Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
This is not too long and surprising in its source and date (near the end). I have paragraphed it from the original one paragraph:
The news that God has become man strikes at the very heart of an age in which both the good and the wicked regard either scorn for man or the idolization of man as the highest attainable wisdom.
The weaknesses of human nature are displayed more clearly in a time of storm than in the smooth course of more peaceful periods. In the face of totally unexpected threats and opportunities it is fear, desire, irresolution and brutality which reveal themselves as the motives for the actions of the overwhelming majority.
At such a time as this it is easy for the tyrannical despiser of men to exploit the baseness of the human heart, nurturing it and calling it by other names. Fear he calls responsibility. Desire he calls keenness. Irresolution becomes solidarity. Brutality becomes masterfulness.
Human weaknesses are played upon with unchaste seductiveness, so that meanness and baseness are reproduced and multiplied ever anew. The vilest contempt for mankind goes about its sinister business with the holiest of protestations of devotion to the human cause. And, as base man grows baser, he comes an ever more willing and adaptable tool in the hand of the tyrant.
The small band of the upright are reviled. Their bravery is called insubordination; their self-control is called pharisaism; their independence arbitrariness and their masterfulness arrogance.
For the tyrannical despiser of men popularity is the token of the highest love of mankind. His secret profound mistrust for all human beings he conceals behind words stolen from a true community. In the presence of the crowd he professes to be one of their number, and at the same time he sings his own praises with the most revolting vanity and scorns the rights of every individual. He thinks people stupid, and they become stupid. He thinks them weak, and they become weak. He thinks them criminal, and they become criminal. His most sacred earnestness is a frivolous game. His hearty and worthy solicitude is the most impudent cynicism. In his profound contempt for his fellow men he seeks the favor of those whom he despises, and the more he does so the more certainly he promotes the deification of this own person by the mob. Contempt for man and idolization of man are close neighbours.
But the good man too, no less than the wicked, succumbs to the same temptation to be a despiser of mankind if he sees through all this and withdraws in disgust, leaving his fellow-men to their own devices, and if he prefers to mind his own business rather than to debase himself in public life. Of course, his contempt for mankind is more respectable and upright, but it is also more barren and ineffectual.
In the face of God’s becoming man the good man’s contemptuous attitude cannot be maintained, any more than can the tyrant’s. The despiser of men despises what God has loved. Indeed he despises even the figure of the God who has become man.
The source is Dieterich Bonhoeffer — a Liberal Icon — (Ethics, Eberhard Bethge, ed., First Touchstone Edition, 1995, pages 74-75) — the location is Klein-Krossin (Kieckow) in Berlin, and the time of composition is during or soon after September 1940, after Bonhoeffer’s first meeting with COL Hans Oster, Admiral Canaris’ #2 at the Abwehr (German Mlitary Intelligence) and fellow conspirator with Canaris.
Bonhoeffer was arrested in 1943 for complicity in the conspiracy. He, Canaris and Oster were hung with piano wire at Flossenburg on 9 April 1945, a month before Jodl signed Germany’s official surrender to the allies.
Hitler and Nazism were the great, inspiring, forward-looking, liberal-minded movement of their day. They thrilled people worldwide. They were the awesome darlings of the MSN. They were supported by many notables in this country as harbingers of an heady, confident, idealistic future.
They were Liberals exactly as that word is meant today, with one exception: instead of the pride in national hegemony expounded by the Nazis, Liberals today expound pride in international hegemony for an entity they allege exists (“the international community”) but in truth is a rhetorical device derived from their dream states. The spirit and intent are the same, but the scale is broadened.
Where to the Liberals who called themselves Nazis, Germany was the entity which will hold hegemony over races and states — and at least Germany existed — to the Liberals who call themselves Democrats and Social Democrats, the international community — a cloud castle — is the entity which already holds hegemony over races and states.
Liberal tyranny is more triumphal today than it was in Nazi Germany — and on less substantial grounds. Oh, the power of maya. Away with its fruits.
Bonhoeffer identified the Liberal traits in the political realm already in 1940. The crisis of the 20th Century was the demise of Liberalism. The beast had two bodies, Nazism and Communism, both on the Left … and both bodies, though decisively defeated, still twitch seductively, attracting morbid misanthropes. The Liberal is a Morbid Misanthrope.
Update: Liberalism — aka left, progressive, humanist — is a criminal mentality masquerading as a really good deal. Its embodiments — e.g., Democratic Party, Social Democratic Party, Peace and Freedom Party — are criminal organizations masquerading as political parties.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
Update 1: Honoring COL Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and the others.
Update 2: Fred Siegel: The Godfather Of American Liberalism
