I Love Thy Rocks and Rills

     Why would certain perhaps well-intended politicians, who do not know that they do not love America, be disappointed by a general pacification in Iraq?  Or, more to the point, why would they not celebrate with beer and song?  Why would they not declare a holiday for their staff, and do Irish jigs on the table tops?

     In a superb article in The Weekly Standard (many thanks to Stuart Koehl for passing it along), David Gelernter argues that the key to understanding what he calls a desire for "defeat at all costs" is a commitment to internationalism.  The article warrants close attention, because Gelernter does not attribute malice to his political opponents.  He's suggesting that they have accepted a political religion, one that is not new.  It was all the rage in Europe after the nationalist disaster of World War I, but it lost what modest following it had in America because of those nation-uniting events that followed: the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.  According to the tenets of the internationalist faith, the worst outcome of the Iraq war would be an American victory, because that would confirm us in our separation from the rest of the world, our belief that we are special or different from or in some ways superior to that world.  We need, for the world's sake and for our own, to be brought into the fold -- they honestly believe, and if it takes a loss to accomplish that, then we should lose.  And so it is an act of international civic virtue to work hard to see to it that we do lose.

     I'm not interested, in this blog, in arguing for or against the wisdom of going to war in Iraq.  Let me serve advance notice: I don't want the discussion to veer off into wrangling about How Stupid the President Was or What Is a Weapon of Mass Destruction or Can Muslims Embrace Democracy.  Those are perfectly valid topics of discussion, but I'd like to steer clear of them and stick to Gelernter's thesis, and his observation that the typical American may still not be ready to identify internationalism with "what's best for the place where I happen to live."  Is internationalism -- by which we concede to a body of international diplomats and jurists our sovereignty, allowing them to draw up regulations for things as intimate as family life -- compatible with patriotism?

     I don't think so.  Now I happen to honor patriotism, and I'm suspicious of internationalism, but that's beside the point.  How can the two be compatible?  The virtue of patriotism is, simply, a special love and honor for one's native land.  Its soil is the small and local: it is expressed most powerfully in the celebration of our holidays, commemorating when our fathers stood against the Redcoats or the Turks or the armies of Napoleon, giving thanks to the God we worship, even if that worship is not universal.  So what if our games are clumsy and hard for strangers to figure out?  We still play them cheerfully, because they are our games.  Patriotism is not selfishness -- though human selfishness can corrupt anything.  It is a subset of charity, and is stirred by gratitude to those who gave us what we have not provided for ourselves.  It is implied in the great commandment that, among the ten, bridges our duty to God and our duty to neighbor: "Honor thy father and thy mother."  Now sometimes the world may be right, and your country may be wicked; and in those cases we must look to prudence, and to virtues that are higher than patriotism.  But unless you are living in Nazi Germany, in this world of tangled good and evil and wisdom and ignorance you will usually be called on, by patriotism, to love a country that is deserving of that special devotion despite its shortcomings, and certainly not to despise it.  For it may be that good people who love their country best will really improve it by that love -- and not the other way around, that those whose fiercest desire is to improve their country (in this case, by appealing to international wisdom) can ever really love it.  A patriot can hearken to the examples of other nations.  Peter the Great did.  But if you cannot imagine saying, even in matters of no ultimate moral import, "I don't care if the rest of the world does it, the rest of the world is wrong, the rest of the world can go to hell," then you are no patriot.  An American patriot can love soccer and not care for baseball.  He can love it for its merits as a game.  But if a man's main reason for pushing soccer is that the rest of the world plays it and we don't, and that therefore there is something wrong with us, then I think there is something wrong with him.

     But the internationalism of the left is the logical extension of statism generally.  A patriot would as soon give to Canada his authority to decide laws regarding marriage as he would give to the social worker next door his authority to tell his daughter when to be back home for the night.  Ah, but there it is -- it is exactly what the left has done with the man and his next door neighbor.  Anyone who says, "You are not competent to raise your own children, so I must teach them about sex, and I know better than you because I took a university class in the subject, taught by people who believe what I believe and what you don't," will also say, "You people in Podunk are not competent to devise your own curricula," and "You people in Iowa are not competent (beyond a certain narrow limit which I will graciously concede to you) to determine what shall or shall not be considered a marriage," and "You people in the United States are not competent to decide who are and are not your enemies, and how you should pursue war if you are threatened or attacked by them."  And this massive takeover will all be engineered under the aegis of benevolence, desire for peace, human rights, whatever.  Appealing to community -- that necessarily disincarnate abstraction called "the international community" -- they will end by destroying communities, reducing all the blessed Podunks and Nazareths of the world to mere zip codes.  Alasdair MacIntyre can tell us then what happens to the difficult training of virtues, when those bodily and earthy and bumptious things called neighborhoods and towns are no more.

Comments

[Joe Long]

"GOD gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Belovèd over all;
That, as He watched Creation’s birth,
So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
And see that it is good."
-Kipling, "Sussex"

We aren't supposed to say that anyone - anyone at all - might not be a "patriot". Yet particular love and loyalty for one nation really is incompatible with internationalism.

I think, though, that patriotism provides a better basis for international relations. If I love my country and wish to promote its interests, it's a deal easier to understand, perhaps even cooperate with, some other fellow who loves his country and wants to promote ITS interests. Even at loggerheads, we have a basis for mutual respect.

But when I've ever-so-bravely ditched my own cultural inheritance in favor of World Citizenship, I pretty much have to hate every benighted bastard who's trying to keep his own. Especially, of course, those who love the specific country I've forsaken - but eventually, everyone who loves any nation at all.

[GL]

This is the lie (the cynical lie) in the title of Hillary Clinton's book, It Takes a Village. It, indeed, does take a village, but she did not mean that and never has; she means it takes the international community. Villages are a community of people who live together, work together, worship together, send their children to school together, shop at the same stores, see each other when they are out, etc. They actually know each other. The world, as a whole, is not and cannot be a village. The only way it can ever be the decision maker is to wrest out of the hand of the village its natural role.

This is, by the way, also a criticism of centralized decision making at the national level and even at the state level as well. Decisions should always be made at the lowest level where they can be made competently, the principle of subsidiarity. Internationalism is the opposite of subsidiarity and it will be a disaster if it is ever truly implemented on the scale envisioned by the Left.

[GL]

Francesca,

If you are reading this thread, this is the biggest problem with the Global Warming initiatives. They represent a big power grab by internationalists. That, I am afraid, is their true aim. If they can get a treaty signed by most of the world's nations, including all of the developed and powerful nations, then they can use the enforcement mechanisms of the treaty to dictate to the signatory nations all sorts of decisions which will impact individuals and the signatory nations will have no choice but to submit to those decisions or to be in violation of the treaty. Before accepting a proposal to give somebody else power over your life which he does not now possess, you should ask yourself what his end game is and, even if he has innocent intent, what infrastructure you are helping put in place for someone who may come along later whose intent in not so innocent.

[Kevin]

Well, Mr. Esolen, I have nothing to add to that except... when will your book be published!?

Keep up the great work.

[Seth R.]

"The virtue of patriotism is, simply, a special love and honor for one's native land. Its soil is the small and local"

Not really.

You seem to be thinking of love of your home town. Or love of your distinct cultural heritage. Or love of admirable points in your personal history. That's fine and good.

But that's not what American patriotism means. Patriotism in the USA today means a commitment to the idea of a nation and allegiance to that national idea. That nation includes many cultures, many of which have almost nothing to do with you or your family. It includes vast swaths of territory you will never visit or care about. It includes allegiance to a national government that WILL squash your dreams if it feels the need to service some other sector of its constituents regardless of whether that constituency has anything to do with you or not.

The word you are looking for here is actually "nationalism." "Patriotism" simply paints a veneer of sentimentality and intimacy over the whole business. But what passes for patriotism in the US today is actually nationalism.

One might protest the need to stand together and look beyond just our own localized communities.

Fine. But that same logic extends to internationalism as well. If it doesn't make sense to draw the borders of your concern at your local county lines, why does it make sense to draw those borders along the country lines?

Nationalism is a means of exclusion, while at the same time coercing a large enough group of people into common cause so that we can have leverage in conducting trade, diplomacy and wars with other groups of nationalistically paranoid people.

I get sentimental about my hometown and its neighboring communities. I get sentimental about my religion. I even get sentimental about shared cultural and literary works in the English language tradition.

But I do not get sentimental about America as an abstract notion. America is a device of convenience that happens to be benefiting a whole lots of the globes inhabitants. It's a strictly utilitarian idea for me, with little warmth and sentimentality.

[Seth R.]

Also...

What does it mean that I feel more at ease with, and connected to Vancouver than I do New Orleans?

Heck, I even feel more at home in Nagasaki than in New Orleans.

Yet New Orleans is supposed to be a part of this thing I call "country," whereas the other two cities are "foreign."

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

A bit trite, but I'll offer it anyways: I belong to Christ so my true "citizenship" is in heaven. That being said, I don't want to be so heavenly minded that I'm no earthly good.

With regards to the distinctiveness and relationship between patriotism and internationalism (confession: I haven't read Gelernter's article yet) this is a rather well-trodden topic. My upfront and personal biases are against a "one world government", the most logical endpoint of a slippery slope from internationalism and/or globalism. And I have very little respect for the United Nations. A near-hopelessly corrupt institution.

And I'm an American patriot only because I don't think there's a better country extant in regards to biblical faithfulness to Christ. Corollary: If I was an international student from Somalia or Cambodia and I compared my home country with the U.S., there's a reasonable chance that I'd think the U.S. was better unless I was completely brainwashed as Somalia/Cambodia jingoist. If something's better, then something's better. Get over it. It's not that I would hate being Somalian or Cambodian, but I'd recognize that America is better overall.

Anyways, the point being that I'm an American patriot because America is where God has blessed me to be and also to serve. The more fundamental point being that the internationalism/American patriot divide is both a matter of indifference and a matter of significance to me.

I am indifferent in the sense that wherever I am, God has called me serve and glorify Him. So what if I am in a statist government and society. There have been glorious persecuted saints in Eastern bloc countries such as Russia, China, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, etc.... By extension, so what if the entire world was a One World Government. I'm still called to be His servant and disciple.

The internationalism matter is significant to me because I think it ushers in unstated, implicit, underlying worldviews that are very opposed to the almighty triune God. Internationalism/Statism becomes a hideously false idol. For that reason I am deeply opposed to internationalism-statism.

[Rob Grano]

Are you saying then, Seth, that in modern America one cannot be a patriot without being also a nationalist? I agree that many people conflate the two, but it seems to me that Dr. Esolen and folks like him can and do make the distinction. In other words, just because the two concepts are often confused doesn't mean they're equivalent or even indistinguishable.

[Frank Purcell]

I honor the German patriots of the Nazi period who risked so much to rid their country of the tyrants. And I cannot say that their country, the Germany of Goethe and Bach, was not worthy of their sacrifice.

If to love is to know and to know is to love, then the true cosmopolitan, who loves all nations, will love his own best of all because he knows it best, faults and all.

There are, thank God, true patriots in America, among those who support the present administration, but also among those who cannot do so. The latter include faithful Catholics who cannot ignore the teaching of their Church, much as they might like to fit in.

[Stuart Koehl]

If Seth believes Tony conflates patriotism with nationalism, Seth himself is guilty of conflating patriotism with parochialism.

[Joe Long]

I think (and, I hope, can express without actually starting an Iraq War Argument on this thread) the concept of patriotism related to the current war results in a number of misunderstandings - most of them wilful ones.

In short: there are those who dutifully support the war, through patriotism. There are those who, in good conscience, oppose the war, through patriotism. And there are those who scream, "DON'T QUESTION MY PATRIOTISM!!" but who would have to oppose any American war, because they hate our country. (They love, perhaps, some dystopian dream of their own of what our country "should" be, but it only adds bile when they compare it to who we actually are.)

The second groups is understandably tired of being lumped in with the third - and I feel for y'all, honest I do.

[Stuart Koehl]

I've spent a lot of time in Europe over the years, and think it should be noted that the vast majority of Europeans are not, in fact, internationalists and indeed are deeply patriotic in the true sense of the word--enamored of the land that gave them birth.

Internationalism, born out of the carnage of World War I, is, and always has been, an elite movement, a reaction against the hypernationalism that grew out of 19th century Romanticism and was a proximate cause of the Great War. But internationalism is not a return to the Age of Reason, but actually an application of 20th Century Romanticism, that wonderful movement that brought us the totalitarian ideologies that killed 100 million people.

Yet, the 18th century, and the late 20th century, share one thing in common: the predominance of a trans-national elite that dominates culture, economics and politics with little reference to the common people. In the 18th century, these people belonged to an aristocracy of blood. They spoke the same language (French, of course), shared the same values, knew each other intimately (in more ways than one, I might add), and paid little or no attention to national boundaries. Indeed, it was the existence of this transnational aristocracy that allowed war to be the Game of Kings, because in the end, only lines on the map changed hands. The people continued to be ruled by members of the aristocracy, who in many cases did not even lose title to their estates.

In the 21st century, the transnational elite belongs to a meritocracy and consists of technocrats, academics, entertainers and journalists who all went to the same schools, hobnobbed in the same circles, and share the same beliefs--foremost of which is a belief in their own worthiness to rule, because, after all, they got where they are on merit, and owe nothing to anybody. This last trait makes the new meritocracy far worse than the old aristocracy, which, for all its foibles, was endowed with a sense of noblesse oblige precisely because the did NOT owe their positions to merit, but to the grace of God (or accident of birth, if you like). Thus, when the aristocracy went out of their way to do something for the "lower orders", they did so because it was their duty, and both grace and good manners caused them to take cognizance of the preferences and beliefs of the commoners. The meritocracy, on the other hand, does things TO the common people because they honestly believe they know better and have a right to overturn the applecart because they are smarter than everyone else. The result is usually catastrophe, but the elites are insulated from the consequences of their actions by their wealth and exalted position. The poor, on the other hand, have to live with the mistakes of their betters.

Now, in Europe, more so than the United States, this trans-national elite has effectively taken over the reins of governance due to the particular nature of parliamentary systems in Europe, and the rise of the European Union. First, in the pariliamentary systems, real governing is done by the "permanent civil service", which is to say government bureaucrats who owe their positions to competitive examinations which they passed because they went to a handful of preferred schools, which they got into because they passed selective examinations back when they were eleven or twelve years old. In France, for instance, attendance at the Ecole Polytechnique is the gateway to a lucrative civil service job which is effectively a life tenure, since one can retire at the age of 56 at a pension equal to 90% of one's final salary.

It's similar elsewhere in Europe. You vote for parliamentary representatives, which in turn allows different parties to form governments, which have some broad policy positions they want to enact, but in actuality, their hands are tied by the civil service, which always follows its own agenda. And since the civil service is filled with precisely the kind of trans-national elites who are the bane of modern life, it should not be surprising if they embrace internationalism with both hands.

Internationalism was behind the formation of the European Union and the attempt to draft a European constitution. The idea was the formation first of a common trade zone, then of a common currency, which would so bind the nations of Europe together that they would never fight a war again. The resulting European Union, run by an appointed Commission, is the internationalists delight--it's an utterly undemocratic, high-handed, hyperbureacracy run by people just like them, who spend every waking moment thinking of ways of intruding every further into the lives of ordinary people and effacing whatever distinctive cultures might still exist within the national boundaries of European states.

No wonder, then, that ordinary Europeans loathe the EU and completely reject internationalism (execept in those cases where its way is greased by generous subsidies and handouts). Most Frenchmen still think of themselves as French, and believe France to be the greatest country in the world (a willful suspension of disbelief, I grant you). Most Italians glory in being Italian, most Spaniards are still as "proud as the devil" about being Spanish, and so forth. In countries which are artificial entities, such as Belgium (a country that always causes one to wonder "Why?"), there are nations within the state that are profoundly patriotic about their national identity. Thus, proud Flemmings are seeking separation from French-speaking Wallonia, Scots are seeking independence from the despised Sassanach, and so forth). Hence the rejection of further European federalism whenever the issue is allowed to come to a popular vote (which, being smarter than other people, the internationalists have seldom allowed).

Of course, the irony is the entire internationalist experiment, including the EU, has not only been a failure but completely superfluous. Long before the Union, long before the Euro, long before attempts at a constitution, the odds of one European state going to war with another were less than nil. The devastation of World War II, the rise of the Soviet Union, the advent of the Cold War, and the American assumption of responsibility for the defense of Europe against a common enemy effectively debellicized Europe. Its states no longer had the money to compete effectively against the two superpowers, so why bother with militarization? Even throughout the Cold War, NATO states never pulled their weight, preferring instead to throw their efforts into building the "good life" in a socialist welfare state. People were seduced into looking towards the state as the source of all benefits, while the state asked nothing of them in return but to pay their taxes. Sacrifice? War? What? With our guaranteed eight week holiday just around the corner? Are you nuts? I have a villa in Majorca reserved starting next week! Peace turns out to be a lot more profitable than war.

And they can thank the good old, nationalistic U.S. of A for all this--if we hadn't poured out our treasures defending them, they'd have had to do it themselves, and the result would have been a somewhat poorer Western Europe, but one armed to the teeth, and certianly not one under a common adminstrative umbrella.

For all that, the internationalist dream seems to be falling apart in Europe. The frog refused to be boiled to death by degrees, but rather seeks to hop out of the pot only half-cooked. The common people of Europe are on to the downside of their faustian bargain with the EU, and are kicking back. They want to be French, Dutch, British, Italian, and German, not "European". They don't want faceless bureaucrats in Brussels telling them what they can and cannot put in their beer, wine, cheese, or whether they can or cannot smoke Galloise on the boulevard (that the social welfare state is collapsing under its own weight is another factor).

Above all, they don't want the Eurocrats and their allies in the national governments telling them to sacrifice their culture in the name of multiculturalism and at the expense of handing over their patrimony to refugees from the Muslim world. Thus we see the rise of righ-wing (as opposed to "center-right) parties throughout Old Europe, a rejection of multiculturalism, and a return to patriotic nationalism (which, in Europe, is a patriotism of blood--one is born French, German, Spanish, etc., as opposed to a patriotism of ideals, which is what we have here).

But the day is late, the internationalists control the institutions, the redress of the people is limited, and whether the people can reclaim their countries from the transnationalist elite remains to be seen. But the tribes are awake once more, and I don't think they will go gently into the dark night.

[Nick]

I'm more concerned about the redness than I think you are Stuart. Recent elections in Europe have tended to abandon centrist parties. The two edges are becoming stronger. It would be sad if ultra-nationalists came to power in response to the ill begotten EU.

[James Kabala]

Here's an interesting (and very strongly worded - I do not necessarily endorse all of it) take on the Gelernter article from Daniel Larison, the young, extremely conservative, Eastern Orthodox convert blogger. It is practically the opposite of Dr. Esolen's. (And to be "fair and balanced," I have also linked to this post at his place.)

http://larison.org/2007/09/18/the-prophet-of-godless-americanism/#comments

[James Kabala]

This is a better link:

http://larison.org/2007/09/18/the-prophet-of-godless-americanism/

[James Kabala]

Leaving aside for a moment the rightness or wrongness of Gelernter's philosophy, this sentence - "More likely, America's political spectrum a decade or more in the future will be defined by two parties both born of today's GOP after a natural and painless mitosis." - is almost certain to prove factually incorrect.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I'm more concerned about the redness than I think you are Stuart. Recent elections in Europe have tended to abandon centrist parties. The two edges are becoming stronger. It would be sad if ultra-nationalists came to power in response to the ill begotten EU.<<<

Suppose that they did. Their policies could really only be domestic, since even the larger European states have abandoned military competition in a manner that makes resurgence almost impossible. The most binding constraint, of course, is manpower--they just don't have enough eligible 18-year old males. Societal attitudes are almost as binding--there just isn't any sentiment for miltarism in Europe. Without armies, you can't fight wars, and right now, the U.S. Marine Corps by its very own self has more deployable combat power than all the armies of Western Europe combined (though their paper strength is very much greater).

So, without the ability to wage aggressive wars, nationalist governments in Europe can only try to enact legislation to restore "traditional" social values, put a brake on immigration and multiculturalism, and roll back the interference of the European Commission.

At every step of the way, they will be opposed by the professional civil service, which will, together with the political opposition, serve to moderate the actual laws implemented. Change will therefore be incremental and modest. There won't be brownshirts in the streets of Berlin any time soon.

[Stuart Koehl]

Larison could use a lesson or two in American history, as well as a reminder that it is not his "objective" analysis of America's biblical roots, but America's own self-understanding that matters here. One can go back to the Pilgrims, who saw the New World as the New Jerusalem, through the two Great Awakenings, through the American Revolution (see Charles Royster's "A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character" for an interesting examination of the relgious self-consciousness that pervaded both the Patriot casue and the Continental Army throughout the Revolution), to the eschatological language used to define the War Between the States, to Dwight David Eisenhower's characterization of the Allied war against Germany as a "Crusade in Europe"--whether it's true or not, Americans seem themselves as exceptional and elect. And, both for America and the world at large, that has been a very good thing.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>> "More likely, America's political spectrum a decade or more in the future will be defined by two parties both born of today's GOP after a natural and painless mitosis." <<<

I don't think so. In contrast to the Republican Party, which remains multipolar among social conservatives, economic conservatives, libertarians and "big business" types, the Democrats are becoming much more homogeneous. How many Scoop Jackson Democrats can you name? That Joe Lieberman was effectively drummed out of the Democratic Party speaks volumes for its big tent. Today, it's basically a hypergolic confluence of divergent interest groups held together only by a desire to get at the spoils. Democrats were lucky back in 1975--they dodged the bullet for Vietnam by the grace of Richard Nixon's pecadillos. This time, they won't have that luxury. To quote Georgie Patton, "Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser!" Running around advocating defeat as an exit strategy and suicide as a security policy is not a good way to garner long-term support.

The few intelligent Democrats left will either switch parties or retire altogther, thereby allowing the leftist fringe of the Democrats to take over the party lock, stock and barrel. At which point, ideological purity having been enforced, the party will commit electoral suicide and fade into an oblivion as deep as that which envelops the Federalists and the Whigs.

As for the Republicans, we can see the split beginning even now, and two parties can indeed emerge from the one: a party of free-market libertarian types with a leavening of "Big Government Conservatives"--i.e. classical Republicanism before the Taft era; and a party of social conservatives and traditional conservatives--the Tory Party of Disreali in American garb.

[Truth Unites...and Divides]

>>>"The few intelligent Democrats left will either switch parties or retire altogther, thereby allowing the leftist fringe of the Democrats to take over the party lock, stock and barrel. At which point, ideological purity having been enforced, the party will commit electoral suicide and fade into an oblivion as deep as that which envelops the Federalists and the Whigs."<<<

Stuart, I would be extremely grateful if you were a prophet speaking prophetically!!! Because I think that the liberal leftist Dems are ascending, and the mainline liberal Prots and liberal Catholics are woefully deceived into helping and enabling this secular humanist movement.

Much to my DEEP dismay and chagrin. I have utterly no qualms in saying that there is a liberal 5th column in America with regards to national security. In addition, I unabashedly maintain that there are wolves in sheep's clothing in Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches across America. And it irks me to no end that true shepherds and disciples must don Ephesians 6 armor and fight these deceived and deceiving wolves which unfortunately gives the appearance to a lost world that there's terrible disunity within the Church.

Pick your poison: Vigorously fight the wolves and give the appearance of disunity to the world OR provide meek, token resistance to the wolves, assuaging your conscience that you're doing something, but LOSING nonetheless, and allowing the flock to be ravaged. Actually, most milquetoast Christians don't even put up token resistance. They just put their heads in the ground like ostriches.

Pathetic! I'm ticked! (I shall now go into my prayer closet, kneel, and pray and yield to God).

[tony o]

Patriotism and internationalism are not only incompatible, they are antithetical.

In the name of internationalism (or messianic democratic secularism, or ideological purity, or nationalistic confusion, or simple ahistorical naivete) nation states have destroyed countless communities, precipitated the uprooting of entire populations, enabled the persecution and expulsion of Christian minorities, and run roughshod, in well-meaning oblivion, over traditions, conventions, rituals, and deep-seated primitive religious tribalism that is incomprehensible to the secular internationalists who direct the operations of the nation state. (No mention of Irag, please.)

Love of The Church, love of family, defense of the homeland; these are the virtues of the Christian, the father, and the patriot. Virtue is exercised locally; the only valid internationalism resides in the Body of Christ.

[Truth Unites...and Divides]

"Love of The Church, love of family, defense of the homeland; these are the virtues of the Christian, the father, and the patriot."

I would politely, yet firmly raise my hand to note an objection. What of the Christians who served in the Nazi regime under Hitler in WWII?

Defending an evil regime governing your homeland is not a virtue.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was and remains one of my favorite heroes and theologians. But there were not enough German Christians like him in protesting against Hitler.

My objection remains in the absence of a qualifier.

[GL]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was and remains one of my favorite heroes and theologians.

I have always been ambivalent about Bonhoeffer because his apparent involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler. As much as I admire the man in general, I cannot see how an individual has the right to murder an evil ruler. Hitler was no more evil than Nero and his successors who persecuted the early Christians and yet one never reads that those Christians did anything other than submit to the emperors where they could. Indeed, Paul enjoined them to do so. And in Revelation, we see these martyred saints petitioning God to mete out justice. Vengeance is His, not ours. And even Christ, who though God and who by all rights could have annihilated His persecutors, submitted to the worldly leaders who had Him crucified. I find Bonhoeffer's involvement in the plot very troubling.

[Jim Baxter]

Every September, I recall that is more than half a century (62 years) since I landed at Nagasaki with the 2nd Marine Division in the original occupation of Japan following World War II. This time every year, I have watched and listened to the light-hearted "peaceniks" and their light-headed symbolism-without-substance of ringing bells, flying pigeons, floating candles, and sonorous chanting and I recall again that "Peace is not a cause - it is an effect."

In July, 1945, my fellow 8th RCT Marines [I was a BARman] and I returned to Saipan following the successful conclusion of the Battle of Okinawa. We were issued new equipment and replacements joined each outfit in preparation for our coming amphibious assault on the home islands of Japan.

B-29 bombing had leveled the major cities of Japan, including Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, Yokosuka, and Tokyo.

We were informed we would land three Marine divisions and six Army divisions, perhaps abreast, with large reserves following us in. It was estimated that it would cost half a million casualties to subdue the Japanese homeland.

In August, the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima but the Japanese government refused to surrender. Three days later a second A-bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. The Imperial Japanese government finally surrendered.

Following the 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese admiral said, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant..." Indeed, they had. Not surprisingly, the atomic bomb was produced by a free people functioning in a free environment. Not surprisingly because the creative process is a natural human choice-making process and inventiveness occurs most readily where choice-making opportunities abound. America!

Tamper with a giant, indeed! Tyrants, beware: Free men are nature's pit bulls of Liberty! The Japanese learned the hard way what tyrants of any generation should know: Never start a war with a free people - you never know what they may invent!

As a newly assigned member of a U.S. Marine intelligence section, I had a unique opportunity to visit many major cities of Japan, including Tokyo and Hiroshima, within weeks of their destruction. For a full year I observed the beaches, weapons, and troops we would have assaulted had the A-bombs not been dropped. Yes, it would have been very destructive for all, but especially for the people of Japan.

When we landed in Japan, for what came to be the finest and most humane occupation of a defeated enemy in recorded history, it was with great appreciation, thanksgiving, and praise for the atomic bomb team, including the aircrew of the Enola Gay. A half million American homes had been spared the Gold Star flag, including, I'm sure, my own.

Whenever I hear the apologists expressing guilt and shame for A-bombing and ending the war Japan had started (they ignore the cause-effect relation between Pearl Harbor and Nagasaki), I have noted that neither the effete critics nor the puff-adder politicians are among us in the assault landing-craft or the stinking rice paddies of their suggested alternative, "conventional" warfare. Stammering reluctance is obvious and continuous, but they do love to pontificate about the Rights that others, and the Bomb, have bought and preserved for them.

The vanities of ignorance and camouflaged cowardice abound as license for the assertion of virtuous "rights" purchased by the blood of others - those others who have borne the burden and physical expense of Rights whining apologists so casually and self-righteously claim.

At best, these fakers manifest a profound and cryptic ignorance of causal relations, myopic perception, and dull I.Q. At worst, there is a word and description in The Constitution defining those who love the enemy more than they love their own countrymen and their own posterity. Every Yankee Doodle Dandy knows what that word is.

In 1945, America was the only nation in the world with the Bomb and it behaved responsibly and respectfully. It remained so until two among us betrayed it to the Kremlin. Still, this American weapon system has been the prime deterrent to earth's latest model world- tyranny: Seventy years of Soviet collectivist definition, coercion, and domination of individual human beings.

The message is this: Trust Freedom. Remember, tyrants never learn. The restriction of Freedom is the limitation of human choice, and choice is the fulcrum-point of the creative process in human affairs. As earth's choicemaker, it is our human identity on nature's beautiful blue planet and the natural premise of man's free institutions, environments, and respectful relations with one another. Made in the image of our Creator, free men choose, create, and progress - or die.

Free men should not fear the moon-god-crowd oppressor nor choose any of his ways. Recall with a confident Job and a victorious David, "Know ye not you are in league with the stones of the field?"

Semper Fidelis
Jim Baxter
Sgt. USMC
WW II and Korean War

Job 5:23 Proverbs 3:31 I Samuel 17:40
http://www.choicemaker.net/

VOTE HUCK ! He's The Man! jfb

[Truth Unites...and Divides]

>>>I have always been ambivalent about Bonhoeffer because his apparent involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler. As much as I admire the man in general, I cannot see how an individual has the right to murder an evil ruler. Hitler was no more evil than Nero and his successors who persecuted the early Christians and yet one never reads that those Christians did anything other than submit to the emperors where they could. Indeed, Paul enjoined them to do so. And in Revelation, we see these martyred saints petitioning God to mete out justice. Vengeance is His, not ours. And even Christ, who though God and who by all rights could have annihilated His persecutors, submitted to the worldly leaders who had Him crucified. I find Bonhoeffer's involvement in the plot very troubling.<<<

I'm happy to agree to disagree agreeably! I could provide you OT examples that would provide scriptural "modeling" for Bonhoeffer's actions, but I cannot readily think of any NT examples off the top of my head.

Also, you focused on the example of Bonhoeffer, rather than upon the general point that I was making: defense of the homeland is not necessarily a virtue.

[Truth Unites...and Divides]

Semper Fidelis
Jim Baxter
Sgt. USMC
WW II and Korean War

Sargeant Baxter,

You and your fellow marines have my deepest gratitude and appreciation. You WWII vets are heroes beyond pale. You truly are always faithful.

Peace and Blessings,

Your Partner for His Truth and Love

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Defending an evil regime governing your homeland is not a virtue.<<<

Defending innocent men women and children is always virtue. Mos Germans did not fight to protect Hitler and his regime, but to protect their Fatherland from what they perceived as attacks threatening its very existence. Certainly, the Germans reaped what they sowed, but at the same time, the Landser (German soldier) fighting on the Eastern Front knew first-hand how the Soviet army would treat German civilians if ever they got into Germany, while the Jagdflieger (fighter pilots) knew they were shooting down Allied bombers that were destroying German cities and killing German civilians. And, by calling for unconditional surrender, the Allies did create the impression that nothing short of the eradication of Germany would satisfy their war aims.

That is one of the tragedies of war--that good and virtuous men ON BOTH SIDES must fight and kill each other because each perceives the other as a mortal threat.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I have always been ambivalent about Bonhoeffer because his apparent involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler.<<<

You are a very strange bird, Greg. It is legitimate to kill hundreds of thousands of German men, to drop bombs on German cities, because these are "legitimate"military targets, but to stop the carnage--which is being caused by one evil man--by killing that man with ten bucks worth of high explosives, is somehow immoral?

What of the Jews, the Gypsies, the Poles, the homosexuals, none of whom could even surrender to the Nazis because their very existence was illegitimate? They died because Hitler--and pretty much Hitler alone--willed that they die. So would not killing Hitler be a defense of the innocent?

>>>Hitler was no more evil than Nero and his successors who persecuted the early Christians and yet one never reads that those Christians did anything other than submit to the emperors where they could. <<<

To make this statement with a straight face, one has to know very little about either Hiter or Nero or both. Moreover, the Christians persecuted by Nero made a voluntary choice to submit. Most of those killed by Hitler were given no choice. Most weren't even Germans, or Christians. And, of course, the scale of the destruction is beyond comparison: Nero ordered killed perhaps a couple of thousand Christians (maybe only a few hundred), whereas Hitler encompassed the killing of ten million, six million of whom were Jews.

An individual Christian can decide for himself to take the road of martyrdom. He can't impose that on others, especially those who are not Christians. And he has a positive moral obligation to defend the innocent against the depredations of the strong.

[Rob Grano]

IMO, Larison and Dr. Esolen are examining flip sides of the same coin -- I don't think they're as far apart as it seems. I believe Larison is correct in saying that patriotism and nationalism aren't the same thing, and that one is praiseworthy and one is not. I doubt Dr. Esolen would disagree. What Larison seems to be decrying is nationalism posing as patriotism, and of course they both have an aversion to internationalism.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>What Larison seems to be decrying is nationalism posing as patriotism, and of course they both have an aversion to internationalism.<<<

Actually, I think Larison decries both patriotism and nationalism as being "false idols". He seems particularly averse to "American Exceptionalism", indicating that it is pretentious for Americans to consider themselves a "Christian Nation". This is a peculiar view for an Orthodox Christian to take, when one considers that for 1000 Orthdoxy considered itself the bulwark of a "Christian Empire". Especially so, when one considers that for all its flaws, Byzantium did indeed come as close as any civilization to being a "Christian nation". In the modern era, I don't think any country has come as close as the United States. Truly, we fall short of the ideal, but we do HAVE the ideal, and we strive to attain it. It shapes our character and our self-consciousness, and if we ever decide that we are not, or cannot be a Christian nation, I don't think Mr. Larison would be very happy with the direction the country then takes.

[GL]

You are a very strange bird, Greg. It is legitimate to kill hundreds of thousands of German men, to drop bombs on German cities, because these are "legitimate"military targets, but to stop the carnage--which is being caused by one evil man--by killing that man with ten bucks worth of high explosives, is somehow immoral?

Government bears the sword, not individuals. Were Bonhoeffer a CIA agent under orders to assassinate Hitler or an Army sniper, he would be doing his duty. He was neither.

Nero burned Christians as torches to light his parties. He was as evil as Hitler. He certainly did not kill as many people as Hitler, but I have no doubt he would have had he had the industrial technology to do so and had the population been sufficient to support it. Evil is not determined merely by a body count.

[Rob Grano]

"In the modern era, I don't think any country has come as close as the United States. Truly, we fall short of the ideal, but we do HAVE the ideal, and we strive to attain it. It shapes our character and our self-consciousness, and if we ever decide that we are not, or cannot be a Christian nation, I don't think Mr. Larison would be very happy with the direction the country then takes."

I don't believe that either our founding or the way that the founding principles have worked themselves out in our history are as "Christian" as is sometimes thought, hence the direction that the country is currently taking. I don't think that that would preclude me from being patriotic, but it does make any tendency towards nationalism suspect IMO. One need not believe in "manifest destiny" to be a patriot, in other words.

[Chris Ryland]

Dear Mr. Baxter--

Your prose is eloquent, and your bravery unquestionable, but your moral logic is faulty. WWII was carried out in an immoral fashion because it was waged against civilians, who can never be "targeted" in a just war. The atomic bombs were the worst example, but the carpet bombing of Germany was just as reprehensible.

You're using a moral calculus we're not permitted to use if we're truly Christian.

Who says, once Japan was contained, we couldn't have simple waited it out? What was the moral imperative for invasion? Once a beast is caged, you've accomplished the goal of stopping the damage.

[Joe Long]

"Government bears the sword, not individuals. Were Bonhoeffer a CIA agent under orders to assassinate Hitler or an Army sniper, he would be doing his duty. He was neither."

GL, that is an honorable position but not one I'll ever take - individuals do bear the sword; witness Christ's command in Luke 22. (And Ehud's left-handed feat in Judges.) ("But he was under God's orders." Well, why wouldn't that apply to Bonhoeffer?) Any decision involving premeditated homicide certainly ought to be approached with fear and trembling, but refusing to take drastic, necessary action against evil because it's government-sponsored and you're not - is to me a variation of the Nuremburg defense: "I was only following orders".

Too, there is the question of a ruler's legitimacy; he may be an illegitimate ruler or may lose his legitimacy through his actions - Paul's statement that those who do good, have nothing to fear from their government thereby, seems to strongly imply to me that if doing good DOES bring governmental retribution, you're no longer dealing with an institution which has the divine mandate. "Touch not mine annointed" certainly should not apply to Hitler (or Nero, frankly).

Plus, I take the patriot side of the American Revolution - and if we were justified in throwing off the King of England, surely Bonhoeffer had far more right (and indeed duty) to rebel against HIS government as opportunity allowed.

(Meanwhile I also perversely agree with Stuart about the heroism of German fighter pilots, placed "between their loved homes and the war's desolation". Good men fought and died on the wrong side - much as I wish evil in the real world was manifested in hordes of soulless orcs, things just don't work that way...)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Government bears the sword, not individuals.<<<

You fail to take into account that in totalitarian dictatorship, the government IS the individual. As one historian put it in a critical essay, "No Hitler, No Holocaust". The Nazi regime was explicitly a personality cult. Absent Hitler, there is no way the diverse and conflicting personalities within the Nazi Party could have held together, because the only thing they had in common was devotion to Hitler. Remove Hitler, the edifice collapses.

On the other hand, while killing Stalin would have ameliorated the carnage inflicted by that depraved individual, the Soviet system was based on more than personalities--it had a coherent underlying ideology, and would have continued. That is not to say that, during the early Cold War, killing Stalin would not have had a beneificial effect for the rest of the world. Same with killing Mao.

>>>Nero burned Christians as torches to light his parties. He was as evil as Hitler. <<<

Not hardly. As Stalin remarked, "Quantity has a quality of its own". Hitler wanted to wipe out an entire people simply because of who they were. They could not stop being Jews, and more than a black can stop being black. Nero not only killed fewer people, but he did so because of what those people believed, not who they were. Thus, the Christians had a choice--they could burn a few pellets of incense, reject Christ and live (for a while); or they could bear witness to Christ and die (but claim eternal life thereafter). As the case of Edith Stein proves, Hitler did not accept conversion as a way out of Judaism. I am fully aware that, though I have been baptized into Christ, by Hitler's standards Jew I was and Jew I remain--and therefore would have been part of the Final Solution. Bonhoffer was fully justified in taking up arms against Hitler (you, by the way, are endorsing the defense of the German officer corps, which claimed it could not oppose Hitler because it had sworn personal allegience to him), because one's duty to protect innocent life, even at the cost of taking another life, trumps all other considerations.

Besides, Greg, be realistic: was there any other way to remove Hitler besides feet first?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>WWII was carried out in an immoral fashion because it was waged against civilians, who can never be "targeted" in a just war. The atomic bombs were the worst example, but the carpet bombing of Germany was just as reprehensible.<<<

I've covered this ground several times here already, so you can look up my responses. All I will say is that Mr. Ryland doesn't understand the history of the war, the limitations of the technology and tactics available to the combatants, or the implications of any of the alternatives to using the Atomic Bombs on Japan (or for that matter, the firebombing of Japanese cities, and the bombing of Germany--which, for the most part, was not "indiscriminate" in the sense that Mr. Ryland understands the term). Mr. Ryland is guilty of dealing with war in the abstract, instead of the reality, with which he is apparently unfamiliar. I strongly suggest that he familiarize himself before he makes sweeping moral judgments such as the one above.

[Joe Long]

"Who says, once Japan was contained, we couldn't have simple waited it out? What was the moral imperative for invasion? Once a beast is caged, you've accomplished the goal of stopping the damage."

This is a good perspective for keeping yourself out of jail in an ordinary self-defense situation. Strategically, however, it's nonsense. Japan still had armies and navies in the field, and a capacity for technological innovation and creative applications for attack (for all we knew, they, like the Nazis, were close to their own atom bomb!), and the mutant Shinto of the '40's was not a rational ideology - nor did the Japanese people enslaved to it face a very bright future on their own island.

I commend to you the last chapter of George McDonald Frazier's memoirs of his service in Burma; like Sgt. Baxter, his life might well have been saved by the Bomb, since combat in Burma continued. He relates an attack by a naked Japanese soldier with a bamboo spear - "he looked half-starved, but he didn't look anything like 'surrender'."

Your comment works out to, "we should not have been committed to total victory"; perhaps indeed we could just have fortifed the West Coast, then, and left the beast a roomier cage.

[Rob Grano]

"Mr. Ryland is guilty of dealing with war in the abstract, instead of the reality, with which he is apparently unfamiliar. I strongly suggest that he familiarize himself before he makes sweeping moral judgments such as the one above."

Yet there are WWII vets whose lives were saved by the A-bomb drops, who would agree with Mr. Ryland. Roger Shattuck comes to mind, for instance -- I've just started his book "Forbidden Knowledge" and he mentions this in his introduction.

On Hitler, Stalin, et al, a worthwhile little book I read recently on this subject is Alain Besancon's "A Century of Horrors: Communism, Nazism, and the Uniqueness of the Shoah."

http://www.isi.org/books/bookdetail.aspx?id=648de15e-a3fc-453c-99da-e2671290b239

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>"Who says, once Japan was contained, we couldn't have simple waited it out? What was the moral imperative for invasion? Once a beast is caged, you've accomplished the goal of stopping the damage."<<<

Again, I covered this, and it is tedious to constantly repeat one's self, but here goes.

1. Three alternatives faced the United States in June 1945 concerning Japan: (a) go ahead with the invasion plan (Operations Coronet/Olympic); (b) impose a blockade on Japan and wait for surrender; (c) begin using atomic bombs on Japanese cities as quickly as we could produce them. Each of these alternatives would result in huge civilian losses, as well as U.S. and Japanese military casualties.

2. Invasion would have resulted in more than one million casualties, mainly Japanese, but possibly as more than 100,000 American dead. The Japanese knew we were coming, and since there were only a very limited number of beaches suitable for landings, they knew where we were going. Both reconnaissance flights and communications intercepts in July/August 1945 indicated the Japanese were building up their forces opposite our selected landing zones, and by the planned invasion date, would actually outnumber U.S. forces at the point of contact. Consider the casualties on Omaha Beach, where ten thousand U.S. troops were pinned down and slaughtered by fewer than 1500 German soldiers armed with nothing more than machineguns and mortars (we lost 2500 dead on Omaha). Consider, too, that the United States was just finishing off the battle of Okinawa, in which 27,000 Americans were killed on the ground (in addition to several thousand more in the U.S. fleet), plus more than 100,000 Japanese, including may civilians. Consider that the Japanese government had ordered the mobilization of the entire civilian population to resist the invasio of Japan, arming them with pikes, knives, grenades and assorted weaponry, and ordering them to fight to the death. Given the level of indoctrination in Japanese society, many of them would have done so.

So bad did the military outlook for the invasion seem, the U.S. seriously considered using nuclear weapons in a tactical role to soften up the defenses. Upwards of six Nagasaki-type bombs would have been dropped behind the invasion beaches 48 hours before the landings. U.S. troops would then land, push through the devastated zone, and continued the battle inland. Of course, a lot of Japanese civilians would have been killed in the process--Japan is a densely populated country, and most of the people do live on the coastal plains--and we didn't know squat about radiation back then, so how many American troops would have died of radiation poisoning as a result? But at least we weren't aiming at civilians DELIBERATELY, were we?

So, bottom line for invasion: about a million people killed, perhaps 100,000 Americans, the rest Japanese, plus four or five times that number injured.

3. Blockade looks like a non-violent way of compelling surrender, but only if one doesn't look too closely. It substitutes slow death by starvation for a quick one by fire, blast or bullet. Already by July 1945, the combination of submarine warfare and aerial mining of the inland waters of Japan had effectively isolated the Home Islands from mainland Asia, except for a few tenuous supply lines. A full blockade would have severed even those, with the result that soon the population of Japan would begin to starve. The Japanese high command had already anticipated that, and had plans in place to kill all the sick, all the elderly, and all children too young to fight (basically, everyone under the age of ten). Also, all foreigners remaining in Japan, including Allied POWs, would be executed as "useless mouths. All food would be diverted to the military and those civilians in "essential positions". Japan would hold out to the last man, woman and child. Nobody has done a serious study of the deaths resulting from blockade, but they would have been enormous--several million at least. It is estimated that more than a million people died in Germany as a result of the British blockade in World War I, which was a lot less hermetic than the blockade of Japan would have been. Almost all the Japanese dead would have been civilians. There also would have been American casualties, as the blockading force would have been subjected to repeated attacks by Kamikzes, submarines, mines and suicide boats. Based on the losses off Okinawa, one might project 30-50,000 American sailors and airmen killed, and more than 400 ships sunk, in a 6-12 month blockade of Japan. But at least we would not have been targeting civilians.

3. The Atomic Bomb. The U.S. had already been obliterating Japanese cities for about four months when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Contrary to what Mr. Rylands says, firebombing Japanese cities was a legitimate military tactic, fully in accordance with the laws of war, for which the Japanese have no one to blame but themselves. Knowing that the Americans had the capability to destroy their factories with high-altitude precision bombing, the Japanese government dispersed all of its war production into small home factories. Almost every house in every city was drafted into the war effort, whether it was turning out parts for aircraft on small lathes, sewing uniforms, or making ammunition, all of it was being done by the entire urban population. There was no way to separate war industry from residential areas, and in any case, the entire population was enrolled in the war effort, and thus became legitimate targets. The man who makes the bullet is as much a soldier as the man who pulls the trigger. That is the sad fact of industrial warfare and the nation-at-war concept.

Given the nature of the target, and the construction of Japanese cities, incendiary bombing was the only logical tactic to employ. And it worked, with aweful efficiency. One firebomb raid on Tokyo killed more than 100,000 people in a single night. For that, too, the Japanese had only themselves to blame, having taken practically no effective steps to protect their cities from aerial attack--simple measures such as building effective bomb shelters, or clearing fire lanes, or ensuring adequate numbers of firefighters and civil defense personnel. Attacks on other cities were almost as effective, if not as deadly. By August 1945, almost every Japanese industrial city had been attacked and effectively destroyed (with the exception of the cities on the atomic targeting list, which were "reserved" so that the effects of the bomb could be studied in detail). Still, the Japanese government would not surrender, so the U.S. had no choice but to up the ante. Even then, the target cities selected were legitimate military targets. Hiroshima was a major port, center of a Japanese military district, headquarters for the Japanese army charged with the defense of Kyushu. Nagasaki was a major naval base and industrial city.

As compared to the conventional bombing raids, the atomic raids were not significantly different in the casualties inflicted. At Hiroshima, the most reliable estimate of immediate and short-term deaths is 70,000. For Nagasaki, where hilly terrain and bad aim mitigated much of the blast effect of the bomb, only 40,000 were killed. Of course, there were some delayed deaths from radiation sickness, but the Japanese tendency to treat the death of everyone who was in either city as being caused by the atomic bombs is pure propaganda. One might as well blame the asbestos deaths of every American who worked in a shipyard between 1941-1945 on the Japanese.

The atomic bombings achieved their objective: they did cause the Japanese to sue for peace. But only after the SECOND bombing, which shows the degree of Japanese obdurancy. This is remarked upon by Eric Bergerud in his monumental "Touched by Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific":

"Wars of attrition fly in the face of the warrior ethos. Bombing cities, starving whole populations, wrecking economies were justified in World War II on specifically unique political grounds. Hitler and the Japanese government, the allies argued, had started a war of shameless and grandiose aggression, and fought it in a viscious manner. Unconditional surrender, consequently, was the only acceptable outcome of the war for the Allies. Note, however, that surrender would end the killing. (Because the Jews could not surrender, Hitler's policy toward them was in no way an act of war but murder on a massive scale). The measure taken to fight the war were so extreme, and ran so deeply against human decency, that modern nations have never remotely duplicated them. The ethics behind nuclear arms proves this point. They existed specifically to make wars of extermination impossible because it would be mutual. Neither side during the Cold War seriously considered using them for a first strike on the other nation's population. Lest we think we are off on a tangent, recall that the only nuclear weapons ever used were dropped on Japan. The American government justified dropping the two bombs by claiming that the invasion of Japan, because Japan would fight a purposeless battle to the end, would become a blood-soaked apocalypse. I have not talked to a single Allied combat veteran of World War II who has any regrets concerning the the decision. The road from the Emperor's Rescript of 1882 ["Duty is weightier than a mountain; death is lighter than a feather"--SLK] to Hiroshima is sadly direct". [p.132]

So, let's sum up: as the Japanese were not going to surrender in a reasonable manner, none of the three options open to the United States in August 1945 were particularly good.

Invasion: More than 1 million dead, including 100,000 Americans
Blockade: Several million dead, mostly Japanese civilians
Atomic Bombs: About 110,000 dead, mostly Japanese civilians.

Given the options available, one can only conclude that using the atomic bombs against Hiroshima was not only militarily correct, BUT ALSO THE MOST MORAL AND HUMANE OPTION AVAILABLE TO US AT THE TIME.

Those who look to other options are not thinking clearly, but are merely attempting to wrap themselves in a blanket of self-righteousness and claim an abstrat moral superiority by looking at options such as blockade which would have killed an order of magnitude more people than the atomic bombs, but which had the virtue of keeping their hands free of blood. Spare me from such abstract and obscene moral logic, please.

And I do not intend to write any more on this subject, having done so at least three times including this. I fail to understand why people insist on making blanket moral condemnations when they are so utterly ignorant of the facts involved. But perhaps this is what comes of seeing morality as a set of abstract propositions, instead of hard choices made with incomplete and perhaps faulty information and very limited time.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Yet there are WWII vets whose lives were saved by the A-bomb drops, who would agree with Mr. Ryland. Roger Shattuck comes to mind, for instance -- I've just started his book "Forbidden Knowledge" and he mentions this in his introduction.<<<

And yet liberal historian and literary critic Paul Fussell, who was a combat infantryman slated to hit the beach in Operation Olympic, summed up his position totally in his essay, "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb".

[GL]

Nero not only killed fewer people, but he did so because of what those people believed, not who they were. Thus, the Christians had a choice--they could burn a few pellets of incense, reject Christ and live (for a while); or they could bear witness to Christ and die (but claim eternal life thereafter).

Your view undoubtedly reflects the Eastern (and Arminian) view of salvation. As a Reformed Christian, I believe Christians believe because of who they are (because of God's divine election and regeneration, not because of anything inherent in themselves). It is true, a Christian could recant, but doing so was a grave sin. It was not simply a matter of choice.

You have not and cannot convince me that Bonhoeffer acted as a Christian should in plotting to murder Hitler. I have studied the matter because I too otherwise have great admiration for the man and of his works, but, as I indicated before, I am deeply troubled by what he did in this instance and am very ambivalent about it.

I honestly see no justification for individual Christian to take it into their own hands to murder heads of state, no matter how evil they are. I am reminded of David's response when the messenger arrived bearing the news that Saul was dead and claiming to have been the one who dispatched him from this life and how David himself acted when twice confronted with the opportunity to take Saul's life and claim what was rightful his, the throne of Israel. Of course, these are not perfect analogy, but it seems clear to me that the government, not individuals, are appointed by God to bear the sword.

[Joe Long]

Even the Romans verse, however, says "HE is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath, and HE bears not the sword in vain". When it comes right down to it, it is never an abstraction which bears the sword, but a man - who sees and acts on the duties of a man in civil society, according to his own capabilities.

A freeborn man against a usurper like Hitler, IS a legitimate ordained authority, so far as I can tell - just as the American colonists acted on what were their lawful rights.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>It is true, a Christian could recant, but doing so was a grave sin. It was not simply a matter of choice.<<<

I never implied that apostacy was ever anything other than a grave sin--the gravest of all sins, save perhaps the sin against the Holy Spirit. But all sin is voluntary. God doesn't force virtue upon us. So it is a matter of choice. The Christian before the Roman magistrate always had a choice, for as the Apostolic Didache writes, "There are two ways: the Way of Life, and the way of death". We are called upon to choose life, which in this case creates the paradox that life can be attained only through death, just as Christ foretold: He who would lose his life will gain it. But Christ doesn't constrain our choices.

>>>You have not and cannot convince me that Bonhoeffer acted as a Christian should in plotting to murder Hitler. I have studied the matter because I too otherwise have great admiration for the man and of his works, but, as I indicated before, I am deeply troubled by what he did in this instance and am very ambivalent about it.<<<

You see a man committing murder. You know he will murder again. Only you can stop him, and the only way you can stop him is by shooting him. But you won't shoot. That makes you morally complicit in all his murders.

>>>I honestly see no justification for individual Christian to take it into their own hands to murder heads of state, no matter how evil they are. I<<<

You leave out the entire notion of legitimacy. By your reckoning, holding power is all it takes, therefore if a tyrant succeeds in seizing power, the Christian does nothing to overthrow him, even though his assumption of power was illegitimate. There is also the matter of social contract: the ruler must rule justly, and failure to do so relieves the subject from his allegience.

You also ignore numerous instances in the Old Testament where illegitimate kings are summarily dispatch, to the approbation of the Deuteronomic Historian and the Priestly Redactor alike.

[GL]

Joe,

I hardly ever disagree with anything you post, but the "He" referred to in Romans was the magistrate, not an individual citizen with no governing authority. Bonhoeffer had no legitimate governing authority.

Stuart,

Desirable ends do not justify any and all means. Hitler could be stopped by others and was. Bonhoeffer, quite naturally and understandably I would agree, was unwilling to patiently wait for a legitimate end to Hitler's madness.

You see a man committing murder. You know he will murder again. Only you can stop him, and the only way you can stop him is by shooting him. But you won't shoot. That makes you morally complicit in all his murders.

David could have ended Saul's evil by killing him, but he would not touch the Lord's anointed. Peter cut off the soldier's ear to protect Jesus from murder and Jesus rebuked him. You are attempting to make simple something which is complex.

[Rob Grano]

'yet liberal historian and literary critic Paul Fussell, who was a combat infantryman slated to hit the beach in Operation Olympic, summed up his position totally in his essay, "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb".'

Yes, I've read some of Fussell. I'm simply stating that even some men who "were there" come down on the other side of this issue, so it shouldn't be surprising that some of those who weren't there do so as well.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Hitler could be stopped by others and was.<<<

At what cost, Greg? Your position can only reached by a tendentious reading of Scripture, and is morally obtuse in the most bizarre fashion. It's legalism taken to extremes--he's the king, so we have to put up with him, even if he is a viscious lunatic.

I think it significant that not to many Reformed theologians would support your perspective (after all, a goodly number of Reformed theologians like John Knox were actively involved in overthrowing and judicially murdering their own rulers. Moreover, in both the Latin and Eastern Traditions, moral theology makes a distinction between a rightful ruler and a tyrant. We must submit to the former but are absolved from allegience to the latter. And the distinction between rightful (legitimate) ruler and tyrant goes beyond bloodline (or election) and comes down to the fact that a rightful ruler rules justly, in accordance with the teachings of the Church or with the natural law written in the hearts of men, whereas the tyrant commits acts which are an abomination before both man and God.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Yes, I've read some of Fussell. I'm simply stating that even some men who "were there" come down on the other side of this issue, so it shouldn't be surprising that some of those who weren't there do so as well.<<<

There may be some, but a distinct minority. I would be interested in knowing what to branch of service Shattuck belonged--it may have colored his post hoc judgments.

And so--Praise Google--I asked and was rewarded:

"Piloting cargo aircraft in the Pacific theater, he rose to the rank of captain."

I don't think Fussell would consider Shattuck qualified to pass judgment.

[GL]

Moreover, in both the Latin and Eastern Traditions, moral theology makes a distinction between a rightful ruler and a tyrant. We must submit to the former but are absolved from allegience to the latter. And the distinction between rightful (legitimate) ruler and tyrant goes beyond bloodline (or election) and comes down to the fact that a rightful ruler rules justly, in accordance with the teachings of the Church or with the natural law written in the hearts of men, whereas the tyrant commits acts which are an abomination before both man and God.

St. Paul appears to disagree with you. He called for Christians to submit to the authorities, who at the time he wrote were vile, evil men who most certainly did not "rule[] justly, in accordance with the teachings of the Church or with the natural law written in the hearts of men," but rather "commit[ed] acts which [were] an abomination before both man and God." As I understand Scripture, we must submit except when we are called to violate God's commands and our allegiance to Him. Then we must respectfully disobey and accept the consequences.

Not believing in the infallibility of the founders and ancestors of my tradition (or of any other Christian tradition, save our Lord Himself and the Spirit speaking through the authors of sacred Scripture), citing Knox's actions does not persuade me that either he or Bonhoeffer acted appropriately. Nor, for that matter, do I believe the founders of our nation were justified in rebelling against King George III. In His providence, however, God used such acts to work His will.

[bd]

Will someone direct me to where MacIntyre talks about virtue and neighborhoods?

[Joe Long]

"I hardly ever disagree with anything you post, but the "He" referred to in Romans was the magistrate, not an individual citizen with no governing authority. Bonhoeffer had no legitimate governing authority."

GL, thanks, and our disagreements are indeed rare. Quite possible I'm just being stubborn and usurping authority myself, on behalf on individuals like Bonhoeffer. However, in societies where leaders are elected, ultimate political authority rests - by statute!- with the citizen; I think ordinary free citizens are the divinely constituted authorities in the societies we live in today - exercising our authority through democratic processes. In extraordinary circumstances, we might need to step beyond them.

I admire the consistency which allows you to unflinchingly aver that Hitler was "God's annointed", but I believe it's unnecessary. Such a government simply could not be legitimate and partake of God's protection - no, not even if the sociopath actually influenced enough of an electorate to win his position. Nor need we accept every self-proclaimed authority which temporarily controls a piece of ground, as suddenly being God's agent on earth.

What about the Weimar Republic - or the Kaiser? Weren't they both more legitimate than "der Fuhrer", particularly considering the devious means by which he'd acquired their authority? De facto control of a government doesn't grant you divine protection if the whole thing is stolen property in the first place.

[Joe Long]

>>>Hitler could be stopped by others and was.<<<

But I submit that it's a shame to Germany - which haunts them to this day - that this necessary action was outsourced. The bitter grownup truth is that, when it's necessary, you ought to shoot your OWN dog.

[Rob Grano]

"I don't think Fussell would consider Shattuck qualified to pass judgment."

He may want to check what Shattuck actually says in his book first.

[GL]

Joe and Stuart,

I don't have the time or energy (or interest) to debate this at lengthy so I'll let you two have the last word.

Was Hitler legitimate? I don't know, he was duly elected, but he most certainly was one of the most vile and evil men ever to rule a nation. I will accept, for argument's sake, that he was not legitimate. There was in place a God-ordained means for removing him from power, the Allies. And they did so. I must assume they did so because God willed it. The question is not the ends (removing Hitler from power), but the means.

[Rob Grano]

If we accept the notion that Hitler was a legitimate God-ordained ruler, does that require us to believe that the Holocaust, or the Shoah, as some Jews prefer to call it, was in some sense God's will?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>St. Paul appears to disagree with you. He called for Christians to submit to the authorities, who at the time he wrote were vile, evil men who most certainly did not "rule[] justly, in accordance with the teachings of the Church or with the natural law written in the hearts of men," but rather "commit[ed] acts which [were] an abomination before both man and God." <<<

Actually, by the standards of the time, most of the civil rulers were quite just. There's a reason the Pax Romana lasted for three centuries, and that Rome was able to rule the entire world from Britain to Mesopotamia with an army of only 170,000 men.

I'm reminded of the Life of Brian, when the Jewish revolutionaries are groaning under the Roman yoke:

REG:

They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers.

LORETTA:

And from our fathers' fathers' fathers.

REG:

Yeah.

LORETTA:

And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers.
REG:

Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!

XERXES:

The aqueduct?

REG:

What?

XERXES:

The aqueduct.

REG:

Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.

COMMANDO #3:

And the sanitation.

LORETTA:

Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?

REG:

Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.

MATTHIAS:

And the roads.

REG:

Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--

COMMANDO:

Irrigation.

XERXES:

Medicine.

COMMANDOS:

Huh? Heh? Huh...

COMMANDO #2:

Education.

COMMANDOS:

Ohh...

REG:

Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.

COMMANDO #1:

And the wine.

COMMANDOS:

Oh, yes. Yeah...

FRANCIS:

Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.

COMMANDO:

Public baths.

LORETTA:

And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.

FRANCIS:

Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.

COMMANDOS:

Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.

REG:

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

XERXES:

Brought peace.

REG:

Oh. Peace? Shut up!
[bam bam bam bam bam bam bam]
[bam bam bam bam bam]

[Bill R]

Most interesting thread! But isn’t it relevant to ask, concerning means, what Bonhoeffer understood in this regard? That is, did Bonhoeffer intend to commend his actions to all Christians? Or did he see himself called by God to be the means of Hitler’s destruction, and therefore understand such duty to be incumbent on himself alone? Wouldn’t that make a difference in your analysis, Greg?

[GL]

Bill R.,

No. For now every devout Christian living under an evil, murderous ruler must ask himself, if he believe Bonhoeffer was justified or even required to plot to murder Hitler, whether he too is so justified or even required to plot to murder his unjust ruler. If Bonhoeffer was called to plot murder, the question becomes, "Am I?" That is a poison. (And why it is dangerous and irresponsible to go around calling politicians, especially potential Presidents, murderers.)

Stuart,

Paul wrote while Nero lived. Nero used Christians to illuminate his parties. Yet Paul wrote to Christians admonishing them to submit to the authorities. The Monty Python excerpt is cute and even valid, but only to a point.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

12 Once again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and because they did this evil the LORD gave Eglon king of Moab power over Israel. 13 Getting the Ammonites and Amalekites to join him, Eglon came and attacked Israel, and they took possession of the City of Palms. 14 The Israelites were subject to Eglon king of Moab for eighteen years.

15 Again the Israelites cried out to the LORD, and he gave them a deliverer—Ehud, a left-handed man, the son of Gera the Benjamite. The Israelites sent him with tribute to Eglon king of Moab. 16 Now Ehud had made a double-edged sword about a foot and a half long, which he strapped to his right thigh under his clothing. 17 He presented the tribute to Eglon king of Moab, who was a very fat man. 18 After Ehud had presented the tribute, he sent on their way the men who had carried it. 19 At the idols near Gilgal he himself turned back and said, "I have a secret message for you, O king."

The king said, "Quiet!" And all his attendants left him.

20 Ehud then approached him while he was sitting alone in the upper room of his summer palace and said, "I have a message from God for you." As the king rose from his seat, 21 Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly. 22 Even the handle sank in after the blade, which came out his back. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it. 23 Then Ehud went out to the porch; he shut the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them.

24 After he had gone, the servants came and found the doors of the upper room locked. They said, "He must be relieving himself in the inner room of the house." 25 They waited to the point of embarrassment, but when he did not open the doors of the room, they took a key and unlocked them. There they saw their lord fallen to the floor, dead.

26 While they waited, Ehud got away. He passed by the idols and escaped to Seirah. 27 When he arrived there, he blew a trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went down with him from the hills, with him leading them.

28 "Follow me," he ordered, "for the LORD has given Moab, your enemy, into your hands." So they followed him down and, taking possession of the fords of the Jordan that led to Moab, they allowed no one to cross over. 29 At that time they struck down about ten thousand Moabites, all vigorous and strong; not a man escaped. 30 That day Moab was made subject to Israel, and the land had peace for eighty years. [Judges 3: 12-30]

o "Again the Israelites cried out to the LORD, and he gave them a deliverer—Ehud..."

o "Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly."

o "... and the land had peace for eighty years."

[Joe Long]

"If we accept the notion that Hitler was a legitimate God-ordained ruler, does that require us to believe that the Holocaust, or the Shoah, as some Jews prefer to call it, was in some sense God's will?"

Well, yes, in the extremely broad sense that everything is - and even without accepting Hitler's legitimacy. (Illegitimate rule of Germany during that period would ALSO fall under that broad sense - which would certainly not render either shoah or reich "approved".)

GL: "...every devout Christian living under an evil, murderous ruler must ask himself, if he believe Bonhoeffer was justified or even required to plot to murder Hitler, whether he too is so justified or even required to plot to murder his unjust ruler. If Bonhoeffer was called to plot murder, the question becomes, 'Am I?' "

GL, yes, that's right. It does. And so you get (for instance) John Brown - and you know what I think of John Brown.

But is it "poison"? Well, like a number of other substances, it is indeed poison - when it's not medicine. And it's rarely the correct medicine. Homocide is never to be undertaken lightly!

It has always bothered me that what Paul wrote about governments in Romans was not...well, true. Christians could not indefinitely win the favor of the Roman authorities by righteous lives; eventually they would be murdered simply for being Christian. Paul does link his admonition to obey governing authorities with a description of rulers who "are not a terror to good works, but to evil". Should rulers become a terror to good works, then so far as I'm concerned, it's "Katie, bar the door!"

GL, I do hope never to have to ask myself that question - indeed I don't anticipate any of my countrymen ever being in Bonhoeffer's position. Of course, neither did he...

[Bill R]

"For now every devout Christian living under an evil, murderous ruler must ask himself, if he believe Bonhoeffer was justified or even required to plot to murder Hitler, whether he too is so justified or even required to plot to murder his unjust ruler. If Bonhoeffer was called to plot murder, the question becomes, "Am I?" That is a poison." - GL

Then what was Abraham doing with Isaac? I am not justifying Bonhoeffer, but I am asking--did Bonhoeffer believe every Christian had such a duty? Or did he honestly believe that he had been called, perhaps much against his will (as with Abraham) to obey a divine command? From our point of view, we would still say: do not do what Bonhoeffer did. But could Bonhoeffer fail to act as he did?

[Bill R]

Yowsir! Al Mohler deals with this very issue of God’s command that Abraham sacrifice Isaac in his column today: Was Abraham a fanatic?

[GL]

TUAD,

An excellent counter example. I could cite others: Jael killing Sisera and Judith beheading Holofernes (not part of the Protestant canon, but nonetheless illustrating your point). As I said before, it is a complex issue.

Bill R.,

I am confident God spoke directly to Abraham. I am not sure He spoke directly to Bonhoeffer.

Joe,

Bonhoeffer was no John Brown, who was a madman. That, of course, does not by itself exonerate Bonhoeffer. And yes, we all pray never to be in Bonhoeffer's position.

[Bill R]

"I am confident God spoke directly to Abraham. I am not sure He spoke directly to Bonhoeffer."

Agreed, Greg. I have no way of knowing. But the point is that Bonhoeffer may well have believed otherwise. I am not familiar enough with his life to say if that was the case.

[labrialumn]

Seth, America is a federal republic of several States, not one State. The idea of America is that political creed, derived from Lex Rex and the whole (western) Christian tradition of political thought, which is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. If you disagree with it, please do become Her Majesty's subject and move to Vancouver. But if you agree with it, be a citizen, and love and like your neighbors in Vancouver.

Stuart, considering that Walloon police arrested the second-highest minister in the Flemish parliament - and anyone else who they thought was Flemish, including tourists - at a recent protest - suggests that the ethnae cannot escape the imperium. The rulers have disarmed the citizenry. In Germany, Nazi-era laws against home-schooling are being enforced, less 'parallel-cultures' be allowed to exist to that of the Reich.

People are too quick to assert the absurd "Godwin's "law", and too afraid to call real ideological fascism by its real name.

Stuart, and the Treaty of Versailles disarmed the Germanies. It would have been impossible for them to re-arm. Or so it was thought. The EU has rather more flexibility in armaments.

GL, when the holders of high office exceed their office and sin and commit crimes, the power delegated to those offices return to the lesser magistrates. Bonhoeffer was the chaplain to those lesser magistrates. He did right. The sad thing is that a pietistic distortion of Luther's Two Kingdoms led him to believe that he was sinning in doing so.

Jim, Considering that there were Japanese soldiers holding out in the Pacific into the 1980s, and considering the significant advancements that the Japanese had made to German rockets and jets, which they were building in mountain tunnel factories, 500,000 is a naively low estimate for American casualties in the defeat of Japan. Thank you for your service.

When Paul wrote down Romans 13, it is most likely that Seneca, not Nero, was running the empire. It was effectively to Seneca that Paul appealed, hoping for a philosophical discussion, but Nero had come of age/taken over by the time Paul actually got to Rome.

Rob, primary source history shows that America was indeed founded on Christian political thought. Unquestionably.

Chris, I too, doubt the rightness of the targets of the a-bombs, let alone the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, but waiting Japan out would have been very foolish and ineffective. They were building highly advanced jet and rocket fighters to use as kamikazes against the American blockade fleet. We did not have the ability to shoot them down. We are talking late 50s technology as used by the Soviets and Americans, in 1946. These were "mark 2" to "mark 4" improvements over the most advanced technology that the Third Reich had thrown at the Allies. these were significant upgrades.

Further, millions of Japanese civilians would have died due to the blockade, and as collateral damage. Certainly the bombs -would- have been used, on cities, as the casualty reports came back to America on Pathe News in the theaters. And we'd have had more than two by then.

Is it more moral to kill someone by starvation than by a bomb? Granted the Left in America think so (think Terri Schiavo and countless others like her) but I don't think so.

Joe, that reminds me of the German commerce raider in the North Atlantic who refused to fly the swastika, but flew the old German imperial banner. :-)

Stuart, National Socialist fascism is not a personality cult, but an ideology that was held by most of the intelligentsia, not only in Germany and Italy, but many in Spain, France, Belgium, England and the US. Arguably, it still is. They've changed tailors, is all. They still follow Heidegger and Derrida. I do agree that if Roosevelt and Truman had had stealth bombers, laser and GPS-guided munitions, if tactical doctrine had developed to where we'd have realized that the Thunderbolt attacking railways and bridges was more effective than Flying Fortresses in massed bombing raids, at least on a unit per unit basis, that we'd have used them in the way that produced the fewest collateral casualties. But doctrine had not developed, and we didn't have pinpoint technology, as remarkable as the Norden sight was.

Stuart, I disagree with the one million figure for Japanese casualties and 100,000 for us. I think our casualties would have been 1-2 million, and we may well have had to fight to very nearly the last Japanese. (The Ainu probably wouldn't have fought us).

Even after the second bomb, the emperor-cultists in the military were prepared to execute the government, and keep on fighting. It may have been a near thing.

I had forgotten or not known of the dispersal of war manufacturing to all homes, that does cast the bombing of -Japanese- cities in a different light. Not so sure about Dresden, though. I've met a survivor of Dresden.

GL, as a Calvinist, you should read Calvin, Knox and Rutherford on the matter of the duty of resistance by the lesser magistrates to unlawful acts by greater magistrates.

Further, surely Bonhoeffer was simply doing what he was predetermined to do, according to your system. How could he do otherwise? The Unmoved Mover moved him, for there are no other movers than the Unmoved Mover.

Stuart, good to know that that distinction exists in Eastern theology, where Caesaropapism has held sway for more than 15 centuries. It comes as a surprise to me, but a happy one.

GL, Seneca as regent -did- rule according to natural law, substantially. And don't forget Peter, James and John disobeying the 'lawful' rulers where they violated the limitations of the offices which they held. You need to renounce American citizenship and bow the knee to Her Majesty, then renounce alliegence to her, and ask the Pope which temporal lord you owe obedience to as a mere subject (for the Crown of Great Britain is in rebellion against Rome), since you claim that our war for independence was illegitimate. Though how legitimately elected American legislatures resisting English parliamentary troops bent on reducing the Americans from their status as Englishmen - though we had a common king, we had no relationship of authority and submission with, could be seen as illegitimate.

The Third Reich would have acted legitimately when it enforced the moral law (against rapists, murderers, homosexuals, etc.) but not when it exterminated the Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, etc. (Weimar wasn't exactly holy when -it- with American medical approval, executed the disabled). It is one thing to obey a traffic law, and another to sin against God in order to obey a temporal authority. That is separate from the question of the legitimacy of the government, That subject raises questions as to for instance, whether a Chicagoan was obligated to obey the Maffia.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>. Yet Paul wrote to Christians admonishing them to submit to the authorities. <<<

Paul's situation was not Bonhoffer's. The people being persecuted by Nero were Christians. Paul was a Christian, with authority over Christians as an Apostle. Paul exhorts HIS followers to submit to the authorities in all meekness, and they could choose to follow his advice or not. The point remaining, it was a choice by Christians about what happens to Christians.

But that was not the situation of Bonhoffer, who saw authorities abusing their power not so much over Christians (the majority of Protestants in Germany in fact followed YOUR lead) but over others who were not Christians--not even Germans, for that matter. He sees this abuse of power, he recognizes that innocent lives are being taken--NOT as a matter of choice on the part of the victims, but against their will. Bonhoffer lives in a totalitarian state. He recognizes that this state does not recognize the popular will, that it cannot be persuaded, that it can not be negotiated out of office. The only way to get rid of the Nazis and bring peace is to kill the one man who holds the Nazi edifice together.

By his actions, Hitler has placed himself hors la loi--outside the law, an outlaw, an enemy of all humanity. He is not the legitimate ruler of Germany, for he has usurped power, demolished the civil institutions and ruled by fear and force.

Nero, for all his faults (and remember, his biography was written by his archenemies) WAS the legitimate Emperor and Augustus--until he abused HIS power and authority, and was declared an outlaw by the Roman Senate, taking back powers which in theory it had never formally ceded.

The Senate was justified in overthrowing Nero, and Bonhoffer was justified in trying to overthrow Hitler.

I find your attitude rather cavalier with the lives of others. I'm supposed to be the bloodthirsty one, but I would never take the Panglossian stance that you have.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Stuart, good to know that that distinction exists in Eastern theology, where Caesaropapism has held sway for more than 15 centuries. It comes as a surprise to me, but a happy one.<<<

A canard, a lie, a caricature long ago disproven. But not something to take up here.

[labrialumn]

GL, that isn't poison, it is a tonic. So, you are opposed for calling spades, spades, out of fear. I see.

You also don't seem to understand (or have read) Knox, Calvin, Rutherfuird or Schaeffer on the proper theological basis and modes of the duty of resistance, or you wouldn't be so confused that identifying someone Biblically as being guilty of murder somehow means that the civiian must act as the officer of the court, without being appointed as a Constitutional officer, after a valid trial.

On the subject of Japanese jets, remember that the MIGs used in Korea were of WWII German design, the Japanese had tweaked that design and were preparing to mass produce them. Korean war MIGs with German-designed, Japanese-improved television-guided bombs would have been unstoppable in sinking our fleet. And that was part of the scenario for 1946.

[Rob Grano]

"Rob, primary source history shows that America was indeed founded on Christian political thought. Unquestionably."

Don't think so. There no doubt was a strong Christian element there, but there was also a Deistic and Enlightenment influence as well. In no way was it based on unalloyed "Christian thought."

"Stuart, good to know that that distinction exists in Eastern theology, where Caesaropapism has held sway for more than 15 centuries."

Caesaropapism? Geez, not even the Roman Catholic apologists are using that word anymore! You need to get into the 21st century with your historical reading, methinks.

[labrialumn]

Stuart,
Really? That is honestly news to me. Very interesting, if true. That is not how I was taught.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Stuart, and the Treaty of Versailles disarmed the Germanies. It would have been impossible for them to re-arm. Or so it was thought. The EU has rather more flexibility in armaments.<<<

The situations have changed very much. In the First World War, the Germans were defeated but not beaten. They came out of it convinced that they had been betrayed, and from the moment the signatures were dry on the Treaty, Germany began violating it. The Reichsheer, though limited to 100,000 men, formed the basis of a mobilization army of millions, and its planning throughout the 1920s was predicated on the assumption that Germany would, eventually, abrogate the Treaty and prepare for Round Two, because the settlement of Versailles was not accepted in Germany, in Eastern Europe, or much of any place else.

In contrast, the settlement of World War II has been accepted as legitimate. Aside from the breakup of Czechoslovakia (peacefully) and of Yugoslavia (violently), there have been little in the way of border changes. The reunification of Germany after the collapse of communism returned Germany to much the same state it was in after World War I (minus East Prussia). There is no irredentism. There are no populations itching for la revanche. It is over. Germany in 1933 still had the industrial and population potential to reemerge as a military power. Germany in 2007 does not. Neither does France, Britain, Italy, Spain or any of the other European states. Not even Russia has the wherewithal to do so. The center of gravity has moved east, and the only powers capable of challenging the United States--potentially, at some point in the distant future--are China and India.

[labrialumn]

Rob,
I find that a 21st century perspective on history is going to be highly distortive and unfair. It is far better historiography to read primary sources than later revisionist propaganda.

Your response to the standard term for the thing, which I was taught in the late 20th century, seems just bizarre to me.

Again, that America was founded upon Christian principles is unquestionable. All of the revisionist claims of deist principles are easily demolished from the primary sources.

The unifying factor seems to be your preference for anachronistic revisionism, and my preference for primary sources.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Don't think so. There no doubt was a strong Christian element there, but there was also a Deistic and Enlightenment influence as well. In no way was it based on unalloyed "Christian thought."<<<

It may have been "Protestant" Christianity, but it was indeed Christianity. The deism and enlightenment skepticism may have affected some of the Founding Fathers (but by no means all of them, or even a majority), but the vast majority of the American people indeed considered themselves to be faithful Christians, and the country itself founded on Christian principles as the New Jerusalem. Just that it's a Protestant New Jerusalem, to be sure. Even American Catholics are just Protestants with a thing for Mary and the Pope (when he agrees with them).

[labrialumn]

Stuart,
That is interesting. You have access to information I do not. I hadn't realized that Putin's missile-rattling and EU interventionism were impotent. But you are much closer to the pulse on this than I am.I also hadn't realized that India had the potential to be more than a regional threat. As long as it maintains Hindutva fascism, and the crippling caste system of their 3,000 year reich, and as long as it has borders with Islam and China. (Vishal Mangalwadi is my source on this, for the most part, with regards to India) But again, you have access to better data (by far, I assume) than I do.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Stuart, I disagree with the one million figure for Japanese casualties and 100,000 for us. I think our casualties would have been 1-2 million, and we may well have had to fight to very nearly the last Japanese. (The Ainu probably wouldn't have fought us).<<<

I'm only counting the dead, not total casualties (which would have been more than one million for the United States and Allied forces). The best analysis is found in Norman Polmar and Thnoas B. Allen, "Code Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan--And Why Truman Dropped the Bomb".

On what the invasion might have been like, Okinawa is the template, and the image that dominated the minds of American planners in July-August 1945. The best account of this harrowing battle (which remains largely unknown in the United States) can be found in George Fiefer's "Tenozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb".

[Josiah A. Roelfsema]

On Bonhoeffer,
I agree with Stuart's point that Bonhoeffer was in a different situation than Paul. I think that is the key to understanding how Bonhoeffer could, without sin, agree to help fight Hitler.

Specifically,
1. Paul told Christians (and Christians only), of whom he was a legitimate leader, to submit to authorities where the only harm would come to Christians - all of whom technically had the choice to leave Christ if they chose.

2. Bonhoeffer opposed a leader who was not targeting Christians, at least not often directly, but rather imprisoning and later killing people for something they could not change.

One opposed Christ directly in the form of his people.

The other opposed the helpless, the widow, the orphan, one's who had no choice but to accept it, those whom James, and others, remind us to look after.

[Ethan C.]

Going way back to before the tangent:

>>and a party of social conservatives and traditional conservatives--the Tory Party of Disreali in American garb.<<

As for all the talk about war and such: I think I've said all I wish to on this thread, and my opinions have not substantially changed since then.

As to assassination, I am more in agreement with GL than with others (especially when it comes to HM King George III and the terrorist John Brown), though I'm sure that if I found myself in Bonhhoeffer's position, I'd look like crazy for a loophole.

I do think there's something to be said for the argument that popular sovereignty gives us a possible recourse in case of a tyrranical abuse of power out of keeping with our constitutional order, and something like that might have applied to Bonhoeffer as well.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Not so sure about Dresden, though. I've met a survivor of Dresden.<<<

I have many issues with the way in which the British conducted their half of the combined bomber offensive, particularly Sir Arthur Harris' acceptance of the "de-housing" theory; i.e., by bombing the houses of German factory workers, they would be so busy trying to find food and shelter that they wouldn't show up for work. There were very elaborate algorithms to "prove" that x tons of bombs dropped on a given city would result in the "de-housing" of y workers which would result in z reduction in German production. All of which proves that logic is simply a means of being wrong with CONFIDENCE. The British overestimated the amount of slack in the German economy (Britain was fully mobilized--it did not occur to them that Germany was not; so the Germans still had enough surplus civilian capacity in the economy to make up for disruptions in the war industries, right through 1943).

Harris was very much opposed to what he called "panacea bombing"--hit a certain set of targets, and the German econmy folds up like a house of cards. Early in the war the British tried oil, then steel, then ball bearings--none of it worked, and Harris became disenchanted. But he also opposed what he called "morale bombing"--hit the civilians hard enough and they will rebel. He knew the British public had not, and he felt that the Germans were probably better at keeping the population in line, what with being Nazis and all.

His basic problem was this: it is very hard to find a precision target at night, especially when the bad guys turn off the lights, jam all your electornic navigation systems, set off decoy fires and smoke screens--and when the cloud cover is 7/10ths most nights, anyway. Night after night, the bombers went out (the British adopted night bombing after they lost 75% of their force in a string of catastrophic daylight raids), and would come back saying that they had hit the target. But little damage was actually done. When a British scientist named Butt had the bright idea to put a photoflash bomb in the bomb bay of each bomber to take a picture of the ground underneath the release point, the results were astonishing: only 5% of British bombers were getting within 5 miles of their assigned targets (10 miles in the case of the hazy and well-defended Ruhr); most bombs were landing in open fields, making life hard for the German dairy cows.

This was the main reason why Harris turned to the dehousing campaign: he knew most of his bombers could hit a city, particularly after more sophisticated navigation aids were developed. But what Harris ignored was just how much improved the aiming techniques of the RAF became after the development of the Pathfinder Force. In fact, from March 1944 onward, RAF Bomber Command showed itself to be capable of hitting precision targets like rail yards in France--and causing minimal collateral damage along the way.

At this time, operations analysts in Britain and the United States independently came to the conclusion that the German economy had two Achilles Heels--transportation and oil. To evade the damage caused by allied bombing, the Germans dispersed their war production into the countryside, with various components for tanks, guns, and planes being made in different places and then shipped to a central location for final assembly. Disrupt the road and rail net, and the parts never arrive. Deprive the German forces of oil, and they can't move--and neither can the parts. As much oil moved by rail, the transport and oil plans were mutually reinforcing. It could and did cripple Germany in the last ten months of the War.

But Harris was still living in 1943, and insisted on hitting German cities regardless. It was wasted effort, for the most part, and Dresden was only a final punctuation.

Dresden was bombed at Stalin's insistence, because it was still a major German communications center and routing point for troops moving to the Eastern Front. It was also the place where refugees fleeing the Russians congregated. And, tragically enough, it was beyond the range of the most accurate British navigation aids. The original target was actually the rail yards, but when the British couldn't locate them, they switch to bombing the center of the target area, which was the old city.

The fire storm was not intentional--nobody actually knew how to start one consistently. Hamburg, Rostock, Tokyo and Dresden were all flukes caused by the right combination of fire locations, fuel, and weather conditions. Attempts to repeat the phenomenon elswhere generally failed.

Nobody knows how many people died in Dresden. Most historians who have studied the German records point to somewhere between 25,000 (the German official figure) and 45,000 (taking into account undocumented refugees). Figures of 75,000, 100,000 or more were made much later, mainly for propaganda purposes. I'm sure Kurt Vonnegut had a horrible experience there, but to be honest, Dresden was not extraordinary, "just the usual plastering" in the words of one British pilot who flew there.

To be fair, the U.S. Army Air Force often did no better than the British, for all that we flew in daylight and practiced "precision bombing" with the legendary Norden bombsight. It may have been able to put a bomb in a pickle barrel from a height of 25,000 feet--under ideal conditions, clear skies, a well-marked target, and nobody shooting at the bombardier. Under real war conditions, accuracy degraded considerably. For one thing, Germany is usually covered with clouds, and when they couldn't see the target, the American bombers let fly at the first valuable looking piece of Germany they could find. Second, the Germans didn't like being bombed, and surrounded their cities with lots of anti-aircraft guns and interceptor aircraft. These shot down a lot of planes, and put the wind up the crews of the ones that survived. Bombardiers got twitchy, formations got ragged, there was always the temptation to drop the bombs just a few second early and get out of Dodge.

As a result, the typical CEP (Circular Error Probability, a radius within which half of all bombs will fall) was on the order of two miles. When the target was totally obscured, and the Americans bombed using radar, their accuracy was as bad as the RAF's.

The situation was summed up after the war by a Bomber Command pilot talking with an VIII Air Force counterpart: "We area bombed area targets. You area bombed precison targets". I imagine to the Germans living down below, it was all academic.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I find that a 21st century perspective on history is going to be highly distortive and unfair. It is far better historiography to read primary sources than later revisionist propaganda.<<<

You won't find the word "Caesaropapism" in any primary document. it's an intellectual construct invented by 18th and 19th century Western European historians following in the footsteps of Edward Gibbon, who believed that Eastern Christianity (and Eastern European culture generally) were decadent and inferior to the enlightened Western culture in which they lived.

in other words, you prefer OLD propaganda, as opposed to NEW propaganda. Surprisingly enough, modern Byzantine scholarship is far superior to its predecessors, not the least because the entire discipline did not exist prior to its invention by Sir Steven Runciman in the 1920s and 30s.

[Ethan C.]

Also, I don't have to move to Vancouver, because King George graciously granted us our independence in the Treaty of Paris. If England still asserted a claim of sovereignty over us, I would have to consider the matter more closely.

[Rob Grano]

'It may have been "Protestant" Christianity, but it was indeed Christianity. The deism and enlightenment skepticism may have affected some of the Founding Fathers (but by no means all of them, or even a majority), but the vast majority of the American people indeed considered themselves to be faithful Christians, and the country itself founded on Christian principles as the New Jerusalem.'

As far as the people go, I fully agree. When we come to the founders, I'm not so sure. Some were definitely devout Christians, but others were, in fact, Deists and there were some Christian-leaning Deists, and Deistic-leaning Christians. The point I made above, in agreement with Larison, is that neither the founding of America, nor the subsequent working out of its principles, is as solidly 'Christian' as some apologists for a "Christian America" make it out to be. On the other hand, the opposite view which says that the founders were all Deists and skeptics and that there was no Christian influence there at all is frightfully wrongheaded.

[Rob Grano]

"I find that a 21st century perspective on history is going to be highly distortive and unfair. It is far better historiography to read primary sources than later revisionist propaganda."

Agreed, but the one does not preclude the other. Studying the primary sources more closely often corrects previous errors. Two cases in point: Dvornik's work on the Photian Schism completely changed that way that event is now viewed historically. And Eamon Duffy's work on the English Reformation is having a similar effect. This is revisionist work in one sense, in that it is revising the views held by a majority of scholars. But the revisions themselves are based on thorough studies of the primary material.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>This is revisionist work in one sense, in that it is revising the views held by a majority of scholars. But the revisions themselves are based on thorough studies of the primary material.<<<

Indeed, the legitimate revisionism is not sparked so much by an arbitrary desire to reinterpret the existing record, but by the expansion of the record itself through the discovery, analysis and exploitation of new source documents, as well as by interdisciplinary studies. Thus, we not only have far more late Roman and Byzantine documents available to us today than a century ago, but we have confirmatory documents from Armenian, Syrian and Coptic sources; and we can put all these documents better into context through the work of archaeology and anthropology in ways that illumiinate the sources.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Bonhoeffer's Message: No Compromise With Evil

http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2006/02/04_argo_bonhoeffers-message.htm

"As much as anyone - and as early as anyone - Bonhoeffer spoke out against the wickedness of Adolf Hitler's regime and took some of the most significant actions to thwart it. It was Bonhoeffer and a small circle of Lutheran ministers who first condemned the virulent anti-Semitism and reawakened militarism in Germany. It was Bonhoeffer who most loudly denounced his country's suicidal summons for war. It was Bonhoeffer who attacked the timidity of German churches when they shrank away from the most severe moral crisis in a thousand years.

Between 1940 and 1943 Bonhoeffer was active in the movement to topple Hitler, by coup if possible or assassination if necessary. Defending his actions to his sister-in-law, Emmi Bonhoeffer, he explained, "If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can't simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver."
------------

"You see a man committing murder. You know he will murder again. Only you can stop him, and the only way you can stop him is by shooting him. But you won't shoot. That makes you morally complicit in all his murders." (Stuart Koehl)

In Stuart's example, a failure to shoot the murderer is, arguably, a sin of omission. Analogously, it is entirely probable that Bonhoeffer believed that failure to stop the madman murderer Hitler would a sin of omission on his part, enabling him to overcome his convictions of being a pacifist.

[GL]

So, you are opposed for calling spades, spades, out of fear. I see.

No, I am opposed to calling clubs spades.

Just to clarify. I did not say I opposed Bonhoeffer opposing Hitler; I said I was deeply troubled by his plotting to have him murdered. David fled from Saul (i.e., did not submit to him), but he refused to kill him on two occasions when he easily could have done so and he had executed the man who unwisely claimed to have killed Saul.

(Reminds me of Genghis Khan, who killed two men who brought him the head of a rival khan. Leaders generally don't take kindly to their inferiors taking it upon themselves to kill other leaders, even if the leader killed is the enemy. Permitting such could prove bad for one's own health.)

[GL]

Further, surely Bonhoeffer was simply doing what he was predetermined to do, according to your system. How could he do otherwise? The Unmoved Mover moved him, for there are no other movers than the Unmoved Mover.

That is an extreme distortion of Reformed theology, of course.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

(1) "Is internationalism -- by which we concede to a body of international diplomats and jurists our sovereignty, allowing them to draw up regulations for things as intimate as family life -- compatible with patriotism?

But the internationalism of the left is the logical extension of statism generally." (Tony Esolen)

(2) It was Bonhoeffer who attacked the timidity of German churches when they shrank away from the most severe moral crisis in a thousand years.
-------

I do not know whether America is suffering through its most severe moral crisis or not right now, but I do believe that America is going through a moral crisis.

My question: Is the American Church (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) being:

(A) Too belligerent and intrusive,
(B) Just right, or
(C) Too timid

about the various moral issues confronting American society? (One of which is leftist Internationalism-Statism).

If the Church is too "belligerent", people (wrongly) yell "Separation of Church and State!" People will say that the Church is polarizing. Leftist liberal Christians will accuse traditional, conservative Christians of being ..., well, you name it. They will publish books like "Why the Christian Right is Wrong."

OTOH, if the Church is too timid, then it's not being Salt and Light.

I don't think the Church will ever find the right balance and its futile to think it could. (There will always be critics, both within and without)

So, the Church with its Touchstone Christians should just unite and stand firmly on God's Word. My two hot-button issues (which others are free to disagree with in terms of importance and priority) are:

1. Abortion 2. Traditional Marriage (or banning Gay Marriage)

I regard some of these other topical issues as not having the same importance for the Church as the two above: Global Warming, Evolution/ID, War in Iraq, Immigration, Universal Healthcare, etc....

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>David fled from Saul (i.e., did not submit to him), but he refused to kill him on two occasions when he easily could have done so and he had executed the man who unwisely claimed to have killed Saul.<<<

Two points on this:

1. Saul was out to get David, not anybody else. Therefore, whatever decision David made regarding Saul was personal; if Saul had eventually captured and killed David, that would have mattered only to David and Saul. If, on the other hand, Saul was out to get not only David, but lots of innocent people as well, then David would have had an obligation to stop Saul by whatever means necessary.

2. Saul was annointed by God through Samuel, thus his reign had divine sanction, and to kill Saul would have been sacrilige according to Hebrew belief. On the other hand, nobody annointed Hitler--Hitler siezed power through a plebescite that he used to abrogate the German constitution and declare himself Fuehrer. If you can't see the difference, then nothing else will make any sense.

3. David intended to become King himself, and it is bad precedent to become king by killing the king. People might get ideas.

4. David promised not to harm the surviving members of Saul's house, and for a while he lived by that promise. But gradually, the ones who appeared dangerous to David came to untimely ends. Occupational hazard of deposed royal heirs.

[GL]

Stuart,

You are a whiz at history, but your math skill are wanting. That's four points. ;-)

[Joe Long]

"...in other words, you prefer OLD propaganda, as opposed to NEW propaganda..."

Why, yes, all other more important issues aside, old propaganda is far more interesting, more forthright, usually better-written (at least the surviving pieces) and more often harmless through simple obsolescence. (Though I am doing my best as a one-man campaign to resurrect "Saracen" and "Mohammedan", as terms analogous to the WWI "Hun".)

New propaganda is far too reliant on mass-media shortcuts into the psyche - fah. Give me ninenteenth-century overstatement, wit, or even plain old balderdash any day, over the scripted, posed and PhotoShopped modern product with its melodrama and its wretchedly implausible affectations of impartiality.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

"...in other words, you prefer OLD propaganda, as opposed to NEW propaganda..."

Well, if movies are propaganda, I confess to liking newer movies with its special effects and advanced technology over the black-and-white movies of yesteryear.

(P.S. I remember Tony Esolen's list of best movies. The old movies are great. But the new movies are really cool, and IMHO, more fun and entertaining.)

I now return you to your Bonhoeffer discussion. ;-)

[GL]

I now return you to your Bonhoeffer discussion. ;-)

No need, I won. ;-) I just had to say that.

I am reminded of one of my heroes, Bob Gibson who, as a member of the All-Century Team, said, while looking at the greatest hitters of his era, "I don't belong here with the rest of you. . . . I struck out all of you guys."

We can now get back to Tony's original topic, the Left's efforts to establish piece-by-piece one world government and its need for us to lose to the Islamofascists in order to hasten their dream.

[GL]

On Tony's point, I would be interested in Joe Long's comparison of the South's concern that the Union was seeking to do to the states on a national scale what the Left now wants to do to nations on a global scale. Up until the Civil War, many Americans referred to our nation as "these United States," not "the United States." And, of course, the centralizing tendency gained momentum during the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War.

[Stuart Koehl]

The following appeared yesterday in the American Spectator Online (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12020)

Pastoral Letter From the Future III
By Lars Walker
Published 9/18/2007 12:07:01 AM

The following letter (acquired through a reliable but anonymous transtemporal source) will be written by the Rev. Dr. Judith Hardanger-Hansen, archbishop of the American Archdiocese of the Lutheran Companionship of the Benevolent Deity Spiritual Movement (BDSM), sometime around the second decade of the 21st century.

Beloved in the All-Merciful (blessed be He):

I apologize for the time that has passed since my last pastoral letter. It has been a stressful period, filled with emotional highs and lows, and only now can I begin to articulate a few of the things I have learned and am learning.

You may have read stories about me in the press. Unkind, hurtful words like "apostate" have been directed at me by the bigots of the insurgency. I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight.

You are all aware, I'm sure, of the trial and execution two months ago of Pastor Ho Chi Niedermeyer. Pastor Niedermeyer was an old friend of mine, a seminary classmate. Although his gay identity was no secret, it was still a shock when he was brought before the Provisional Islamic Tribunal on charges of sodomy.

I must admit that during that terrible time, I had a crisis of faith. The core beliefs that had sustained me all my life seemed ready to give way.

I began to question multiculturalism.

When Pastor Niedermeyer was sentenced to death by stoning, I confess that I went through a lamentable period of genuine bigotry. For a few terrible days, I actually believed that his conviction was morally wrong. That his Islamic accusers should not be judged by their own cultural norms, but by some universal standard of right and wrong.

Such thoughts sickened me. I went for counsel to the wisest person I know, the man who has become my mentor and much more, Imam Mustapha Ali Hakim al-Cincinnati.

As I told him of my struggles, he fixed me with his soulful, compassionate brown eyes and said to me, "Why are you in doubt, Daughter? Do you not see that all the enemies of Allah are messengers of evil, worthy of indignity and death, rightly doomed to eternal torment, writhing upon red-hot coals among the blasphemers and infidels?"

"You mean," I said, "that the only possible reason one could object to the ancient wisdom of the east is sheer bigotry."

"That is one way to put it," he replied. "Furthermore, all sodomites are abominable in the eyes of Allah, and ought to be spat upon, beaten with sticks and mocked by true men, and if they will not renounce their perversion they should be grateful if crushing under a collapsed wall is all that they must suffer."

"I see," I said, understanding him to mean that the Islamic peoples are victims of western imperialism, and have the right to uphold their cultural traditions in the face of Amero-European cultural aggression.

"Pastor Niedermeyer was my dear friend," I said. "I can't see that he's done anything worthy of death."

"You need to purge your mind of worldly opinions," the Imam said. "Your feelings, along with your idea of some inner moral sense, are all less than lint in a camel's navel in the eyes of Allah. All that matters is the word of holy Koran, and total submission to its ordinances."

By which he meant (obviously) that I had no right to call myself a tolerant person so long as I refused, out of mere Christian prejudice, to open my mind and embrace the tenets of Islam.

Such wisdom the imam possesses! I suddenly felt deeply ashamed, as I always do when I speak with him, of the mulish inferiority of our western ways in comparison with the sophistication and spirituality of his.

I fell to the floor, tears if shame burning on my cheeks. "What must I do?" I cried. "How can I expiate the guilt of my imperialist heritage, my bigoted morality, my hateful blue eyes?"

"The way is plain," said he. "First you must lay down this sham of spiritual leadership. You are a mere woman, and must not presume to teach men the ways of Allah. You must resign your bishopric."

I felt then that he understood the leaden weight I carried, and I knew that it was a relief to be rid of it.

"Then you must convert to the true faith," he said. "For there is no God but Allah, and all polytheists and idolaters are abominations in His sight."

And I understood then in my heart that the Prophet Isa of Nazareth (called Jesus by Christians), the messenger of peace, would surely be pleased if I renounced the foul doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, evolutionary outgrowths of a hybrid of degenerate Greek philosophy and Jewish blasphemy, the causes of so much strife and division in the world.

"And you must become one of my wives," he declared.

I wept again then, grateful for the imam's graciousness in accepting me, a cursed American whore, into his household.

And that is the reason for my resignation. Future inquiries concerning my life and welfare may be directed to my Revered Husband.

I urge all of you to follow the ways of peace, and to obey the Prophet Isa, who would surely command you not to resist, but to submit to the will of Allah. I am grateful to Allah (blessed be He!) for leading me out of the sewer of Christian delusion into the light and purity of Islamic truth, where I have at last found my true fulfillment as a woman and -- soon, I trust -- a mother.

Blessed be He. Death to all sodomites.

Judith Hardanger-Hansen,
Formerly Archbishop.

Lars Walker lives in Minneapolis, where he works for the schools of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations. He blogs at Brandywine Books. Those wishing to learn of the earlier career of Archbishop Hardanger-Hansen may consult Walker's novel, Wolf Time.

[Bobby Winters]

Stuart,
Your sure this is fiction, right?

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

"We can now get back to Tony's original topic, the Left's efforts to establish piece-by-piece one world government and its need for us to lose to the Islamofascists in order to hasten their dream."

Arguably, Tony and you and many of the posters on this blog are de facto supporters of the much-maligned and despised Religious Right. Of course, you don't agree with RR on all its particulars (who does?), but in general, that's where your sympathies lie.

Come clean GL, and confess to papa TUAD that you're a closet Religious Righter. Seriously, you're against abortion, you're against gay marriage, you're the lead screamer about how contraception is a sin, you don't support macro-evolution, etc.... all hallmarks of a fundamentalist Religious Righter.

Confess, and I will overlook your comment stating that you won the Bonhoeffer debate. ;-)

[William Tighe]

"Though how legitimately elected American legislatures resisting English parliamentary troops bent on reducing the Americans from their status as Englishmen - though we had a common king, we had no relationship of authority and submission with, could be seen as illegitimate."

This is, I am sorry to say, wholly inaccurate. By the 1760s many American intellectuals had come to think of their colonial legislatures as "little parliaments" or "their own parliaments" but this was, historically and legally, sheer baloney. George III was not "King of Virginia" or "King of Massachusetts" and the rest (in the way that Elizabeth II is "Queen of Canada" or "Queen of Australia" and the rest). Rather, the British North American colonies (plus Barbados, St. Kitts, Jamaica, Bermuda, Nova Scotia and the rest) were "detached dominions," separate from the Realm of England (or, after 1707, Great Britain), but still subordinate and subject to it, as were (and are still today) the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, and in earlier times the (English) King's Town of Berwick upon Tweed (taken from Scotland in 1482), Calais (taken from the French in 1349 and lost to them in 1558) and even Ireland, at least before 1540. That the colonies had their own legislative assemblies no more exempted them from the omnicompetence of "the King's Parliament of England" than did the possession of the Lordship of Ireland of a parliament of its own, the possession of the Isle of Man of its Tynwald, and so forth. If one reads carefully the charters of the original American colonies, it is clear that the colonies' assemblies were instititions whose (English) legal status was the same as that of the Board of Governors of the Hudson's Bay Company or the East India Company (before Parliament assumed second-hand control of the latter in the course of the 18th Century), that is, they had a competence to legislate for the "corporate body" which they represented, but both it and those same "corporate bodies" were under the overarching and legally omnicompetent authority of the King-in-Parliament.

It is true that some of the early colonial charters before 1640 appear to be designed to subject the colonies directly to the King, and to treat whatever form of government he should be pleased to bestow on them as his gift "motu proprio" and to exclude (implicitly) the English Parliament from any jurisdiction over the colonies. However, Parliament did assert such jurisdiction in the 1640s, and the New England colonies submitted to it while Virginia and the West Indian colonies were brought to accept it by force -- and the passage of the Navigation Acts in the 1650s were a direct assertion of Parliament's ultimate authority. These acts lapsed with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, but their prompt reenactment by the English Parliament demonstrated both that Parliament was bent on maintaining this claim, and that the monarchy was now prepared to accept it. The "Glorious Revolution" once again underlined this assertion (it met with no resistance in America) and the Post Office Act of 1713, by which Parliament erected a postal system in the colonies and imposed direct internal taxes (if light ones) in the colonies was a further, and uncontested, assertion of Parliamentary jurisdictional omnicompetence throughout "the British realm." Prior to the Act of Union of 1707 the English Parliament asserted no jurisdictional claim over Scotland, but when the Irish Parliament in the 1640s began to assert its sole competence to legislate for Ireland, the English Parliament contested this, and by the 17-teens the Irish Parliament had to yield (and the medieval precedents, such as they are, favored the English Parliament's claims, for Ireland itself, before Henry VIII muddied the waters in 1540 by declaring himself "King of Ireland," was regarded as a "subordinate realm" [like Wales, before the Act of Unification of 1540 that annexed Wales to the Kingdom of England] to England, a realm with its own organs of government, including a parliament -- but organs which were subordinate to the authority of the King of England as expressed in and through the King's Parliament of England).

The "American claim," such as it was, had to rest on theoretical assertions without much basis, in many cases, in English law and practice -- such as "no taxation without representation" and this despite the fact that from the 14th century onwards all of England, and even Wales, was subject to Parliamentary taxation, despite the absence of Welsh "representatives" in the English Parliament before 1540, or the absence of representatives of Cheshire until 1661, or the absence of representatives from the County Palatinate of Durham until 1832: all of these were nevertheless subject to parliamentary taxation -- although if one were to attempt to "distill" legal and constitutional principles from such laws and practices, and then to make these "principles" so derived supreme over the law, then one could arrive at some, at least, of the "American claims" by a form of a priori reasoning, in much the same way that the Protestant Reformers made both Tradition and the Church itself subject to "Biblical principles" or "Biblical doctrines" -- as "distilled" by themselves, of course.

[Tony Esolen]

Superb discussion.

I agree with Stuart that Nero was not Hitler. Probably he would have been, if he could. His mayhem was mainly limited to his enemies in the city, not in the hinterlands. That's the case with the Roman decadence among the Claudian emperors generally; it didn't have wide currency. People in the countryside were living pretty much as they had been, for a long time. Nero did not make a habit of killing Christians -- and I'm not excusing the wickedness of his turning them into living candles, etc. He had no great program for their extermination; he couldn't focus his tiny mind long enough for that, nor were the Christians so great a threat yet.

I don't think that Bonhoeffer was required by charity to attempt to intervene as he did, to save the lives of his countrymen. But I think that he could be justified in it; tyrannicide is justified (and Nero, a fool and a madman, a murderer of Christians, did not come to the imperial authority illegitimately, never mind what Robert Graves says, or the scandalmonger Suetonius; and he had no systematic program to destroy the form of government that had elevated him in the first place). The virtue to call on here is prudence, the same that must decide many of our actions in the tangled mess called war.

I think it tallies in Bonhoeffer's favor that his assassination would not have benefited the people of his own faith primarily, but the Jews. In other words, there was no obvious self-interest in it. Had he been successful ...

Somebody has asked where MacIntyre talks about neighborhoods. According to a recent First Things article by Stanley Hauerwas, it's in the preface to a new Polish translation to After Virtue. But I believe MacIntyre, as a good Aristotelian and, then, Thomist, has always argued that you cannot build character without small communities to do it -- the polis, with a vibrant civic life, wherein most people will know most others if not by sight then by reputation or family connections .....

[James A. Altena]

As much as I hate to disagree with my good friend GL, I've been 1,000% with Stuart on this one.

Dear Bill Tighe,

How does the Gov. Andros episode in Massachusetts Colony fit into your analysis? (My memory is extremely vague on the details.)

[Bill R]

"No need, I won. ;-)" -GL

Greg, we do need our own "Liturgical Referee" on MC, as David Mills' thread today points out. Looks like you're, well, self-appointed to the job! ;-)

[James A. Altena]

Dear Bill,

I also should have thought to have asked --

Doesn't your analysis also completely undercut any justification for the 1688 "Glorious Revolution" in England (with which teh Andros affari had some conenction)? And, by legitimating that revolution, didn't England provide de facto (and perhaps even de jure) legitimacy for the "American claims" you criticize as being based on "a priori reasoning"? And certainly defenders of the colonial position such as William Pitt and Edmund Burke were not idiots here.