"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
http://tinyurl.com/7kcp5
--
Support our troops in Iraq: bring them home.

Considering that my grandfather had many run ins with the Nazis in WWII,
including many scars, I really take offense when liberals stoop so low and
call Republicans nazis. This is exactly why the liberals keep losing
elections. Call them whatever you want, but once you call them nazis, you
lose credibility with millions of people.

Dan J.S. wrote:
"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
http://tinyurl.com/7kcp5
--
Support our troops in Iraq: bring them home.

Considering that my grandfather had many run ins with the Nazis in WWII,
including many scars, I really take offense when liberals stoop so low and
call Republicans nazis. This is exactly why the liberals keep losing
elections. Call them whatever you want, but once you call them nazis, you
lose credibility with millions of people.

Seeing how most of the U.S. comes from Anglo-Saxon descent, and thus
have all had "run ins" with various factions, that argument hardly
holds water. It's odd that most conservatives are the first one's to
NOT want to be politically correct, then when someone they oppose isn't
politically correct, they cry and whine....
My father was wounded in wwII, also. But I can see the similarities in
the Nazis and BushCo. If you are offended, then vote against that form
of government next election.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Seeing how most of the U.S. comes from Anglo-Saxon descent, and thus
have all had "run ins" with various factions, that argument hardly
holds water. It's odd that most conservatives are the first one's to
NOT want to be politically correct, then when someone they oppose isn't
politically correct, they cry and whine....
My father was wounded in wwII, also. But I can see the similarities in
the Nazis and BushCo. If you are offended, then vote against that form
of government next election.

Here is a very interesting piece that confirms what you are saying.

Jim C.


Gott Mit Uns
by Laurence M. Vance
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the
people" (Karl Marx - Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right).

Marx was right.

This admission may sound strange coming from someone who is both a
conservative Christian and an unabashed advocate of laissez faire, but what
Marx said about religion being a drug is nevertheless correct. He may never
have said anything else in his entire life that was true or worth reading,
and probably didn't, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

It goes without saying that people high on drugs do not act normal. They may
think, say, and do strange things that they would not normally do. They may
even do some wild and crazy things that they would never dream of doing when
they were not high.

Many supporters of the senseless war in Iraq are high on religion. Add a
religious element to a war and the faithful will come out in droves in
support of it. In the case of the current war in Iraq this is easy to do.
Because the United States is supposedly a "Christian nation," the war can be
turned into a modern-day crusade since Iraq is a "Muslim nation."

The use of religion in war is as old as history itself. If there is one
thing that men are willing to fight and die for it is their religious
beliefs. But unfortunately, it is also historically true that many are
willing to kill or justify killing under the guise of religion.

This is especially disheartening of those who would defend aggression in the
name of Christianity. As the Baptist minister who called himself Veritatis
Amans lamented in the pages of The Christian Review back in 1847:

War has ever been the scourge of the human race. The history of the past is
little else than a chronicle of deadly feuds, irreconcilable hate, and
exterminating warfare. The extension of empire, the love of glory, and
thirst for fame, have been more fatal to men than famine or pestilence, or
the fiercest elements of nature. The trappings and tinsel of war, martial
prowess, and military heroism, have, in all ages, been venerated and lauded
to the skies. And what is more sad and painful, many of the wars whose
desolating surges have deluged the earth, have been carried on in the name
and under the sanction of those who profess the name of Christ.

The last time the United States experienced such religious intensity during
a war was back during the misnamed conflict commonly called the Civil War.
The blasphemous "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is still sung today in many
northern churches around the fourth of July and Veterans Day.

American preachers were used during World War I to keep war fever high. Here
is a typical example: "It is God who has summoned us to this war. It is his
war we are fighting.. This crusade is indeed a crusade. The greatest in
history - the holiest . a Holy War. Yes, it is Christ, the King of
Righteousness, who calls us to grapple in deadly strife with this unholy and
blasphemous power" (Randolph McKim, For God and Country or the Christian
Pulpit in War Time, 1918). For more on religion during World War I and the
Progressive Era see Richard Gamble's The War for Righteousness: Progressive
Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation.

President Bush has mastered the art of using religious rhetoric to capture
the support of gullible evangelical Christians. Even while the federal debt
and deficit skyrocket, the body count in Iraq continues to rise, and he
makes war on the bill of rights, Bush has continued to maintain that he is a
man of faith who is doing the will of the Lord. And so have others: see
Stephen Mansfield's The Faith of George Bush and David Aikman's A Man Of
Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush. Christian "leaders" like Pat
Robertson, Ralph Reed, James Dobson, Donald Wildmon, Tim LaHaye, D. James
Kennedy, John Hagee, and Jerry Falwell are some of the most vocal apologists
for Bush and the Republican Party. Even that great paragon of virtue,
Rudolph Giuliani, has gotten on the religious bandwagon, recently saying
that "there was some divine guidance in the President being elected."

It is no overstatement to say that many of these so-called Christian leaders
consider George Bush to be God's gift to the human race. Jerry Falwell, who,
in the wake of the elections, has resurrected his Moral Majority
organization, said his group would capitalize on the momentum of the
elections "to maintain an evangelical revolution of voters who will continue
to go the polls to 'vote Christian.'" Said Falwell: "On election night, I
actually shed tears of joy as I saw the fruit of a quarter century of hard
work. Nearly 116 million Americans voted. More than 30 million were
evangelical Christians who, according to the pollsters, voted their moral
convictions. I proudly say . . . they voted Christian!!" Although Bush fails
on all three counts, Falwell has actually called him a "socially, fiscally,
and politically conservative president." When it comes to the subject of
politics, Christian leaders and their followers are a perfect example of the
blind leading the blind (Matthew 15:14).

There is another regime in recent history that used religious rhetoric in
wartime. Soldiers in the German Wehrmacht wore belt buckles inscribed with
Gott Mit Uns (God is with us). Now, I am not in any way comparing the United
States to Nazi Germany or George Bush to Adolph Hitler. However, there are
an abundance of Bush/Hitler comparisons out there, most perhaps written by
"any Democrat-but-Bush" leftists, but some that are at least worth reading -
like the one that was linked to on LRC, and a recent one that raises some
good points. Anyway, there really is no comparison between the two
"leaders," for as has been pointed out, Bush is not the orator that Hitler
was, and he doesn't promote the production of small, cheap cars.

But in all seriousness, there are two passages in Hitler's Mein Kampf, which
was published in two volumes in 1925-1926, and which can be read today in
print or online, that are uncanny.

In volume I, at the end of chapter 2, the Führer said: "Hence today I
believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty
Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of
the Lord." Substitute "Muslim" or "terrorists" for "Jew" and this sounds
like George Bush. According to Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack, Bush
prayed as he walked outside the Oval Office after giving the order to begin
the attack on Iraq: "Going into this period, I was praying for strength to
do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify war based upon
God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a
messenger of His will as possible."

In chapter 13 of volume 2, Hitler mentions the German people asking God to
bless their troops:

Each point of that Treaty [of Versailles] could have been engraved on the
minds and hearts of the German people and burned into them until sixty
million men and women would find their souls aflame with a feeling of rage
and shame; and a torrent of fire would burst forth as from a furnace, and
one common will would be forged from it, like a sword of steel. Then the
people would join in the common cry: "To arms again!"

Then, from the child's story-book to the last newspaper in the country, and
every theatre and cinema, every pillar where placards are posted and every
free space on the hoardings should be utilized in the service of this one
great mission, until the faint-hearted cry, "Lord, deliver us," which our
patriotic associations send up to Heaven today would be transformed into an
ardent prayer: "Almighty God, bless our arms when the hour comes. Be just,
as Thou hast always been just. Judge now if we deserve our freedom. Lord,
bless our struggle."

For an unpretentious war prayer that no Christian "leader" would dare to
pray - see Mark Twain's "The War Prayer."

In fairness to Bush, the "Gott Mit Uns" belt buckle was not just used by
Germany in World War II - it was also worn by German soldiers in World War
I. But contrast this with the supposedly "Christian" United States, where,
as defense consultant Josh Pollack, in his "Saudi Arabia and the United
States, 1931-2002," has documented, Air Force chaplains were forbidden to
wear Christian insignia or hold formal services during the early decades of
the American troop presence in Saudi Arabia. It is also true that during the
first war in Iraq, the importation of Bibles for Christian troops was
discouraged, and no alcohol was permitted to U.S. troops in accordance with
Islamic Law.

The lesson here is clear: The state uses religion for its own sinister
purposes, and especially for that most destructive purpose of all - what
Jefferson called "the greatest scourge of mankind" and Washington called
"the plague of mankind" - war. But if war is so destructive then why does
the state engage in it? As Randolph Bourne (1886-1918) so succinctly stated:
"War is the health of the State."

December 20, 2004
Laurence M. Vance Archives

On Fri, 2 Dec 2005 11:10:44 -0600, "Dan J.S." wrote:


"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
http://tinyurl.com/7kcp5
--
Support our troops in Iraq: bring them home.

Considering that my grandfather had many run ins with the Nazis in WWII,
including many scars, I really take offense when liberals stoop so low and
call Republicans nazis. This is exactly why the liberals keep losing
elections. Call them whatever you want, but once you call them nazis, you
lose credibility with millions of people.


Give them a break. They're doing the best they can with what they've got.
--
John H

"It's not a *baby* kicking, beautiful bride, it's just a fetus!"
[A Self-obsessed Hypocrite]