A Fuerher of Our Own
A Fueher of Our Own
American Jews face a very difficult political reality today. I came upon this dilemma while I was listening to the ninth of twelve CDs of “European Thought and Culture in the 20th Century,” a series of lectures from The Great Courses™ series produced by The Teaching Company and given by Professor Lloyd Kramer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In his 17th lecture Professor Kramer gives a brief rundown of the events that thrust Hitler and the Nazis into power in German. My notes read as follows:
“By the early 1940’s there was no way to ignore what was happening in Europe with the aggression of the Nazis. Ell European countries but Spain were at war, and Spain had just endured a bloody civil war which resulted in a dictator assuming control of that country’s political fortunes. Intellectuals were divided by Nazism. People in the middle of a moment in history cannot see the outcome or assess the validity of their choices. Intellectuals were faced with the problem of abandoning the abstract and making political choices. They made these choices in the military context of the 30’s and 40’s. Three German writers are perfect examples of the possible choices in response to the rise of the Nazis and totalitarianism: Martin Heiddeger—support; Hannah Arendt—exile/flight; Dietricht Bonhoffer—resistance leading to death.
In later January, 1933 Hitler and the Nazi party legally come to power in Germany. Within a matter of months, Hitler declares and gains emergency powers. Again almost immediately, he launches the persecution of Jews, outlaws all other political parties and trade unions other than those with close Nazi affiliation, establishes Germany as a police state, builds concentration camps for political opponents, and essentially militarizes the entirety of Germany culture. The Nazis begin to re-arm and prepare themselves for a massive offensive against their European neighbors. This is also the start of “The Final Solution,” the systematic extermination of all Jews.”
The resultant Holocaust is all too well known to us. This specific lecture goes on to show that Heiddeger, Arendt, and Bonhoffer, all three great intellects, made three distinctly different choices regarding their acceptance or rejection of the Nazis. While that moment in history was as desperate as any humanity has ever recorded, the questions facing the American Jew and his political choices today are, while not as terrifyingly life-threatening, far more difficult an intellectual puzzle to unravel than what the great minds of Heiddeger, Arendt, and Bonhoffer faced with the rise of Nazi Germany. And here is why.
If we look at that second paragraph of notes which detail the Nazi rise, one cannot ignore the startling similarities to the sequence of events and actions between Hitler and the Nazis and the present Bush administration. President Bush came to power legally, and within 8 months, the tragic events of 9/11 lead the president to declare a state of emergency. We have remained in this state of armed readiness since. In this heightened posture, America has justified some seemingly implausible political actions. I say “implausible” because I never expected the United States, the land of the free, to perpetrate such defiling of American ideals as “Guantanamo,” “the attorney general purges,” “the Iraqi war,” “the planned Iranian war,” and the seemingly endless number of assaults on American Civil Liberties I had come to believe to be an American birthright. Further, this administration’s attempts to imbue the presidency with king-like divine rights of power have posed a greater threat to our constitutional guarantees than any other political maneuvering since the grotesqueries of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Indeed, we have become aware of documented cases of Middle Eastern-Americans being swept up off street corners and placed in jail cells for weeks, even months, without explanation for why they were detained, without means of defense, and without a phone call to a lawyer or loved ones. Our government clearly falsified information about weapons of mass destruction to legitimize the Iraqi invasion and subsequent occupation. And it is but a hair’s width of sanity and the interjection of concrete evidence about Iran’s lack of effort to create a nuclear bomb arsenal that keeps our military dogs at bay from Iranian borders. Seemingly, America has declared an undeclared war against Arabs, short and sweet. By throwing a blanket of “terrorism” over ever turban in the Middle East, this administration attempted to receive a carte blanche to invade wherever and whenever they wanted, just so their bullying behavior yielded enough oil to satisfy the American populations gluttonous desire for fuel and American oil companies greedy thirst for profits.
This lumping of one people-- today it is Arabs, seventy-four years ago, it was Jews-- into a faceless group of “enemy combatants,” who by their very existence threaten the moral (filthy, greedy, blood-thirsty: pick the adjective to applies to the group and era), religious (Muslim vs. Christian, Jewish vs. Christian), and financial (“They control all the oil,” or “They control all the banks”)well-being of the United States, is essentially the line Americans are being fed by the present administration. Thousands of lives have been lost. Thousands are incarcerated and tortured, regardless of the legal hair-splitting of the term, “water-boarding.”
But these are Arabs, who are being treated thus. These are our sworn enemies, foes determined to wipe out Israel. Therefore, the question before American Jews is: can we adopt the ways of our former enemy in opposition to our present enemy? This is indeed a more difficult decision for the American Jew than the rest of America, for Jews must wade through the history of victimization at the hands of the Nazis, before being able to see clear to the unencumbered American question of whether this administration’s policies have been valid or legal or moral.
Yet, while the American Jew might have his vision blurred by the encroachment of the past onto his thinking today, the answer to the question: Should I support a presidential administration that treats my enemy as we were treated by the Nazis; is even more powerfully the same. To condone the same shape of actions which led to the extermination of six million Jews is to condone the extermination itself. Regardless of what group of people are on the other end of the stick this time, we cannot allow our nation adopt the policies of the most morally repugnant leader and government in modern history. We must not. For if we open that door a mere sliver, those echoes of goose-stepping footfalls will drown out any American Jewish voice denouncing any future attack on any Jew ever again.
The question then must be posed: do we accept (Heidegger), flee (Arendt), or confront (Bonhoffer)? There are arguments for all three positions. Although the above makes clear I am against accepting what the Bush Administration has to offer, in any form, mind you, that does not mean I am oblivious to the profoundly valid arguments pleading for military forcefulness in the world community as a means of achieving stability, and hence peace. However, military might and aggression is successful when applied judiciously and without bias. What I mean by that is we should not threaten a sovereign nation because it has brown skinned people as opposed to light skinned people, which seems to be the extent of the Bush foreign policy other than the oil grab doctrine. Rather, we must establish a significant enough military force as to dissuade other aggressors throughout the world from attacking other sovereign states (and us) for fear that we might exercise our power against the aggressor. Still, to be able to carry this posture, one must assume a moral high ground, and not one reached by declaration (Hey, we’re the good guys. See the white hat?). Instead, our actions as a country must show the world our conscience is clean and clear of lesser motives.
As American Jews with much at stake in the well-being of American life, our acceptance of our government means a commitment to the democratic process. Should this process become compromised (see: Florida, Presidential Election: 2000), the stability and freedom we have enjoyed in the US is jeopardized.
Another alternative is to flee. My father did this. He was sick of the government. He was sick of banging his head against the wall, so he took himself, his wife (English), his vast knowledge of American law, and moved to England. Unlike Hannah Arendt, he left for more personal than political reasons. But the issue is should we leave these shores and from afar point out the misguided direction in which the country is headed? This option strikes me as a completely sane choice. Other than Israel (and that doesn’t exactly qualify as Sanity Central), Jews have never known a country from which they did not have to flee at some point or another. The Wandering Jew plant was named after a repetition of circumstance, as opposed to us being named after a plant.
Secondly, to remove oneself from a state of conflict is to achieve perspective. Nothing rounds out one’s viewpoint like either a distancing of time or space. I can’t possibly imagine that our present federal government could look any more ridiculous from a change of scenery, but my father swears otherwise. And this coming from a man who goes to work everyday with men wearing wigs style for the 18th century. Go figure.
As for confrontation, there is much to say for it. However, the ability to confront our government in writing, in peaceful protest, and/or by any other means, merely serves to suck the wind from one’s anti-establishment sails. One of the great things about this country is its uninterrupted support of protest. While violent protest is not tolerated, and while other protests might be disrupted and even attacked by the establishment’s police force, the population at large views these police attacks as a violation of our inalienable rights and there is a constitution which back up this viewpoint. This is not to say there are not oppressors in our government, but they are not the loudest voice in the crowd of the body politic.
Additionally, the freedom of speech extends to the written word, and writing about the violations of human rights is rarely, if ever shut down in the United States. And one need not be Al Gore to take a pot shot or two at Bush and his cronies. Heck, all you really need to do is write a blog and figure out how to put on an rss feed (something which is beyond me at present, but I was just looking into how to do it), and lawdy, lawdy, you got yourself a protest. Now, perhaps my next blog will be from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, but I doubt it. Instead, I, like most, will go ignored by the powers that be, and elections will proceed without incident and I will avoid incarceration and show up at the polls on Election Day. When I do, I will have committed the most audible protest imaginable. You can join me, and, to quote the tag line from last century, “throw the bums out of office.” We can only hope.
American Jews face a very difficult political reality today. I came upon this dilemma while I was listening to the ninth of twelve CDs of “European Thought and Culture in the 20th Century,” a series of lectures from The Great Courses™ series produced by The Teaching Company and given by Professor Lloyd Kramer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In his 17th lecture Professor Kramer gives a brief rundown of the events that thrust Hitler and the Nazis into power in German. My notes read as follows:
“By the early 1940’s there was no way to ignore what was happening in Europe with the aggression of the Nazis. Ell European countries but Spain were at war, and Spain had just endured a bloody civil war which resulted in a dictator assuming control of that country’s political fortunes. Intellectuals were divided by Nazism. People in the middle of a moment in history cannot see the outcome or assess the validity of their choices. Intellectuals were faced with the problem of abandoning the abstract and making political choices. They made these choices in the military context of the 30’s and 40’s. Three German writers are perfect examples of the possible choices in response to the rise of the Nazis and totalitarianism: Martin Heiddeger—support; Hannah Arendt—exile/flight; Dietricht Bonhoffer—resistance leading to death.
In later January, 1933 Hitler and the Nazi party legally come to power in Germany. Within a matter of months, Hitler declares and gains emergency powers. Again almost immediately, he launches the persecution of Jews, outlaws all other political parties and trade unions other than those with close Nazi affiliation, establishes Germany as a police state, builds concentration camps for political opponents, and essentially militarizes the entirety of Germany culture. The Nazis begin to re-arm and prepare themselves for a massive offensive against their European neighbors. This is also the start of “The Final Solution,” the systematic extermination of all Jews.”
The resultant Holocaust is all too well known to us. This specific lecture goes on to show that Heiddeger, Arendt, and Bonhoffer, all three great intellects, made three distinctly different choices regarding their acceptance or rejection of the Nazis. While that moment in history was as desperate as any humanity has ever recorded, the questions facing the American Jew and his political choices today are, while not as terrifyingly life-threatening, far more difficult an intellectual puzzle to unravel than what the great minds of Heiddeger, Arendt, and Bonhoffer faced with the rise of Nazi Germany. And here is why.
If we look at that second paragraph of notes which detail the Nazi rise, one cannot ignore the startling similarities to the sequence of events and actions between Hitler and the Nazis and the present Bush administration. President Bush came to power legally, and within 8 months, the tragic events of 9/11 lead the president to declare a state of emergency. We have remained in this state of armed readiness since. In this heightened posture, America has justified some seemingly implausible political actions. I say “implausible” because I never expected the United States, the land of the free, to perpetrate such defiling of American ideals as “Guantanamo,” “the attorney general purges,” “the Iraqi war,” “the planned Iranian war,” and the seemingly endless number of assaults on American Civil Liberties I had come to believe to be an American birthright. Further, this administration’s attempts to imbue the presidency with king-like divine rights of power have posed a greater threat to our constitutional guarantees than any other political maneuvering since the grotesqueries of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Indeed, we have become aware of documented cases of Middle Eastern-Americans being swept up off street corners and placed in jail cells for weeks, even months, without explanation for why they were detained, without means of defense, and without a phone call to a lawyer or loved ones. Our government clearly falsified information about weapons of mass destruction to legitimize the Iraqi invasion and subsequent occupation. And it is but a hair’s width of sanity and the interjection of concrete evidence about Iran’s lack of effort to create a nuclear bomb arsenal that keeps our military dogs at bay from Iranian borders. Seemingly, America has declared an undeclared war against Arabs, short and sweet. By throwing a blanket of “terrorism” over ever turban in the Middle East, this administration attempted to receive a carte blanche to invade wherever and whenever they wanted, just so their bullying behavior yielded enough oil to satisfy the American populations gluttonous desire for fuel and American oil companies greedy thirst for profits.
This lumping of one people-- today it is Arabs, seventy-four years ago, it was Jews-- into a faceless group of “enemy combatants,” who by their very existence threaten the moral (filthy, greedy, blood-thirsty: pick the adjective to applies to the group and era), religious (Muslim vs. Christian, Jewish vs. Christian), and financial (“They control all the oil,” or “They control all the banks”)well-being of the United States, is essentially the line Americans are being fed by the present administration. Thousands of lives have been lost. Thousands are incarcerated and tortured, regardless of the legal hair-splitting of the term, “water-boarding.”
But these are Arabs, who are being treated thus. These are our sworn enemies, foes determined to wipe out Israel. Therefore, the question before American Jews is: can we adopt the ways of our former enemy in opposition to our present enemy? This is indeed a more difficult decision for the American Jew than the rest of America, for Jews must wade through the history of victimization at the hands of the Nazis, before being able to see clear to the unencumbered American question of whether this administration’s policies have been valid or legal or moral.
Yet, while the American Jew might have his vision blurred by the encroachment of the past onto his thinking today, the answer to the question: Should I support a presidential administration that treats my enemy as we were treated by the Nazis; is even more powerfully the same. To condone the same shape of actions which led to the extermination of six million Jews is to condone the extermination itself. Regardless of what group of people are on the other end of the stick this time, we cannot allow our nation adopt the policies of the most morally repugnant leader and government in modern history. We must not. For if we open that door a mere sliver, those echoes of goose-stepping footfalls will drown out any American Jewish voice denouncing any future attack on any Jew ever again.
The question then must be posed: do we accept (Heidegger), flee (Arendt), or confront (Bonhoffer)? There are arguments for all three positions. Although the above makes clear I am against accepting what the Bush Administration has to offer, in any form, mind you, that does not mean I am oblivious to the profoundly valid arguments pleading for military forcefulness in the world community as a means of achieving stability, and hence peace. However, military might and aggression is successful when applied judiciously and without bias. What I mean by that is we should not threaten a sovereign nation because it has brown skinned people as opposed to light skinned people, which seems to be the extent of the Bush foreign policy other than the oil grab doctrine. Rather, we must establish a significant enough military force as to dissuade other aggressors throughout the world from attacking other sovereign states (and us) for fear that we might exercise our power against the aggressor. Still, to be able to carry this posture, one must assume a moral high ground, and not one reached by declaration (Hey, we’re the good guys. See the white hat?). Instead, our actions as a country must show the world our conscience is clean and clear of lesser motives.
As American Jews with much at stake in the well-being of American life, our acceptance of our government means a commitment to the democratic process. Should this process become compromised (see: Florida, Presidential Election: 2000), the stability and freedom we have enjoyed in the US is jeopardized.
Another alternative is to flee. My father did this. He was sick of the government. He was sick of banging his head against the wall, so he took himself, his wife (English), his vast knowledge of American law, and moved to England. Unlike Hannah Arendt, he left for more personal than political reasons. But the issue is should we leave these shores and from afar point out the misguided direction in which the country is headed? This option strikes me as a completely sane choice. Other than Israel (and that doesn’t exactly qualify as Sanity Central), Jews have never known a country from which they did not have to flee at some point or another. The Wandering Jew plant was named after a repetition of circumstance, as opposed to us being named after a plant.
Secondly, to remove oneself from a state of conflict is to achieve perspective. Nothing rounds out one’s viewpoint like either a distancing of time or space. I can’t possibly imagine that our present federal government could look any more ridiculous from a change of scenery, but my father swears otherwise. And this coming from a man who goes to work everyday with men wearing wigs style for the 18th century. Go figure.
As for confrontation, there is much to say for it. However, the ability to confront our government in writing, in peaceful protest, and/or by any other means, merely serves to suck the wind from one’s anti-establishment sails. One of the great things about this country is its uninterrupted support of protest. While violent protest is not tolerated, and while other protests might be disrupted and even attacked by the establishment’s police force, the population at large views these police attacks as a violation of our inalienable rights and there is a constitution which back up this viewpoint. This is not to say there are not oppressors in our government, but they are not the loudest voice in the crowd of the body politic.
Additionally, the freedom of speech extends to the written word, and writing about the violations of human rights is rarely, if ever shut down in the United States. And one need not be Al Gore to take a pot shot or two at Bush and his cronies. Heck, all you really need to do is write a blog and figure out how to put on an rss feed (something which is beyond me at present, but I was just looking into how to do it), and lawdy, lawdy, you got yourself a protest. Now, perhaps my next blog will be from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, but I doubt it. Instead, I, like most, will go ignored by the powers that be, and elections will proceed without incident and I will avoid incarceration and show up at the polls on Election Day. When I do, I will have committed the most audible protest imaginable. You can join me, and, to quote the tag line from last century, “throw the bums out of office.” We can only hope.
Labels: 9/11, Bush, history, individual rights, Jews, Nazis, politics
posted by milesjason03 at 1:14 PM
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