Mien Kampf Chapter 14By Richard E. Noble At this point, I find it interesting to contemplate the notion of nationhood or citizenship. For example how does one become a German, or a Russian, or a Chinese, or an American, for that matter?
In Germany, at this time, there were Jews who could trace their ancestry back to the fifteen hundreds and before. Some could probably link themselves to the area even to a point when Germany was not even called Germany. They spoke German. They wrote German. All of their ancestors were born and raised in the area. They served in the armies and the military of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Bismarck, and whoever came before them, but yet with the rise of anti-Semitism they were suddenly no longer German.
Adolf himself, as far as I know was born in Austria, but yet he was a German.
My own experience in the United States seems interesting to me. I was born in the United States. My mother was born in the United States. My father was born in the United States. My father's father and Mother were born in the United States. Technically I was a citizen, but to many other folks, I was a foreigner. I was a Polack, or a Harp, or a Limey. When I became of military age, I was told that the time had come when I should earn my citizenship. I was in debt to all the Patriots who had fought in all of America's past wars. I wondered at the time, were there any Patriots who had fought for what they thought was right without the notion of enslaving their children and all future generations of Americans? Do all soldiers fight in all modern wars out of a sense of Patriotism, and loyalty regardless of any personal conviction? If I owe my life and my citizenship to the legacy of all of those who have died in past American Wars fighting, regardless of any personal conviction, am I free? If all of today’s soldiers fight because they are indebted to the soldiers who fought before them, are they free? If I haven't fought in any American War, am I still a citizen? Many German Jews fought in many German Wars, but yet they were suddenly no longer German.
Being raised poor, in a rented apartment, to parents who never had a steady job and in an economic ghetto always made me ask - if this is my country, what part of it belongs to me?
I have deeds to prove legally what part of this country belongs to me today, but yet there are many people in my area who do not feel that I have the right to be here, or to live here.
I live in an area on a bay, and the bay has often been a point of local controversy. On one occasion, I got involved in a project that concerned itself with the environmental protection of the bay. I had spoken at a town meeting on the subject. A man spoke after me and said, “We here, appreciate the fact that strangers come here and take on the protection of our bay as if it were their own, but ...”
So was I a stranger? Have I always been a stranger in my own country?
I thought to myself that everywhere that one goes in this country there are people living there who feel that they own it. And they own it whether or not they have a deed to any part of it, or have ever fought in any wars on behalf of it. How do they get to feel this way? Is this a matter of instinct, or is it a learned behavior? Is it something in the genes? Is it biological?
There are black people in America who can trace their heritage back to the original thirteen colonies and before. They have ancestors who fought in every American war that this country has ever battled, but yet they are still often told to go back to where ever it was that they came from. What is the deal on this?
In the North, I was a Polack or a Limey, or a Harp, and I didn't really belong there. In the South I was a 'Yankee' and I didn't really belong there. If I migrated to Europe, I would probably be called a Yankee or an ugly American and told to go home to where I belong.
I am also certain that if I moved to China, I could not become a Chinaman. In Korea I could not become a Korean. If I were born in Russia, would I be a Russian, or an American who just happened to be born in Russia?
Obviously this is not something peculiar to the American continent, as we see here with the Jew in Germany. My problem is not with those who feel that they do not really belong. I understand that clearly. My problem is with those like our friend here, Adolf, who confiscate everything they touch; who feel a part of everything, even if they are not; and who feel that they belong, even where they are not wanted. Where do these people come from? Or should I say where are they coming from?
What interests me here is the psychology of it all. Race is something that can be pointed out. You are black, brown, yellow, or white whether you like it or not. And if you are black, you will never be yellow, even if you sit on a pillow and eat rice until you fall over backward. But nationhood even in countries where race or skin color is not an issue is a very nebulous quality. You are or are not a citizen depending on basic government policy. Often times in this country as regards a particular governmental policy one will hear said - Love it or leave it - My first reaction to this type of argument was that if I didn't agree with the policy presently being argued and therefore didn't love it. Where is it that I would go that I would have a legitimate right to be THERE? In other words, if I “left it” and settled elsewhere, when I then came in dispute with a policy and those living there informed me that I should agree or get out, where would I go? I finally came to the conclusion that if people who had no more legitimate right to be anywhere on this planet than I had, could think that they had the right to order those that they disagreed with to get off, then I could legitimately do the same. My response to that type demand was that their problem was that they had, unfortunately, drawn the lines to their country right in the middle of my world, and I would appreciate it if they would take their country elsewhere.
What did the Jews in Germany do wrong? Did any of them stand up to their Nazi neighbor and if necessary fight with them physically? Did Jewish Germans argue and defend their rights to claim Germany as much theirs as anybody else's? What would Jews in America do if the same tactics were to be used against them here? What gives one group any more right to a particular spot on this planet than anyone else? It seems that not only does one have to battle people who try to attack their country externally, but one must constantly fight against one's own neighbors who, for whatever reasons, feel that they have a greater claim on the right to live within a particular country's borders, than they do. But the problem becomes even more complicated when the government becomes controlled by one particular group, with one particular attitude, and this government then controls the making of the laws and, even more important the military. Once again we come to the military as a frightening thing, and one has to question the mentality of an individual who says that I must obey the orders of my government, no matter what that government contends. Are we not back to the love it or leave it attitude above.
Freedom of speech as we call it, and the right to disagree, even with the policies of our present government, has to be one of the greatest attributes in favor of the notion of Democracy.
We have a truly unique experiment going on here in the United States of America. You can come here from another country; you can be black, yellow, brown, grey, or white, and by simply professing to believe in a philosophical concept that states basically that all men are created equal, and because of this fact are entitled to certain inalienable rights, you can become a citizen of this country. I don't know, can you do that in England, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, China, or Japan or anywhere else? Now granted even if you do this it doesn't mean that your neighbors on the street where you live will accept or recognize you as a citizen, but under the laws of this nation it is a supposed fact. You will have to fight and argue about it, just as I am doing here, but it is the legal truth at present as far as I know.
When I was living in Miami, I got a job working with Cubans. Most of them had been born in the United States, but were still being put on the defensive about their right to be here by some 'real Americans' who lived in the neighborhood about them. One day an argument ensued about what was a 'real' American. I told them that I was a real American. They laughed and told me that only the indigenous populations of American Indians were real Americans. They said that if you originally came here from someplace else you were not a 'real' American, just some sort of half-breed transplant. I told them that they were missing the whole point of America and that by their definition even the American Indian was not a 'real' American, because he had migrated to this continent via the ice age, from Manchuria or someplace, and therefore was a transplant here from someplace else. You guys are defining what a 'real' American is by trying to determine who got here first. I told them that I was a real American because 1) I was born here, and 2) because I believed in the declaration of independence, the bill of rights, the basic principals of democracy, truth, justice and the American way. I further told them that they too were real Americans if they wanted to be. All they had to do was believe that they too were 'real' Americans and participate in the 'real' American way of live. Get a job, take care of your family, fight for your rights, and yell, kick and scream at anybody who tells you that you don't have the right to do so.
They all laughed at me, but from that day on when I came to work they all greeted me as 'The Real American'. I have to laugh whenever I think about it. There I was, a 'real' American, established by self proclamation, and accepted as such for the first time ever in my career as a human being who had never lived anyplace but in The United States of America. I have since become a writer, a poet, an artists and a businessman in the very same manner. I simply told myself that it was so.
So, let's get back to Adolf and his notion that some Germans are not Germans, no matter what they have done in the past or where their ancestors were born. He first explains to us that Jews are not really citizens of any country, and that they are involved in a conspiracy to deceive the general populace of that country. The Jew does this by cleverly deceiving people into believing that he is a member of a religion.
"...His life (a Jews) within other peoples can only exist in the long run if he succeeds in creating the impression as though he were not a people but only a 'religious community', though a special one..."
It is interesting here. To cast someone out seems to be a method of bonding those that remain. We bond ourselves together by saying that either we have such and such in common and therefore form a group by our mutual alikeness, or that we are unlike so and so and therefore alike in the quality of not being like “them.”
The Jewish 'parasite' deceives the populous he is 'infecting' by hiding his true racial character under the cloak of an innocuous religion claims Adolf.
"...the Jews were always a people with definite racial qualities and never a religion ... the Jew cannot possess a religious institution for the very reason that he lacks all idealism in any form and that he also does not recognize any belief in the hereafter ... Indeed the Talmud is then not a book for the preparation for the life to come, but rather for a practical and bearable life in this world..."
Well, I am not an expert on the Jewish religion, but if I am not mistaken, the Old Testament is the Bible of the Jews. The Talmud is another of the religious books of the Jews, and it deals specifically with laws, and the rules and regulation for decent respectful living within a community. It deals with government, justice, and the rules of fair play and, if I am not mistaken, the separation of the operations of the church and the functions of the politic - the separation of the church and the State, if you will. The Jew, as far as I know, believes as much in an “after life” or “other world” as the Christian. As far as I know there are Christian sects who do not believe in an 'other world'. They believe that the 'other world' will be a transformation of this world into a land of peace and happiness that will be inhabited after the Armageddon by the 'humble' as affirmed by Jesus in His statement that the Humble shall inherit the earth. But there are as many Jewish sects as there are Christian sects, or sects of any other organized belief. To say that the Jew is unique in this respect, I would say is incorrect.
Was Adolf and his Nazi philosophy concerned about the next life? A life existing in the kingdom of whom? I have seen nothing other-worldly about Nazism. Again, I have to ask - Does Adolf consider himself a Christian? Is he still a Catholic at heart?
Pope Pious XII supported both Mussolini's fascism and Adolf's Nazism. Was Nazism and World War II a holy crusade in Adolf's mind? Was he fighting for the establishment of white Christianity throughout the world?
"...His life (the Jew’s life) is really only of this world and his spirit is as alien to true Christianity, for instance, as his nature was two thousand years ago to the Sublime Founder of the new doctrine..."
This is, as I interpret it, a reference to the Jew as Christ killer. How did the Jew get this rap anyway? It was Romans that captured Jesus. It was a Roman who passed the death judgment on Him. It was Romans who beat and scourged him, stuck thorns into his head, and nailed Him to the cross. The Jews screamed kill him, kill him, it is said. But that was some Jews. Other Jews worshiped Him, claimed Him to be a God and brought his teachings to the world. So the Romans killed Jesus while some Jews denied his divinity and other Jews proclaimed it. We had a Jewish schism.
And say what you will here, but it does seem that Adolf feels himself, at least at this moment to be a follower of the Sublime Founder of the new doctrine, and a Christian – of course Adolf is a politician and prone to say anything to his political advantage.
"...Of course, the latter made no secrete of His disposition towards the Jewish people, and when necessary He even took the whip in order to drive out of the Lord's temple this adversary of all humanity, who even then as always saw in religion only a means for his business existence..."
Adolf is implying here that Jesus hated Jews also, and he showed it by taking the whip to them in the temple. First of all, Jesus was a Jew among Jews. He was in the temple arguing intramurally with his fellow Jew about a specific interpretation of their mutual held beliefs.
Please don't try and tell me Mr. Adolf that Jesus hated Jews, or hated anybody for that matter. Neither will anyone ever convince me that Jesus Christ was a violent man, who was prone to losing his temper and beating up on people, never mind possessive of a tendency to torture.
A case may be made regarding masochism on the part of Jesus, but certainly not sadism. I have heard others, Catholics and Protestants alike use this same example to try and put a sword in the hand of Jesus. I find this ludicrous. Jesus was certainly no advocate of the Pax Romana concept of peace through war. Jesus was a man who refused to fight back even against His enemies. He is a supporter of the turn-the-other-cheek philosophy. His immediate followers were tossed into the lions den for the amusement of the spectators. They would laugh as the followers of Christ would fall on their knees and pray rather than attempt to defend themselves against the lions. Christians, because of their pacifism, were a joke to the Romans. But somewhere along the line of History the Christians denied their Christly inspired example of non-violence and passive resistance and turned from the persecuted to the persecutor. Just as the United States which seemingly started out to be the refuge and defender of the down-trodden, poor and rebellious and ended up the protector of the rich, wealthy, and established. Somehow the Christians became the mainstay of the Roman legions. They formed legions of their own, with Popes as their military leaders. They marched off on Crusades with swords to conquer the world. This has got to be a story in itself. I would be interested in how they made this philosophical transition, and practical transformation - seemingly without the slightest commotion amongst the rank and file. What happened here?
I will have to look into that question. It intrigues me. I know that it had something to do with Constantine who somehow ended up with an army full of Christians.
Even without going into the Jew and his historical link to money, isn't this rather hypocritical? To berate a group for being exactly what you yourself aspire to become. Adolf wants to turn the German race into exactly what he wants to destroy the Jews for being. The Jews are powerful, wealthy, prosperous, superior, self contained, racist, intelligent, dominating, controlling, manipulative; they are the chosen people who are attempting to overthrow 'nationhood' and manipulate the world to the advantage of their kind, says Adolf. Are not these the exact aspirations as stated by Nazism? But the Nazi will accomplish this not by guile or wit, but by out right force and violence. I think that I would rather the so called hypocritical route of the Jew to power and dominance, than the direct route of our friend Adolf. It would seem to me that the Jews are doing it the old fashioned way ... they are earning it.
Jesus is recorded or said to have gotten violent with the money changers in the temple and the conclusion is therefore he hated Jews? I don’t think so.
Jesus is alleged to have tipped over some money exchanging tables and scolded these Jews for bringing money into the house of God? We therefore concluded that Jesus was now an advocate of war and not peace? I don’t think so.
Jesus is upset in this situation by a few rich Jews or business minded Jews and the conclusion is Jesus hates all Jews? I don’t think so.
We do know from the story about the camel and the eye of a needle that Jesus felt that wealth was a handicap in the goal of saving ones soul – this is true of most renowned religious prophets. But these chastisements certainly do not support any notion that Jesus may have been in favor of genocide or extermination or even the perfection of a superior breed of humans.
In today’s misguided world we have religious groups who are praying for a nuclear holocaust as a sign of their religious revelations. I have met educated people who have made similar claims. This tells me that the human civilization may be progressing technologically but certainly not intellectually or spiritually.
I am tempted at this point to give up on the rest of this chapter because it is nothing more than venomous anti-Jewry, but I certainly can't defeat it by ignoring it. So forward we go.
"...His (the Jew) versatility, rather his unscrupulousness, in all money matters knows how to extract, even to extort, more and more money from the exploited subjects who tread the path to nothing in shorter and shorter periods of time..."
Once again we have Nazi plagiarism of the Communist rhetoric. The only difference is that the Jew is the culprit in the poverty and exploitation of the poor as opposed to the Capitalist. Almost everywhere in Mein Kampf where we have the word Jew, if we substitute the word 'capitalist', our anti-Semitism will be transformed to communism.
"...If one considers how much he (the Jew) has sinned against the masses in the course of the centuries, how again and again he squeezed and extorted without mercy, if one considers further how the people gradually learned to hate him for this and finally saw in his existence really nothing but a punishment from heaven, then one can understand how hard this change must be for the Jew. Yes, it is tiresome work to present one's self suddenly again as 'friend of mankind' to the skinned victims..."
If you will re-read the above passage substituting for the Jew, the capitalist, and before the Capitalist, the Kings and Princes of Feudalism, you will see that you have the classist notions of the Marxist Communist. More and more, Nazism seems to be nothing more than classist Marxist Communist notions, reinterpreted with the Jew as the dominant, exploitative class. Adolf simply repeated the outbursts of the Marxist Communist, substituted Jew-exploiter for Capitalist-exploiter, and it seems never really had to write a speech. He simply had to copy down the speeches of his Communist opponents, and substitute the word Jew wherever they placed the word Capitalist, or rich and powerful moneyed class. But once again this leads me to investigating the world at large during this period - the 20's and 30's. Henry Ford once again looms to mind. Once again I feel that Nazism is a philosophy that had it roots planted in the fertile ground of western anti-Semitism.
How did the Jew gain his reputation for unscrupulous behavior with regards to money? It must have been eye opening to Adolf when as the Great Fuhrer he challenged Mr. Krupp, the arms manufacturer, with regards to selling his arms abroad and even to Germany's enemies, only to be told to mind your own business or I will move my factories to Russia, as recorded in "The Arms of Krupp" written by William Manchester. That must have been a slap in the face to Nazi Nationalism.
According to one account that I have recently read with regards to the success of the Jews, economically, the author contends that the Jews were more or less pushed into their good fortune by unscrupulous non-Jews, or were basically so imaginative and creative that they somehow made a success out of whatever was handed to them. The author goes back to the Feudal system. A system controlled by a rich and powerful Christian elite, who in their attempts to keep their Christian serfs under control, denied to them, not only education and learning, but the opportunity to learn any skill or trade. In consequence the Jew was contracted as artisan, and craftsman to furnish the serfs with their supplies, and manufactured goods. The Jews did so well at this that eventually a whole middleclass sprung up around the supplying of these goods and services. It was then infiltrated by the serfs and Christians, and sprung the world into a new type of economic system which eventually led to the rise of Capitalism.
The Jews success in banking seems to be another back door story. The religious elite of the period considered the charging of interest as sinful and immoral, and no believer was allowed to engage in such a horrid endeavor. The Jewish belief held no such prejudice against loaning money at interest, and since so many Christians kept running out of money the Jew fell into another thriving industry. I guess although the Christians didn't believe in charging interest on borrowed money, they did believe in 'borrowing' money. But although they believed in borrowing money, I guess that they didn't have a lot of faith in loaning money. Especially in loaning and not collecting any interest on the money loaned. Certainly if good Christians loaned to fellow good Christians without charging any interest, the Jew would have been hard pressed to find any clients for their usury loans.
One question bothers me here. If the Christian elite did not believe in charging interest, and in fact considered it sinful, how did the Jew ever collect his money? What did the Jews do, run around strong-arming deadbeat Christians? Were the Jewish money lenders of the time like the Mafia of today? Or did they have the support of the legal system during the period? If the Jews began in the money lending business like the Mafia, then a lot of the deep seated feelings of hatred against Jewish money lending would be somewhat understandable.
"...For the strengthening of his political position he tries to pull down the racial and civil barriers which at first still restrain him at every step. For this purpose he fights with all his innate thoroughness for religious tolerance..."
So the Jew fights for religious tolerance for others only because he wants to protect his own religious and social position. And this is a bad thing? There is a theory and/or philosophy that suggests that this notion of self-interest is the sole motivation for all of the actions of all mankind - past, present, and future. It is called Utilitarianism, and it was brought forward by a man by the name of John Stewart Mill. He makes a good case for this concept. I don't know if I ascribe to it entirely, but I do know that whenever you wish to make a case for a desired goal or direction for your fellow man, you will find the greatest support and appeal when you ascribe your notions to their personal self-interest. If the Jew fights for religious toleration because he wishes to protect his right to believe freely, I say all the more power to him. Most groups won’t even fight for their own right to believe freely never mind anyone else's.
"...He poisons the blood of others, but he guards his own. The Jew does not marry a Christian woman, but always the Christian a Jewess. Yet the bastards take to the Jewish side..."
I don't get this observation. Adolf seems to be claiming that Jewish woman marry Christian men, and for some reason when they mate they produce little Jewish children, and not Christians. Well from my own experience as a Roman Catholic, I know that if a Roman Catholic man were to marry a Jewish woman, they could not be married within the Roman Catholic Church unless she agreed to raise their children as Roman Catholic. I don't know what the Jews have to say about this situation, but from my point of view it matters not at all.
The footnote at the bottom of the page also points out that Adolf is wrong in his generalization. The fact seems to be that more Jewish men marry Christian girls, and the editor states - In the United States Abie's Irish Rose emphasizes the same trend.
"...Yet, in order to disguise his activity and to put his victims to sleep, he speaks now more and more of the equality of all men, without consideration of race and color. And those who are stupid begin to believe him..."
Da Da Dah, I guess you got me there Adolf. Those nasty Jews are more concerned with 'equality' than with their race or the color of a man's skin. Well, there is reason enough to hate anybody I suppose.
For the rest of this chapter Adolf proceeds to unravel the greatest Jewish conspiracy theory of all time. In the gospel according to Adolf, that sneaky Jew established the bourgeoisie class basically to overthrow the Feudal system. I take it that the Feudal system, because it was basically a Christian system, was pretty much A-O.K. in Adolf's book. I wish that Adolf went into a little more detail on how the Jews invented the bourgeoisie class. But the sneaky Jew isn't satisfied at this. He now inveigles himself into the rich industrialist class and the moneyed class.
Does he do this by wearing disguises or by working his ass off?
As a controlling dominating force in this class he then proceeds to enslave and totally piss-off the workers in his factories - unlike non-Jews like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison whose workers simply loved them to death!
He does this, of course, because he now has the clandestine goal of establishing Marxism among the stupid peasants. And, of course, the rich Jew industrialists would want to invent a political philosophy which basically stated that they were the plight and scourge of modern mankind, and would hopefully all be killed and exterminated by all the 'nice' poor people of the world.
This seems reasonably logical to me, how about you?
So now, says Adolf, while Moses Cohn and his fellow Jewish corporate elite stiffens the backs of his industries until it becomes intolerable for the poor proletariat; Isaac Cohn, the labor leader, begins the agitation in the courtyard for the purposes of overthrowing Moses Cohn's factory. But Moses Cohn doesn't really care about his toothbrush factory that has taken him and his ancestors four generations to build, because he rally has the bulk of his money invested in the Jewish, international stock exchange. So Moses Cohn, industrial leader, and Isaac Cohn labor activist are really in cahoots to overthrow the power of individual nations, and thus make one world united under the rule of the international stock exchange, whose Jewish executives will eventually rule all of international mankind.
I guess that the Jews are pissed-off against nationhood because they have been deprived of a nation for so long. So then you would think that Adolf would be in favor of Zionism, but no he doesn't like that either. Israel is kind of like the secret cave of Ali Baba and his thieves. Israel will become the hiding place for all of the wealth and fortune that is extracted by Jews from unsuspecting nations all over the world.
Well, what do you know? I thought that I was thinking ahead for Adolf here but looky-looky;
"...They have no intention of building up a Jewish State in Palestine, so that they might perhaps inhabit it, but they only want a central organization of their international world cheating, endowed with prerogatives, withdrawn from the seizure of others: a refuge for convicted rascals and high school for future rogues..."
Well, as I have said Adolf is, if nothing else, consistent, one stupid premise, logically following another in reasonable sequence. And I guess if you can buy into the Isaac Mosses deal, you can buy the rest of it. I guess Isaac, the union agitator, has his proletariat stock portfolio full of shares in Ford Motor Company, I.T.T., and the International Monetary Fund. This must undoubtedly be the case because as we all know, there are no poor Jews. Actually their are no working Jews, because as we all know;
"...Judaization turned the one time respect for craftsmanship into a certain disdain of all physical work as a whole..."
I'll close this chapter with two other points of Adolf horror.
"... in our people the personification of the Devil, as the symbol of all evil, assumes the living appearance of the Jew..."
It is interesting to note that in our society today the image and personification of the devil is none other than Adolf.
This last quote from this chapter, I take as a warning.
"... Any defeat can be the father of a later victory. Any lost war can become the cause of a later rise, every distress the fertilization of human energy, and from every suppression can come the forces of a new spiritual rebirth, as long as the blood remains preserved in purity..."
Or, one might add, as long as the world still gives credence to lunacy, and there remain true believers to the cause.
The defeat of Germany after World War I obviously did not bring the German people to recognition of the evil of their ways. The defeated Generals were not defeated. The defeated soldiers were not defeated. The people, who we were told that they were brought to their knees, were not kneeling. The treaty was barely dry before new plans were under way for the re-establishment of German Militarism. Within a generation a new German army was rebuilt, and a new world conflict under way. By the end of World War II the allies had learned their lesson and an unconditional surrender was demanded, and an occupation government was put in place. The German people and their Nationalistic philosophy of Militarism have now been subdued within German borders for over fifty years. But the philosophy of Militarism has virtually gone unscathed in the world. Hitler is dead and the Nazi party in Germany has been outlawed. But it has only been outlawed in Germany, and not throughout the world. Like anti-Semitism, Nazism lives in other parts of the world, and here in the United States. I have heard most of the prejudices outlined in this book in drugstores, candy counters, barbershops and shopping malls all over America. I have been listening to them all of my life it seems. I am glad that I have given myself the opportunity to challenge these notions somewhat in this homespun, non-intellectual, uneducated critique. But already information is coming out that the Nazi movement was never killed. Many Nazis went unpunished after World War II. Many were helped to escape from Germany, and international justice. Nazi monies by the billions were relocated through out the world. Nazism, just as Adolf had criticized Judaism, has taken on an international character, and lives today as a philosophy or Religion without a homeland and has inveigled itself into nations around the world.
This is disappointing but even more disappointing to me is that the militaristic notions, and the barbaric military traditions barely took a hit. Even at the trials at Nuremberg Militarism was not among the charges against the Reich. We live in a nation today that revels in the glories of militarism and accepts a nation living within our nation of totalitarian militaristic dictatorship as a necessary adjunct to freedom and Democratic rule. Even as I write these words there is no attempt to reform the militarism of our own military. We still promote a bastion of bullies, at academies, and training centers throughout the land. We, for reasons beyond my comprehension, are willing to tolerate an undemocratic organization that lives and operates above the very Constitution that it is sworn to defend. It is not defined by the principles of the Declaration of Independence nor the Bill of Rights, but has a system of rules unto itself. We see the problems presented by this unrecognized and unchecked hypocrisy in our newspapers every day. Every day a new outrage is perpetrated, and for the most part I think that it can all be attributed to the 'bully-bully' undemocratic militaristic spirit on which the organization is based. Let me end this chapter with a brief quote from Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – “As long as Mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.”
The question of Militarism is not that we bear arms in defense of our countries, but in HOW we bear those arms, and what lessons we impart to our citizens while they bravely serve in such a capacity. If we truly believe in Democracy, justice, freedom and the American way we should practice it in all of our institutions. Our own military needs democratization not nazification.
