I noticed today a post on TwitteX of a foreigner (Visa Student) burning an American flag. In that context people like Andrew Isker was insisting that such a person be sent back to where he came from.
I understand the sentiment and agree that said person should be given the heave ho. But I agree with qualifications.
First, I have no problem with burning the American flag, as such, my issue wasn’t with the burning of the American flag itself but my problem was with who was burning the American flag.
Allow me to explain.
The American flag is a symbol and I have, with reluctance, determined it is a symbol of destruction. It was the American flag that was flown when the original American republic was destroyed in 1865 as the nation was transformed, by Lincoln’s war from a Federal Republic to a Unitary Nation State. My attitude towards the flag is similar to the old captured Confederate soldier who was told that if he took an oath of loyalty to the US flag he would be released from his Yankee captors. His response was classic;
“Sonny, I wouldn’t wipe my arse with that rag.”
The American flag likewise is largely responsible for the end of Christendom in Europe with America fighting to destroy old Europe in
WW I, the Versaille Treaty, and WW II, as the American flag led the way in shattering Christendom in Europe. In both wars America and her flag should have stayed at home. The American flag guaranteed that there would not be a negotiated peace after WW I, thus perhaps giving old Christendom the opportunity to rise from the war’s ashes. The American flag was at Versailles guaranteeing that per Woodrow Wilson’s “Peace” that WW II would break out again in twenty years, with the result that all the shards of old European Christendom was completely obliterated.
“This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years.”
French Marshall Fernand Foch
Supreme Allied Commander
Response to Versaille
The American flag was on those planes that murdered countless civilians in the firebombing of civilians in WW II. The American flag was present on the planes that dropped two Atomic Bombs on Japan after Japan had already accepted the peace that was finally implemented after the dropping of the two bombs. The American flag was present during the Bolshevik Revolution providing coverage for the Communist Reds in their warfare against the Nationalist White Army.
Similarly, it is the American flag that owns every abortion since 1973.
So, I think that is a pretty good case of not having any problem with the American Flag being burned on principle.
However, when it is a foreigner who is present on a Student Visa burning the American flag that is a different kettle of fish because that student is burning it in support of policies that if taken up would make me want to burn even more American flags.
Yet, people may find it odd that in spite of all this I love America and Americans enough to write all this. Mine is not a blind hatred of all things American. Mine is a hatred of all the unrighteousness that the flag is associated with. We, as Americans, have not been a God-fearing people for a very long time and because of that why should I want to defend the symbol that stands for a Christ-hating America?
Now a word as to the cure for all this. Increasingly, we are seeing younger Christians understanding that the America of the post-war consensus to be an ugly failure. More than a few are advocating that what America really needs is a good old fashioned National Socialist Government. Quotes like,
“National Socialism is merely the politicization of Christianity.”
Or
“Hitler was a Christian Prince.”
Or
“Race is real. Jews are evil. Whites are supreme.”
Are deeply problematic. Some of these statements just are not true. Some of these statements lack the requisite nuance. Reformation in America is not going to come via embracing National Socialism or variant forms of Fascism. The answer to an Cultural Marxist America that deserves to have its flags burned is not National Socialism where;
“All is within the state, nothing is outside the state, nothing is against the state.”
In such an arrangement the State becomes God walking on the earth. In such an arrangement we can say that “in the state we live and move and have our being.” Being ugly in a different way is not the answer to being ugly in the way we are now.
The answer to our current ungodly liberalism is not Stone Choir’s advocacy of National Socialism. Instead we could pursue a social order theology where the State, like all the other institutions in society, is merely one institution among many operating in a Christian society. The National Socialism idea that all must operate in the state and per the state is anti-Christ because it makes the State to be the norm that norms all norms. It will do no good to insist that in National Socialism the State only does what the Volk wants because it is the state that is determining what it is the Volk want.
America is ugly. As such burning American flags in protest of America’s real ugliness leaves me undisturbed — and that even if I could never bring myself to burn a flag. The answer though is not to slingshot in another ugly direction by supporting a State centered answer informed by Marxist categories.
We need a return to Biblical Christianity that because it embraces the theological idea of the temporal one and many as a reflection of the eternal one and many can provide both unity (in a common faith) and diversity (as each social institution orders itself consistent with God’s Word). This means a sovereignty that is not unitary in the State or any other cultural institution in the society. This means all cultural institutions are allowed to flourish in the sphere wherein they were designed to flourish. The Christian state flourishes in the state sphere. The Christian family flourishes in the family sphere. The Christian church flourishes in the church sphere as each and all together operating consistent with Christ’s sovereignty. This is the idea of diffuse law orders operating under God’s law in one society.
For those who want to pursue the ideas about how society should reflect the idea of the One and the Many should read;
Colin Gunton — The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity / The 1992 Bampton Lectures
Rushdoony — The One and the Many
Law & Revolution — Harold J. Berman (Two Volumes)
I’ve said before that we’ll probably never agree on this, but I wonder if it’s not because you harbor libertarian/atomized prejudices and presuppositions that run counter to the National Socialist concept of community. Those closest to the Fuhrer all said he was NOT a ‘my way or the highway’ kind of leader, but, on the contrary, always solicited advice and was ever alive to the anxieties of the people.
Can the same be said of any of the installed functionaries in the Western democracies?
I’m sure that to a collectivist, it would look like I have atomistic prejudices. All I can offer is that the Libertarians absolutely loathe me when I enter into discussions with them. I would contend that is because they think I have collectivist tendencies.
I, of course, would say, that in understanding the necessity to have a proper understanding of the One and the Many that to the Libertarian I look collectivist and to the collectivist, I look Libertarian.
A pox upon both their houses.
Of course you know I have no use for the Western Democracies.
I’ll elaborate just a bit further by addressing a few statements in your article directly:
“All is within the state, nothing is outside the state, nothing is against the state.”
I assume this quote originated with Mussolini? Fine if it did; it’s not National Socialism, … nor would it even apply to every variant of Fascism.
“It will do no good to insist that in National Socialism the State only does what the Volk wants because it is the state that is determining what it is the Volk want.”
Nothing could be further from the truth:
“People outside Germany appear to imagine that “individuality” is the one thing above all others likely to disappear in the “Nazified” State. They suppose the average German under the Hitler regime to be cut strictly to pattern, soul, mind, clothes, and body. But this is not the case. By individuality, Hitler means something the reverse of mass. He does not want things done by committees, by majorities, by groups of people – no single one of whom can be held personally responsible for what is done. He wants the capable individual, and the individual alone, to emerge in factory, workshop, office, institution, as the Fuhrer, the Leader. He holds the opposite method, the parliamentary method, to be the antithesis of individualism. He wants the nation itself to produce the one responsible individual at its head. He wants the individual home rather than the block tenement; he wants the individual shop rather than the department store. Under a dictatorship, perhaps, individuality is impossible. But Hitler is a Leader, not a Dictator.” p. 122 footnote.
Heinz A. Heinz, ‘Germany’s Hitler: The Only Authorized Biography’, Ostara 2021
Thanks Ron for Heinz’s opinion. As you know there are countless others who would not share his opinion about Hitler or the Nazis.
Now, I have no use for Martin Niemoller’s theology but this account is interesting as compared to your quote from Heinz;
In 1934, Hitler summoned Niemöller along with other German church leaders to his Berlin office to berate them for insufficiently supporting his programs. Niemöller explained that he was concerned only for the welfare of the church and of the German people. Hitler snapped, “You confine yourself to the church. I’ll take care of the German people.”
As the meeting was breaking up, Niemöller fired his final shot, “You said that ‘I will take care of the German people.’ But we too, as Christians and churchmen, have a responsibility toward the German people. That responsibility was entrusted to us by God, and neither you nor anyone in this world has the power to take it from us.”
Hitler listened in stony silence, but that evening his Gestapo raided Niemöller’s rectory, and a few days later a bomb exploded in his church. During the months and years following, he was closely watched by the secret police, and in June 1937, he preached these words to his church: “We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the arm of the authorities than had the apostles of old. We must obey God rather than man.” He was soon arrested and placed in solitary confinement.
____
Thank you Ron for your engagement. I am encouraged by how respectful you are in our back and forth.
I’m not sure where your account of Niemoller came from, but I know you’ve read David Irving’s account in Hitler’s War:
“Tired of the sniping against Muller, Hitler invited a dozen of the Protestant leaders to his chancellery on January 25, 1934. Goring had by then begun furnishing Hitler with wiretaps on Niemoller. One recorded a very recent conversation between Niemoller and a brother clergyman, discussing an audience they had just had with Hindenburg to campaign for Muller’s merit. ‘We sure gave the old fellow the extreme unction this time,’ Niemoller had guffawed. ‘We ladled so much holy oil over him that he’s going to kick that bastard [Muller] out.’ Listening to the dozen bickering Protestant clergy in his chancellery study, Hitler’s patience left him. He allowed them to make their demand for Muller’s resignation … and then he motioned to Goring to recite out loud from the FA wiretap transcripts. Niemoller denied that he had spoken the words concerned. According to Lammers, Hitler expressed indignation that a man of the cloth should lie. After that, there was open war between Niemoller and the Nazi regime.
In July 1935, Hitler made one last attempt to calm these troubled waters, setting up a Reich Church Ministry under Hans Kerrl. … Hitler was loath to make a martyr of the man, but on July 1, 1937, Niemoller was arrested for sedition. … In a snub to the regime, the court sentenced Niemoller to the seven months already served; to Hitler’s pleasure, however, he refused to give the court the customary assurances of good behavior and he was re-arrested and interned in a concentration camp. Here this turbulent priest would languish, though comfortably housed and fed, until 1945. pp. 185-6.
David Irving, ‘Hitler’s War’
Richard Stiegmann-Gall in ‘The Holy Reich’ frames this conflict in further context, but this account alone certainly suggests to me that Niemoller’s posturing about ‘obeying God rather than men’ is just that: posturing.
Do you understand my mirth here? You are insisting that the Nazis were not collectivists and to do so you send me an account wherein it is said;
“Goring had by then begun furnishing Hitler with wiretaps on Niemoller.”
I’m afraid not. If one has shown signs of having the mind of a saboteur or traitor, I really don’t see that wiretaps settle it that, ‘well, they’re collectivists, so who cares what they said or thought.’ Wiretapping in such a case just exhibits being ‘wise as a serpent’ without abjuring being ‘harmless as a dove.’ Degrelle, as so often, has something valuable to add to this discussion about the character and credibility of Niemoller:
“On Oct. 14, 1933, the conference board would receive a telegram from Hitler that was short and to the point: Germany withdraws from both the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations. … “At last,” exclaimed old Marshal Hindenburg, to whom the years of negotiation at Geneva had brought nothing but bitterness and gall, “we have a man who has the courage to do something.” … Even the most stubborn dignitaries of the church now rallied around Hitler. The most “umbrageous” among them, Pastor Martin Niemoller, always the leader of any opposition, telegraphed Hitler: “We hail our Fuehrer in this decisive hour for our people and our fatherland. We thank him for his manly action and enlightening words in defense of Germany’s honor. In the name of more than twenty-five thousand evangelical ministers, we take an oath of fidelity to him and assure him of our constant prayers.” (Schacht Memoirs, Vol. II, 28). pp. 330-33.
Leon Degrelle, ‘Hitler Democrat’
Sorry… I am not collectivist enough to trust the State to determine who is and who is not a danger so as to pursue surveillance. Am I a danger? Yet, I have reason to believe that I am being kept tabs on.
That is a mega slippery slope.
Of course I’d argue they were not collectivists, but communitarians. I’m not a danger to the public welfare, but I have little doubt we’re both being kept tabs on. In fact, as Edmund Burke said, ‘it would be madness not to give credit to it’ since ‘they’ve made’ and are daily making ‘declarations of hostility against us.’ I think Niemoller actually invited the surveillance by his behavior. I agree that government overreach is a slippery slope, but authority (state, family, or otherwise) has to have a warrant to defend itself, and its other charges, against threats. That’s just in the nature of authority.