So Steve, are you also concerned that Americans (of certain political persuasions) exalt Martin Luther King, Jr., and don’t ever address his philandering or plagiarism?

“Philandering” is such an understatement that it must be taken as a euphemism. King took part in wild orgies, especially when white women were available. Although, in fairness, it should be pointed out that apparently a black bruthah would serve in a pinch, according to Abernathy — King was apparently neither a racist nor a sexist, at least in this matter that interested him more than anything else. Nevertheless, it was encouraging to see Hart start off by at least mentioning these suppressed aspects about Westminster Seminary’s hero Martin Luther King, Jr.

Alas, it wasn’t to last. He continued:

The right [meaning, the Right -- ed.] of course looks at those moral failings to discredit King. But what exactly do those failings have to do with what he was trying to do to gain equality for blacks?

This is not the right question, however. The question is, what exactly do those failings have to do with honoring him as an American hero? And the answer is, it has everything to do with that. Moreover, heroes are generally identified not by what they “try to do,” but what they actually do. George Washington was honored by our forefathers not for “trying” to do something, but actually doing it, against all odds — namely, defeating an empire with a rag-tag group of freezing patriots. In contrast, what did King “do”? He was a hollow man that could not even write his own sermons and speeches. He was chauffered up to the front of the parades at just the right camera moment. His movement did not overcome anything. On the contrary, his small band of opponents were beaten down with the combined forces of LBJ, the nationalized militia, the FBI, federal marshals, corrupt judges, and an adoring and dishonest media. All King had to do was show up. What a difference from Washington.

But, Washington was also perceived to be morally blameless. For all intents and purposes, he was beloved by everyone, and that for the double qualification of heroic deeds coupled with exemplary character.

But let’s consider Mr. Hart’s thesis on its own level — what did King’s “failings” have to do with “what he was trying to do”?

According to lore, Mafia bosses “did a lot” to “gain equality for the Italian people.” But most people do not say that the criminal means can be divorced from the end (even if the ambiguity of that end is set aside for the sake of discussion).

I suppose it goes without saying that Mr. Hart would not praise the original KKK for attempting to regain equality for Southerners vis-a-vis the Yankee occupiers.

Why then are King’s methods and character set aside by defenders like Mr. Hart, when they would never do so for a Mafia godfather or KKK leader? It must be either that some heroes are guilty of a skin, and thus must not be honored, or character and methods is not something Mr. Hart actually believes can be set aside when deciding whether to honor a man. As if sensing the corner he has painted himself into, Hart continues:

Was he sleeping with female congresswomen in order to secure favorable legislation? That might discredit some of his stand.

Oh please. This is really quite a revelation of how the slavish political conformity of our Reformed “leaders” has addled their thinking. As if a Congresswoman in 1965 would be thinking, “I really can’t support this civil rights legislation … unless Dr. King would be willing to sleep with me. Then I would.”

A quick check of Wiki indicates that in 1965, of the nine Congresswomen in office, all were White and over 50, except for one Oriental woman from Hawaii. Does Mr. Hart really think that even one of these women would think the way he imputes in the one example that pops naturally into his head?

Does he think any woman holding power, of any race and any age would think that way?

This is one sick dude.

In point of fact, that is one perversion that Martin Pervert King did not choose in plying his trade. Why does Mr. Hart think this way?

Even so, how would such a scenario “discredit some of King’s stand”? Does “the stand” mean the cause — equality for black people — in which case, how could such a sacred cause be discredited by the behavior of any person? Or does it mean, “this man’s standing” — i.e. it discredits this man, personally, this man that is taking the stand? In that case, what does the “some of” qualification of his stand mean? To the extent that the stander not the stand is in view, wouldn’t it completely disqualify?

But for the most part, his failings were personal and private and represented the afflictions that cling to most human beings not born of a virgin.

First, all failings by persons are personal. How does that qualify anything?

Second, “Doctor” King’s failings were not private. The plagiarism in particular was witnessed every time he made a speech, and the plagiarized Ph. D. dilutes the credibility of every other Ph.D. holder, especially those coming from Boston U.

Third, this statement is a preposterous denial of God’s gifts and graces manifested in history. It plasters over human history into a flat sameness. Only, he doesn’t even use plaster, he uses dung.

According to Tacitus, the Germans in their pre-Christian state were more chaste than the African-American community is after three centuries of exposure to the Bible.

Actually, putting it that way is not quite fair… to the Germans. It would be less misleading to say it this way: the pre-Christian Germans were a chaste people; the Christian Negroes are not a chaste people.

But according to Hart, King’s flagitious character represents “the afflictions that cling to most human beings not born of a virgin.”

Michael Dyson says the womanizing is endemic among pastors in the black church. Is Mr. Hart willing to say, “also in my denomination, the OPC?”

Is Mr. Hart willing to say, “most Ph. D. holders not born of a virgin have plagiarized their dissertations”? How should we regard the integrity of Mr. Hart’s own Ph.D. if that is what he thinks?

In fairness, Mr. Hart admits defects in King’s theology, and rejects King’s use of theology for his civil struggle. But that’s not the point. Being antinomian leads to despising God’s work of sanctification where it has occurred, and to God’s common gracious preserving and directing in history. This is the theological fruit one reaps when one reveres the current political order, along with its shibboleths, above just about all else.

Part 2: Religion

The value of the book resides entirely in the lucid and irrefutable summary of Part 1.  Part 2 starts off bad enough, using a higher-critical scissors to trim the Bible down to a kernel that suits Griffin’s purpose. (It is interesting, however, that once a statement in the gospels survives being pressed through the liberal sieve, he does seem to regard it as authoritative at some level). But it gets much worse. He needs a credible theory of “the demonic” to explain how imperialists could be so wicked as to execute a false-flag operation like the 9-11; but without a devil, as that would be mythic. With this motivation, he launches into an exposition of Process Theology only slightly less mythic than Mormon cosmology. In the beginning was God and matter; there was no creation ex nihilo; God shapes and persuades the matter as best He can, always trying to get it stay on the moral path; but the matter, especially after evolving into complex organisms like humans, has a mind of its own that is metaphysically autonomous from God and thus can assert evil. (Insert Twilight Zone theme.) He calls it Semidualistic Monotheism (p. 137).

There are metaphysical, ethical, and epistemological problems with this dualism that are fatal. Here, I take the time to highlight just one.  Griffin seems to think that if there was a big blob of matter that was a se, self-existent, and a god that was also a se, then that god might glance over at the blob of matter and say to himself, “self, I think I will go make something out of that blob.”

But this is a gross anthropomorphism. The independent god would not “see” the blob at all. He would not feel it. It would not exist for him.

We can see and feel things because our bodies are subject to electomagnetic forces just like the stuff we see and feel out there. If this were not the case, we would not see anything. If our “arm” swung down against a “table,” it would sail right through without a break. Take away the electromagnetic force, and floors, tables, roofs, walls, and so forth, simply don’t exist for us.

He tries to avoid this problem by saying that knowledge mediated by causal sequences is characteristic of creatures alone (p. 136). As if appealing to the Creator/creature distinction can help this ontology! The living and true God knows all thing immediately, because he is the master of them: his thoughts define them; but Griffin’s god, surrounded by darkness and unfulfilled potentiality, needs a third something between himself and his balky Gegenstand, to establish the contact. Moreover, for Griffin’s god to “find” the blob of matter, he and it would have to “reside” in the same space as it were. But what is the origin of that space? If it is from the god, then how did the eternal matter, being heterogenous to his nature, squeeze into it? If it is from the matter, how did the god enter in? Or, it is a framework in which both exist, in which case then we need to find the living and true God who defines the common framework.  Griffin’s god and matter would never have found each other.

It is embarrassing that Prof. Griffin saw fit to go into this, and that the publisher permitted it.

Part 1: The 9-11 Events

In stark contrast, Part I, which lays out the evidence that 9/11 was quite different than what the U.S. national government has told us, is quite good, both for logic and brevity.

He correctly sandbags against the typical name-calling. President Bush and 9/11 Commissioner Philip Zelikow have

warned against “outrageous conspiracy theories.” What do these men mean by this expression? They cannot mean that we should reject all conspiracy theories about 9/11, because the government’s own account is a conspiracy theory, with the conspirators all being members of al-Qaeda. (p. 35)

Griffin’s summary of the case against the Government Story of 9/11 can be sorted under several categories.

Physics

This includes things like the fact that burning kerosene only heats up to about a thousand degrees less than the melting point of steel (p. 36). The problems are nicely summarized in pages 35-44. One observation he makes had escaped my attention before, yet is devastating: if the floors really had “pancaked” down on each other, thus explaining the verticle collapse into its own footprint, then the steel columns should have been seen sticking up through it.

Intuitively, most people probably think that a skyscraper is like dozens of crates stacked up on each other, each crate representing a story. Then, as each crate collapses into a pancake, starting at the top, the added weight crushes the next crate, and combined mass falls down to the next crate, and so on.

However, this is not how a skyscraper is constructed. Instead, one should imagine massive steel columns (47 of them) which, tied together and reinforced, form the load-bearing core all the way to the top of the building. Then, each floor is “hung” on this core. So, if under the right conditions, the floors started to pancake down on each other, nevertheless the columns would stick through and still be visible.

The 9/11 Commission

simply denied the existence of the forty-seven core columns, saying, “The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped.” Voila! With no forty-seven core columns, the main problem is removed. (40f.)

The NIST tried a little harder:

The NIST Report handled this most difficult problem by claiming that when the floors collapsed, they pulled on the columns, causing the perimeter columns to become unstable. This instability then increased the gravity load on the core columns, which had been weakened by tremendously hot fires in the core, which, NIST claims, reached 1832°F, and this combination of factors somehow produced “global collapse.”

However, Griffin dissects NIST with two whacks:

First, NIST’s claim about tremendously hot fires in the core is completely unsupported by evidence. As we saw earlier, its own studies found no evidence that any of the core columns had reached temperatures of even 482°F, so its theory involves a purely speculative temperature. Second, even if this sequence of events had occurred, NIST provides no explanation as to why it would have produces global — that is, total — collapse. The NIST Report asserts that “column failure” occurred in the core as  well as the perimeter columns, but this remains a bare assertion. There is no  plausible explanation of why the core columns would have broken or even buckled, so as to produce global collapse at virtually free-fall speed, even if they had reached such temperatures. (41)

Sequence of events

The Sequence problem has to do with the consistency of alleged events — the timing of phone calls, meetings, and movements, with respect to the timing of the publicly knowable events — where was Cheny when the second plane hit, that kind of thing. In addition, there is the question of why — NORAD standing down or at least fumbling, intercept planes nearby not being ready. As much detail as the reader can stomach is ably summarized in Chap. 4, Flights of Fancy (pp. 57-75).

Investigations

The government investigations, notably the 9/11 Commission’s and the NIST report, are what most people rest their confidence in. It is probably not so much belief in the veracity of the government so much as the impossibility of the contrary: it seems incredible that so many people could collude to deceive without someone blowing the whistle.

Nevertheless, there are facts about these reports that need to be remembered:

1. The official narrative changed through several revisions as skeptics pounced on contradictions (pp. 57-75).

2. Facts that remain embarrassing are simply ignored into oblivion (e.g. 9/11 Commission on the 47 columns, mentioned above [pp. 40,41]; others discussed p. 16, pp. 80-82).

3. Other problems are dealt with by pure arbitrary assertion, without evidence — (e.g. the NIST report on the same problem [41]; more on p. 35).

How do we reconcile these difficulties with the common man’s feeling that a conspiracy of such magnitude is not possible?

The answer is, it is not necessary that very many of the investigators would be in on the scam — indeed, perhaps not any of the rank and file.  Most of them are just ordinary people doing their job, and their job was not to discover the most probable perpetrator from a clean slate, but rather, “show how al Qaeda did it.” And in terms of that non-falsifiable premise, the investigators did their investigation quite diligently.

That this is exactly how they proceeded is ludicrously illustrated in one incident. Just days before the event, a huge number of PUT options were taken out on just the very two airlines involved in the hijackings. This allowed the holders, after the event, to “put” the stock to the writer of the option at the pre-plummeted price, making millions of dollars. There is strong prima facie suspicion that the purchasers knew what was coming down. The government’s explanation for this is telling for their whole approach:

The 9/11 Commission tried to show that these suspicions were unfounded. Its most important claim was that the purchases of put options for United Airlines do not show that anyone other than al-Qaeda had foreknowledge of the attacks, because 95 percent of these options were purchased by “[a] single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda.” (p. 80)

And they roared with laughter, Solzhenitsyn’s equivalent narrative would add.

We can see what value should be put on those investigations.

The Inhumanity

For me, at the end of the day, it is the human narrative that makes the official conspiracy theory incredible. It is bad enough that 19 skinny Arab boys, entering single file Indian style with their box-cutters (and how did the investigators figure that out again?), are able to overwhelm the crews — who are generally tough guys, often former military — and succeed every time. Then, right after the fight of their life and commission of grisly, bloody murders, the corpses still lying around, they “get behind the wheel” for the first time ever, and find these targets and steel their nerves to blow right into them. Try this while speeding scary fast down a hill on your bike, then multiply the velocity by 20. Yet these Arab boys did it, every time without fail.

But it gets better. One of the boys, slated to board flight 11 from Boston, decides to make an excursion to Maine the day before. No one can figure out why. It will necessitate hopping on a commuter flight to connect to the big one the next morning. Imagine risking the whole operation if the puddle-hopper were to be late! And sure enough, it is late — not so late that Atta cannot board Flight 11, but too late for his luggage to get transferred, and so the authorities can now retrieve some smoking guns. And what is in his bags?

Flight simulation manuals for Boeing airplanes, a copy of the Koran, a religious cassette tape, a note to other hijackers about mental preparation, passport and will. (p. 17)

Think about it. I suppose Atta was thinking he would cram during the last hour before the “final exam” on how to fly the big Boeing. In case he would get bored with that, he could always read a bit of the Koran or listen to a tape. But the real howler is the will. He is about to self-immolate in a towering inferno. What possible good to anyone would it do to have his will burning up along with him?

I can’t believe a human would behave like this, even if I try. But I can very well believe that some dim-witted police-state bureaucrat assigned to this detail of the planning would include all those items in the packet, since each has its place in ratifying the government’s story.

All of this I mention, despite the fact that “the flight manifests that have been released have no Arab names on them. The 9/11 Commission Report simply omits any mention of this problem.” (p. 16) But we have to start somewhere.

Meanwhile, the boys that hijacked American flight 77

reportedly executed a 270-degree downward spiral, which according to some pilots would have been impossible for a Boeing 757 even with an expert pilot. Hanjour, moreover, was known as ‘a terrible pilot,’ who could not even fly a small airplane” (p19).

During all this, the W was yaking away to the schoolkids in Florida. He continued to yak even after the second tower was hit. This is not how a President would behave if an unexpected attack of unknown scope were occurring.

Conclusion

Despite its flaws, this book presents a succinct summary of the facts such that it is hard to imagine that anyone intelligent, honest, and diligent could continue to believe the government’s conspiracy theory of what happened on 9/11.

Reconstructed Frauenkirche and square

We need to understand clearly that in modern German parlance, “right wing extremist” means, anyone that wants to remember his ancestors slaughtered by the “Allies,” unless he simultaneously confesses that they richly deserved to be slaughtered. This is what the rulers in Germany think, and an analogous viewpoint is held by our rulers. Therefore, it is worth while to reflect on this matter a little. I will do so by highlighting an anecdote from my own travel in Germany.

I was in Leipzig in December 2006 when Passau police chief Alois Mannichl was non-fatally stabbed, apparently at the door of his house. Instantly all the media — radio, TV, and newspaper — area-bombed the news that a “presumed right-wing extremist” (vermutlich Rechtsextremist), still at large, had done the deed. Every half hour on the radio, the same notice was given out.

Mannichl was a fanatical “anti-Nazi.” He had actually gone so far as to have the grave of a German dug up when he heard that a flag of the Third Reich had been draped over the body. In occupied Germany, such symbols are illegal. Showing Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will is illegal. Singing the Horst Wessel song is illegal. “This symbolism is illegal! We must seize the evidence” he must have screamed. Even the dead lying six feet under have no rest from zealots like him.

Mannichl had told police that a young man of such-and-such height and with a crewcut and a tattoo on his neck, before he jabbed the knife, had shouted, “with greetings from the national resistance.”

At the bar in the hotel lobby I had struck up an acquaintance with an amiable German who worked as federal police in the border control department.  I expressed doubt that the evidence that had been made public logically entailed that the deed was connected with “right-wing extremism” or even right-wing non-extremism. He said, they would not be claiming this if the investigation had not shown it. He knew, as a policeman. Trust the system, I suggested. Ja, he said.

Within days, perhaps just hours, all the pundits and politicians, like a flock of chirping sparrows, raised a unison cry that the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany) — styled by our rulers as “neo-nazi,” presumably because it openly favors the continued biological existence of Germans –, should be outlawed. Even though no connection between the NPD and the skin-headed attacker had been made public! I encourage our readers to do a google search. Dozens of articles making this demand at the time can be scanned.

No suspect was apprehended, month after month. A strange detail leaked out: the knife used in the attack apparently came from Mannichl’s own kitchen.

A year after the attack, a few articles could be found that sheepishly conceded that the wound was probably received by Mannichl in a domestic dispute in his own household. Officially, the investigation is still “open” — even though finding a right-wing extremist with a tattoo visible on his neck ought to be exceedingly easy in a surveillance state like occupied Germany!

Was there an apology to the NPD? Was there an admission that there was a rush to judgment without sufficient evidence? Will anti-nazi Mannichl be indicted for making fraudulent statements?

To ask it is to answer it. Of course not.

Now, a little more than two years after the incident, a human chain is to be formed to keep the “right wing extremists” from honoring their slaughtered ancestors.

In a future post, I will document the extent to which censorship has already been put in place in Germany, and increasingly, here as well.

The Gulag is being constructed all around us, brick by brick. But this time, not a shot will need to be fired. The memory of Dresden stands as a reminder of what our rulers can do and will do if necessary. But they also have learned that mind-control is a much more convenient form of power than shooting guns.  No blood to mop up. Much cleaner.

(I. plausibility of big picture and motive)

1. The logistics needed to support the official story are stupendous

The number of total victims claimed used to vary wildly. In the 1980’s, a cousin of mine returned from an official tour and proclaimed to us with wild eyes that the number exterminated was actually over 20 million! Usually, however, the number of non-jewish victims is always kept just a little below that of the jewish victims, i.e. 5 million compared to their six. So stick with that for a moment.

As a budding Physicist, I was encouraged from a young age to visualize quantities, not just memorize them. If a dinosaur is said to be 30 feet tall, I look at a building and imagine a head poking in through a third-story window. That makes it vivid. We were also trained to do “order of magnitude” sanity checks of our calculations. One of my students carried out this agenda in a clever way. He supposed that every time a tire rotated, a one- atom- thick radius of rubber was removed by contact with the pavement. He then looked up the inter-atomic spacing of rubber, and calculated how long a tire should last. To order-of-magnitude, the tire life came out to be approximately right. That is the right way to test a model in a preliminary way.

Now, the serious accounts of the holocaust suggest that it took place mainly over a period of about two years — say, mid 1942 to mid-1944. Say there were six “death camps.” Then the average camp had to dispatch about 2 million victims, or 1 million per year. That is 20,000 per week, or 4,000 per day, if weekends or other rest days are allowed for.

4,000 per day, day in, day out, gassed, incinerated, and disposed of, for two years without letup, during the time that a desperate war was being waged, in which the Wehrmacht often had to resort to horses and wagons for its own logistics. Look up how long it takes a crematorium to incinerate one body with a Google search, and continue the calculation.

Perhaps, as Rocco in Godfather 2 said, “difficult; not impossible.” But almost impossible. Maybe impossible. It staggers the imagination in any case.

It was this kind of thought that first made me, with my background, open to the possibility of holocaust research. But it took years before I could work up the courage to actually start doing it.

2. There is more than one big-picture narrative, and these are contradictory

For example:

“No one knew” about the holocaust. That’s why it was rarely or never referred to explicitly by the officials.

On the other hand, “everyone knew” (e.g. the movie Amen.) That’s why the mass destruction of the German cities is justified, and never-ending reparations.

Likewise, at Treblinka, the bodies were dug up and burned, and everything bulldozed over without a trace, to remove all evidence prior to the allied victory.

On the other hand, “exterminations continued to the last day of the war” (e.g. the film We Were So Beloved).

Listen to enough discussions of the story with ears perked up, and such  contradictory covering propositions will quickly be discovered. We know from logic that once contradictions are allowed, anything can be proved.

3. If the Germans had set the goal of systematic extermination, bullets to the back of the head would have been much more efficient and cost-effective

The Judeo-Bolsheviks knew better, when they massacred the Ukrainians. Wouldn’t the Germans have learned from their superiors at the art of mass-murder?

4. The claim of having the goal of genocide — that is, completely eliminating the jew from the world — is not plausible, in that it was known that millions of jews had taken up residence in the US (for example)

Indeed, the Germans regarded the US as effectively a jewish client state.

For years the goal of the National Socialists was to induce the jews to leave, as can be seen in the film We Were So Beloved, for example. They knew many thousands of jews had emigrated to lands of safety, at the behest of the Nazis themselves. It is quite impossible to imagine rational people thinking that they could pull off a global extermination.

There is no evidence, contrary to the bar-room chatter, that Hitler had the goal of “taking over America,” let alone the world. On the contrary, Hitler envisioned a four-power division of hegemony between the Germans, the Japanese, the British, and the Americans. (See, for example, the Teaching Company’s series, World War II: A Military and Social History, conducted by Penn professor Thomas Childers.) The British indignation was not at the thought of someone “taking over the world,” but at having their own position of primacy challenged.

Thus, the idea that Hitler’s goal was to successively mop up all the remaining pockets of jewry, and thus succeed in “genocide,” is simply impossible.

(II. Rules of Evidence)

5. Much of the “evidence” comes from a group which not only had just been in a desperate war with the Germans, but was their ideological enemy.

The pictures of mountains of hair, and mountains of eyeglasses, and so forth, come almost exclusively from the Soviets. The Soviets just ten years earlier had conducted the infamous “show trials” in their own land. The Soviets had perfected the art of cinematographic propaganda in the earlier decades, led by Eisenstein. The Soviets had a visceral hatred of the Nazis exceeding even the Nazis’ hatred of them. The Soviets are now known to have blamed massacres on the Germans that were carried out by themselves — the Katyn Forest massacre, for example. They are known, documented liars.

6. Most of the “evidence” supplied by the Western allies has had to be modified or abandoned in the course of time

In the 1970s, mention of the word “Dachau” elicited the same horrified shudders that “Auschwitz” does today. But when I visited that camp in 1979, imagine my surprise to see that German historians had been permitted by their rulers to place a sign near the “gas chamber” that declared that no one was gassed to death at Dachau.

Likewise, any number of American WW2 veterans involved with the “liberation” of Buchenwald swear up and down that they “saw the evidence of the holocaust” with their own two eyes.  Yes, the conditions were harsh. Yes, many perished there in the cold or due to unjustly harsh treatment — the Reformed pastor Paul Schneider for example. But no one suggests anymore that anyone was gassed to death at Buchenwald. Buchenwald was a punitive labor camp: nothing more, nothing less.

Today, the idea that jews were turned into lampshades has been exploded.

Likewise, the stories about human soap — now abandoned.

Human hair for mattresses — absurd. No mattress stuffed with human hair has been produced. Think about it. If human hair had been seen as a desirable commodity, would not the Germans have first started a program of human-hair recapture from the civilian barbers — where the hair would be clean, not lice-infested, and plentiful, coming from repeat customers? Yet no such program has ever been made public.

By an amazing coincidence, it appears that all of the camps liberated by the Western allies have now been cleared of the charge of being death camps. All the camps still listed as “death camps” were liberated by the Soviets.

7. Even the Soviet accounts have been slowly revised and otherwise rendered suspect

It is now admitted that the main gas chamber at Auschwitz was reconstructed after the fact — “to reflect how it really was,” of course. (See other details about Auschwitz in the three videos that begin here.) The number of victims at Auschwitz has been revised downward by millions, yet the total number is never affected.

8. There is precious little actual eye-witness testimony

Examining the accounts carefully, one often finds the testimony qualified by “I heard that…” or “someone said that…” This is known technically as hearsay.

9. The detailed “eye-witness” testimony is often mutually contradictory

Some of the original “eye-witnesses” claimed the death chambers worked by electrified floors. Some said the floors were designed to open up and dump the bodies into railroad cars underneath that could haul the corpses quickly to their graves.  Others said they worked by evacuating the air. Others said the holocaust occurred by people being thrown alive into burning pits. None of these tales are accepted in the official account any more.

10. The detailed “eye-witness” testimony is often absurd

Adolf Eichmann spoke of blood spurting up out of the burial grounds.

The prison confession of Rudolf Gerstein, whose story is amplified in the movie Amen, is a serious case in point. His details are simply impossible. The pile of clothes would be ten stories high. The body counts would pack more than one victim per cubic foot of space. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), Gerstein died in Allied prison under suspicious circumstances before he could be cross-examined.

11. Eye-witness testimony that runs against the official story is always discounted, making the account look like a non-falsifiable dogma

Red-cross reports on camp inspections, for example.

12. Video pictures, absent verbal testimony giving the interpretation, are nearly worthless

We have all seen the footage of bulldozers pushing emaciated bodies into mass graves after the war. But who were the victims? Germans starved to death by the infrastructure destroyed by Allied napalm? Prisoners that died of typhus because the means for dealing with it was similarly destroyed? Without a narrative, including dates, times, and places, raw images are worthless.

At Buchenwald, there is a picture showing a mass of bodies. As time ran out toward the end of the unconditional-surrender destruction of Germany, these corpses could not be buried or cremated in time. It is now known that Buchenwald was not a death camp.

The maker of the Night and Fog documentary admits they were operating with little documentation. See my review for some of the absurdities in that film. Staring at the images in that “documentary” confirmed me as a skeptic. (It can be dangerous taking evidence too seriously.)

13. Doing the “numbers” by census report is unsound

First, jews are reluctant to be counted, even by themselves (see Wex’s explanation for this). Second, a reduction in number obviously does not prove foul play, let alone identify the killer. Third, some census figures I have seen show the jewish population increasing during WW2. This matter needs to be gotten to the bottom of.

14. The general German concession of guilt does not pass the smell test

Nuremburg led to a remorseful owning-up by the Germans. It was neither, “Ja, we did that, but you need to hear our side,” nor, “we didn’t know about it therefore we are not guilty.” There is just stunned, remorseful silence: a peculiar combination of assuming guilt even while incognizant.

For example, the interview of Traudl Junge that frames the movie Downfall shows that she was unaware of the holocaust, though she served as the personal secretary of Hitler. Yet she feels guilty because Sophie Scholl was her age, and Sophie “knew.” But the movie expanding on Sophie Scholl’s life does not put words in her mouth different what any pacifist might say in general terms. What is the chance that Sophie, living in Munich, “knew” while Hitler’s personal secretary did not know?  How does Traudl now “know”? Because the Nuremburg Trial proved it. All the years at Hitler’s side, right up to the end, divulged not a hint of it.

(III. General nature of historical evidence)

15. The evidence for the holocaust is quite different from the evidence for other historical “facts”

Think of the difference between denying the holocaust and denying, say, the existence of George Washington, or denying that the battle of Gettysburg took place.

To do either of the latter examples, one would have to deny the entire continuity of the historical narrative, including finally one’s own existence in a coherent world. But to deny the holocaust, the rest of the narrative of history remains intact.

Suppose someone denied that the Battle of Gettysburg ever happened. But there is the field that can still be visited, with bullets still findable in the soil, and mass grave ditches. There are the official field reports. There are the thousands of soldiers’ memories, that were integrated into the shared experience of the nation and, above all, their families: widows and comrades, that lived next door to others, and whose descendants still live among us. There were the books written later by the generals that were actually there. These all match the newspaper accounts written as the event was happening. At the end of the day, there is no integrated history of the world if there was no Gettysburg: then the whole world might as well be a figment of my imagination.

This comprehensiveness and coherence that would be lost is hardly the case if it turned out there was no holocaust.  The stories of the players and the newspapers are perfectly coherent and comprehensive without a holocaust: indeed, neither the newspapers nor official statements of the time even mention a holocaust in any kind of compelling way.

(IV. Evidence of fraud)

16. Many of the salient elements of the narrative were broached before the corresponding fact could have occurred

The “six million” figure was broached several times, long before it could have been a fact.

My favorite is the reference to “gassings” in the Charlie Chaplin movie The Great Dictator, produced in 1940, and long before the alleged “final solution” proposal at Wannsee. (A correspondent suggests it was a reference to WW1 gas. However, since the Allies also used gas in WW1, it would have been awkward for Chaplin to bring this up in his parody of Hitler.)

17. The Nuremburg trials have many marks of a show-trial

The Soviets were major players as prosecutors and judges, coming off their own show-trials of the previous decade. The American staff was loaded with resentful and vengeful jews. There was very little cross-examination. There is evidence that torture was used and threatened.

18. The number of “holocaust survivors” is huge, and continues to grow

Just a couple months ago, our local rag trotted out another victim of suffering during the Holocaust, who had remained completely silent for sixty-five years!

Before they think about it, people think the vast number of survivors is proof of the holocaust. It is the opposite. It is evidence against.

19. The story has grown, and grown, and grown

Evidently, the memoirs of Churchill, Eisenhower, and de Gaulle make scant mention of the Holocaust by any name. The director of the movie Judgment at Nuremburg states that he found that college audiences found his material incredible at the time — the early sixties. The Holocaust only became big business in the seventies. And it continues to grow.

Normally, don’t we expect details of history to be most vivid near the event, and fade with the passage of time?

(V. politicized nature of subject)

20. Revisionists are attacked in a way that is entirely unfair, ad hominem, and even criminal

Robert Faurisson has been beaten up physically, and endlessly reviled in print. Revisionists are routinely accused, without any evidence other than the content of their conclusions, of being neo-Nazis or fascists. Above all, see also #24.

The charge of “anti-semitism” as the only motive that could lead to questioning the story is question-begging. Perhaps the attackers should entertain the converse: could it be that seeing how questioners have been ridden roughshod over is the very thing that pushes some toward “anti-semitism”?

21. Questioning the official story is usually not answered by unassailable facts, but by appeal to the authority of the establishment guild

And this is particularly weak when we realize that the guild is self-perpetuating: dissenters are not allowed in, or are forcibly removed. When discussing the identity of King Tut, we might expect some objectivity from the academic guild, but when discussing a subject for which publishing the wrong answer will lead to losing the royally-rewarded tenure track, academics themselves should be honest enough to recognize their bias. Read the story of Germar Rudolf, and ask how many other academics you have ever met would be willing to sacrifice the cushy academic life for Rudolf’s destiny. Consider this list of people fired, exiled, and persecuted in Switzerland for doubting the story. Shame, and double shame!

Now add to this the threat described in #24. It is hardly surprising that the guild is united around one story.

The appeals to authority are often coupled with a condescending sneer that suggests that only perversity could even raise the question. Compare this to how someone that believed the earth were flat and the sun revolves around it would be answered. Can you imagine how absurd it would be if the only answer ever given to such a person were, “all the university Physicists disagree with you”?

Anyone – including non-Physicists — that can’t rattle off two or three infallible proofs that the earth is round and is rotating on its axis has no right to claim those beliefs.

Anyone that can’t rattle off half a dozen infallible proofs for the holocaust has no right to scoff at the questioner.

22. The manner in which jewish suffering is highlighted, and the suffering of others minimized, smacks of propaganda

The very term “holocaust” is virtually copyrighted. The Armenians are not allowed to refer to the Armenian holocaust. Nor are the Tutsi in Rwanda. Nor, the Cambodians under the Pol Pot. All these people are only allowed to mention their story as a footnote to the One Really Important Story.

23. Likewise, the way in which the noses of the “liberators” are rubbed in the muck smacks of propaganda

Virtually every American city of any size has a holocaust memorial. I thought we were the liberators, that we should be praised. No; we are to feel guilty also.

Finally, the clincher:

24. Almost everywhere in Europe, people that question the holocaust story are thrown in prison

Pacifist artist Ernst Zundel was dragged from his home in Tennessee, shipped to Canada, and then sent to Germany, where he sits in the slammer. Note that the charge of “inciting racial hatred” is identical to the “charge” of denying that the Nazis killed millions of Jews. Note also this chilling statement: “German prosecutors were able to seek his extradition on the ground that a Web site he ran was accessible in Germany.” What site is not accessible in Germany?  By this criterion, no one is safe that publishes such material on the web.

David Irving — thrown into the slammer in Austria for denying the holocaust – in a speech he had made seventeen years before!

Gerd Honsik  — extradited from Spain and thrown into the slammer in Austria – for holocaust denial

Gaston-Armand Amaudruz — Swiss citizen, thrown in prison – for holocaust denial

Fredrick Toben –  sentenced for publishing “anti-Semitic material” – which are detailed as (1) suggesting the Holocaust did not happen, (2) questioning whether there were gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp, and (3) hurting some jews’ feelings by challenging their intelligence.

Some of these have already been freed. On the other hand, the list is not complete.

Not since the Gulag Archipelago was in full swing has the expression of heretical opinion been treated this way. Does anyone suggest throwing flat-earthers in prison, or Gettysburg-deniers? This shows that the holocaust is functioning as a state religion — in an age that pretends horror at religious persecution.

What academic wants to be thrown in prison, or (if he is American) put in a position of not daring to step foot into Canada or Europe?

What young academic wants to jeopardize his chance for the life-long gravy-train known as tenure?

What academic, tenured or not, wants to face a national campaign by ADL terrorists to have him removed from office and rendered unemployable?

Academics today is all about “getting funding.” What is amusing is that in the very era, our own, when every historian is keenly tuned in to the “material factors” that might have “influenced” the Nicean Council, or even a Luther, seem totally oblivious to the material factors that are patently and undeniably steering their own work!

The “academic consensus” in any matter that is so politically and (above all) financially charged as this subject is, has no value whatsoever. It is unfortunate, but true.

When people are thrown in prison for expressing a belief, it is virtual proof that something is going on with the power-holders other than commitment to truth.

Conclusion

These considerations do not prove that the holocaust story is false, but the consideration I have outlined do prove that investigating it is not a sign of insanity or bad faith. On the contrary, the mockers and persecutors of revisionists must answer the charge of bad faith, if not outright dishonesty.

The landscape has changed for me, and I think the landscape will be changed for anyone that takes a couple years, part time, to look into these matters.  For me, the burden of proof has decisively swung to the side of the received story.

Why does Westminster Theological Seminar continue to honor him with an awkward day off in the middle of the winter term? Anyone can guess: Because Martin Luther King, Jr. is a popular Negro, and they want to “reach out” to the Negro community with Reformed theology, by “showing solidarity” or whatever the current buzzword might be.

The only problem is, honesty is more important than being Reformed. And Negroes see right through the condescending prevarication of honkies that take this kind of stand.

If enough of them ever do adopt Reformed Theology, and do so honestly, then they will be the ones to rise up and condemn Westminster for this dishonest and immoral capitulation to political correctness. As a post-millennialist, I think that day will come. Or, perhaps WTS will have stopped this charade by then. That, too, would be a small yet significant sign to give one hope that progress is possible — or at least, an occasional correction of a wrong turn.

1. The time-compression of a film can give the misleading impression that the bombings and assassinations were daily fare in Germany. One must remember that they were stretched out over ten years (though there were several dizzying bursts, as in May 1972), and “life goes on” just as it does for us in America despite the urban crime that is daily happening all around us. Nevertheless, the events did create a social tension that was felt by everyone (and still is).
2. It does not have time to stop and reflect on the underlying issues.
3. Poetic license has been taken. The gang is shown as sexually libertine, Ensslin shouting “fu@%ing is the same as shooting” to the confused Arab at one point. But gangsterette Brigitte Mohnhaupt, released from prison a couple years ago, has sued the film for defamation for depicting her in a promiscuous situation. So this is a danger of filmmaking that must be kept in mind: what is real and what is extrapolated?

I have had general acquaintance with the story of the Baader-Meinhof gang for at least three decades now.  There are ethical issues and tactical issues, all of which may have continuing relevance as it looks more and more as though our people are going to have to rise up, eventually, and attempt another war of independence sometime in the next generation. And that war will clearly not be lines of clam-diggered musket-shooting gentlemen facing each other.

Here are some striking features about the movement:

• The gang was marked by intense loyalties, so that much of the action was aimed at rescuing captured comrades and/or inducing the government to release them. Usually, the targets were deliberately selected as responsible for the persecution of their comrades, or as willing agents of a system that needed to be destroyed because of its injustice. Thus, a distinction needs to made between this group and terrorists that select victims at random.
• Though ruthlessly violent, quite possibly a majority of the major players were young women.
• Though the movement was self-consciously leftist, it is interesting as being a peculiarly non-jewish and even anti-jewish form of leftism, even while seeing itself as “anti-fascist.” Thus the American jewish press, that is (to say the same thing more briefly), the American press, has been somewhat more negative toward the gang compared to its normally indulgent attitude toward leftist terrorists. By itself this is a reason to take a closer look.
• In addition to some wild-eyed fanatics, the movement included some serious intellectuals, including especially Horst Mahler, who in the meantime has become a full-blown National Socialist. What is interesting is that he does not see his current position as a radical break with his earlier activities. Mahler will be worth while discussing in much greater detail anon.

Some Key Events

Though the Huffman site linked to above should be consulted to get the fuller story, it might be helpful to extract a briefer summary as a preliminary orientation. It will probably aid to scan these events prior to viewing the film, as the events depicted may be confusing without some prior orientation.

To set the context, one needs to recall the student demonstrations during the 1960s on US campuses, which protested the Vietnam War, oppression by right-wing dictatorships, and world hunger. Similar demonstrations took place in Germany, but there, there was in addition a guilt-driven specific reaction to the “fascism” of their parents’ generation, which many thought was continuing under the guise of American-dominated capitalism. In contrast, the American youth movement was to a far greater extent merely hedonistic, since in rebelling against their parents’ generation they were rebelling against a generation they had been taught to regard as “heroic” in its “struggle against fascism” in WW2. Thus the German rebellion was more existential, touching the deep sinews, while the American rebellion was much more egocentric. I will come back to this theme in a future post.

Now, there was a great deal of balderdash in those demonstrations, on either side of the Atlantic, and many were probably instigated and pushed by communist front groups. However, we must recall that there are many different motivations that might lead a young person to show up at a demonstration. There is the hard core, but they are few. For others, it is just something to do. One is part of an “event” that is covered on the news. You get to hang out with friends. There are those that feel sympathy from youthful idealism even if it would not have taken this form spontaneously. There are those that are curious onlookers, who would like to be there, especially if something big might happen. So the presence of a huge crowd does not necessarily mean much. It is the small subset that have true concerns and are not pawns of communist governments that should be of particular interest for us.

In my condensed summary, I will lay particular emphasis on persons and events of international status. Many shootouts, cop-killings, and gang member killings are left out of this account for introductory brevity.

Andreas Baader

1. June 2, 1967:  There is a massive demonstration against the visiting Shah of Iran, in which Benno Ohnesorg, a pacifist that probably was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, is shot by police, quite possibly by accident. It becomes a cause célèbre. The date lives on in memory and is even taken on as a name by a later RAF affiliate.

2. A new “Bonnie and Clyde” dynamic duo emerge from the protest movement, Andreas Baader and girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin. They bomb a department store, and are soon arrested, in early April, 1968.

3. A week later, leftist agitator Rudi Dutschke is gunned down by a citizen in cold blood.

Ulrike Meinhof

The leftist movement pins the entire blame on the Springer Press, and mobs their headquarters. Springer publishes many of the garish tabloids that are read by millions of the working class in Germany. It was considered not only right-wing in orientation, but provocative and scandalous in its approach. The incident was important, among other reasons, because it drew the attention of the brooding, intellectual leftish girl-journalist Ulrike Meinhof.

4. March 1970, the nascent gang is formed, initially under the leadership of lawyer Horst Mahler. Baader has been let out of prison on a technicality but the sentence is reinstated and he is now a fugitive. On April 3, he is apprehended again.

Irene Goergens (l.), Ingrid Schubert (r.)

5. May 14, 1970, the gang pulls off a sensational rescue of Baader. Meinhof, using her reputation as a serious journalist, arranges for an “interview” of Baader for a book to be written. The interview is to be at an off-site Research Institute, and the prison administration is somehow gulled into allowing it. At the Institute, two girl gang members, Irene Goergens and Ingrid Schubert, who had earlier made themselves known to the guard by showing up to use the reading room, “happen” to show up again during the Meinhof interview and, recognizing them, the guard lets them in. A little later Ensslin and another gang member show up at the door with guns, and Goergens and Schubert buzz them in.

Gudrun Ensslin

The gang shoots their way out. The movie shows that Meinhof was supposed to stay behind and feign lack of knowledge but at the last minute bolts with them. Whether that detail is “historical fiction” or not, I don’t know. But as a result of this incident, the Springer press dubs the gang “Baader-Meinhof.” Pastor’s Kid and Baader’s girl Ennslin seems to have been the actual feminine force of the gang, and Baader did not become the top leader until a little later, but Springer’s name stuck from that moment on.

6. After the break, the gang goes to Jordan to receive guerrilla training from a Palestinian group. However, the libertine Germans are more than the Arabs can bear, and after two months they are sent packing.

Horst Mahler

7. In September, Mahler organizes the simultaneous robbing of four banks. One is stymied, but three are successful, netting 200,000 DM, and leading to a surge in recruitments, including Jan-Carl Raspe and film student Holger Meins. This is the first in a long string of bank robberies used to finance the outfit.

8. October 8, 1970, a meeting is ambushed by police, leading to the arrest of Mahler and Goergens among others. Andreas Baader, still at large, becomes the head of the gang.

9. July 15, 1971, a couple of gang members bolt from a police roadblock in Hamburg.

Petra Schelm

Shots are fired; gangsterette Petra Schelm, age 20, is dead.

10. September 1, 1971, Horst Herold is made head of the new Budeskriminalamt (BKA), a federal-level investigating unit similar to our FBI, which is established for the first time in Germany, in response to the RAF gang. This man is well-played in the movie by Bruno Ganz, who played Hitler in the film Downfall.

11. Dierk Hoff is recruited in December, and becomes the bomb fabricator. His most infamous invention is a bomb shaped like a large helmet that a woman can wear over her belly to look like she is pregnant to smuggle the bomb into buildings.

Irmgard Moeller

12. Over a 12 day period in May, 1972, the US Army HQ in Frankfurt is bombed by Baader, Ensslin, Meins and Raspe, killing American Lt. Col. Bloomquist; the Augsburg police station is bombed by gangsterettes Moeller and Luther in retaliation for the earlier shooting in that city of one of the gang members; Baader, Meins, and Enssler set off a huge car bomb in Munich; the car of Judge Buddenberg is bombed by Baader, Raspe, and Meins; the Springer Press building in Hamburg is bombed by Meinhof and Stachowiak; the US Supreme Command in Heidelberg is bombed (Moeller and Luther again), killing three Americans.

13. Over a two-week period in June, in three episodes, Baader and Meins, then girlfriend Ensslin (who foolishly let a gun bulge out of her jacket while shopping), and finally Ulrike Meinhof, are all nabbed.

Holger Meins

14. The “Black September” terror attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics takes place, seen by the whole world.

15. On March 3, 1973, Palestinian terrorists kill American diplomats in Khartoum. Among others, they demand the release of the Baader-Meinhof gang, but their demand is not met.

16. November 9, 1973, Meins dies of self-imposed hunger strike. Riots break out as a result, and the next day, Judge Drenkmann is assassinated by the gang.

17. The same month, Meinhof’s suggestion of an interview between Jean Paul Sartre and Andreas Baader actually takes place!

18. Feb. 27, 1975 the CDU (~our “Republican”) candidate Lorentz is kidnapped in Berlin. Five terrorists are released as ransom and given a plane that takes them to Yemen. However, Horst Mahler refuses to be released under these circumstances. Lorentz is released unharmed.

Susanne Albrecht

19. May 21, 1975, the big trial begins in Stuttgart in the newly constructed Stammheim prison courtroom. The courtroom was constructed at a cost of DM 15,000,000. The roof is covered with jagged razor wire to prevent helicopter landings and steel nets to prevent any potential airborne bombs from doing damage, and the entrance has a sophisticated metal detector.

20. May 9, 1976, Meinhof hangs herself in her cell.

21. June 7, 1976, the famous hijacking of an airline from Israel to Idi Amin’s Uganda. A number of the gang are involved. They demand the release of Baader-Meinhof gang as well as others. The Israelis swoop down and kill them.

22. April 7, 1977, the gang murders Attorney General Siegfried Buback in Karlsruhe.

Brigitte Mohnhaupt

23. July 30, 1977, upper-class Susanne Albrecht with Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar “pays a visit” to the home of Jürgen Ponto, a friend of her father’s and chairman of the Dresdner Bank. They gun him down.

24. Sept 5, Hanns-Martin Schleyer, an important industrialist, is kidnapped after no fewer than three bodyguards around him are gunned down.

25. Oct. 13, 1977. In concert with the Schleyer kidnapping, Palestinians hijack a Lufthansa plane to Mogadishu, Somalia, demanding the release of the Baader-Meinhof gang. A German swat team secretly lands there and storms the plane, killing or capturing all the hijackers.

Jan-Carl Raspe

26. As a result of this, the gang leaders throw in the towel. Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe commit suicide in their respective cells. They were in communication with each other by using jerry-rigged radios hooked up to the power lines. A day later, Schleyer is murdered and his body dumped. (Later, Nov. 13,  Ingrid Schubert hangs herself.) On Oct. 27, Baader, Ensslin and Raspe are interred in Stuttgart, with thousands in attendance. The public plot was provided, against public outcry, by order of Mayor Romfred Rommel, son of the great WW2 General.

Thus ended the so-called “German Autumn.” A film (Deutschland im Herbst) was made by the New German Cinema group to document the events, with a leftish spin.

This was the high-water mark. The gang continued for two more decades, but the founding nucleus was gone.

Guises of Inge Viett

There was a time when we would have all written this movement off as simple communist evil. The suspicion can scarcely be suppressed, that the gang was helped by and thus collaborated with communist governments — think of the procurement of weapons, the communications gadgets, the forged documents, the ease of international travel, the network of safe houses. (Some [e.g. Susanne Albrecht and Inge Viett] actually escaped to the “German Democratic Republic” and cooperated with the Stasi, being arrested only after the wall came down.) Baader, Ensslin, and Meinhof all abandoned their own children for the “cause.” Moreover, if the depiction of personalities in the film is accurate, Baader and Ensslin were simply crazy self-indulgent fanatics. However, as mentioned above, there is some reason to doubt the uniform accuracy of the film on such points. Above all, Mahler does not write them off completely, so we should not either. And Ulrike Meinhof cannot be written off at all so easily.

Even if someone accepts support from a communist state — and I am not suggesting that this was true of all the gang members by any means –, this doesn’t tell the whole story from a human standpoint. People are not just cardboard characters called “agent of X.” They have a story, that sometimes leads to willingness, for a cause, to embrace death, to inflict death, even to commit suicide. They must be distinguished from worthless people that betray their country for money.

Not just the case of Horst Mahler, but our new insight into the American problem, is cause to reflect on this matter with more nuance than we all would have once. We too think we are facing a regime that is simply going to act according to its nefarious plan and ignore all objections; a regime that is deaf to appeal. Our rulers meet at midnight to pass laws they haven’t read, on weekends and holidays. We are going to have to extract a number of threads carefully. More will need to be said before the right way to think about this arc of recent history can be considered resolved.

The movie can be rented from Netflix or members can watch on-line as one of their freebies.

Warning: there is a lot of violence, occasionally reaching the intensity of the assassination of Sonny in Godfather. There is also some full nudity, but I should qualify that by observing that the nudity, as often is the case in German films, is not particularly erotic and thus does not seem voyeuristic. There is something perfunctory about its presence in German films. (I can just hear the producer talking with his screenwriter: “Hans, Abe just called from Hollywood. If we want them to distribute the film in America, they insist there be at least one sex scene. Do you think you can work it in?”) German nudity has a tradition going back to the barbarian days, when the women goaded their men into realizing the cost of military defeat by baring their bosoms as the men marched into battle. I wonder if the German appropriation of nudity is as a result somewhat different from that of us, as consumers of jewish Hollywood. It may help explain the acceptance of photography even in the street-level press that shocks our Victorian sensibilities, despite the generally exemplary German Sittlichkeit. Nevertheless, fair warning.

One line of criticism of their project is the ecumenicity of Prelatic and Evangelical, which is nicely parodied here. I would only add, that if the particular points of this manifesto are all they could come up with, then why not become even more ecumenical and invite like-minded Unitarians and atheists? True, they sign it “as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” but that comes at the end of the short statement, there is no attempt to show implication, and they are not signing it as authorized agents of the representative church of any of their branches. Why even mention that the group of signatories happens to include — and no more than hap can be claimed — individuals that are members of three branches of Christendom?

However, let us drill deeper. The three points, shorn of all the committeespeak, and put in plain English, are these:

1. Burning babies to death in saline solution is not a good thing.

2. Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman.

3. Those that affirm the first two points should not be imprisoned and black-listed.

Is it not odd that as noisy “followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” they don’t think to mention the public blasphemy of his holy name in the movies being poured down the throats of the nation’s young people? At the end of the day, I suspect these men know whose bread needs to be kept buttered above all else.

On the other hand, in the full-text version, they do find time to praise historical Christian involvement in democracy, abolitionism, first-generation feminism and the American Civil Rights movement, even though there were undoubtedly more Christians rightly opposed to those movements than engaged in them. The great Plagiarist and Adulterer is also cited favorably.

Nevertheless, the three points are a summary of where we have arrived politically, sufficient to point out that this is not the stuff for polite position papers: it is the stuff of revolutions. If we had real leaders, they would be advising us as to whether it is time for men to rise up with arms in defense of their families and property, and kill the wicked usurpers – and if it is not time, explain how we will know when it is time. We certainly do not need more double-minded men writing up the minutes of their tea parties for the whole world to see. I don’t know which I dread more: a new string of conferences, special discounts available if you send your money in right away, or the inevitable “get the message out” fund-raising letters, no doubt coming soon. Meanwhile, the dragon yawns, his most essential principles having been conceded once again.

Putting Reformed in scare quotes sets up an ambiguity from the very beginning — and indeed, one can’t get closer to the beginning than the first word of the title. The predicate, “is not enough,” is also unspecified — not enough for what? Let us unpack each one separately:

1. “Reformed”

Let us consider how Wilson uses the word and how the word should be used. Just getting this straight would, I think, clear up much confusion in the church world today.

Exactly why the word is put in scare quotes is never explained. In the Forward, Wilson clearly wants to define Reformed as a category that can be claimed by someone, apparently anyone, holding to “the teaching of the Westminster Confession” or the “historic Reformed faith” (p. 7). He suggests that “this is a debate between the Enlightenment TRs (ETRs) and the historic reformed” (p. 9).

A little later he implies that the term when scare-quoted indicates a person as above but who has ossified, who has not continued to advance. “Because of the Reformational commitment, it is still necessary to say that to be Reformed is not enough. We must certainly live up to what we have already attained, but together with this we must not be allowed to assume that the last significant attainment was in the middle of the seventeenth century.” (p. 13). He unfortunately then quotes the bogus semper reformanda canard — it is “not something we should all chant together right up until someone actually tries it. ” Haha — but don’t let’s chant it either, shall we?

Thus Reformed in scare quotes seems to indicate that “Reformed” is a label that can be claimed by anyone holding certain beliefs, and moreover this claim to be Reformed is not sufficient to settle the questions in the book since it may harp back to a set of beliefs formulated in the 17th century: something more is needed.

But this move is unclear. If anyone claiming to be “holding to the teaching of the Westminster Confession” gets to be referred to as Reformed, and then Wilson making the same claim gets to say “that’s not enough,” then “Reformed” is indeed just a word in quotes. It has little if any value. Let me explain.

“Reformed” is properly not the designation for Calvinism any more than “Catholic” is a designation for Thomism. There is clearly an association, but the entailment is the opposite of how Wilson is using the terms. (It is not just him; the mistake is commonly made by friend and foe.) Instead, we should say that Calvinism is associated with the Reformed church, because the Reformed church in its judicial decisions historically embraced tenets compatible with Calvinism. Had the Synod of Dordt ruled for the Remonstrants, then Arminianism would be the “Reformed” doctrine. Thomism is associated with Catholicism, because the Roman Catholic Church endorsed Thomism. Now consider the converse.

Does some unchurched guy emerging from his study get to make the announcement, “As a Catholic thinker, I endorse Thomas”? Not at all. Agreeing with every word Thomas wrote does not make one a Catholic. Being admitted as a communing member makes one a Catholic. Then one could say, “Though a Catholic, I demur from Thomas at various points.”

Does some unchurched guy emerging from his study get to make the announcement, “As a Reformed thinker, I say ‘Reformed’ is not enough”? Not at all. His claim is just as presumptuous as the churchless guy (or worse yet, a Baptist) claiming to speak as a Catholic, just because he believes this or that also taught by the Catholic church.

What I am suggesting, in other words, is that a great deal of clarity would be injected into the current discussions by defining Reformed doctrine as “that which is taught by the Reformed church,” and a Reformed man as “a member of the Reformed church.” Reformed (with a capital R) is a name that designates a particular church settlement at the time of the Reformation, which has come down to us today by historical continuity reflected in succession of ordination.

If this seems strained or odd, play the logic out with Catholic (with a capital C) or Orthodox (with a capital O). The logic will immediately be clear.

One does not become “Reformed” in any ecclesiastically-meaningful way by starting a club with the word “Reformed” in it, like the “Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches” (CREC). So indeed, putting “Reformed” in scare quotes may have expressed a primal intuition of a real issue.

2. “Is not enough”

Once this is understood, the predicate can now be analyzed. “Reformed” is certainly “enough,” because being in the Reformed Church suffices, so we believe, to be in the holy catholic church “out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (WCF 25.2).

One could certainly point out that hypocrites should derive no assurance from their church membership. But then, the point would be, not that “being Reformed” is not enough, but that “being a church member” in general is not enough.

One could point out, that “being a member of the Reformed church” is not “enough” to permit one to announce his opinion as that of the Reformed church. Again, that is true but fatuous. It applies to every member of any church, unless it should be the pope (if his claims can be sustained).

One could grant that “being Reformed” or “being Lutheran” or being anything else “is not enough” for this, that or the other thing — like being a good engineer I suppose. But so what?

3. Wilson: what is he?

With that background, it simply needs to be pointed out that Douglas Wilson is not a member of a Reformed Church. If the unchurched man cannot come out of his study and announce, “I as a Catholic think…” nor “I as a Reformed thinker say…” then neither can ten such men band together and say, “we be a Reformed church.” There is only one way to become a Reformed man: and that is to join the Reformed Church. Not announcement, but joining is called for.

What makes the book so silly is that all kinds of analysis is given relevant to what it means to take covenant vows, and so forth, all of which is like a eunuch giving marriage counseling. Auto-ordained Wilson in the self-proclaimed CREC dares to instruct on what it means to be in covenant! As if blabbing on and on endlessly about being in covenant puts one in covenant!

4. “The” covenant

Lest it be thought that I am harping too much on the title, an extension of the semantic analysis can be made in respect to the word that could be said the book purports to be “about,” namely covenant. “One of the great reformational needs in the Church today is the need for us to understand the objectivity of the covenant, and so that is the thrust of this book” (p. 13). So the first point is that Wilson needs to join the Church before talking about what the Church needs to do. But the second is like unto it: “the” covenant is never specified. There are several covenants in Scripture, and even more sub-covenants or covenant administrations. So what possible sense is there in referring to “the covenant” as if there is only one? The “objectivity of the covenant,” so stated, is an empty abstraction.

It may seem like a mere semantic quibble, but it is not. Read the book while constantly asking, “what covenant is Wilson talking about” and you will see the problem.

It is not that the book has nothing good; but when the verbal legerdemain is removed, we must borrow the words of a wag who said “where it is original it is unsound, and where it is sound it is unoriginal.”

Douglas Wilson. “Reformed” is Not Enough. (Moscow, ID: Canon) 2002

For the former, one verse that is cited is, predictably, Gal. 3:28 (p. 91). Now, I wish these fellows would write the following statement on a flashcard and memorize it: If Gal 3:28 proves that interracial marriage is okay, then it also proves that homosexual marriage is okay. It may be that miscegenation is permitted, and of course, homosexual marriage is not marriage at all, but you can’t prove that from Gal 3:28. By itself, that verse could certainly be used by homosexuals if it can be used to support miscegenation. The same exegetical mistake would be committed by both parties. The point of Gal 3:28 is not to overthrow all differences between the sexes, and thus it is also not to overthrow all differences, if there are any, between the races.

They continue: “Malachi 2:15 declares that an important purpose of marriage is to produce godly offspring…In addition, the man and woman must be one spiritually so they can fulfill the command to produce godly offspring…  According to the Bible then, which of the impending marriages in the illustration does God counsel against entering into?” (p. 91). The chart on the following page shows three couples:

1. A Negro and an Aryan, both Christian
2. An Aryan and an Oriental, neither Christian
3. Two Aryans, one Christian and one non-Christian.

(Note the Aryans as common denominator in all three scenarios. I wonder if in the Chinese edition of the book the targeted race will be changed.)

“The answer is obvious — the third one.”

But if that is obvious on the basis of the “godly seed” argument, why is not the marriage of two non-Christians equally questionable, since these have no purpose to produce a godly offspring? Why is the second scenario not also highlighted as sinful?  Is there a perverse neutrality principle at work in their not seeing #2 as a violation of their stated premise? It is as if the unbeliever gets a bye on the commands of God.

(There is even something oddly perverse about the language used here, starting with the expression, “God counsels.” I thought God commanded. I didn’t think he merely gave counsel.)

Presumably, the Hamites believe that all three scenarios describe valid marriages once contracted. That is, I take it that, whatever sin might have been involved at stages leading to any of three scenarios, the status quo would not be grounds for annulment on their view. The only question then is whether sin would be involved in entering into any of the three.

If there are other principles of marriage that must also be understood, such that one might conclude that scenario #2 is not inherently sinful, then one would need to check to make sure that those missing principles would not have something to qualify scenario #1 as well. If the only principle at work was the desire to “have a godly seed,” scenario #2 would fail just as quickly as #3. Ken Ham instinctively recognized his mistake at a gut level, yet utterly failed to see that his argument was therefore simply inadequate. In their haste to conclude from a carefully selected biblical principle, they have clearly stepped into a major non-sequitor, or they are affirming that unbelievers are not required to obey the law of God.

The eagerness to ratify political correctness leads to a suspension of thought, and a suppression of sanctified instinct. It reminds me of a Board that I twice sat on, which, upon the agitation of one busybody on the Board,  became concerned about a “dangerous outbreak” of opposition to miscegenation — well at any rate, a fellow out in the hills that demurred from miscegenation had once visited the busybody’s church. This created a crisis that had to be addressed immediately. The catalog could wait, finding ways to recruit new students could wait — everything could wait until this dire heresy would be stamped out.  (Geneva could not even be used in the institution’s name, because someone — why, is anyone’s guess — might associate it with a website known as “Little Geneva” that the busybody found objectionable.) So, in fourteen minutes, they proposed, debated, and passed a motion defining a new heresy, in these words: “The Board of [such and such] denounces the Kinist core idea that miscegenation is a sin, and affirms that the only Biblical limitation for Christian marriage is that believers marry only in the Lord, I Cor 7:39.” From the context, it was clear that by “in the Lord,” they meant “another Christian” — for, if  “in the Lord” is meant to designate “all relevant biblical principles,”  it would be question-begging so far as settling the miscegenation question — then all the biblical data would have needed to be scanned to make sure, and this can surely not be done in 14 minutes; and it was not done. The context is clearly, that only the religious faith of the person functions as a norm when choosing a mate.

They never noticed that according to their new definition, you can marry your mother as long as she is a Christian!

Such is the result of a generation that feels the magnetism of the politically correct, and acts in haste born of fear.

There are a variety of considerations that might lead fathers or tribal leaders to forbid their daughters to be wooed by tribal outsiders.

1. When it comes to inter-racial marriage, there is a distinct asymmetry between the possible pairings as to desire. There are far more Aryan men that successfully woo Oriental girls than Orientals that avoid being spurned by Aryan girls. There are one or two orders of magnitude more Negroes interested in Aryan girls than Aryans that desire Negresses. This means that, when inter-racial marriage is permitted on a wide-spread basis, there is one sex of each tribe that is the competitive loser — some members of which must either become more aggressive in a way that should not be necessary, or give up. Namely, Orientals vis-à-vis Aryans, Aryans vis-à-vis Negroes, and Negresses vis-à-vis Aryan girls.

Why should this be considered a good or healthy situation? Why should one half of a tribe be put at a competitive disadvantage in the marriage market?

Why should Korean elders insist that their girls may be wooed by Vietnamese? Who would have thought of it?

Why would a Negro seek to seduce or marry an Aryan princess, when there is an ample quantity of Negresses eager to receive his advances? What possible motive could there be other than pure lust? And yet, the pictures of favorable miscegenation shown by Ham and cited by pro-miscegenation preachers is always a Negro with an Aryan fox. Why is this? Has MTV triumphed? What is really at the bottom of this excitement? I will speculate a bit on this down below.

2. Mr. Ham and his colleagues make the analogy between dog breeds and the speciation of humanity from a common pair of parents (pp. 36-45). The differentiation in the case of humans came about by natural selection, they say, but the inter-breedability establishes that there is no racial norm. But carry the analogy through: if you had a nation of cocker spaniels, another of great Danes, and another of Labradors, might it not be well within the rights and natural desires of each of these “tribes” to preserve its distinctives? To forbid the dams to make themselves available to the dogs of the other breeds? What possible “biblical argument” could there be to say that inter-breeding must be permitted, if not encouraged? What could possibly be wrong with recognizing the great gifts inherited by your breed and wishing to preserve them?

The libertarian will have a ready answer: what each individual chooses, let it so be; no one dare object.

At bottom, I think the Christian miscegenists are libertarians to a far greater extent than they are aware. They really model humanity as a miscellaneous collection of individuals, with libertarian choice the highest value governing everything. Society is only a matter of voluntary association. Earlier I showed why this solution is inadequate.

3. Other analogies can be imagined. Consider forbidding your daughter from dating an inmate of a nut-house, for example. If tribe A has an IQ of 70, and tribe B has an IQ of 100, then would it not be insanity for tribe B to permit its daughters to marry into tribe A?

Yet this is exactly the case!

4. Not just the future look and character of one’s descendants, but the organization of society is threatened. The reason is easy to comprehend. There are three possibilities for the mulatto first-generation offspring of the inter-racial marriage. (1) They will bond to the mother’s tribe, (2) they will bond to the father’s tribe, or (3) they will become exemplars of tribeless society, continuing the free and libertarian mixing of their parents into the next generation. Either (1) or (2), continued for several generations, means the race of one of the parents is effectively renounced in favor of the other, and the inter-racial marriage proves to be a brief turbulence that settles back into one ethnic identity eventually. (3) is a view of society which, universalized, implies that the ethnic stock that forms the core of every nation is to be ignored; then government is, at most, a matter of geography, and even geography then becomes arbitrary. That is, “borders” no longer define the concrete land settled by a people.  If there is no bond of national blood, why should things be different just for hopping over an arbitrary border? Thus, there is a teleology of one-world government when one ponders this matter deeply. The Hamites consider an objection under this name (pp. 105-111) and poo-poo it, but without showing evidence that they have thought the matter through teleologically. Their analysis fails to consider the deeper issues involved in nationality, and thus this section is not worthy of further interaction.

The Hamites' dream couple -- provided they are both Christians or non-Christians

Why do the Hamites lust for Negroes to have their way with Aryan girls? For, inevitably, that is the picture that is given as Scenario #1 (see illustration on p. 92). The Bible certainly does not command this. We can only speculate.

1. The most charitable view would be to suppose that they pick the most aesthetically repulsive combination in order to set up an a fortiori for libertarian mixing, which model of humanity they really believe is taught by the Bible.

2. Perhaps it is a sign of simple capitulation to the memes and images imposed on us by our secular rulers for the last 40 years, both de jure and de facto: jewish propaganda through movies, starting with Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and culminating in MTV; agitation through ADL, SPLC, and ACLU; and the rulings of revolutionary judges. The Stockholm syndrome is very real. The desire for praise and acceptance by those holding power leads to a double mind. The beaten dog not only wags his tail but really does desire acceptance by its abusive master. The busybody that brought complaint against me to the Board very clearly and explicitly indicated his fear of the ruling establishment: but it was a fear his conscience approved of, a fear that he did not blush to admit.

3. I don’t think we can rule out a motivation that would properly be designated as “racist” if that word has any meaning at all. Namely, perhaps they think the Negro can only be raised to civilization by raising his IQ and character through interbreeding. In that sense, they are willing, Christ-like, to sacrifice themselves for the sake of another. I believe it was Barth who said there is only one story: the Christ story. Perhaps they see the destiny of the Aryan to lay himself down in sacrifice for the sake of the other races, and specifically, for the Negro race.

4. Most sinister of all, could it be that there is a subtle belief that evangelism of the Negro in a serious, culture-changing way, will only take place by this means? Perhaps the enticement of White girls is the evangelistic trick they wish to hold out, replacing the magic shows, snake handling, and other gimmicks of huckster evangelists of a century ago?

These possibilities are not disjunctive. They all could be in play, feeding one another, supplementing the same grotesque monster. It is not biblical, though in their conceit they think it is.  It is messianism on man’s terms. These men have dedicated themselves to a cause that can only be identified as evil. If they persist, the only just fate for them will be exile to Africa.

We should hope for better from them: that they will come to their senses. Let us pray and hope so, before the gifts that God has distributed to humanity, organized into tribes, are washed away, never to be recovered again so far as what can be discerned humanly.

Because people groups have allegedly evolved separately, they are at different stages of evolution, and some people groups are less evolved. Thus, the other person may not be as fully human as you. This sort of thinking inspired Hitler in his quest to eliminate Jews and Gypsies and to establish the “master race.” Sadly, some Christians have been infected with racist thinking through the efforts on our culture of evolutionary indoctrination, that people of a different “color” are inferior because they are supposedly closer to the animals. (p. 78f.)

And, in case you missed it the first time,

Evolutionists like Hitler treated the Jews, Gypsies, and other groups as inferior, and therefore argued that they needed to be eliminated. (p. 166)

It is unfortunately necessary again to question Ham’s honesty. In the current sputtering shibboleths about Nazis, you are supposed to mention the persecution of homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses as well. Why does Ham “forget” to mention those groups? Why only Gypsies and Jews? Obviously, because Sodomites are not a racial group, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are not a racial group. (Perhaps it is also because his rhetoric would then find less sympathetic reception amongst his white conservative audience?) But this should have cued him in that his premises might be wrong. He needs a theory to account for the persecution of all the groups that were persecuted.

The “closer to the animals” argument is dubious as stated. Presumably, Ham believes that cattle are “inferior” to humans; yet this has not led him to desire that all the cattle of the earth should be wiped out. Of course we slaughter cattle, but this is different than “eliminating.” The history of man is full of mutual slaughter, and not necessarily based on a theory of inferiority. Indeed, probably it hardly ever is tied to a theory of inferiority.

Moreover, one can believe that some races are inferior to others based on any number of criteria having nothing to do with evolution, nor does such a belief need to entail hatred or a desire for genocide. One could believe that one’s mortal enemies were superior, and therefore had to be eliminated — kill or be killed as they say.

Note further that the desire for racial separation does not necessarily imply a sense of racial superiority, any more than separating the squabbling children is. Think: let it be that the Aryan is inferior to the other races. Fine: now can we have our own country? Indeed, if there is any legitimacy to desiring to see one’s tribe continue qua tribe into the future, then the desire for separation would only become stronger when said tribe is mingled with a superior and dominating rival tribe.

We can summarize the fallacious forms of Ham’s logic thusly:

• Belief in racial inferiority does not imply justification for genocide
• Belief in racial inferiority does not imply belief in evolution
• Desire for racial separation does not imply belief in racial inferiority
• Desire for racial separation does not imply belief in evolution

The Hamites have not thought this matter through carefully because, I suspect, their minds have been addled by the Nazi meme, which our rulers have deeply implanted in the minds of our people. Corrupted by our rulers’ meme, the Hamites in turn plant their own. The meme-planting intent of this passage is clear: if you want to live where you can raise your children far away from Negroes, then you are equivalent to a Nazi, acting like Hitler.

Whenever the H-card is played, one should unpack carefully. Why is the deliberate Judeo-bolshevik slaughter of millions of Ukrainians prior to the ascendancy of H never mentioned? That was surely racial hatred, but not necessarily based on evolution. On the other hand, there are several ways that Ham on Hitler re race is wrong, reflecting the analysis above:

1. H’s alleged belief in the primacy of the German and the relative inferiority of the Slav, Hun, and Mediterranean did not stop him from making friendly alliances with Croatia, Hungary, and Italy (not to mention Romania) against their common enemy, the Bolsheviks; and those allied nations fought valiantly at the side of the Germans.  (Slovakia too was on friendly terms, and had something equivalent to an SA of their own.)  Many Russian soldiers after capture volunteered to fight with the Germans against their communist rulers. (Roosevelt/Truman obeyed Stalin’s order to hand them over to the USSR after the war for execution — but I digress.)

2. If he had heard that the Slavs regarded their race as superior, I suspect H would have taken that with bemused humor. He would not have cared if you did not agree that the Aryan was superior. Indeed, he would probably respect you more if you held a similar view of your own race. Think of C. S. Lewis’ friends observing that the men of every nation believe their own women the most beautiful, when one of the old ones murmured “yes… but in our case, it is true.”

(Interesting trivia: H thought of the Japanese as the “Aryans of the Orient.”)

3. Nor was his desire to expel jews from Germany necessarily based on a belief that jews were inferior or sub-human in the sense that Ham implies. It was based on his conviction that jews were deleterious in their effect on the German people; and whether that pernicious effect was due to their being superior or inferior would be irrelevant to that conclusion, unless it should be that jewish superiority made separation even more urgent.

4. Why were other groups put in concentration camps, such as Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Sodomites? I cannot produce quotes, but it does not require much imagination to find a common denominator to make sense of such a policy: all of these groups are resistant to bonding tribally: they thus needed to be quarantined during the national emergency. All of this would make for an interesting discussion in its own right, but too much of a digression just here. The point is, that Ham’s pulling of the H-card is confused and probably exploitative of current political shibboleths; it cannot be marshaled to his thesis about evolution, or even race.

If quarantining a group believed to be potentially dangerous during a national emergency is so bad, why don’t the Hamites harp on the American segregating of Japanese-Americans during WW2 — which was unambiguously race-based. Why does poor old H always have to take the heat on this one? The answer is, that the American action was very clearly not related to a belief in evolution. It was based on the question of ethnic loyalty. The action may have been just or unjust — that would be the subject for a different essay. But it would reveal a nest of debatable issues that belie the Hamites’ charge of evolution, and place the discussion in a completely different framework.

5. We have made the point before, but it bears repeating in this new application: Hitler’s view that the Aryan needed to be preserved and separated from the Jew is a position that one could hold with or without evolution. The logic is simply absent when people make this assertion.

6. Doubtless, Hitler had a dynamic view of history, such that energetic peoples would tend to expand and sluggish ones contract.  Any pointy-headed academic might entertain such a hypothesis about history. No doubt, H desired his own people to be one of the energetic ones, not one of the sluggish ones. Given the hypothesis, that is certainly a rational view to have. It is compatible with either evolution or anti-evolution.

If it turns out that H believed in evolution in point of fact, would that prove Ham’s thesis? No it would not. It is the logical entailment that is wrong with Ham’s analysis.

People need to work up the courage to study that period in our people’s history; or perhaps just a study of critical thinking will suffice. After they do, cheap rhetorical tricks such as are sprinkled through this book will be enough by themselves to strip credibility from such authors. The Hitler treated by the Hamites is actually just a cartoon character created by Hollywood. That is why I say “the Hitler” in the title of this post. It is a stock character, to be dragged out on demand from the back-stage closet, like “the Mummy,” or “the Vampire.”

Now perhaps the Hamites will answer this analysis along these lines: even granting that the desire for racial separation is not logically dependent on a view of inferiors and superiors, and even if such a desire is possible with or without evolution — yet the escalation from separation to extermination (i.e. the “holocaust”) would only be possible on a view of superiority derived from evolution. Now leaving aside the fact that the “holocaust” story itself, as we have begun to document, seems to be patched together with even more baseless assertions and distortions than the Hamites can make in one short book, consider the logic of this move even granting the premise. First, such a view would be a misunderstanding of Darwinism. Darwinism speaks of the fittest surviving, not the “superior” as conceived of along logical, ethical, or teleological grounds. In other words, a Hitler that wished to exterminate a rival gang would not need to deduce a “right” to do so from some axiology of worth: the desire itself would be its own vindication or (upon loss) rebuttal. It is a misunderstanding to think that Darwinism permits a calculation of ethical right, or even a pragmatic right. The fittest survive, because those that survive are the fittest by definition. It has nothing to do with an apriori. Second, such a desire could be produced by other non-Christian worldviews with or without Darwinism being part of the package. One could believe, for example, that one’s own tribal god has created one’s tribe, or set it apart, and so ordained. In that case, Hitler’s view would be formally analogous to the ancient Hebrews’s genocide of the Canaanites, if it were the case that Jehovah were simply a tribal invention and not the true God. Again, such an attitude need not involve either a view of superiority or evolution. Finally, the last resort of the Hamite will probably be to say, that the execution of a genocide requires the cooperation of many persons, whose scruples would have to be overcome by some means or other. But if their scruples are based on Christian convictions, how would this be overcome by Hitler asserting Darwinism? The overcoming of scruples would need to take place by defeating Christian convictions by hook or by crook, and (a) this need not take place via Darwinism, and (b) the cynical Hitler-figure would not need himself to believe whatever subterfuge would be used to overcome the others’ scruples. And again (not to sound like a broken record), the agenda could just as well be pushed on the view of the right and exigencies of tribal survival as on the view of tribal inferiority or superiority.

One gets the feeling that Ham never tests his premises by the free variation of imagination. After a while, one starts to wonder if he is just cliché-monger, not a thinker at all. But if Ham merely passes along the usual “white lies” about Nazis, we cannot let the “Editor-in-chief” Jim Fletcher in his forward to the book off the hook so easily. Of that little piece of work, we must borrow the words of Mary McCarthy spoken originally about Lillian Hellman: Every word in it is a lie, including “and” and “the.” Consider just this one whopper:

Even the Japanese in World War II, to justify that nation’s expansionist aggression, had been told that they were the most “highly evolved” race on earth. After all, Europeans, with their longer arms and hairier chests, were clearly still closer to the ape, weren’t they? (p.13)

I seriously doubt that he can back up his quote with a published citation: I am calling your bluff, “Mr. Fletcher.” But perhaps he will find some Japanese somewhere that said that. Perhaps some over-heated rhetoric on either side may be excused on the mitigating circumstance of the heat of battle — on the level of the playground pugilist’s “your mother wears army boots.”

However, even the slightest acquaintance with the facts belies this assertion as a fair statement of the case: the expansion of Japan was into the territory of fellow Orientals, and they were allied with that nation, Germany, which is arch-European! Even the attack on “European” America was reluctantly undertaken due to the deliberate provocation of the Roosevelt administration, as “Mr. Fletcher” would have known if he had read even ten pages of history before getting up on his soap box.

Again, if he feels the need to take a cheap shot, why not pick on “us” rather than “them”? After the US government had goaded and tricked the Japanese into a war they did not desire, consider how “the Allies” treated them racially. Military commentator Fletcher Pratt “declared that the Japanese ‘can neither make good airplanes nor fly them well.’” (T. Fleming, The New Dealers’ War, p. 44) After Pearl Harbor, “an agitated General Douglas Macarthur swore they must have acquired Germans or some other white mercenaries to fly their planes.” (pp. 44-45)  “After the bombs fell, the paper’s cartoonist, Theodore Giesel, future beloved children’s book writer Dr. Seuss, drew a picture of a long column of slanty-eyed Japanese lining up to collect TNT at a house labeled ‘Honorable Fifth Column.’” (p. 110) “Pearl Buck risked her status as a best-selling author … in her 1943 novel, The Promise, about the British and Chinese fighting the Japanese in Burma. She depicted the British as infected with all but incurable racist attitudes, which led them to see Asians as subhuman, even when they were allies.” (p. 379) “In an official government film, Action at Anguar, issued in the spring of 1945 to support the seventh war-bond drive, footage showed Japanese soldiers being burned alive by flamethrowers while the narrator said: “By this time we had shot, blasted or cooked six hundred of the little apes.’” (p. 540)

A Christian should be doubly careful to be fair and just in his treatment of his enemies, knowing the proneness of human nature to self-deception. One feels cheap having to correct Ham and his colleagues on these matters: like having to prove that there were 10 cookies in the jar in the presence of the little liar that obviously stole one. The situation has gone beyond the passing on of falsehoods that are part of the received tradition taught in government schools. One can forgive someone that has not been corrected, for passing on the false idea that Lincoln waged the “Civil War” to end slavery. But here, we are dealing with a situation that has gone beyond that: people think they can actually make up any slander out of thin air and pass it on with impunity when dealing with Nazis.

Schlissel thinks one can lie when dealing with a Nazi: it is but a short step, and one which most published Americans evidently have taken, to think one can tell any lie about the Nazis. Ham et al. undoubtedly think that if these baseless assertions about Nazis turn out to be false, they are just little “white lies,” well justified by the circumstance. But John Murray showed convincingly that even inadvertent passing along of falsehoods involves one in sin: for God is Truth. This is a very serious matter. If people claiming to be Christians continue to do it after being corrected, the credibility of their profession will eventually need to be questioned.