Another Franco...?

[Warrenton]

Considering how Franco’s followers actually treated women (especially during and immediately after the Civil War) the thought of Japanese Comfort Women comes to mind.

What a strange notion. Has it not occurred to you that had Catholic Europe wanted to exterminate its Jewish minority, it had about 1500 years to get the job done? The Catholic response to perceived Jewish power was exile, not making turning them into a race of concubines in order for the whole society to become even more Jewish.

Within Christendom, there was always a place for the Jewish minority.

The notion of total absorbtion of the Jewish people into the state was put into practice by the atheist regimes of Hitler, and to a lesser extent, Stalin.

Sometimes, Angry, I despair of you. I really don’t know what to say when you critisize a Catholic government on the ground that it would be Japanese!

Anyway, as an atheist, you’re supposed to love that stuff. Life is for pleasure. You need to brush up on your Dostoevsky!

 

[Warrenton]

I’m glad there’s no coyote hunting ban.

.270 or .30-06? So many coyotes, so little time.

 

[Kaninchen]

I don’t question that you are European, but one does not like something because of who she is, but because of the attributes of the thing in question. I would not find it surprising if you adored the fox hunting ban as much, or more so, as the finale at the Proms, but if you said you adored it because of its distinctly European flavour, then I would be perplexed.

A thing I found strange was when we told people we were going home - many of them were shocked at the idea that we didn’t want to stay in the US, not because we didn’t like it but just because we’d never intended to stay. Some people took it as a kind of insult which was weird because, I’d never have thought and certainly never would have said the same to Americans going back to the US.

I loved LA but it wasn’t Florence, or Rome, or Paris . . . . Why is a European not allowed to feel that an English Cotswold village ‘feels’ right in a way that a small town in Colorado doesn’t? Or that Oxford probably suited her better than Harvard would have?

One of the central problems with utopias is that somebody thinks they ‘know what the answer is’ for everybody - it’s why they end up as ‘Hell’ with people ready to resort to desperate measures to bring them down and/or junk the Ideal when they falter.

Which brings us back to Franco again.

 

[Kaninchen]

Within Christendom, there was always a place for the Jewish minority.

The ghetto.

The notion of total absorbtion of the Jewish people into the state was put into practice by the atheist regimes of Hitler

European history really isn’t your thing, is it? The only way Hitler’s regime was going to absorb Jews was as fertilizer.

 

[Reservoir_Dog]

.270 or .30-06? So many coyotes, so little time.

Ah hear you … M96 6.5 X 55 Swede. Flat shooting killer. About the equivalent of a .240.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

The notion of total absorbtion of the Jewish people into the state was put into practice by the atheist regimes of Hitler, and to a lesser extent, Stalin.

The Nazi regime was NOT atheist.

If anything it was Christian with pagan overtones.
Even if HITLER was an atheist (which he was not) that would not automatically make his regime atheist.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Sometimes, Angry, I despair of you. I really don’t know what to say when you critisize a Catholic government on the ground that it would be Japanese!

Anyway, as an atheist, you’re supposed to love that stuff. Life is for pleasure. You need to brush up on your Dostoevsky!

Considering your views on freedom, women, justice, and the law I would be more worried if you approved of me Warrenton.

 

[Warrenton]

European history really isn’t your thing, is it? The only way Hitler’s regime was going to absorb Jews was as fertilizer.

Perhaps Jewish history is not your thing. Had the aim been simple removal, it could have been done far more efficiently and quickly. The Nazi’s aim was to control continental Jewry totally, place it in a government run environment in which every moment of every day was directed by the state. If that is not total absorption, I don’t know what would be.

I understand liking a Cotswold village, as well as Oxford. Both are creations of a Catholic world. The reason things like that are being maintained, rather than created, in Europe is because the Catholic culture is weakened. Catholic England built Morton in the Marsh and Baliol quad. Agnostic England buit the Millenium Dome.

We need not even discuss who created Los Angeles in its present incarnation. It’s too awful.

Oscar Wilde said something to the effect that there is much beauty in America, except where Americans have tried to create it. Still valid, 100 years on. There may be some signs of improvement, but that is for another thread.

It is hard to understand the insistence that a government that incorporates the Church is is “utopian.” In the Franco debate, it was accused of being retrograde. I have said clearly that I do not think it would be utopian, in fact, it would be the least utopian government in the west.

The opponents of Catholic government are many. Userers, panderers of all types, abortionists, the nuclear arms industry, are the self interested opponents. Others are tempermentally opposed, like Angry. The modern pantheist would rather believe in everything, think he believes in nothing, and at all costs avoid believing anything definite. That would require commitment. That view, for now, officially prevails.

Given what any Church-allied government will have to work with when it takes power, it won’t be utopia.

 

[Warrenton]

The Nazi regime was NOT atheist.

If anything it was Christian with pagan overtones.
Even if HITLER was an atheist (which he was not) that would not automatically make his regime atheist.

The problem with Hitler is that no one will take him.

For the sake of the argument I’ll grant you that Hitler and his cronies weren’t atheists.

I’m almost certain our friend Lone Wolf won’t accept that they were pagans, either. Being somewhat skeptical myself, I think real pagans of the Hesiod variety have been in short supply since at least the days of Marcus Aurelius.

I hope you will at least agree that by 1936, Hitler and his inner circle weren’t secret altar boys at the local Catholic Church.

Let’s comprimise and call them pantheists, of a particularly progressive type.

No one on this thread has advocated for anything remotely like a Catholic Nazi government.

 

[AcolyteLector]

Perhaps the insertion of “from a Catholic perspective” before the ‘lol’ would be appropriate?

Well, I think you might be saying that ironically, so I’ll preface this with a ‘haha’, if so.

If not, I really meant politically acidic, from several perspectives. Let me try to explain myself: As I understand it, the suggestion that Shari’a should be adopted to an extent is largely a UK issue–insofar as it has received broad, tentative support from non-Muslims (I realize there are debates worldwide, mostly in Muslim-majority nations, over the extent to which civil codes should incorporate Shari’a law). This suggestion, most famously put forward by the furry Archbishop of Canterbury, is only–as far as I understand it–a way to provide inclusion and acceptance for a minority that has had difficulty integrating into UK society, and relating their religion to their new nationality. This, some argue, would help re-shape British society, and improve its harmony.

Thus, its ‘acidic’ because people disagree pretty vigorously over the assumptions (that Muslims are having unusual difficulty integrating, that Shari’a would mitigate this difficulty, that Islam can comfortably synthesize with UK values, &c.–‘the rest’, in this case being a host of divisive contentions) that people use to advocate it in the first place. Moreover, its applying something that purports to be an ‘eternal’ truth as a solution to a temporary solution, which many faithful Muslims would find mercenary.

Finally, Islam and Shari’a are both conceptual systems that are–I would guess–among the most chronically misunderstood and unfairly villainized in existence.

 

[AcolyteLector]

The notion of total absorbtion of the Jewish people into the state was put into practice by the atheist regimes of Hitler, and to a lesser extent, Stalin.

The Nazi regime was NOT atheist.

**Yes it was.

By the reasoning you’ll undoubtedly use to justify this statement, the Catholic Church is pagan Roman, and not Christian: because it has some vestigial symbols of paganism.

The Christian churches–although not perfect in their resistance… hell, neither was America, we had our share of Nazi sympathizers–were the main source of resistance. All of the Germans brave enough to put their necks on the cutting block were staunch Christians.**

If anything it was Christian with pagan overtones.
Even if HITLER was an atheist (which he was not) that would not automatically make his regime atheist.

 

[AcolyteLector]

The ghetto.

**You’re forgetting the shtetl.

This statement also isn’t entirely fair. The European Christian treatment of European Jewry was far from uniform. Each nation that we regard as the titans of Antisemitism, Poland Germany &c., were once havens of tolerance. Much like the Jewish-Muslim relations, historically, in many majority-Muslim nations.

This is probably less an expression of the depravity of European Christianity, and more a characteristic of majority-minority, ethnic-religious relationships in states everywhere. **

European history really isn’t your thing, is it? The only way Hitler’s regime was going to absorb Jews was as fertilizer.

 

[dusty_david]

It won’t.

Sorry, I was quoting the theocratic poster. Ain’t no one gonna take my rights, money, property without facing me and my guns. And I like to shoot. A lot.

 

[AcolyteLector]

The problem with Hitler is that no one will take him.

For the sake of the argument I’ll grant you that Hitler and his cronies weren’t atheists.

I’m almost certain our friend Lone Wolf won’t accept that they were pagans, either. Being somewhat skeptical myself, I think real pagans of the Hesiod variety have been in short supply since at least the days of Marcus Aurelius.

I hope you will at least agree that by 1936, Hitler and his inner circle weren’t secret altar boys at the local Catholic Church.

Let’s comprimise and call them pantheists, of a particularly progressive type.

No one on this thread has advocated for anything remotely like a Catholic Nazi government.

I think you’re ‘giving’ him far too much.

People usually cite–in claiming some hidden Catholicism for Hitler–the fact that he received sacraments at one point in the Church. OK. Granted.

The entire series of early sacraments occur, I think we can admit, before the person reaches what we can call his or her most ‘mature’ adulthood. Even the sacrament of Confirmation occurs far earlier than the age at which we assign a person many civil privileges… to give it some perspective.

But does that make the products of his life…somehow… essentially Catholic or Christian?

And, in fact, if we used this criteria, we would be forced to call certain movements like Sovietism, Bolshevism, &c., Jewish and secular movements–given that their key figures and proponents were technically Jews and secularists.

Though, of course, there is the fact that Hitler’s speeches include over-the-shoulder acknowledgments of Christianity and references to it… and of course this would be the first time a politician cynically abused religion! Unheard of!

 

[AcolyteLector]

Perhaps Jewish history is not your thing. Had the aim been simple removal, it could have been done far more efficiently and quickly. The Nazi’s aim was to control continental Jewry totally, place it in a government run environment in which every moment of every day was directed by the state. If that is not total absorption, I don’t know what would be.

**I think I understand what you mean, but please don’t turn this thread into one of ‘those’ discussions. I don’t think the Shoa should be the central focus of this discussion. **

 

[AngryAtheist8]

The Nazi regime was NOT atheist.

**Yes it was.

By the reasoning you’ll undoubtedly use to justify this statement, the Catholic Church is pagan Roman, and not Christian: because it has some vestigial symbols of paganism.

The Christian churches–although not perfect in their resistance… hell, neither was America, we had our share of Nazi sympathizers–were the main source of resistance. All of the Germans brave enough to put their necks on the cutting block were staunch Christians.**

If anything it was Christian with pagan overtones.
Even if HITLER was an atheist (which he was not) that would not automatically make his regime atheist.

Don’t people ever get tired of reciting the same old lies?

Adolf Hitler clearly believed in a vengeful God and thought that He was on Adolf’s side. This is obvious based on Hitler’s actions and his own words (Mein Kampf being the best example). Most of the Nazis were practicing Catholic or Protestants (including a large proportion of the SS). Moreover the leader of the SS, Himmler was creating a type of cult based on the mythic heroes and stories of pagan Germany.