Posted on 06/23/2002 12:32:56 PM PDT by Hacksaw
WHO SUCKS THIS WEEK?
When thinking about the current state of affairs in the civil rights establishment one word comes to my mind-- Nazi. The word has been used so recklessly and frequently in recent years that it may have lost its meaning. Our side calls their side Nazis; their side calls our side Nazis, all the while diminishing the impact that the insult is suppose to have in the first place. In short, it has become a game, and I remain unsure as to whether that is a good or bad thing.
One the one hand, by accusing all whom one disagrees with of being Nazis; no one pays attention the charge. On the other hand, by using the term so loosely -- as we do today -- we become desensitized by it, unable to recognize real Nazis or real Nazi tactics when they confront us.
It seems that my Who Sucks columns solicit feelings of Nazism by those on the Left. Make a crack about Jesse Jackson or Maxine Waters, and I must be a Nazi. Why just this morning I received more email in which it was stated or insinuated that I am a Nazi. I'll quote from two I found particularly well written (warning--"Unsalty" language [you'll see what I mean later]).
You, Mr. Porter, represent the culmination of a flatulence perfumed breed of pests whom rely solely upon the degradation and misunderstanding of those groups or individuals who are attempting to fight for what little right there is left in a world tainted by the perpetuation of individuals such as yourself. Ignorance was the instrument which silenced Hitler's followers from the cacophony of sin in which they drowned their conscience.
OR
You fucking-ignoramus-disinformation-lauding-right-leaning -Bush and Reagan loving-uniformed Nazi prick.
My friends, the gig is up. I have been discovered. The truth is, when flying my Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator I enjoy flying for the Germans. There is something peculiarly satisfying about dropping a bomb on London, but does that make me a Nazi?
In America, the term Nazi is used most frequently when discussing issues of race and politics. To paraphrase Michael J. Bates, you know you’re a Nazi if you think "Al Sharpton is the reverend at the Church of Mo Better Den Thou and you wonder just exactly what it is Jesse Jackson does for a living." But you don't hear the term much in the rest of society. We don't hear NBA players trash-talk by calling each other Nazis. We don't hear Casey Martin call the PGA a bunch of Nazis. And although he probably should, we don't hear Bill Gates call the Justice Department Nazis. But spend an hour with the House Progressive Caucus...
As America pauses to reflect on the life and accomplishments of Martin Luther King, I cannot help but wonder what King would think of the civil rights establishment today. What would King would think seeing an African-American Secretary of State and National Security Advisor...in a REPUBLICAN administration? Would he be disappointed? Would he be disappointed that the civil rights movement never progressed beyond the "no boots" strategy? Compare some of the current crop of civil rights "leaders" to Dr. King.
As Los Angeles burned during the riots of 1992, Maxine Waters said:
People want to know why I'm not saying exactly what they want me to say. They want me to walk out in Watts, like black people did in the Sixties, and say, 'Cool it, baby, cool it.' Well, I'm sorry the fact of the matter is, whether we like it or not, riot is the voice of the unheard. These were mothers who took this as an opportunity to take some milk, to take some bread, to take some shoes....One lady said her children didn't have any shoes. She just saw those shoes there...God Damn it! It was such a tearjerker. I might have gone in and taken them for her myself.
On the other hand, Dr. King wrote:
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
Whose words should African-Americans believe and follow?
Jesse Jackson says:
New York is Hymietown...Stay out da Bushes...What we have is a coup d'etat led by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dr. King said:
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Perhaps before acting or speaking, civil rights "leaders" such as uncle Jesse and aunt Maxine should ask themselves, "What would MLK do?" Would he have aired the NAACP's dragging death ad against George Bush? Would he have been the first off the plane in West Palm demanding a recount in front of 12 or 13 protesters? Is that what Martin Luther King, Jr. would be doing in the twilight of his years? Would Martin Luther King, Jr. spend his energies destroying the reputation of a fellow Christian who was appointed to be the next Attorney General?
Would Dr. King oppose Ashcroft because, as Barbara Boxer said, his Christian beliefs are far outside the mainstream and he is not the kind of person to set aside his deeply held personal views as a matter of principle? Or would Dr. King be concerned that a man who believed we "have no king but Jesus" could become Attorney General? Would Dr. King disagree with John Ashcroft's stated belief that it is against his religion to impose it on anyone?
I think it's fitting on this Martin Luther King Day to also remember another reverend named Martin, and in the current climate I want to look at the two men not as political leaders but as pastors, as men of God, as men of honor, as men of their words. Martin Niemöller was a white German U-boat Captain during WWI. After WWI, he became a Lutheran pastor who risked it all by speaking out against the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler. He and a few brave Lutherans organized a resistance movement. Niemöller is credited with saying the following in a speech in 1945, and many times thereafter:
In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up.
During the 1930s, the Nazi’s also persecuted Christian churches. In 1933 the German government introduce a sterilization law that incensed the Catholic Church. Abortion was legalized during this time as well. During the next years, legions of pastors, priests, nuns and church members were arrested and charged with "immorality" and other fabricated offenses. Hitler was promoting neo-Paganism and some Protestants embraced the new German Church. Members of Hitler's SS would attend church services to keep an eye on the likes of Martin Niemöller. It was under these circumstance that Martin Niemöller gave a sermon based on Matthew 5: 13-16 ("You are the salt of the earth...You are the light of the world.").
Two weeks after giving this sermon, he was arrested by the Gestapo, sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen and then Dachau. He survived eight years in the concentration camps before being freed in 1945. And while he became unpopular with many Western leaders for later preaching disarmament, his words from 1937 still ring true today.
In his sermon, Niemöller asked:
Does the Church of Christ still have the right today which the Fuhrer has confirmed with his word, to allow us to defend ourselves against attacks on the Church? Or are the people right who forbid us--the Christian community--to defend ourselves against unbelief...
Niemöller continued:
'Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven: for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you!' And then it goes on: "You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world!' "
I must say that in this passage--which I have known since I was a boy--I today realized for the first time that the Lord Jesus Christ is telling His disciples: 'You will be reviled and persecuted, you will be falsely slandered,' and immediately He adds: 'You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.'
The Lord Jesus Christ draws our attention to this responsibility: 'But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?' Our responsibility is not how we shall pass on the salt, but we are to see that the salt really is, and continues to be, salt. So that the Lord Jesus Christ--who is, as one might say, the cook in charge of this great brew--can utilize the salt for His purposes.
Niemöller went on to say that the Christian world was in danger of losing its distinctiveness (saltiness) from the rest of the world:
We have come through a time of peril when we were told: 'You really must suit your message to the world; you really must bring your creed into harmony with the present. Then you will again become influential and powerful.' "
Brothers and sisters, that is the strange crossroads to which we have been brought today. It has come to this: we are being accosted on all sides, by statesmen as well as by "the man in the street," who tell us: "For God's sake, do not speak so loudly or you will land in prison. Do not speak so plainly: surely you can also say all that in a more obscure fashion!"
Dear brethren, that means: The salt loses its saltiness. It is not for us to worry about how the salt is employed, but to see that it does not lose its saltiness. The Gospel must remain the Gospel and the Church must remain the Church. And we must not--for Heaven's sake--make a German Gospel out of the Gospel; we must not--for Heaven's sake--make a German Church out of Christ's Church!
It is precisely when we bring the salt into accord and harmony with the world, that we make it impossible for the Lord Jesus Church, through His Church, to do anything in our nation. But if the salt remains salt, we may trust Him with it: He will use it in such a way that it becomes a blessing.
By insisting that to hold public office, Christians must "hide their light," these leftist Democrats and civil rights "leaders" are hoping to ensure that no earnest Christian is willing to take such a position. This is the true danger of letting the Left win this battle. As another Martin (Martin Bormann, private secretary to Hitler) said in 1941, "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." It has always been my experience that truly spiritual people, regardless of their faith, are more tolerant of the faith of others than those who have no faith, or conduct themselves in such a way as to lead one to believe that their faith doesn't account for much.
Like Martin Niemöller, Martin Luther King was an outspoken opponent of government led oppression, a man of God, and a man of peace. Also like Martin Niemöller there are areas where King and I disagree, but on this Martin Luther King Day let's stay focused on areas where we agree.
MLK once gave a sermon called Our God is Able. His words also ring true today:
God is able to beat back gigantic waves of opposition and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. This ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.
There are those who seek to convince us that only humanity is able. Their attempts to substitute a human centered universe for a God centered universe is not new. It had its modern beginnings in the Renaissance and subsequently in the Age of Reason, when some people gradually came to feel that God was an unnecessary item on the agenda of life. In these periods others questioned whether God was any longer relevant. The laboratory began to replace the church, and the scientist became a substitute for the prophet. Not a few joined Swinburne in singing a new anthem: "Glory to Man in the highest! For Man is the master of all things."
Let us notice that God is able to subdue all the powers of evil. In affirming that God is able to conquer evil, we admit the reality of evil. Christianity has never dismissed evil as illusory, or an error of the mortal mind. It reckons with evil as a force that has objective reality. But Christianity contends that evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. History is the story of evil forces that advance with seemingly irresistible power only to be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. There is a law in the moral world - a silent, invisible, imperative, akin to the laws in the physical world - which reminds us that life will work only in a certain way. The Hitlers and the Mussolinis have their day, and for a certain period they may wield great power, but soon they are cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb.
Only God is able. It is faith in God that we must rediscover. With this faith we can transform bleak and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of joy and bring new light into the dark caverns of pessimism. Is someone here moving toward the twilight of life and fearful of that which we call death? Why be afraid? God is able. Is someone here on the brink of despair because of the death of a loved one, the breaking of a marriage, of the waywardness of a child? Why despair? God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed. Is someone here anxious because of bad health? Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.
It seems that Ashcroft and King have much in common: the belief that ONLY God is able. It sucks that so many who claim to carry the mantle of MLK today are using Ashcroft's faith to discredit him. And count me among those who think if King were alive today, he would be profoundly, proudly, bravely pro-life, yet it is precisely his pro-life stand that leads to the persecution of John Ashcroft. Oh, I know they all want to talk about Ashcroft being racist, but that dog won't hunt and they know it. Would Patricia Ireland be concerned about Ashcroft's alleged bigotry if he were pro-choice?
So, as the drama unfolds before our eyes do not be anxious. Come what may, God is able, and as surely as there are two Martins worth knowing about, there are two Jesses as well. And as Reverend King taught us, history is the story of evil forces that advance with seemingly irresistible power only to be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. And one modern battering ram of justice is the Reverend Jesse Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny. Peterson organizes the National Day of Repudiation for Jesse Jackson, held every year on MLK day until, as Rev. Peterson puts it, "Jesse Jackson repents of his ways and stops attempting to tear the races apart for his own personal gain."
Said Peterson, "Jesse Jackson is out of control -- he has become a national embarrassment. He is a self-serving racist, a problem profiteer, who with the help of the liberal media, has co-opted Dr. King's dream and turned it into a nightmare. Jesse Jackson's attack on our nation's highest court and the legitimacy of our new president is dangerous -- Dr. King would never have stood for it."
There's only one thing I would ad to that assessment. During his lifetime, Martin Luther King dreamt of redemption, but today Jesse Jackson seeks revenge. And for that, "Reverend" Jackson, you suck.
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