has been accompanied by unremitting criticism that the United States was the principal architect that stood behind Israel from the very beginning with money, manpower and arms. The fact is that President Truman eventually decided against the pro-Arab “professional opinion” of his Secretary of State, General George Marshall and the Arabists of the State Department. He accorded diplomatic recognition to the new Jewish state but never considered active military aid. His own memoirs recall how he felt betrayed by State Department officials and the American U.N. Ambassador, Warren Austin who pulled the rug out from under him one day after he promised Zionist leader Chaim Weitzman support for partition.

American Jewish voting in the 1948 Presidential election leaned heavily for President Truman but also cast a substantial number of votes for third party “Progressive” leader Henry Wallace who had spoken out even more strongly on behalf of American support for the Zionist position and aid to Israel. It was actually not until the administration of President John Kennedy in the early 1960s that American arms shipments were made to Israel.

Soviet Diplomatic Support

The struggle of the Jewish community in Palestine was endorsed completely by what was then called “enlightened public opinion,” above all by the political Left. Andrei Gromyko, at the UN, asserted the right of “the Jews of the whole world to the creation of a state of their own”, something no official of the U.S. State Department has ever acknowledged. Soviet support in the U.N. for partition brought along an additional two votes (the Ukrainian and Bielorussian Republics within the USSR and the entire Soviet dominated block of East European states. Taking (as always) their lead from Moscow, the (hitherto anti-Zionist) Palestinian communist organizations merged their separate Arab and Jewish divisions in October, 1948, giving unconditional support to the Israeli war effort and urging the Israel Defense Forces to “drive on toward the Suez Canal and hand British Imperialism a stinging defeat”!

World Wide Support from the Left

The most famous and colorful personality of the Spanish Republic in exile, the Basque delegate to the Cortes (Spanish Parliament), Dolores Ibarruri, who had gone to the Soviet Union, issued a proclamation in 1948 saluting the new State of Israel and comparing the invading Arab armies to the Fascist uprising that had destroyed the Republic. Just a few months earlier, the hero of the American Left, the great Afro-American folk singer, Paul Robeson had sung in a gala concert in Moscow and electrified the crowd with his rendition of the Yiddish Partisan Fighters Song.

Jewish Attempts to Buy Arms and Czech Approval

The major Arab armies who invaded the newly born Jewish state were British led, equipped, trained and supplied. The Syrian army was French-equipped and had taken orders from the Vichy government in resisting the British led invasion of the country assisted by Australian troops, Free French units and Palestinian-Jewish volunteer forces in 1941. In their War of Independence, the Israelis depended on smuggled weapons from the West and Soviet and Czech weapons.

The leaders of the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine), already in the summer of 1947, intended to purchase arms and sent Dr. Moshe Sneh (the Chief of the European Branch of the Jewish Agency, a leading member of the centrist General Zionist Party who later moved far leftward and became head of the Israeli Communist Party) to Prague in order to improve Jewish defenses. He was surprised by the sympathy towards Zionism and by the interest in arms export on the side of the Czech Government. Sneh met with the Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Clementis, who succeeded the non-Communist and definitely pro-Zionist Jan Masaryk. Sneh and Clementis discussed the possibility of Czech arms provisions for the Jewish state and the Czechs gave their approval,

In January, 1948 Jewish representatives were sent by Ben-Gurion to meet with General Ludvik Svoboda, the Minister of National Defense, and sign the first contract for Czech military aid. Four transport routes were used to Palestine all via Communist countries; a) the Northern route: via Poland and the Baltic Sea, b) the Southern route: via Hungary, Yugoslavia and the Adriatic Sea, c) via Hungary, Romania and the Black Sea, d) by air, via Yugoslavia to Palestine.

At first, a “Skymaster” plane chartered from the U.S. to help in ferrying weapons to Palestine from Europe was forced by the FBI to return to the USA. By the end of May the Israeli Army (IDF) had absorbed about 20,000 Czech rifles, 2,800 machine-guns and over 27 million rounds of ammunition. Two weeks later an additional 10,000 rifles, 1,800 machine-guns and 20 million rounds of ammunition arrived. One Czech-Israeli project that alarmed the Western intelligence was the, so called, Czech Brigade, a unit composed of Jewish veterans of “Free Czechoslovakia”, which fought with the British Army during WWII. The Brigade began training in August 1948 at four bases in Czechoslovakia.

Czech assistance to Israel’s military strength comprised a) small arms, b) 84 airplanes – the outdated Czech built Avia S.199s, Spitfires and Messerschmidts that played a major role in the demoralization of enemy troops; c) military training and technical maintenance. On January 7, 1949, the Israeli air-force, consisting of several Spitfires and Czech built Messerschmidt Bf-109 fighters (transferred secretly from Czech bases to Israel), shot down five British-piloted Spitfires flying for the Egyptian air-force over the Sinai desert causing a major diplomatic embarrassment for the British government. According to British reports, based on informants within the Czech Government, the total Czech dollar income from export of arms and military services to the Middle East in 1948 was over $28 million, and Israel received 85% of this amount. As late as 1951, Czech Spitfires continued to arrive in Israel by ship from the Polish port of Gydiniya-Gdansk (Danzig). Since May, 2005 the Military Museum in Prague has displayed a special exhibition on the Czech aid to Israel in 1948.

In contrast, the American State Department declared an embargo on all weapons and war material to both Jews and Arabs in Palestine, a move that only had one effect in practice. There was no Arab community in North America to speak of and given the fact that a substantial and overwhelmingly sympathetic Jewish community in the United States was anxious to aid the Jewish side, the embargo simply prevented a large part of this intended aid from reaching its destination. The small trickle of supplies and arms reaching Israel from North America was accomplished by smuggling. The U.S. vote in favor of partition was only de facto reflecting the State Department’s care not to unnecessarily offend the Arab states whereas the Soviet vote recognized Israel de jure.

Even with Czech weapons and Soviet aid, Israel would undoubtedly have been unable to halt the Arab invasion without a massive inflow of manpower. The United States, Canada and Europe provided no more than 3000 volunteers, many of them combat hardened veterans from both the European and Pacific theaters of war plus a few score idealistic youngsters from the Zionist movements with no combat experience or training. But their numbers were a drop in the bucket compared to more than 200,000 Jewish immigrants from the Soviet dominated countries in Eastern Europe, notably, Poland, Bulgaria (almost 95% of the entire Jewish community) Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the former Baltic States and even the Soviet Union who emigrated to Israel arriving in time to reach the front lines or replenish the depleted ranks of civilian manpower. Without both the arms and manpower sent from the “Socialist Camp”, to aid the nascent Israeli state, it would have been crushed.

The About-Face of The Party Line on Zionism

Jewish Marxist theoreticians the world over including several high ranking Party activists, all dedicated anti-religious and anti-Zionist communists had followed the Party Line and even praised a vicious pogrom by Muslim fanatics carried out against ultra-Orthodox Jews in the town of Hebron in Palestine in 1929. The Party Line then was that the Arabs masses were demonstrating their anti-imperialist sentiment against British rule and its sponsorship of Zionism. In 1947, when Stalin was convinced that the Zionists would evict the British from Palestine, the Party Line turned about face. Following Soviet recognition and aid to Israel in 1948-49, both the Daily Worker and the Yiddish language communist daily in the U.S. Freiheit (Freedom) outdid one another to explain the new party line in that…. “Palestine had become an important settlement of 600,000 souls, having developed a common national economy, a growing national culture and the first elements of Palestinian Jewish statehood and self-government.”

A 1947 CP-USA resolution entitled “Work Among the Jewish Masses” berated the Party’s previous stand and proclaimed that “Jewish Marxists have not always displayed a positive attitude to the rights and interests of the Jewish People, to the special needs and problems of our own American Jewish national group and to the interests and rights of the Jewish Community in Palestine”. The new reality that had been created in Palestine was a “Hebrew nation” that deserved the right to self-determination. Remarkably, the Soviet propaganda machine even praised the far Right underground groups of the Irgun and “Stern Gang” for their campaign of violence against the British authorities.

Church Support in the U.S.

The Jewish cause in Palestine enjoyed the support of a large section of mainstream and liberal Protestant churches and not primarily the “lobby” of Protestant Fundamentalists as is often portrayed today by critics of Zionism. As early as February 1941 and in spite of the wholehearted desire of the American Protestant establishment not to risk involvement in World War II, Reinhold Niebhur spoke out convincingly through the journal he founded “Christianity and Crisis” and sounded a clarion call of warning about Nazism. Its final goals were not simply the eradication of the Jews but the extirpation of Christianity and the abolition of the entire heritage of Christian and humanistic culture. This is the only kind of “World Without Zionism” that the Iranian and Arab leaders long for. Niebhur based his views not on any literal “Evangelical” interpretation of Biblical promises but the essentials of justice for the nations and also called for some form of compensation to those Arabs in Palestine who might be displaced if their own leaders refused to make any compromise possible.

Nazi and Reactionary Support for the Arabs

There was nothing “progressive” about those who supported the Arab side. The acknowledged leader of the Palestinian Arab cause was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had fled from Palestine to Iraq to exile in Berlin where he led the “Arab office,” met with Hitler whom he called “the Protector of Islam,” served the Germans in Bosnia where he was instrumental in raising Muslim volunteers among the Bosnians to work with the SS. At the end of the war, the Yugoslav government declared him a war criminal and sentenced him to death. Palestinian Arabs still regard him as their original supreme leader. Lending active support to the Arab war effort were Falangist volunteers from Franco’s Spain, Bosnian Muslims and Nazi renegades who had escaped the Allies in Europe.

The close relationship between the Nazi movement and the German government under Hitler in courting the Arab Palestinian and Pan-Arab attempt to act as Fifth column in the Middle East has been thoroughly researched by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers’ in their new book Halbmond und Hakenkreuz. Das “Dritte Reich”, die Araber und Palästina, (Crescent Moon and Swastika: The Third Reich, the Arabs, and Palestine) It was published in September, 2006 and has yet to appear in English translation. It documents the Arab sympathies for Nazism, particularly in Palestine and German attempts to mobilize and encourage the Arabs with their ideology, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, and the forces around the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, in Palestine.

Nazi radio broadcasts to the Arabs between 1939 and 1945 constantly proclaimed the natural German sympathy for the Arab cause against Zionism and the Jews. German Middle East experts stressed “the natural alliance” between National Socialism and Islam. And such experts as the former German Ambassador in Cairo, Eberhard von Stohrer, reported to Hitler in 1941 that “the Fuhrer already held an outstanding position among the Arabs because of his fight against the Jews.”

Cüppers and Mallmann quote many original documents from the Nazi archives on this close relationship. From the late 1930s, the planning staffs dealing with the external affairs of the Reich in the Head Office of Reich Security (RSHA, Reichssecuritathauptamt, originally under the monstrous Gestapo-chief Reinhard Heydrich), sought to engulf the Arabian Peninsula and win control of the region‘s oil reserves. They dreamt of a pincer movement from the north via a defeated Soviet Union, and from the south via the Near East and Persia, in order to separate Great Britain from India.

Thanks to the counteroffensive of the Red Army before Moscow in 1941/1942 and at Stalingrad in 1942/1943, and the defeat of the German Africa Corps with El Alamein, the Germans never managed to actively intervene in the Middle East militarily although they helped spark a pro-Axis coup in Baghdad in 1941.

Britain and the Abstentions

In the vote on partition in the UN, apart from the states with large Muslim minorities (like Yugoslavia and Ethiopia), the Arabs managed only to wheedle a few abstentions and one lone negative vote out of the most corrupt non-Muslim states. These included Cuba (voted against partition) and Mexico (abstained) eager to demonstrate their independence of U.S. influence and Latin American countries whose regimes had been pro-Axis until the final days of World War II such as Argentina and Chile (both abstained).

All the West European nations (except Great Britain) voted for partition as well. No other issue to come before the U.N. has had such unanimous support from the European continent or cut across the ideological divide of communist and western sectors. The Jewish state was even supported by Richard Crossman, a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine who had been handpicked by Britain’s anti-Zionist Prime Minister Ernest Bevin. Crossman, taking a principled stand, refused to endorse the Labor Party Line.

He had visited the Displaced Persons camps in Germany where Jews who had sought entry into Palestine were being detained. He realized that their sense of desperation derived from a world with no place which they as Jews could truly call home. He wrote that when he started out he was ready to believe that Palestine was the “problem,” but his experiences made him realize that it was the “solution.”

What Today’s So Called “ Progressive” Jews Have Forgotten or Ignore

Even many Jews in the Diaspora whose parents and grandparents rejoiced at the rebirth of Israel in 1948 and regarded it mystically as partial compensation for the Holocaust have been psychologically intimidated by the constant anti-Israel line of the media and of the torrent of bloody confrontations picturing enraged Muslim mobs ready for constant mayhem to avenge what they regard as the worst injustice in human history (i.e. the creation of the Jewish State rather than the failure to establish an Arab Palestinian state).

Some prominent Diaspora Jews, particularly among those who cannot escape the narcotic-like trance they have inherited as “progressives” and are essentially secular and ultra-critical of capitalism and American society with its underlying Christian values, have developed a new kind of psychological self-hatred to exhibit a disassociation from the State of Israel and their religious heritage. They are upset over the close Israeli-American friendship and outdo themselves in slanderous attacks on President Bush.

They easily see Israel’s many flaws (both real and imagined) among which, the worst is that Israel, like America is a “privileged” society enjoying wealth amidst a world of misery. They flatter themselves that they are the modern day prophets who see “the writing on the subway walls” (as Paul Simon sung). They have earned for themselves the justifiable contempt of most Israeli Jews (both religious and secular) for their moral duplicity.

As long ago as 1958 this trend was clearly seen in the interviews given by Leon Uris, the author of the best selling novel “Exodus” in explaining why he wrote the book. He had in mind successful Jewish authors such as Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Bernard Melamud whom he called “professional apologists” (for being Jews). Uris set out to tell the story of Israel’s rebirth as the story of Jewish heroes rather than the psychological analyses of individuals who grew up damning their fathers and hating their mothers and wondering why they were born.

Uris unapologetically made a pro-Israel film only a decade after every Jewish movie producer had turned down making the film “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947; starring Gregory Peck) about polite anti-Semitism. It was made into a film by the great Greek-American producer, Elia Kazan who was later turned on with vengeance for cooperating with the House un-American Activities Committee revealing communist influence in Hollywood. Uris himself has been in the front lines in Guadalcanal and Tarawa island and felt an immense respect for the Israelis who had defeated the invading Arab armies and defied the legion of pro-Arab diplomats in the British Foreign Office and the leadership of the Labor Party (a sin the British Left has never forgiven).

Today’s crowd of “progressive” Jewish actors and entertainers outdo even the writers Uris attacked fifty years ago. Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman and Richard Dreyfus are among the most visible and acidic critics of American policy in Iraq and have called for the impeachment of President Bush. They naturally proclaim themselves to be supporters of Israel without realizing how convoluted their antics appear to others.

They are sarcastically referred to by many in Israel as “beautiful souls” i.e., by those who reject their elitism of supposed high moral values so out of place in the Arab Middle East and as remote from the real world as were the great majority of the victims of the Holocaust whose Jewish values prevented them from attributing such evil to the Germans. Most of the victims of the Holocaust were as deaf and blind to the fate that awaited them as surely as today’s Hollywood “stars“ are with regard to their calls for a selective “hands-off policy” or the future consequences of a return to Ba’athist rule in Iraq, the likely outcome of their incessant calls for immediate and total withdrawal of Allied involvement.

Two of these “stars”, Streisand and Hoffman recently played the lead roles in self-mocking doubly ironic roles of a liberated Jewish couple in the comedy “Meet the Fockers”. This is a grotesque example of art imitating reality (or is it the other way round?). The couple in the film have nothing but disdain for traditional American manly heroic virtues of military valor or achievement in sports nor do they demonstrate any respect whatsoever for what were classical Jewish virtues of learning and piety. They exhibit the most crass, offensive loud and vulgar behavior constantly embarrassing their son. For them and much of the Left, the very concept of civility is regarded with contempt.

Whatever the differences between secular and religious Israelis, they pale before the monumental differences that separate life in the State of Israel with all its inherent promises, risks and dangers from the Diaspora’s ultra idealized concerns and sensibilities. This is as true today was it was in 1948. The Political Left today refuses to admit that it stood wholeheartedly behind Israel much like the exercise performed by Stalin’s staff of photographers who could surgically extract and obliterate old time Bolsheviks who had fallen out of his favor.

Convenient Amnesia

Today’s media never attempt (not even the History Channel) to explain how it was Soviet and East Block aid and not American support that was the crucial factor which brought both essential weapons and manpower to the beleaguered newborn Israeli state in 1948-49 and enabled it to turn the tide of battle and justifiably hand the Palestinian Arabs and their allies their “Nabka.” Soviet hopes that they might eventually pressure the new and profoundly democratic Israeli state to side with them in the Cold War were hopelessly naïve*. The Arabs cannot admit the truth of Soviet aid to Israel as it would rob them of their psychological advantage that they are victims who have the right to continually browbeat Western and especially American public opinion as responsible for their catastrophe. Amnesia is a common malady among politicians. Democrats and others who have soured on American intervention in Iraq now have great difficulty remembering Iraqi aggression against Iran, Kuwait and the atrocities committed against the Kurds, Assyrians, Marsh Arabs and all opponents of the regime. Even President Bush and his supporters seem to suffer from amnesia and are reluctant or incapable of setting the record straight about 1948.

* see Israel Between East and West; Israel’s Foreign Policy Orientation, 1948-56.

Uri Waller. Cambridge University. 1990. 302 pages ISBN 0521362490 Decisive Manpower Reinforcements from Eastern Europe

The Meaning of Religious Liberty

The article by Dr. Matthew Spalding speaks for itself.

The Meaning of Religious Liberty

By Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.

“America does not depend on a shared theology, but it does depend on a shared morality.”

It is often thought that religious liberty means a strict separation of church and state, but that view is out of tune with the proper understanding of the role religion and morality play in the civic and public life of a self-governing people. A more compelling model is that of America’s Founders, who advanced religious liberty in a way that would uphold religion and morality as indispensable supports of good habits, the firmest props of the duties of citizens, and the great pillars of human happiness.

Origins of Religious Liberty

The story of religious liberty in America begins with religious persecution in the Old World. At the root of these conflicts was the much deeper controversy of divided loyalty between the city of God and the city of man. These dueling claims undermined political authority and obligation and led to religious wars and the civil coercion of faith.

The basic parameters of the American Founders’ arrangement in the New World are well known: They sought to prevent the religious battles that had bloodied the European continent by removing entirely the authority of the church over matters of governance. In its place, they sought to secure the basis for political obligation in the consent of the governed, premised on concepts of individual freedom and equality that were grounded in human nature.

In a letter written in 1791–all the more powerful because it was written by the first president to a Jewish synagogue–George Washington declared that ‘the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance’ but ‘requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.’ Toleration, he continued, was no longer ‘spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.’

The Founders’ View of Religion in Public Life

But far from wanting to expunge religion from public life, the Founders encouraged religion as a necessary and vital part of their new nation. They sought the official separation of church and state in order to build civil and religious liberty on the grounds of equal natural rights, but never intended–indeed, roundly rejected–the idea of separating religion and politics.

The Founders opposed the establishment of a national church (though the federal government did not do away with state establishments); church doctrine would not determine the laws, and laws would not determine church doctrine. However, the Founders did favor government encouragement and support of religion in public laws, official speeches and ceremonies, on public property and in public buildings, and even in public schools.

Indeed, the official separation of church and state allows and encourages (just as true religious freedom depends upon) a certain mixing of religion and politics. On the day after it approved the Bill of Rights, Congress called upon the president to ‘recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God.’ President Thomas Jefferson regularly attended church services held in the House of Representatives and allowed executive branch buildings to be used for the same purpose. Jefferson seemed to find nothing wrong with the federal government supporting religion in a non-discriminatory and non-coercive way.

Even after the ‘republican revolution’ of 1800, President Thomas Jefferson praised America’s ‘benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter.’

Religion and Morality

The Founders’ support for blending religion and politics was based on the following syllogism: Morality is necessary for republican government; religion is necessary for morality; therefore, religion is necessary for republican government. ‘Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,’ Washington wrote in his Farewell Address, ‘Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness–these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens.’

Those two sentences are illuminating. Religion and morality are the props of duty, the indispensable supports of the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, and the great pillars of human happiness. They aid good government by teaching men their moral obligations and creating the conditions for decent politics. And while there might be particular individuals whose morality does not depend on religion, Washington argues, this is not the case for the nation as a whole: ‘And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.’

In the end, while it is often thought that religion and politics must be discussed as if they are radically separate spheres, the Founders’ conception of religious liberty was almost exactly the opposite. It actually requires the moralization of politics, which includes–and requires–the continuing influence of religion in public life.

The health of liberty depends on the principles, standards, and morals common to all religions. By acknowledging the realm in which reason and faith agree and can cooperate about morality and politics, religious liberty unites civic morality and the moral teachings of religion, thereby establishing common standards to guide private and public life. By recognizing the need for public morality and the prominent role that religion plays in nurturing morality, the Founders invite churches to cooperate at the political level in sustaining the moral consensus underlying their theological differences. It is by separating sectarian conflict from the political process and then strengthening this moral consensus that religious liberty makes self-government possible.

America does not depend on a shared theology, but it does depend on a shared morality. In his First Inaugural Address, the first president said that ‘there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness’ and that no nation can prosper that ‘disregards the external rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.’ Jefferson put it more succinctly: The people, who are the source of all lawful authority, ‘are inherently independent of all but the moral law.’

What the separation of church and state does, then, is free religion–in the form of morality and the moral teachings of religion–to exercise an unprecedented influence over private and public opinion by shaping mores, cultivating virtues, and, in general, providing an independent source of moral reasoning and authority. At the same time, religious liberty reminds man to pursue his transcendent duties and frees religion to pursue its divine mission among men. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that even though religion ‘never intervenes directly in the government of American society,’ it determines the ‘habits of the heart’ and is ‘the first of their political institutions.’

Conclusion

Today, it is increasingly evident that there is a close connection between America’s deepest social ills and the weakening of religious participation and the abandonment of traditional moral norms taught by religion. Rebuilding a post-welfare state society demands the return of religion and faith-based institutions to their central role in the nation’s civic and public life. To attain this, Americans must abandon the interpretation, maintained by the Supreme Court, that religion is in conflict with freedom and that any ‘endorsement’ of religion creates an unconstitutional religious establishment. That interpretation prevents government from recognizing or advancing religious faith generally.

At the same time, sectarian politics is not the way to restore and strengthen America’s religious heritage. A better course is to return to the more reasonable, historically accurate, and faith-friendly view of religious liberty that upholds religion and morality as indispensable supports of good habits, the firmest props of the duties of citizens, and the great pillars of human happiness.

Matthew Spalding, Ph.D., is Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

The True History and Real Meaning of Thanksgiving

It is a sad travesty that we are losing our true historical understanding and heritage of our national traditions. They are RICH with incredible meaning, purpose and understanding of our many national blessings that we take for granted.

When you understand our true history – the appreciation we should have for our Patriarchs and their relationship with God should serve as a model that we should once again emulate in terms of how grateful we need to be as a People before God.

The following is an essay from my mentor and freind Peter Marshall, who understands our true religious history better than anyone I have ever had the pleasure of reading, hearing or studying under.

Thanksgiving 2007

Why should we celebrate Thanksgiving? Is this holiday just the annual American fall holiday that President Abraham Lincoln put on the calendar during the Civil War, or does it have a special significance for us above and beyond its tradition?
For most of us, Thanksgiving is about family, feasting, and football—approximately in that order. If we think about God at all, it usually involves saying a few simple pre-turkey-carving prayers of thanksgiving for His blessings during the year which is now fast ebbing away.

But, had it not been for the hand of God watching over that hardy little band of Pilgrims that found themselves thrown up on the shores of Massachusetts in 1620, there would have been no first New England thanksgiving. And quite probably, no modern holiday to celebrate.

What keeps modern Americans from properly understanding who the Pilgrims were, and the pivotally important role they played in our history? That we are not taught the whole truth about why they came to America. Every school child has been told for decades upon decades that the Pilgrims came to America for religious liberty, or religious freedom. Not quite right. Shallow history teaching.

In reality they were missionaries, coming to the New World to plant the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the wilderness. As their great governor and chronicler, William Bradford, wrote: “They had a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation…for the propagating and advancing the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.” Obviously, they had a strong sense of call and mission.

What is special about the Pilgrims is that these English evangelical Christian exiles actually layed the moral, spiritual, and governmental foundations of America at Plymouth (see our book The Light and the Glory, and my DVD “Pilgrims, Puritans, and Patriots,” and the DVD teaching seminar “Restoring America” — all available on my website). But it was only by God’s repeated intervention that they survived to accomplish their calling.

With other Puritans, they had endured vicious religious persecution in England, having been arrested often by the King’s soldiers and imprisoned by sheriffs. Finally, fleeing for their lives to Holland, they settled in the town of Leyden. There they enjoyed religious freedom for 12 years. But, toward the end of this time, it became increasing clear to them that God was calling them to leave Holland and come to America.

Consider the fact that, if their motivation had been primarily about religious liberty, they could have stayed where they were. They already had it. But what compelled them was much deeper than that. They were missionaries. They weren’t running away from anything when they came to America — they were obeying the call of Christ on their lives!

Leaving Leyden in mid-summer, they traveled in barges to Delfthaven, and boarded the small ship Speedwell for the short trip to Southampton, England. There they met the Mayflower, the larger merchant vessel they had leased for the occasion, and additional English passengers whom these “saints,” as they called themselves, quickly dubbed “the strangers.” Delayed by leakage problems with the Speedwell, they finally had to abandon her in Plymouth, England, and there all who remained committed to the expedition were crowded on the Mayflower. It was early September as the last glimpses of England faded from view and the Mayflower gamely launched out into the vast North Atlantic ocean.

The first few weeks at sea proved to be balmy sailing weather, but then the voyage turned nasty. Their delays had put them squarely into the fall storm season. The old freighter soon found herself battered by fierce gales and towering waves of sea-green water. While the crew tied themselves with ropes to the masts and rigging to stay on board the tossing ship, their captain, Master Jones, had ordered below the 102 men, women, and children passengers. They were confined in the “tween-decks,” the cargo area of the old ship — about 90 feet long, and 25 feet wide, with only 5.5 feet of head room. In these storms, with people being simultaneously thrown from side to side and violently pitched up and down; with children crying and adults throwing up; with the stench of vomit, animals, and unwashed bodies; and with the sea water leaking through the deck above, the conditions must have been almost unbearable. The passengers tried to cope with their fears as best they could by chanting Psalms from the Bible, which welded saints and strangers alike into a praying congregation of desperate Pilgrims.

They had good cause to be afraid. In the midst of one terrible storm, there was suddenly a loud crack! One of the large beams that held the mainmast in place had snapped, and now was dangerously sagging. Should that beam give way, the mast would fall and the ship would surely founder, with the loss of all passengers and crew. By the grace of God, the Pilgrims had brought with them a large iron screw, which was found and quickly hoisted into place under the beam. Buttressed with other pieces by the ship’s carpenter, young John Alden, the beam thankfully held.

In the midst of yet another storm, John Howland, a young twenty-something indentured servant of the Pilgrims’ first governor, John Carver, found himself unable to take the confinement any longer. He lifted the hatch and stepped out on deck. In seconds the next huge wave washed him overboard, and Howland found himself in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Only minutes away from freezing to death, as he was going under the waves, one of the ropes from the ship’s rigging just “happened” to snake across his wrist. Instinctively, his hand closed on it, and the crew managed to haul him back on board.

Just luck or a coincidence? I don’t think so, and neither did the Pilgrims. God’s hand had intervened once again, and John Howland knew it. He became one of the leading elders in the Plymouth colony.

After enduring storms for 44 days out of their 66 day voyage, the weakened and sick passengers at last sighted land on November 9th, 1620. It was Cape Cod. Turning south, toward their original destination in the northern part of the Virginia Colony (today’s New Jersey shore), the ship soon got caught in the shoals off the bottom elbow of the Cape. After fighting through this for a day and getting nowhere, the Pilgrim leadership prayed and decided that God wanted them to stay there and start a separate colony. Master Jones sailed north and anchored the Mayflower in the lee curl of Cape Cod’s tip, in what is today Provincetown harbor.

There they re-assembled the one-masted sailboat they had brought in pieces on the ship, and prayerfully launched a hand-picked crew to sail around the inside perimeter of Cape Cod Bay and search for the right location for their colony. Providentially, in the midst of a blinding December snowstorm, they were blown into Plymouth harbor. After spending a cold and miserable night on a small island, and resting the next day on the Sabbath, they came ashore at Plymouth to find the ground cleared and recently cultivated, but no Indians anywhere to be seen. Strangely, the area was littered with human bones.

Concluding that God had prepared this place for the colony, they sailed back across the bay to fetch the Mayflower. After anchoring the ship in Plymouth harbor, they commuted from ship to shore in the ship’s boat, and began construction on a common house. There they could sleep and store supplies until they were able to start building their houses.

But, with no shelter, and immune systems weakened by the rough voyage, they began to get sick. Colds became bronchitis, and pneumonia set in. The dreaded killer of ship’s passengers—scurvy—and other “wasting sicknesses” ravaged their number. With no effective medicines, they began to die. In January and February the deaths sometimes reached two and three a day; 17 dying in February alone. At one point, there were only five people well enough to be on their feet, caring for the rest. Toward the end of March, when the worst was over, they had lost 47 of their number. Of the 18 wives who had come, 13 had died. Only three families remained unbroken. They were in real trouble, for the food they had brought on the Mayflower was virtually gone, and they were facing an unhospitable wilderness.

But God’s greatest miracle for them was on its way! On March 16th, 1621, a lone Indian, clad only in a loincloth, walked boldly up to them and said: “Welcome, Englishmen!” After the Pilgrims had recovered from this surprise, they had found out that his name was Samoset, and that he had come from Massasoit, a regional Indian chief who lived about 40 miles to the southwest. The following week he appeared again, this time bringing with him a Patuxet Indian by the name of Squanto, who as William Bradford would write, was “a special instrument sent of God for their good, beyond their expectation.” That was understating it a bit.

Squanto offered them his services, and they were invaluable. He taught them how to trap eels in the mud flats of the bay, what berries were edible, what herbs were good for medicine, and how to trap beaver, which would later become a source of income for the Pilgrims. Most important of all, he taught them how to plant corn, and plant it the Indian way — by burying dead fish with the seed, to fertilize the seedlings as they grew. He was God’s instrument for their salvation.

As Squanto’s story came out, the Pilgrims learned that his tribe, the Patuxets, had lived at Plymouth. But, in 1617, a plague, probably brought by French fur-trappers from the north, had killed every member of the tribe. That explained why they had found the ground covered with human bones, and evidence of previous cultivation. The plague had raced through the tribe so quickly that they had not even had time to bury all their dead!

Sqanto had escaped because he had not been there. They learned that he had been kidnapped in 1605 by an English fishing expedition and taken to England, where he had lived for nine years in the home of an merchant named John Slanie. He had learned to speak English well, and became accustomed to English foods and ways. In 1614, he had been brought back across the Atlantic on another fishing expedition, under the command of John Smith, of Jamestown, Virginia fame, who had gone into the fishing business. Squanto had enjoyed being home while the English filled up their ships with the plentiful cod in the bay. But, when it came time for them to depart, Smith had ordered one of his captains,Thomas Hunt, to stay behind and trade for beaver pelt. After Smith and the others left, Hunt got rid of the fish, but he had another cargo in mind. Tricking on board 20 young Patuxet braves, Squanto among them, he took them prisoner and sailed across the bay, stopping briefly to pick up 7 Nauset men. He set course for Malaga, a slave-trading port on the south coast of Spain. There, these American Indians were auctioned off as slaves!

When it became Squanto’s turn to be sold, a monk from a nearby monastery just “happened” to pass by at that moment. Looking at this forlorn Indian, he took pity on him, bought him, and took him to the monastery. Squanto lived with the monks for about a year, after which he obtained his freedom and worked his way up through Spain and France until he could cross the English channel and get back to England. He stayed with the English until 1619, when a Captain Dermer brought him back home on a fishing expedition to the New England coast in exchange for his services as a pilot in American waters. Dermer dropped him off on the tip of Cape Cod, but when Squanto got back to his village site at Plymouth, he received the worst shock of his life. All of his people were dead, killed by the plague that had struck two years earlier.

Heartbroken, he wandered among the ruins and the bones, and then walked the 40 miles southwest to the tribal seat of the Wampanoag and Chief Massasoit, who took him in. He stayed with them until March of 1621, when Samoset had returned from his village site to tell him that some English had settled there. Squanto suddenly had a new reason to live! He would go help these white people. And so he did.

In October, when the 20 acres of corn the Pilgrims had planted under Squanto’s tutelage had been harvested, they wanted to hold a celebration festival. They invited Massasoit and the Wampanoag, and of course Samoset and Squanto as well, to come and celebrate with them. Massasoit came a day early, with 90 braves, plus women and children. The Pilgrim women’s hearts must have sunk, because they were going to have to use the corn stored up for the winter to feed this crowd of Indians. But Massasoit had thought of that, and had ordered some of his men to hunt for the occasion. They brought with them five deer strong up on poles, and wild turkeys. There were fish from the bay, berries and other fruits, roasted corn, and the Pilgrim women supplied vegetables from their gardens. The festival lasted three days, complete with bow and arrow shooting contests, foot races, and relay races. It was a good and peaceful time for whites and Indians together.

I suspect that many times during those festivities the Pilgrims stopped to thank the Lord for His miraculous provision of Squanto. Had it not been for him, there would have been no cause for celebration and thanksgiving. God had sent this American Indian, who spoke English fluently, ate English foods, understood English customs and ways, and knew about the Christian faith because of his time with the Spanish monks: the right man, in the right place, at the right time. Only God can do something like that.

My friends, that is the true story of the first New England Thanksgiving; the real reason this holiday should be special in Americans’ hearts!

Copyright, 2007, Peter J. Marshall. All rights reserved.

More links to historical proclamations and declarations of America’s early history.

May all of you have a happy, joyous and THANKFUL Thanksgiving Day.

President George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation

How far we have fallen spiritually from the kind of people and nation we were – even from our infancy. It would do all American well, to read and meditate on George Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation, and recapture the kind of allegience we once had to our God as a People and nation.

Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789
by President George Washington

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanks giving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many single favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the Service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks, for His kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the single and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of His providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, of the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have to acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favors which He hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humble offering our prayers and supplications to the Great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all people, by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone know to be best.

Think It Can’t Happen Here?

With the recent stories about our Credit market woes, housing market collapse and dollar devaluation, coupled with the stories about Hillary Clinton last week – I could not help but recall Argentina, and their economic collapse a little while ago.

Watching a once-affluent nation become beggars and riot over food and water as their economy collapsed around them while the government secured themselves into permanent tyrannical power was instructive to recall when looking at the woes and issues this political season is breeding among the American people.

Our fate may end up being much worse, as an age of Jihadists and once secure nuclear nations goes absolutely beserk into civil chaos, bring home the fact that this world is about to get more dangerous than any of us will allow ourselves to imagine.

I find it ironic that a nation that birthed Eva Peron’s “war on the rich”, America is already on the same plane, and whether it be from health care to mortgage loans, the turn to government as savior will become a roar – and anyone outside of that sphere is going to end up a target to be eliminated.

My friend John Galt has a good foresight on things based on historical examples, and using the fluctuating value of fiat money in the collapse of Argentina and applying those lessons to an American situation as they seem to be unfolding, is a good exercise in “What if…?”

He posted these thoughts on Friday – and it might do you good to familiarize yourself with the admonitions he gives that accompany the illustration.

Casino Currency

As my wife and I entered the flea market, we understood the risks we took that day. Shopping for goods outside of the “registered” stores had become a Class 1 Misdemeanor for a first offense and the worst part was that you would be forced to take chip implantation if convicted as part of your sentence. This tracking chip served as your rationing card, probation officer, and national identification all rolled into one. The conversion to the new currency was not going well as illustrated by the Amarillo food riots last month and the tension since that incident was noticeable in every state. As we approached the entrance we uttered the password of the day which cost me exactly two junk quarters, but was well worth it. After paying the guard at the entrance, we entered into the dank, old abandoned warehouse and were shocked to see the number of people inside. The hyperinflationary destruction of America was almost complete, as the rationing program had forced many legitimate businessmen into underground situations like this. Never in my life did I imagine that saving all those old coins and silver bars would mean anything. Then again, never in my life did I think that food and water would be rationed in America.

As we walked up to a farmer’s table I noticed the sign with prices prominently displayed, along with the Bushmaster slung over his shoulder and another man with a 12 gauge nearby. The prices were split into silver and barter and to no surprise, he had “specials” just like the old days of capitalism. There was a third price list in the old US Dollars and the exchange rate was published prominently: USD to Amero 75:1. This figure of course was thievery but he had everyone who didn’t convert two years ago by the throat, as it was not illegal to own dollars unless you were a licensed retailer. I asked him if he would barter tobacco or alcohol for his goods, and he said “of course” and we commenced our grocery shopping. It was a steal trading a fifth of whiskey for a ham and two frozen chickens, and that would keep us in fresh meat for a while. I thanked the gentleman and he mentioned that ammunition was good for barter also and would fetch more farm goods. With that my wife got nervous and just had to ask “why, have you been using a lot of it?” The farmer sheepishly looked down, and said “sadly, yes” and I knew what has been going on. This guy was about to become the wealthiest soul in our part of the state until the Department of Agriculture Regulatory Enforcement Group (DAREG) sends their goons out to his place. Or have they already, and that’s why he’s needing more ammo? Sometimes, it’s just better no to know. And sometimes, what you know can get you sent to the new Freedom Camps…..

Commentary at Link

The Politics of National Destruction

The essays and posts I’ve made in the last few weeks about the fight to preserve our right of free religious exercise over the banning of God in public spaces – brought to mind an essay I read roughly a year or so ago by Ronald L Dart, who wrote of an uneasy Thanksgiving he was sitting down to in light of last year’s election results.

On going to his website at Born To Win, I discovered – perhaps by Providence Himself, that the essay I sought was again featured on the home page. This essay by Mr. Dart is a MUST READ for all American Christians at this time of year, and the points he makes are things we as Americans and Chrsitians need to ponder, meditate upon and consider as the days and months unfold ahead of us now.

The 2008 political campaigns are entering what used to be the official kickoff month, but the quest for power overrides tradition – and today’s politicos are determined to capture it at all costs; tradition, liberty and national interests be damned. – The key subjects being ranted about as the cornerstones of progress and change in America are frightening when one considers how detrimental they are to liberty, prosperity and security. The spate of debates and political garbage already tossed around out there has me more worried than I was last year about the fate of this republic. Mr. Dart’s essay points are more applicable now than they were even last year, and I’d like to call out some of those thoughts and examine them in the context of what we are already seeing.

His essay is entitled: An Uneasy Thanksgiving and he begins by recognizing who the REAL ENEMY is that we fight against in this present evil world – not one of flesh – but of spirit. A spirit that seeks seats of power in government – for more leverage to wreak havoc among men and destroy our relationship with God.

In a culture that is witnessing more depraved acts of evil, and men are asking how such things can happen in the world under the watchful gaze of a loving God..How could things like murdering women to cut their babies from their wombs; events like 9-11 and so on – I cannot help but notice the symmetry of our national woes are on par with how fast we are divorcing ourselves as a culture from God.

What I want to focus on, is the mechanisms and tools that historically have engineered disaster and slavery for a people who forget history. History repeats itself when a people forget. Mr. Dart makes these observations after reading a book by Ron Rosenbaum “Explaining Hitler”. He notes:

The book turned out to be not so much about Hitler as it was about the people who have tried to explain Hitler. I have only gotten a quarter of the way through the book, but I am already deeply disturbed by what I am reading. The world has moved on and has mostly forgotten Hitler. But historians are still struggling with him. They have tried to find a cause for the man and the great evil that he wrought in the last century, but with mixed success. Some of the explanations are laughable, and troubling at the same time. They are troubling in that they try to see Hitler himself as a victim. Some event in his life, perhaps a disease brought all this to pass. Some mental pathology.

We have a penchant in a society that sees morality as an evil judgment to equate acts of evil as results of victimizaton or mental disorders. We refuse to call sin and evil what they are – for fear of offense and accusations of judgmentality. The fact that Hitler is seen in today’s emoting non-judgmental culture as an errant anomoly or victim is not surprising when this culture excuses Jihadists beheading Americans and blowing up their children to kill others as the fault of America – and specifically Christian Americans.

But did [Hitler/Nazi Genocide] come to pass without warning? Did no one know it was coming? Hardly. One man in England, Winston Churchill, saw it coming as clear as day. He warned anyone who would listen and nearly destroyed his political career in the process. But I got an answer from Rosenbaum to a question I have been asking for years. Where were the news media when this man was coming to power? Did no one see? Did no one report?
And the answer is that yes, they did see, and they did report. They were the men of the newspaper Hitler called “The Poison Kitchen.” The one newspaper Hitler hated above all the rest. It was a liberal paper, anti-communist and anti-Nazi, the Munich Post.

This principle of asking where was the media in the face of Hitler’s rise is as applicable to America today as it was when the Brownshirts were tearing up streets in Berlin. The mainstream press in America is become nothing but a propaganda arm for the neoLeft/Socialist/Democrat cabal, and their assorted doctrines and causes of everything from Global warming to Free Government Healthcare. They apologize for the Politically-correct Brownshirts and give cover to their power-mad candidates in order to promote the political agenda that takes precedence over all things.

Rosenbaum tells us that the Munich Post journalists were the first to focus sustained critical attention on Hitler from the first moment he came out of the beer halls and into the streets. You never hear about them, “because it is more comforting to think that no one really knew who Hitler was and what he was all about until it was too late, until after 1933, until he had too much power to resist.”
But that is simply not true. The Munich Post writers and editors knew and engaged Hitler in mortal combat for 12 years. The Munich paper had been so much on Hitler’s case, that he dispatched a gang of his “bodyguard,” to vandalize the offices of the Munich post . . . in 1923. Ten years before Hitler finally got the power to destroy them.

Today’s equivalent of the Munich Post is Conservative Talk Radio and blogs like this one. Their efforts to battle the political Left are become a lone voice since the Republican party has long since abandoned it’s stance as a party of loyal opposition to the efforts the Left wishes to instill on the country. The efforts to silence radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin by our own government really ratcheted up in the last few months, and some tried to re-impose the Fairness Doctrine to silence them by law. At the moment it appears that the efforts have failed – but rest assured – like Hitler, they will succeed one day – and possibly by violent use of force if history is any indicator.

The men of the Munich Post saw Hitler as a “political criminal.” Rosenbaum is at pains to draw the distinction between a criminal politician and a political criminal: “Hitler’s evil” he concluded. “was not generated from some ideology that descended into criminality and murder to achieve its aims. Rather his evil arose from his criminality and only garbed itself in ideological belief.”

Given the behavior of the political Left from the Clintons, to Pelosi, Murtha, Durbin, Schumer and the host of the Democrat Left – the ideal is that the end desires justifies any means to acquire their goals. Whether they sabotage our war efforts to secure defeat for political points towards outright threats and investigations by the IRS and front groups like George Soros’ Media Matters, the Political Left – like the Nazis are playing for keeps. The nature of tyrants is to cover their own wrongdoing by wrapping themselves up in the cloaks of ‘serving the downtrodden’, which is really nothing but a pandering ploy to the masses to achieve power for themselves, and sadly – it appears they may get what they desire given the duped masses rallying to the calls for government mandated healthcare and punishing business for ‘having too much”.

But what Mr. Dart notes next is the most important thing I want us to consider and meditate on, comparing it to the political landscape we currently see in America today:

Think carefully about this. The political structure of the time lent itself to adapting one’s programs, chameleon like, to the needs and wants of the people. The political promises made did not arise from real conviction, but from a drive to power. When politicians change their beliefs and positions to get elected, they are doing the same thing Hitler did. Except that Hitler did not sacrifice principles to get into power. He had no principles to sacrifice. But when a modern politician changes positions to get elected, he is playing the same game Hitler played. Perhaps with less malice for now, but the same game.

Watching the debates this past week, I could not help but recall this passage as I watched Tim Russert and even John Edwards note that Hillary Clinton changed her position in the space of two minutes time. It is self evident that Hillary will say and do anything and everything to get into the White House. Sadly none of the Democrats are exempt from that observation, and neither are most of the Republican Candidates. The difference being the drive for power, and absolute power that the stated agendas seek should send shivers down the spine of any American who understands true liberty. Unfortunately, it is looking like the emoting gimme-gimme masses are outnumbering those who should be frightened by what is being campaigned on.

Remember, it was not merely Hitler. What the Munich Post saw was a homicidal criminal enterprise that grew up around Hitler as the center. Rosenbaum saw in the yellowing pages of the Munich Post the signature crimes of Hitler and the Hitler party: Blackmailing and counterfeiting (not just money, but history itself). The stories of political blackmail outlined in the Munich Post were an absolute snake pit. They blackmailed their enemies, they blackmailed one another, they blackmailed other countries.
And it was right here that I saw a terrible convergence starting to take place. For the signature crimes of the devil are blackmail and counterfeiting.
The investigative work of the Munich Post reporters is staggering. They had copies of documents, blackmail letters, threats, extortion letters. They published it all. Over twelve years, they cataloged every crime of the Hitler party for the German public. They maintained a daily log of murders. Cumulatively, what one saw in the pages of the Munich Post was the extermination of the best and bravest people in Germany. Hitler succeeded, according to Rosenbaum, by killing off his most capable opponents and by blackmailing the rest. When his two best generals would not go along with him, he blackmailed them out of the military and replaced them with men more pliant.

Everything gravitates towards those in power – and loyalty, patriotism and righteousness will take a back seat to those who seek to share in power. This applies to industry as well as those in any career that seeks preservation and advancement, be they civilian or military.

One of the saddest pages of this story is the fact that Hitler went from a politician on the wane, who had suffered an electoral setback, to the chancellorship of Germany in just a few short weeks. Many historians believe he blackmailed his way into the chancellorship. After one week of Hitler in power, the Post published their regular murder count. There were 18 dead, 34 wounded in that one week alone. In a matter of days, the Munich Post was stormed by the SA, trashed, the editors and reporters arrested, most finally killed. Two made it to France and lived to tell the story.
Nearly every crime of the Hitler Party was chronicled in the pages of the Munich Post in the twelve years leading up to Hitler’s final power grab. But the public in Germany were never impressed by any of this, and this may be the most astonishing thing of all. I can only conclude that they did not want to see. Other papers published some, not all, of this material.
What happened? The Hitler propaganda machine denied everything. They lied in their teeth and the people chose to believe it.

I cannot help but note the similarities of that observation and those of our current American culture.

When I post news about religious exercise being banned, I get blank stares and suggestions that I’m a conspiratorial loony bin. When we see story after story promulgating the absurd myths of man-made global warming in the effort to redistribute our wealth – I cannot help but see that people will choose to believe the lie in order to go with the herd in what they are being led to do.

Ultimately, such herding is always to the slaughterhouse, but a people who forget history – will not understand that – and will refuse to believe it when urged to see this truth.

The struggle taking place in the next year for this country’s highest office will be assisted by the efforts of great spiritual evil, using men and women and their zeal for power like marionettes. They will pander to the base desires of selfish greed and vice. If this nation enters economic hardship and financial collapse as the credit and derrivative banking crisis deepens, the parallels to the Weimar Republic that gave birth to Adolph Hitler may become more than ironic – but a living nightmare. Couple that with another Jihadist attack and everything we know will be turned upside down. A people in hardship with no self reliance or responsiblity will gladly surrender whatever Liberty they have for a promise of bread and sustenance. Hillary Clinton and the host of Democrats have already watered and fertilized that soil. A rudderless Republican party following the plows of the DNC in nearly similar efforts of expanding the state to heights unseen does not give me much hope the future will be any different – except for how fast we hit the brick wall. Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath was nothing but a foretaste of a dependent people fettering blame and positioning themselves for greater power.

The zetigeist of Politial correctness is an agenda steeped in hatred of God and morality. The foundations of liberty in America are built on God and morality – and once those seeking power acquire it – the elimination of our Godly foundation will really begin in earnest. Those in talk radio, the Conservative blogosphere and anyone speaking out in defense of our God-ordained rights and freedoms will be targeted, just like those in the Munich Post.

We have been warned.

History is screaming at us, right now.

The parallels are frightening.

Yet onward we march to the gates of a new Auschwitz.

As you watch what looks to become a Soviet-style propaganda circus for Hillary Clinton or whomever ends up being the nominee – recall this essay by Ron Dart, and remember that the warnings have been made loud and clear.

Warnings like this one: Hillary’s Ruthless and Bloodless Revolution

With all these trumpets sounding to alarm us, liberty’s blood will be on our own heads – and not the watchmen who are crying aloud the warnings.