Himmler and Jihad

January 18, 2015 at 1:05pm I spent last night's insomnia watching a disturbing film about Heinrich Himmler, *The Decent One.* The audio is in German, but it's captioned. Based entirely on letters between Himmler and his wife, daughter, parents, and others, as well as his personal journal from student days onward, it's illustrated with candid photos and film, plus contemporary footage. What's devastating is Himmler's ordinariness, even banality. Love letters, self-examination, the incipient plans for the racially pure Germany he envisioned--all give insight into the mind of the creator of the Nazi death machine. He looks winsomely boyish playing with his daughter. Even in state propaganda films he has the look of a boy playing at being a soldier, happy to be included in the game. It makes one wonder if history would have been altered if he hadn't been rejected by the fraternity he pledged at university. The film is also unsettling because of eerie parallels between 1920s Germany and present-day America: a long period of economic recession, a war-weary populace, sharp political division, and rampant conspiracy theories. By "conspiracy theory," I mean an irrational belief that one will not abandon, no matter how much evidence is adduced to dispel it--a definition that applies as readily to radical Islam as to Nazis. Anyone who denies the phony belief becomes part of the vast conspiacy, and, therefore, an enemy who must be eliminated. In a frightening parallel, both the Nazis and Islamists see the Jewish people as enemies, responsible, through nefarious manipulation of world media and finance, for all their problems. Today, anyone who supports Israel is also the enemy. Hence the book-burnings. Torching works by Jews in festive bonfires was one of the first public acts of the newly elected Nazi government. It was seen as a patriotic act, as was refusing to buy from Jewish-owned stores. "Don't put money into their coffers!" was the slogan. Now the self-named Islamic State begins its reign with glorious conflagration of "un-Islamic" books. That is, any work that challenges their phony belief. Remember, anyone who does so becomes part of the conspiracy--an enemy to be destroyed. And so we see the need to murder a handful of cartoonists at a small magazine roughly comparable to an R-rated Mad, just as those who opposed Nazi dogma were sent to concentration camps where, they, too, died. And now you know the connection between the Islamic State and Nazi Germany. The terrorists, too, are ordinary people, fired by a mistaken ideology. They, too, have families back home who love them; they may write tender, playful letters to their wives and children. Still they will kill us. Nazis were easy to recognize: they dressed in sharp uniforms and goose-stepped through the streets. Today's storm-trooper may live among us for years, working, hanging out with friends, going to university, even joining our military. They may even be our own children. Only a small percentage of Germans were members of the Nazi party. Only a small number of Muslims are Islamists. The rest stand by and say nothing, either because they fear the all-too-real reprisals, or because they secretly share in the same false beliefs, or because, like most of us, their own lives are going pretty well and it's not really their problem. It seems the only kind of conspiracy that can destroy us is a conspiracy of silence. As Edmund Burke, that other prophetic Burke, said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." What's missing from that quote is that those who "do something" often pay a price, sometimes their life itself. But what, finally, is the alternative? http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/05/tripoli-library-burned_n_4543928.html Ancient books in a historic library in the Lebanese city of Tripoli have been torched by Islamist, after a pamphlet purportedly insulting religion was found inside one of the books. Security sources say that up to 78,000 books, many irreplaceable ... HUFFINGTONPOST.CO.UK Th The film, The Decent One, is available on Netflix.

Undaunted

Surprised by a winter snow this week,  I am pressing on regardless.  Going to my mom's with the Kid and Grandkid and both large dogs to "help" her pack some things and celebrate my birthday on Sunday. 

Like most Catholics, I am deep in Lent, feeling my own slickness and aware of my dependence on grace.  Right now,  we are also preoccupied with the resignation of our pope and the upcoming conclave.  Spiritual warfare within and without. 

Which is always fitting, but especially now.  Let us encourage one another to carry on.  We have our Lord's promise:. Gates of Hell and all that. 

I was just talking about Pearl Harbor with my mom, Nikki Rader Newkirk, and I heard a commemoration of it on NPR in the car earlier. My mom was 17, a high school senior--and suddenly her entire life was changed forever. Boys she knew were called up, other boys from other places were stationed in Enid, Oklahoma. One, a New York Italian, used to hang out with Mother's family just because he so missed his own family and all the noise and activiity of a full household.

Pearl Harbor happened just about five years before I was born. By the end of the war, Mother was married to a young man from South Carolina that she never would have met without that war. A few years later, thought, she was married to my Daddy, a boy from Enid who was home from Great Britain and in college on the GI Bill. SoIn the post-war 1950s, Oklahoma boomed, finally recovering from the Depression and the Dust Bowl. We had new neighbors, new cars, new houses, new schools as my generation, the first wave of the Baby Boom, made its way through childhood and adolescence. All we had to worry about was retribution for those bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--not from the Japanese, who were now our friends and partners, but from the Russians. We had "duck and cover" drills, as if our wooden desks would protect us from the blinding flash and the mushroom cloud. During the Cuban missile crisis, we stood in the school parking lot and shivered and cried as we considered our potential lack of a future.

So, yes, I remember. And I imagine most of my contemporaries do, at least. My son, with his deep connection to my dad, remembers. And we will teach the granddaughter, only five, as time goes on. Her memories won't be as immediate as my mother's, or as personal as mine. And eventually the common memory will become as remote as those of Gettysburg or the trenches in France, subsumed into a kind of general gratitude toward those who have fought and those who supported them. Maybe we seem oblivious or ungrateful, but I think most of us know the debt we owe to those who have won and preserved our freedom. Now, we pray God to make the best use of that freedom. We choose our leaders and representatives; let us try, at least, to choose those worthy of our forebears' sacrifice.

Unsung Heroes

Whenever I see a servicemember I thank them for their service. They make daily sacrifices so that I can live free.

But there are other soldiers on the job 24/7--not so I can live free, but so I can live forever. These guys remain faithful through isolation, scandal, overwork, and the contempt of much of society. So the next time I see a priest, I will say, "Father, thank you for your service."

Nietzsche was only partly right....

That which does not kill us makes us strong. But sometimes we wish it would go ahead and kill us.

St. Edith Stein on Plans

Whatever did not fit in with my plan did lie within the plan of God. I have an ever deeper and firmer belief that nothing is merely an accident when seen in the light of God, that my whole life down to the smallest details has been marked out for me in the plan of Divine Providence and has a completely coherent meaning in God’s all-seeing eyes. And so I am beginning to rejoice in the light of glory wherein this meaning will be unveiled to me.

— Edith Stein, Saint Teresa Benedicta a Cruce, martyred at Auschwitz, August 1942

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509843,00.html

Fox News reports that two African immigrants duped the Pewaukee (Wisconsin) Carmel out of ten of thousands of dollars they said they needed for medical treatment, college tuition, and other nonexistent expenses.

There is surely an especiallly warm place in Hell for those who prey on innocents, and I can think of no one more pure and innocent than a cloistered nun. Note to cops: Please put these two UNDER the jail until ICE deports them back to Kenya.