“There is no longer any political question at issue here. This thing cannot be judged or estimated by political rules or principles. It is Iniquity under a political mask. It is not something to be brought before the bar of world history but rather something that has to be dealt with by the judicial administration of each country.”*
Imagine facing communism on your border. Millions are murdered. The Revolution justifies any evil and is spending millions of rubles to import Revolution to your nation. What could be worse?
Nothing could be worse, seemingly, and so normal discourse must be suspended. Everything is possible. Communism is such a fearsome foe that nothing could be more vile, degenerate, wicked.
So the speaker said in rallies memorialized in a book of reflections on threat of the Bolsheviks.
A Christian must pause. Bolshevism is evil, so twisted that nuns must die.
Meet a Bolsheviki even in today’s American colleges and soon the discussion of how many of us must die will start. How many of the old order must perish to bring on the Utopia? Of course, the Utopia never comes and millions die so the rest can live in grinding totalitarian misery. Inquiry has come under a political mask.
We must suspend the rules of our fathers and mothers, the polite policies of peaceful periods, to counter the Red Shirts. There is no longer a “political question at issue here.” This is justice. So said the speaker and millions of highly literate Christian people believed. Only the Soviet stooges and the Catholics resisted en masse for any length of time.
Things got better. The communist threat ended, the economy boomed, and all was well. Indeed, all was more than well as the government made holidays affordable, cleaned up the environment, and finally dealt with the punks who had roiled the streets.
And yet, as some have guessed, nothing was good, truth vanished, and beauty gave way to gigantism. The quotation that opens this little piece is from a sort of scholar, he had a serious degree, Jospeh Goebbels, Hitler’s academic, propagandist, and one of the most vile men who ever lived. Millions on millions died, especially Jewish people.
Dr. Goebbels cut ethical and political corners, the times were dangerous, and the Brown Shirts ended up as bad as the Red Shirts. The difference? Those who followed him who rightly hated Bolshevism ended up doing vile deeds equal or worse than those done by those they loathed. Dropping principles for political gain turned out to be, as the Jewish sages warned us, a failed philosophy that left compromised these false “conservatives” forever.
Of course, my argument is not merely that Dr. Goebbels was smart, evil, and deceptive and so all his ideas are bad. He was “smart” and certainly evil, but after all, he might have had a good idea or accidentally agreed with one. I am not merely saying that to agree with Dr. Goebbels shows one is wrong, though if one sides with Dr. Goebbels against the consensus of Christian ethics, one should pause if one is a Christian and consider that one may be evil.
Millions died for the regime he justified.
Instead, my case is that his argument is bad, as bad as his character and that is very bad, and so set up his evil deeds. Dr. Goebbels claimed the times were so bad that the rules must be suspended. Evil men always claim this and it seems right because the times are always bad. There is always some threat that can justify anything.
The message of Christianity is that martyrdom is better than compromise with injustice. Ethical rules cannot change: better to die than to tell a lie.
We cannot do evil that good may come nor do evil to avoid evil. We all fail, we all must repent.
Why?
Truth endures. Truth is so mighty that we must pray for mercy. Any regime that embraces lies to win for some deeper truth cannot corrupt the truth they claim to serve, but they are corrupted. Lies, intentional lies to win, do not damage the truth for which they are told, but they destroy the soul of the man who tells them.
When we fudge the truth, quibble and qualify to win, then the truth becomes our foe. Ask Oedipus. If we don’t abide in the Truth, the we shall find the truth and the truth will blind us and kill all we love. Better martyrdom than compromise with lies.
God save me.
God save the Republic.
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*Communism with the Mask Off Goebbels, Joseph.
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