Tribute to America

The Cologne Cathedral Boys' Choir perform "Shenandoah", conductor: Prof. Eberhard Metternich

PLEASE NOTE: This is a private recording with a normal camcorder.

Der Hohe Dom zu Köln (Cologne Cathedral):

Berlin Airlift 60 Years Ago

Here!

A great lesson in civics!

I decided not to leave the house today (apart from for the dogs' basic necessities, of course) and even with my huge work backlog, that leaves some time for blogging as well, so here is something I had saved for such an occasion: About two weeks ago, in connection with the presidential election, Terry Morris of Webster's gave us a -- I couldn't put it any better than he did it himself -- a great lesson in civics at View from The Right:

For the very first time since I've been voting I left a portion of my ballot blank, as did my wife, namely the presidential section. And to top it all off we took our eleven year old daughter with us who pointedly asked early this morning whether she might be allowed to go with us to learn more about the voting process in order to better prepare her for good citizenship once she comes of age. She and I read the ballot together, discussed the various candidates, reasoned through the state questions on the ballot and our decision for or against, etc. I let her "complete the line" (as is the method on Oklahoma ballots) for the candidate that we decided on in the individual races, as well as on the state questions. She filled out my entire ballot from start to finish. We rechecked the ballot once finished for any inadvertent mistakes. Once satisfied there were no mistakes, and that we were sure we wanted to leave the presidential section unmarked as originally intended, we fed the ballot through the machine for processing. Afterward we discussed voter fraud and how to prevent it, as well as the secret ballot.

A great lesson in civics!

I wish all those knee-jerk America-haters here in Germany would read that. But then, would they understand it? Thank you Terry! Your children are very lucky.

"Schaut auf diese Stadt"

(The sound starts only at 1:22 with the crucial sentence of Ernst Reuter's speech and stops at 1:49.)

At the end of WWII, a defeated Germany was divided amongst the victorious United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France. Like the rest of the country, the capital Berlin, sitting right in the middle of the Soviet-controlled Eastern half, was also divided into four parts.

By 1948, it became apparent that the Western Powers' and the Soviet Union's plans to rebuild Germany couldn't be reconciled. Early in 1948, tensions between the former Allies climaxed. On April 9, 1948, Stalin ordered all American Military personnel maintaining communications equipment out of the Eastern Zone (Soviet controlled Berlin), trains were halted on June 1and June10 and on June 21, a US Military Supply Train was stopped and its passage to Berlin blocked. On the 22nd, the Soviets placed armed guards aboard, attached a Soviet engine and hauled it back to the West. In a final move on June 24, 1948, all land and water access to West Berlin was cut off. There were to be no more supplies from the West.

Diplomacy failed, ground invasions were planned, and World War III was looming. US Military Commander Lucius Clay had developed a plan by which an armed convoy through Soviet Controlled Germany would break the blockade.

British Commander Sir Brian Robertson offered an alternative: air supply. Supplying the occupation forces of 2,2679 was not the problem, but more than 2 million berlin citizens was another matter. The only aircraft the Americans had available for the task were 5 year old Douglas C-47 Skytrains, which would only hold 3.5 tons each. It was decided that it was worth a try. Earlier in April, US Forces airlifted in supplies to replace the ones being delayed by the Soviets. This was what became known as the "Little Lift". At that time, Berlin had two airports, Tempelhof, which was Berlin's main airport and located in the American Sector, and Gatow, in the British Sector. Supplies could be airlifted in by C-47 and there was nothing the Soviet Union could do about because, in 1945 it had been agreed, in writing, that there would be three 20-mile wide air corridors providing access to the city. These were unarguable. The Spirit of Freedom website, which is dedicated to the Berlin Airlift tells:

When the blockade began, the Soviets rejoiced, because they believed the Western powers had only one option, to leave Berlin. But they underestimated the West airlift supplies. Gen. Clay called upon General Curtis E. LeMay, commander of USAFE and asked him if he could haul supplies to Berlin. LeMay responded, "We can haul anything". Two days later Gen. LeMay called upon Brig. Gen. Joseph Smith, Commander of the Wiesbaden Military Post, and appointed him Task Force Commander of an airlift operation estimated to last a few weeks. The only US aircraft initially available were 102 C-47's and 2 C-54 Skymasters. On June 26, the first C-47's landed at Tempelhof Airfield, foreshadowing the great operation that was to come. Smith dubbed the mission "Operation Vittles", because he said "We're haulin' grub." The British called their part "Operation Plane Fare".

It was determined that the city's daily food ration would be 646 tons of flour and wheat; 125 tons of cereal; 64 tons of fat; 109 tons of meat and fish; 180 tons of dehydrated potatoes; 180 tons of sugar; 11 tons of coffee; 19 tons of powdered milk; 5 tons of whole milk for children; 3 tons of fresh yeast for baking; 144 tons of dehydrated vegetables; 38 tons of salt; and 10 tons of cheese. In total, 1,534 tons were needed daily to keep the over 2 million people alive. That's not including other necessities, like coal and fuel. In fact, the largest quantity of anything required was coal. It wasn't needed to heat homes as much as it was necessary for industry. In addition, there was limited electricity, because the city's power plant was located in the Soviet sector, so that was cut off, too. It was determined that in total supplies, 3,475 tons would be needed daily. A C-47 can haul 3.5 tons. In order to supply the people of Berliners, C-47's would have to make 1000 flights each day. Impossible.

Initially, Gen. Clay determined that, with the limited number of airplanes available to him, he could haul about 300 tons of supplies a day, the British effort, was estimated to be capable of 750 tons a day. This leaves a 2,425-ton deficit daily. Realizing that this kind of tonnage could not be achieved using C-47's, Gen. Clay and Gen. LeMay made requests for more C-54's, for they could carry over three times more cargo than C-47's. On June 27, an additional 52 Skymasters were ordered to Berlin.

On June 28, President Truman made a statement that abandoning Berlin was out of the question. He then ordered US B-29 Superfortresses to be stationed at British airfields to show the Soviets that the Western powers were not taking this lightly. We would not abandon these people!

By July 1, C-54's were slowly taking over airlift flights, and they were operating 24 hours a day. Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfort was made exclusive C-54 base, and Wiesbaden was a mix of C-54's and C-47's. To accommodate these two different aircraft, General smith established a block system, giving the bigger, faster C-54's priority. They were also given radio codes to identify each type and the direction it was going. C-47's going East to Berlin were called "Easy", returning C-47's traveling West, were called "Willie". C-54's had the names 'Big Easy' and "Big Willie". Aircraft were also given a spacing of three minutes apart.

The size of the operation had to be increased in order to sufficiently supply this city and keep these people going. It needed to be commanded by someone who had expertise in air transport. That man came in the form of Maj. General William H. Tunner. He was revered as "The transportation expert to end all transportation experts" by LeMay. Tunner had previously established the Ferrying Command in WWII, and successfully organized and commanded the "Hump" operation into China near the end of the war. His reputation was not falsely earned. Tunner hated to see airplanes parked on the ramp not being utilized. This was a waste to him. He longed for efficiency and was about to set the standard for all that followed

Tunner assumed command of airlift operations on July 28, 1948. The airlift had been operating for just over a month. One of the first major changes he made came as a result of "Black Friday". On Friday, August 13, Tunner flew into Berlin to grant an award to Lt. Paul O. Lykins, and airlift pilot who had made the most flights into Berlin up until that time. Weather that day was awful, and conditions in Berlin were impossible. Clouds had lowered to the tops of buildings and heavy rain had disrupted radar. One C-54 had crashed and burned at the end of the runway a second landed behind him and blew its tires trying to stop to avoid hitting the burning C-54. A third ground looped on the auxiliary runway. Pure havoc was reigning supreme. Aircraft were beginning to stack up over Tempelhof and a huge number of airplanes were circling stacked from 3000 to 12000 feet in no visibility conditions. These conditions spur red Tunner to make a fateful decision. He called the tower. "Tunner here, send everyone back to their base and let me know when it's safe to come down". To avoid this stacking problem, a new policy was created. Any aircraft that missed its approach was to continue back to its station via the outgoing center corridor. This created a continuous loop of planes to and from Berlin. If a pilot missed his approach, he would immediately become a departure and head back to his base. The loaded aircraft would get a fresh crew and be sent back as a regular flight. In addition, all aircraft were required to fly by instrument rules to maintain the same speed, interval and altitude. This almost eliminated accidents and became the key to the success of the operation.

Another essential decision was to standardize aircraft, parts, and procedures. It was decided to base these around the C-54. One of the reasons was that it took just as long to unload a 3-1/2 ton C-47 as it did to unload a 10-ton C-54. One of the reasons for this was the slanted floor made truck loading difficult, whereas the C-54 was level and a truck could back up to it and cargo could be unloaded fast. In addition, no pilot was to be away from his aircraft. General Tunner had seen many aircraft sitting idle, loaded and waiting for their crews to return from inside the terminal. He thought this to be a great waste of resources, therefore the order was sent that no pilot should be away from his aircraft from the time it landed until the time it took off from Berlin. Weather and up to date information was brought out to the aircraft while they were being unloaded, so the crews didn't need to go inside the terminal. In addition, several trucks were outfitted as mobile snack bars and staffed by some of the prettiest Berlin girls. This enabled the crews to get coffee, a snack or other goods without having to leave the airplane. This reduced the average turn around time from landing to departing to about 25 minutes.

On September 9, 1948, Mayor Ernst Reuter, who, as an ex-Communist, knew about what he was talking, made his legendary speech in front of what had remained from the Reichstag:

Ihr Völker der Welt, ihr Völker in Amerika, in England, in Frankreich, in Italien! Schaut auf diese Stadt und erkennt, daß ihr diese Stadt und dieses Volk nicht preisgeben dürft und nicht preisgeben könnt! Es gibt nur eine Möglichkeit für uns alle: gemeinsam so lange zusammenzustehen, bis dieser Kampf gewonnen, bis dieser Kampf endlich durch den Sieg über die Feinde, durch den Sieg über die Macht der Finsternis besiegelt ist.

People of the world, people of America, of England, of France, of Italy! Look at this city and see that you can not, that you must not, abandon this city and this people! There is only one possibility for us all: to stand together until this battle is won, until this battle is finally over by defeating the enemy, by defeating the power of darkness.

On May 12, 1949, the Soviets finally gave in and the blockade was over.

It was decided to continue supplying Berlin by air in addition to the land routes in order to build up a sufficient supply of goods. The Airlift officially ended on Sept. 30, 1949, fifteen months after its meager beginnings in June of '48. In total, the US delivered 1,783,572.7 tons, while 541,936.9 tons were delivered by the British totaling 2.3 Million tons from 277, 569 total flights to Berlin. C-47's and C-54's alone traveled over 92 million miles in order to do so. These were astounding figures, considering that in the beginning it seemed impossible to even try. Nevertheless, even the greatest operation is not without risk. A total of 101 fatalities were recorded as a result of the operation, including 31 Americans, mostly due to crashes.

At 00:00 hours today, Tempelhof airport was closed. There may have been sufficient businesslike reasons for the decision, although more than 60% of the citizens of Berlin, including many Tempelhof residents, opposed it. What WILL remain, though, is that, thus, one more memorial of the Second German Dictatorship was safely removed from the collective memory, today, October 31, 2008, at 00:00 hours, 60 years, a month and 21 days after Ernst Reuter beseeched the people of the Free World not to let Berlin down.

One can not live crooked and think straight! (Hilmar von Campe)

I first met Hilmar von Campe last October – as one does in the Internet.

Different from all other online-encounters was, however, the fact that he was graceful enough to write me an email to thank me for my brief appreciative remarks about him and his work. (I have still no idea how he found them.) We have become friends, are talking on the phone occasionally and I intend to meet him and his wife should circumstances permit it.

This is about my experience with his latest book "How Was it Possible?".

"How Was it Possible?" is introduced as an autobiography. That it is, but it is much more. A passionate polemic pamphlet, a compelling and demanding ethical codex, an authoritative source on the German past with lots of historical information from a contemporary witness, and a declaration of appreciation and gratitude for the country that has become his home, America.

Born in the German province of Westphalia in 1925 to an aristocratic family (the father was a high-ranking civil servant), von Campe offers a, to me, unique Christian perspective on the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. His account as both, witness and participant of the horrible outcome of self deception and godlessness in Germany is invaluable. As a Hitler Youth, then as a soldier, he saw the world plunged into war and his country and family destroyed. One of his brothers fell in the war, his father was murdered in a Russian concentration camp. When it was all over, he knew he had nothing to blame but himself and all the many Germans who had looked the other way.

After the war Hilmar von Campe had to come to terms with the fact of the Holocaust but, different from other Germans, he met his moral responsibility head-on, went through a profound ethical change and embarked on a travel of restitution for the crimes of his nation and of reconciliation with the victims. He was received twice by the then executive director of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Washington, Dr. David Weinstein, and apologized to him for the suffering Germany had inflicted on the Jewish people. He told him, "that the crimes of the Nazis were only possible because of the moral cowardice of so many of us non-Nazis."

An honest, remarkable, and remarkably brave, statement indeed!

The most painful part of defining National Socialism was recognizing my own moral responsibility for the Nazi disaster and their crimes against humanity, which boiled down to the accepting the truth that "as I am so is my nation" – in other words, if every German had been like me, it was no wonder that the nation became the tool of gangsters.

Like here, Hilmar von Campe reminds his readers in no uncertain terms throughout his book that the still undecided battle between good and evil is fought with the weapons of truth and lie. He talks about the godless cult of relativism, which is part of the latter, and that every human being will have to decide on which side he or she wants to stand at this historical point in time. There is no cowardly opting out. In his book he sends a warning to every American – to every human – not to look the other way and follow the road of appeasement to evil as millions of Germans did, but stand up for God's truth. One cannot be a bystander and a Christian at the same time, he says.

Von Campe is in an almost unique position to point out the links between Nazi ideology and Islamic hatred, and he tells us clearly and precisely how things are, how Islam follows in the steps of the "Third Reich", how the "Grand Mufti of Jerusalem" and rabid Jew-hater was sponsored by the Nazis, how his relative and ideological foster child Yasser Arafat was recruited and trained by Russia and how the Nazi's persecution of Jews has been taken to new levels by radical Islam and thus become a threat not just to the Jewish people but of the entire free world.

Hilmar von Campe, who had left Germany in the Fifties, spent a long time in various Latin America countries. His experiences have been far outside the "standard", like his kidnapping in Bolivia by mine workers, his living in an Argentine factory in Avellaneda dominated by Peronist workers, his interactions with the leaders of the Communist Dockworkers Union in Rio de Janeiro or his chairmanship of the Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce Subcommittee on Foreign Investments. He owned a factory in Mexico and is now president of an Ex- and Import business in the United States. He is married to Dina from Peru. They have two children, Stefan and Sabrina and it is a delight to read how the von Campe family didn't end up as a "multikulti" hotchpotch, but as four tri-lingual individuals who learned to evaluate and respect different cultures. As Hilmar von Campe puts it: "Other nations and what makes them tick has been part of our family as long as our family has existed, and we have been better off for having friends in many parts of the world."

Hilmar von Campe's biography and thinking bears witness to the fact that secular ideologies are no answer to totalitarian and inhuman threats now, as they haven't been an answer seventy years ago, but to me, personally, it doesn't end here.

"How Was it Possible?" is, among the many other things it is, an priceless source for Americans who are interested in truly authentic insight of the German soul beyond "panzer ace" admiration and German self-hatred at two different sides of the same scale. Hilmar von Campe's ethical and political analysis is simple (but far from simplistic), revealing, astounding and thought-provoking at the same time. At a time when a phoney pacifism has all of Germany in its grip and more and more people are surrendering unconditionally to the forces that threaten our culture under the bigoted pretense that our Nazi past means a special "responsibility" not to fight anymore and not even, or rather specifically not, against evil ("Who are we Germans to judge others… we, with OUR past...") I, as a German, appreciate in particular that he has the rare courage to draw the inevitable parallels between Nazi Germany and the recent Muslim threat, a parallel hardly any German is willing to draw. It is, so I think, no mere chance that so many ex-Nazi followers (like Nobel-laureated former SS-man Günther Grass, to mention just one notable example), their children and grandchildren, are falling over their own feet in anticipating obedience, relativist reasoning and dhimmitude* and that their interpretation of the German past and what it should imply is leading to the opposite position of that of a Hilmar von Campe, who is a staunch ally of Israel. Which is, to me, the hallmark of honest German "Vergangenheitsbewältigung".

If that it simplistic, so be it, but Hilmar von Campe's sincere, truthful and straightforward reckoning with the past is a previously unknown comfort to this German's heart.

Hilmar von Campe shows us Germans a way out of that endless spiral of hypocrisy and self-hatred. Will we take it? I doubt it.

---

*On an additional note, to what extent there is the conscious ot subconscious desire behind the inflated understanding, even support, of Islamic atrocities that the Arabs may as well finish what the Germans had to be forced to cease – and it needed a world war to do that – namely the Holocaust of the Jews, is maybe not a different question right here, but beyond the scope of this review.

I would like to mention two minor items (page numbers will be added), where I happen not to agree with Hilmar von Campe respectively where I would like to see some additional information:

The hatred of Jews did not start with the infamous "Mufti". It had been, and still is, an integral part of Islam since times immemorial, although it didn't have the genocidal quality of Nazi-antisemitism then.

The other thing is the fact that, when Friedrich von Bodelschwingh and his resistance against the Nazi "euthanasia" (i.e. the killing of "useless" human life) scheme is mentioned, Bishop Clemens August Count Galen ought to be mentioned as well.

All The Boys Anywhere

The film Flags of our Fathers is a major topic right now. Since (I think) the year 2000, I have put up the link to the All the Boys at Iwo Jima website among the links of my homepage. I would like to share with you the simple words of James Bradley as they were featured there already long before his book became a bestseller and his message almost inaudible through all the media brouhaha.

ALL THE BOYS AT IWO JIMA

THE IWO JIMA MEMORIAL IS THE LARGEST BRONZE STATUE IN THE WORLD. IT DEPICTS ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHS IN HISTORY: RAISING THE AMERICAN FLAG AT THE TOP OF A ROCKY HILL ON THE ISLAND OF IWO JIMA, JAPAN DURING WW11.

THIS IS A TRUE STORY NARRATED BY JAMES BRADLEY WHO HAPPENED TO BE AT THE MEMORIAL ONE EVENING AS TOUR BUSES FROM A WISCONSIN HIGH SCHOOL ARRIVED. MR. BRADLEY HAD STOPPED BY TO PAY HIS RESPECTS AND TO SAY GOODNIGHT TO ONE OF THE SIX BRAVE MEN DEPICTED ON THE STATUE: HIS FATHER, JOHN BRADLEY.

THIS IS HIS NARRATIVE AS HE SPOKE TO THE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AND STAFF:

"MY NAME IS JAMES BRADLEY AND I'M FROM WISCONSIN, TOO. MY DAD IS ON THAT STATUE. I JUST WROTE A BOOK CALLED, "FLAGS OF OUR FATHER'S" THAT IS ABOUT THE SIX BOYS YOU SEE ON THIS STATUE.

SIX BOYS RAISED THE FLAG. THE FIRST GUY PUTTING THE POLE IN THE GROUND IS HARLON BLOCK. HARLON WAS AN ALL-STATE FOOTBALL PLAYER. HE ENLISTED IN THE MARINE CORPS WITH ALL THE SENIOR MEMBERS OF HIS FOOTBALL TEAM. THEY WERE OFF TO PLAY ANOTHER TYPE OF GAME. A GAME CALLED "WAR." BUT IT DIDN'T TURN OUT TO BE A GAME.

HARLON, AT THE AGE OF 21, DIED WITH HIS INTESTINES IN HIS HANDS. I DON'T SAY THAT TO GROSS YOU OUT. I SAY THAT BECAUSE THERE ARE GENERALS WHO STAND IN FRONT OF THIS STATUE AND TALK ABOUT THE GLORY OF WAR. YOU GUYS NEED TO KNOW THAT MOST OF THE BOYS AT IWO JIMA WERE 17, 18, AND 19 YEARS OLD.

THE NEXT GUY IS RENE GAGNON FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE. IF YOU TOOK RENE'S HELMET OFF AT THE MOMENT THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN, AND LOOKED IN THE WEBBING OF THAT HELMET, YOU WOULD FIND A PHOTOGRAPH. IT IS A PICTURE OF HIS GIRLFRIEND, AND RENE PUT IT THERE FOR PROTECTION BECAUSE HE WAS SCARED. HE WAS 18 YEARS OLD. BOYS WON THE BATTLE OF IWO JIMA. BOYS, NOT OLD MEN.

THE THIRD GUY IN THIS TABLEAU WAS SERGEANT MIKE STRANK. MIKE IS MY HERO. HE WAS THE HERO OF ALL THESE GUYS. THEYCALLED HIM THE "OLD MAN" BECAUSE HE WAS SO OLD. HE WAS ALREADY 24! WHEN MIKE MOTIVATED HIS BOYS IN TRAINING CAMP, HE DIDN'T SAY, "LET'S GO KILL SOME JAPANESE" OR "LET'S DIE FOR OUR COUNTRY." HE KNEW HE WAS TALKING TO LITTLE BOYS. HE TOLD THEM, "YOU DO WHAT I SAY, AND I'LL GET YOU HOME TO YOUR MOTHERS."

THE LAST GUY ON THIS SIDE OF THE STATUE IS IRA HAYES, A PIMA INDIAN FROM ARIZONA. IRA HAYES WALKED OFF OF IWO JIMA. HE WENT TO THE WHITE HOUSE WITH MY DAD. PRESIDENT TRUMAN TOLD HIM, "YOU'RE A HERO." HE TOLD REPORTERS, "HOW CAN I FEEL LIKE A HERO WHEN 250 OF MY BUDDIES HIT THE ISLAND WITH ME AND ONLY 27 OF US WALKED OFF ALIVE?" IRA HAYES HAD IMAGES OF HORROR IN HIS MIND. HE DIED DEAD DRUNK, FACE DOWN AT THE AGE OF 32, TEN YEARS AFTER THIS PICTURE WAS TAKEN.

THE NEXT GUY AROUND THE STATUE IS FRANKLIN SOUSLEY FROM HILLTOP, KENTUCKY. HE WAS A FUN-LOVIN' HILLBILLY BOY. FRANKLIN DIED ON IWO JIMA AT THE AGE OF 19. WHEN THE TELEGRAM CAME TO TELL HIS MOTHER THAT HE WAS DEAD, IT WENT TO THE HILLTOP GENERAL STORE. A BAREFOOT BOY RAN THE TELEGRAM TO HIS MOTHER'S FARM. NEIGHBORS LIVING A QUARTER OF A MILE AWAY COULD HEAR HER SCREAM ALL NIGHT.

AS WE GO AROUND THE STATUE, THE NEXT GUY IS MY DAD, JOHN BRADLEY FROM ANTIGO, WISCONSIN WHERE I WAS BORN AND RAISED. MY DAD NEVER TALKED TO THE PRESS INCLUDING WALTER KRONKITE PRODUCERS AND THE NEW YORK TIMES. US KIDS ALWAYS HAD A LIST OF THINGS TO SAY TO THE PRESS AS TO WHY DAD WASN'T AVAILABLE TO TALK TO THEM.

MY DAD DIDN'T SEE HIMSELF AS A HERO. EVERYONE THOUGHT THEY WERE BECAUSE THEY WERE IN THE PHOTO AND ON THE MONUMENT. JOHN BRADLEY WAS A MEDIC. HE WAS A CAREGIVER. ON IWO JIMA HE PROBABLY HELD MORE THAN 200 BOYS AS THEY DIED. AND WHEN BOYS DIED ON IWO JIMA, THEY WRITHED AND SCREAMED IN PAIN. MY DAD TOLD ME, "I WANT YOU ALWAYS TO REMEMBER THAT THE HEROS ON IWO JIMA ARE THE GUYS WHO DID NOT CAME BACK."

THAT'S THE STORY ABOUT SIX NICE YOUNG BOYS. THREE DIED ON IWO JIMA, AND THREE CAME BACK AS NATIONAL HEROS. OVERALL, 7000 BOYS DIED ON IWO JIMA IN THE WORST BATTLE IN THE HISTORY OF THE MARINE CORPS."

JUST MINUTES AFTER THE FLAG WAS RAISED, SGT. MICHAEL STRANK, CPL. HARLON BLOCK, AND PFC FRANKLIN SOUSLEY WERE KILLED.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. GOOD EVENING."

May God bless them and their memory.

Welcome Dubya!

Thanks to Gudrun Eussner for the picture.

Happy Birthday America

The picture is one of the recently restored murals in the Rotunda at the National Archives Building in Washington D.C. They show fictional scenes of the presentation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Happy 8th of May

And believe me, my dear compatriots who gladly followed a deranged little housepainter into destruction and who are currently meekly following an equally deranged death cult into what can be safely assumed as worse, the followers of the "prophet" Mohammed will not treat you as kindly as the Americans.

Come to think of it, not even as kindly as the Russians...

"There is, it would seem, only one answer. Nazism taught you nothing. Instead of learning that evil must be fought, you learned that fighting is evil."
(Dennis Prager)

God Is at The Window

Some emails are worth reading:

There was a little boy visiting his grandparents on their farm. He was given a slingshot to play with out in the woods. He practiced in the woods, but he could never hit the target. Getting a little discouraged, he headed back for dinner. As he was walking back he saw Grandma's pet duck.

Just out of impulse, he let the slingshot fly, hit the duck square in the head, and killed it. He was shocked and grieved.

In a panic, he hid the dead duck in the wood pile, only to see his sister watching! Sally had seen it all, but she said nothing.

After lunch the next day Grandma said, "Sally, let's wash the dishes." But Sally said, "Grandma, Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen." Then she whispered to him, "Remember the duck?" So Johnny did the dishes.

Later that day, Grandpa asked if the children wanted to go fishing and Grandma said, "I'm sorry but I need Sally to help make supper."
Sally just smiled and said," Well that's all right because Johnny told me he wanted to help." She whispered again, "Remember the duck?" So Sally went fishing and Johnny stayed to help.

After several days of Johnny doing both his chores and Sally's... he finally couldn't stand it any longer. He came to Grandma and confessed that he had killed the duck.

Grandma knelt down, gave him a hug, and said, "Sweetheart, I know. You see, I was standing at the window and I saw the whole thing, but because I love you, I forgave you. I was just wondering how long you would let Sally make a slave of you."

Thought for the day and every day thereafter?

Whatever is in your past, whatever you have done... and the devil keeps throwing it up in your face (lying, cheating, debt, fear, bad habits, hatred, anger, bitterness, etc.) ..whatever it is....You need to know that God was standing at the window and He saw the whole thing..... He has seen your whole life. He wants you to know that He loves you and that you are forgiven. He's just wondering how long you will let the devil make a slave of you. The great thing about God is that when you ask for forgiveness, He not only forgives you, but He forgets..... It is by God's grace and mercy that we are saved.

Go ahead and make the difference in someone's life today. Share this with a friend and always remember: God is at the window.

(From my friend Sheila!)

Lest We Forget!

Tonight, I listened to the radio in the car and thus came, by pure chance, across a brief feature commemorating the 60th anniversary of the founding of CARE today. CARE helped many Germans survive or out of bitter starvation, American families paid for it. Of course, the little feature had to mention that the CARE parcels were originally meant as supply for the American troops in the Pacific, but not needed anymore because the Americans had "destroyed" Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thus shortened the war. German media never miss an opportunity for an anti-American sly little dig. (For my German readers: The station was WDR2!)

Germans will never forgive America for liberating them from the Nazis and even less that they, the Americans, were gracious in victory.

It is a sad quirk of human nature that it, more often than not, bears grudges against those it owes instead of being grateful.

However, THANK YOU AMERICA!

Four Years Ago Today

Father Mychal Judge, NYCFD Chaplain, who died while administering the last rites to one of his men. Open, though celibate, homosexual, alcoholic anonymous, hero.

St. Father Mychal, pray for us.