That would be the date that the forces of the Soviet Union liberated the Majdanek concentration camp near Lublin, Poland, the first of many that they would enter as Nazi Germany fell. Efforts were made by the Nazis to destroy the evidence of their death camps, but they were forced out so quickly that too much evidence was left behind. And many in the world were horrified. Piles of belongings systematically taken from camp victims. Tons of hair. Piles of dead. Walking, empty-eyed skeletons. Enough evidence that some were hanged after Nuremburg. Enough that some are still being taken to trial and convicted of crimes 70 years later.
The world had been warned - there had been voices crying in the wilderness. But by and large the world had ignored the warnings because it could not believe that such a thing was happening. It could not comprehend the levels of brutality accepted by the Reich and those who, in one way or another, accepted and followed it. This despite that fact that the Allied countries were themselves not far distant from another evil, slavery, that is born out of and sustained by exactly the same core belief that fueled what became known as the Holocaust. The belief that some human beings aren't quite human enough. And if they aren't quite human enough some argument can be made for their disposal, their unwilling disposition.
Recently, videos have revealed that Planned Parenthood not only deals in the body parts of aborted human beings but that they can even offer a "less crunchy" method of dismemberment so as to ensure less damage of the body parts they are providing. Body parts, of course, requiring a fairly advanced level of development. Human body parts, of course, requiring a human. None of this surprises me. Nor would it surprise me if the supporters of Planned Parenthood stopped reading right here. I can guarantee that Planned Parenthood isn't the only one trafficking in the body parts of those they kill. Nor does the cavalier, casual way in which it is discussed between sips of wine and bites of food surprise me. It's to be expected. We've seen this over and over in the history of the world. First, declare someone not quite human. Then do what you will with them. With proper rationalization, of course. See the Wansee Conference for one of many parallels.
Nobody who calls themselves pro-choice can be made uncomfortable by these videos as they are released. In reality, I don't believe they will watch them anyway. To do so might cause discomfort and require serious contemplation and reflection and we are in too much of a mass media, bread and circuses environment for that to happen. The preference for the comfortable will take priority. But also there is the fact that if a human being is not being killed in an abortion then there is no more reason to be bothered by it than there is to be bothered by the package of chicken livers that one picks up at the local grocery store. If it's not a human being and not your household pet then it's just meat, no different from the roast or wings housed in a cooler.
If, on the other hand, it is not just meat, then what is it? No magic happens at some point between conception and birth. The same chromosomes - half from the mother, half from the father - and the same biology exists for 9 months. And for every month after. It's just a matter of development. A unique entity appears at conception, first dependent on and nourished by just the mother, then dependent on and nourished by both mother and father. X and or Y chromosomes combining to form an entity carrying various characteristics of both parents. Nothing about that changes at any point from the moment of conception to the moment of death. There is no person alive or dead who can prove that that changes. The only thing that is proved as time goes on is how amazing a developing human being is.
In order to support abortion under any name, one of two things has to happen. Either "humaness" has to be denied or it has to be accepted that a human being who has never committed a crime and cannot defend itself can be killed. And that is the exact pathology that has allowed slavery, lynchings, the Third Reich, and countless other evils to flourish and grow. It always will. The pro-choice person is no more than the "good German" who, while perhaps not entirely accepting the extremes of the Reich, accepted that Jews were not quite human and possibly were a problem. Those people were otherwise kind and giving. They went to church, they brought a sick neighbor a casserole, they socialized and they looked after one another's children. They lived in the proximity of death camps and maybe even made a little money on the side selling produce from their farms for the commandant's table. They had a vague feeling that if someone was in Dachau they deserved to be there and then they went about their lives. Because doing otherwise was unthinkable. And hard. The pro-choice person is the Yankee who would never consider owning a slave and yet feels that plantation owners have a right to their own property.
Since not a single pro-choice person can verify the instant a human being magically appears, a pro-choice person, no matter what they say, has to accept that no human being exists until birth. That particularly onerous opinion does exist in the pro-choice community and is demonstrated in partial birth abortion. Yet there is zero evidence to support one time or another as far as when a human life begins if it does not begin at conception. Without anything to back it up, it's just a matter of personal opinion. If human life, despite the evidence of biology, only begins at some middle time, then that time is tied to a clock that is tied to exact instant of conception and to a capability for a measurement of time that we don't have. For a pro-choice person, human life isn't tied to any science - it's tied to personal feeling. For human life to be defined at some x along the developmental way, that x has to be defined to the tiniest, most infinitesimal fraction of time. An instant on the wrong side of that time and a human being is dead. In a sane world, this is ludicrous. In the pro-choice world, it is fine. A member of a jury is required to only convict when there is no reasonable doubt. A pro-choice person not only convicts but hands out a death sentence thousands of times a day from deep within the shadows of doubt and personal opinion.
And there lies slavery. There lies the Final Solution. There lies Hutus and Tutsis. There lies the millions dead under Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot. It is exactly the same evil: insidious, comforting for those that accept it, normalized. Promoted as progress and freedom. And funded under the name of the Reich, the Glorious Revolution, Planned Parenthood. All the born of the same idea - some are not human enough to not be expendable.
I don't expect anyone who calls themselves pro-choice to have finished reading this. It will have made them too uncomfortable. Or, if they do get this far their sense of superiority will be outraged and they will call me names, condemn me. They are part of a clique, surrounded by waves of media and persons with whom they feel comfortable, and any challenge to that will make them angry and frustrated. At the very best they will call me divisive. Many will deride opinions such as mine as stupid, ignorant, anti-woman, etc., because they cannot address the core arguments. And those who at minimum call me divisive will continue to congregate where they feel safe. If they contemplate otherwise they run the risk of being themselves called divisive and their comfortable community and the approbation of such as John Stewart are too much to risk for them.
They also have an advantage. They will never in this life have to look into the eyes of the victims whose deaths they supported and justify themselves. It's all very neat and distant and clinically described for the pro-choice community. After the Ohrdruf labor camp was liberated in April of 1945, General Walton Walker began the practice of making local civilians view the death camps, made them face up to what they had allowed and supported. Very very few supporters of abortion will ever have to do that in this life. They will oppose pain capable laws but never, ever interact with a survivor of abortion, despite the fact that there are thousands in this country alone who have survived that horrific, agonizing, and sometimes crippling attempt on their lives. Those who are pro-choice will never look into the eyes of those survivors and tell them why they had to die, why their lives are a mistake. That would require integrity and courage. That would require the admission that the they, those that call themselves pro-choice, are exactly the same as those neatly dressed middle-class citizens who stand looking at a pile of bodies of those who weren't quite human enough. That sort of integrity and honesty doesn't exist in the pro-choice community. It's much too frightening.
Showing posts with label Nazi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nazi. Show all posts
Thursday, July 23, 2015
July 23, 1944
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Saturday, July 28, 2012
Trapped in the Garden of Beasts
In between work work working and run run running I've gotten a little reading in. After several strike outs from various $1 bins I snagged a copy of Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts from the local used book shop.
And in a tiny nation-state less than a half kilometer square in Italy, Catholics worked to protect those against whom the Nazis had turned their most vicious hatred. But that's a blog for another day.
The book follows U.S. ambassador William Dodd - a mild mannered history professor who became ambassador in 1933 basically because he was the only one who didn't turn Roosevelt down - to a Germany in which Adolph Hitler was just coming to power but which still presented a face of beauty and culture to the world. Appointed Chancellor in January 1933 by President Hindenburg, Hitler wasted no time in moving to consolidate power. Yet, throughout those early years when the oppression, the propaganda, and the violence grew, the thought remained that Hitler would not last. He couldn't possibly succeed. It all was just too obviously insane.
Dodd, initially taken with Hitler's seemingly sincere desire for peace, held out hope for a while. But in the end, he stopped meeting with Hitler, seeing him for what he was, but like so many others, still holding onto hope that he couldn't possibly last long.
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| Ambassador William Dodd in Berlin, 1933 |
The U.S. already had its hands full with the Great Depression - getting mixed up with conflict with Germany was the last thing Roosevelt wanted. Dodd's position required that he handle Nazi thug attacks on Americans, watch the regime carefully, and try to convey to others the horror he saw coming - a horror that was descending not just on Jews but on any group that the Nazi party viewed as "other" and as dissidents.
Dodd also had a wild daughter, prone to love affairs and scandal, which made his job doubly hard.
It's a good read - I highly recommend it.
Dodd watched the position of Jews in Germany deteriorate into the evil we know as "The Final Solution", but Hitler and his minions weren't picky about who they unleashed hell on.
The post World War I Catholic Church in Germany claimed 20 million members and 20,000 priests. Its political interests were represented by the Catholic Center Party, which had been launched in 1870 in opposition to Bismark's Kulturkampf. There was an active Catholic press, Catholic labor unions, and a Catholic Youth Organization with 1.5 million members. Initially, like so many others, some Catholics viewed Nazism as a potential ally against the spread of Communism. But by 1931 various regional bishops were condemning the Nazi Party.
Hitler moved swiftly after his appointment. By March 1933, the "Enabling Act" had given him virtually dictatorial powers, and his Gestapo, SS, and SD used terror and brutality to remove opposition. Dachau was opened in March 1933 and thousands disappeared into it. In July 1933 Germany officially became a one-party state. As dissidents were jailed and killed, the Christian trade unions were dissolved. Constant pressure was applied by the Gestapo, who rounded up hundreds of priest for speaking out against anti-democratic changes and against the persecution of Jews. Thousands of members of the Catholic Center Party were jailed and sent to concentration camps. In the face of that, some bishops agreed to permit church members to join the Nazi party.
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| Dachau, 1933 |
Wanting a formal document establishing the legal status of Catholics in Nazi Germany, Pope Pius XI signed a concordat with Hitler on July 20, 1933. As with all agreements he signed, Hitler then ignored it and the persecution went on. Any who opposed the Nazis were arrested and executed for "crimes against the state."
On June 30, 1934, the Night of the Long Knives was unleashed. It was a bloody purging of political opposition, including the leadership of the Brown Shirts, whose thugs were no longer useful to Hitler. Among those who died that night was the president of Catholic Action in Germany, Eric Klausener. He had delivered a speech against the regime to the Catholic Congress in Berlin earlier in the month. Klausener was shot in the back in his office and his entire staff was sent to concentration camps.
The "Editor's Law" of December 1933 required all editors to joint the Literary Chamber of the Third Reich. Rather than print Nazi propaganda on issues such as forced sterilization and euthanasia, Catholic newspapers and publications closed. At the start of 1933 there were more than 400 daily Catholic newspapers. By 1935 there were none. In 1941 the government shut down the remaining diocesan weekly papers and Catholic journals.
The Hitler Youth became mandatory for all German boys and girls in 1936 - all other youth organizations were abolished. Parents who sent their children to Catholic schools were required to appear before authorities and publicly declare why they were betraying the regime. By 1939, more than 10,000 Catholic schools had closed.
Yet still Catholic voices spoke out. Pius XI led with his encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge ("With Burning Concern"), condemning the elevation of race above all. Catholic bishops delivered sermons that condemned Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda: from the cathedrals of Munich, Munster, Berlin, Breslau, and Cologne the Nazis were attacked. The Nazi response was to arrest hundreds of German priests, lay-brothers, and women religious for show trials.
Martin Bormann made the Nazi position on churches clear in a decree for regional party leaders in 1941:
"More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs the pastors... Just as the deleterious influences of astrologers, seers and other fakers are eliminated and suppressed by the State, so must the possibility of church influence also be totally removed...Not until this has happened, does the state leadership have influence on the individual citizens."
The need for Nazi separation of the people from their churches was demonstrated in the Netherlands in 1941 when Catholics took part in strikes and protests against the Nazi treatment of the Jews. The Nazis declared that all Jewish converts and Jews married to Gentiles would be exempted from deportation if the opposition stopped. The Archbishop of Utrecht refused. In response, all Catholics of Jewish blood were deported.
Dachau alone housed 2,579 Catholic priests, along with unnumbered seminarians and lay brothers. 1,034 priests died in the camp. The Nazi hatred of Poland and its ruthless destruction and enslavement of its people sent nearly 5,000 Polish priests into concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Mathausen, and Buchenwald. Thousands of nuns were also sent to camps or killed along the way.
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| Written by a survivor of Dachau's "Priestblock" |
And in a tiny nation-state less than a half kilometer square in Italy, Catholics worked to protect those against whom the Nazis had turned their most vicious hatred. But that's a blog for another day.
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Saturday, June 11, 2011
Well, it almost went right...
So today’s challenge was to clean Dad’s Model 1922 Browning .32. Note to Dad – I know you thought it was safely hidden in your underwear drawer, but I’ve known where it was for more than 50 years. I did always try to make sure the t-shirts were put back neatly after I had been messing with it, though.
I don’t know where Dad got it - it was just always there. Made by Fabrique Nationale in Belgium, it has the Nazi stamps that show it was made during the German occupation. The West Virginians from Dad's area all went to the Pacific. Dad was a medic in the Philippines, and his unit was supposed to move into Japan with the first wave of Marines when the U.S. invaded. Then, after carpet bombing didn’t get the idea across, a couple of larger bombs finally convinced some folks that it was time to quit, and he served as part of the occupying army in Tokyo. He did bring some souvenirs home - the blanket the gun is laying on was courtesy of some Japanese cavalry horse - but the Browning must have been picked up later.
Anyway, this gun hasn’t been fired for I don’t know how long, and I thought it was time to make it useful again. So, first step:
Safe? Yes. No surprises waiting.
Next step, take it apart. I've a fair amount of confidence that I can take it apart. It's the putting back together that concerns me.
OK. Yes. Some of it's a bugger just trying to move little pieces that haven't much to get hold of, but it's safely disassembled. Now for application of a great deal of cleaning oil.
All the serial numbers on the parts match.
If I squint I can read all the stampings and see the German eagles on each part.
Then came the reassembling. Ummm... well. It's the barrel. No matter which way I turn it, I cannot get it to lock back in the way it is supposed to. Watched a video on field stripping this model, swear I'm doing it the same. Went through it step by step to make sure I was doing exactly the same thing. Over and over. But that barrel ain't about to move past a certain point no matter how much wiggling or grumbling I do.
So that's where I am right now. Thought I'd set it down and go do other things for a while and see if I develop a magic touch in the interim. Or if the shoe elves will fix it. I wonder if there's a patron saint of I-took-it-apart-and-now-I-can't-get-it-back-together causes?
Added 10 min later:
Dang! Decided to take one more crack at it and slide, click, done. No gaurantee it will fire, but, hey, I figure this was a victory!
Added 10 min later:
Dang! Decided to take one more crack at it and slide, click, done. No gaurantee it will fire, but, hey, I figure this was a victory!
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