No longer the White Man's Burden

Way back yonder, when the Democratic Party had a soul, it had a president who was a vociferous advocate for human rights.

Democracy was in the balance, yet this president, standing against the tide attempting to dominate world politics, decried the notion that anyone, regardless of what part of this world they occupied, should live without four basic, fundamental freedoms.

Freedom of expression, freedom to worship and the ability to live free of fear and from want were the cornerstones of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies that he announced during his State of the Union address on January 6, 1941, coincidentally enough, nearly 11 months to the day before Pearl Harbor was attacked.

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms.
“The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world.
“The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.
“The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world.
“The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world,” said Roosevelt.

The United States, he said, would become an Arsenal of Democracy, helping defend countries in Europe and Asia that were fighting German fascists and Japanese militarists. The American way of life, he said, would never be secure so long as someone, somewhere in the world, was oppressed.

Roosevelt knew instinctively that countries seeking to oppress others have an insatiable hunger to subjugate as much of the world as possible.

As a result of FDR’s bold policies, Europe and much of Asia are free today. Over the course of more than 40 years, the United States and its allies defeated the enemies of human rights: German fascists, Japanese militarists, and then Soviet Communists.

You cannot help but to admire FDR. His domestic and foreign opponents were formidable and yet he managed to outmaneuver and, eventually, trounce them.

Did he play fair? Probably not. There’s evidence that suggests he knew Japan would strike Pearl Harbor and allowed it to happen so he could gain the domestic support he so vitally needed to bring the United States into a war its citizens didn’t want to fight.

Studying Roosevelt makes you wonder what went wrong with the Democratic Party over the last 60 years. It’s gone from being a party that insisted the United States pay any price and bear any burden to support those who champion liberty to becoming a party that’s more interested in its own self-indulgence. Fortunately, for its own sake, it’s not alone: The Republicans are just as awful.

Each contender for next year’s Democratic Presidential nomination denounces the war in Iraq and, as they do, they signal to terrorists and insurgents alike that they’re more concerned about their rights – than the rights of those they slaughter.

FDR is rolling over in his grave. And Hitler and Tojo are jealous that they didn’t have the great fortune of facing the pusillanimous Democrats of today.

If you’ve joined today’s anti-war movement, keep something in mind: The people in the Middle East who want the United States out of the Middle East aren’t pacifists. They’re cold-blooded killers. The peace movement, if it’s successful in securing a United States withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, only condemns an Iraqi or Afghan citizen to a grizzly death.

The peace movement is anything but a peace movement. It’s a form of passive-aggressive fascism. Whether it realizes it or not, the movement is aligned with groups that have no compunction about killing innocent people; other than demanding an immediate U.S. departure from Iraq and Afghanistan, not a single political idea is shared between these groups.

The typical supporter of peace movement in the United States is a Democrat who should support anyone advancing liberty and human rights. The typical terrorist has likely never heard of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle, philosophers who influenced and created the very political freedoms that the West enjoys today.

But the average terrorist has definitely heard some hijacked version of the Koran and Islam, which inspires them to kill anyone – Muslim, Christian, Jew, man, woman or child – who doesn’t support their thinking.

Today’s anti-war movement is rooted in the one that rallied around the slogan “Give Peace a Chance,” forcing the United States to end its military and political efforts in Southeast Asia more than 30 years ago. The result: Millions of Cambodians were condemned to their Communist executioners. Communist North Vietnam was granted victory and went on to place millions of South Vietnamese into reeducation camps. Many South Vietnamese fled the country and many drowned in their attempt to live free.

If the peace movement’s conclusion is accepted at face value, once the U.S. military leaves Iraq and Afghanistan, peace breaks out. There’s only problem with the conclusion: It’ll kill some innocent man, woman or child.

The only good news from this conclusion is that the insurgents won’t have Americans to kill anymore. The bad news, however, is that innocent citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan will fall into the terrorists’ cross-hairs.

Then there’s the issue of Europe’s security vis á vis Iran as well as the security of those Persian Gulf and Middle Eastern nations allied with the United States, either covertly or overtly, since 9/11. These issues are never addressed by the peace movement.

President George W. Bush and his administration have truly mismanaged the country since September 11, 2001. The President was granted a golden opportunity to demonstrate to the terrorists and their sympathizers that Western political philosophy is far superior to the dictatorships, theocracies and monarchies they live under. In addition, the President had a wonderful opportunity to infuse the United States with a sense of patriotism and mission. He blew it.

The administration’s political aims would have been far better served had it focused on turning Afghanistan into a successful, self-supporting country. How this administration ever thought it could successfully turn around Afghanistan and, at the same time, turn Iraq into some sort of jewel of Middle Eastern democracy is anyone’s guess. Evidence suggests that they never thought through all the challenges they’d face.

Besides bad planning on Iraq, after defeating Saddam Hussein’s army, one wonders about the various companies that have benefited from contracts supplying U.S. military and political forces there. The manner in which these contacts were handled gives every appearance that the Bush Administration is more concerned about its corporate backers than it is about helping innocent civilians.

More than 100 years ago, at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, an Indian-born British subject wrote a poem called “A White Man’s Burden.” Rudyard Kipling was in the United States as it achieved military victories over Spanish forces in Cuba and the Philippines. The war turned the United States into a global power because, for the first time in its history, it occupied land far outside of its territorial waters.

Reading the poem with the lens of the 21st century, when we’ve all been sensitized to the slightest slur, it’s hard not to look at this as something that insults people with darker skin. But, as Kipling saw the world, in this poem he was attempting to tell Americans that they had special role; their new mission, as he saw it, was to educate, lift-up and improve the native people of the lands they occupied.

Kipling was telling the United States it had a moral duty to instruct Cubans and Filipinos on democracy, freedom and human rights so they could advance themselves and their countries in ways that would never have occurred under the Spanish.

This is the same moral philosophy that guided President Roosevelt as he presented his State of the Union address under the storm clouds of early 1941, when the future of democracy, freedom and human rights was in question. It is the same philosophy that has bound American foreign policy for more than 60 years and will likely continue to do so into the foreseeable future.

FDR is known to have quoted Kipling from time to time. “A White Man’s Burden” was written when he was in his late teens; this poem, along with his education, which instilled him a sense of obligation to help the less fortunate, guided his political beliefs.

FDR is the patron saint of the Democratic Party. He infused it with a sense of obligation to those less fortunate and that’s been its hallmark throughout the 20th century and still is to this very day.

But when it comes to helping those outside of U.S. borders who are less fortunate, today’s Democratic Party sounds like the Republicans FDR faced during the first two terms of his presidency. They’re isolationists.

Aligned with the Democrats, today’s anti-war movement is without any sense of obligation. In fact, it’s racist. At the core of its message is this: Darker skinned people, Arabs in this case, are not the White Man’s Burden.

Invisible Jews in Nazi Germany: A Book Review

(Editor’s Note: This week ItsFourthAndLong initiates its first book review.)

Too often history comes across as dull, gray, lifeless text that will sooner put people to sleep than give them any insight on the lives we live today. Part of that is due to the way it’s taught, which is not all that well from everything this correspondent has learned from those who detest the subject. And part of it is attributable to the very nature of the subject itself: Why should anyone become excited about something that happened decades or centuries ago? How does it apply to the lives we lead today?

This is the reason I’m a fan of first-person accounts. They bring historical events to life because someone has taken the time to write down their experiences, often during a tragic, horrible or dramatic period of time.

No. 12 Kaiserhofstrass: The Story of an Invisible Jew in Nazi Germany, written by Valentin Senger, brings Nazi Germany alive. Senger and his family survived the Nazis in Frankfurt, right out in the open, even though they were Jews. And this is what makes his story all that more compelling.

Senger’s story is one of constant deception. His mother and father were Russian émigrés who had been associated with Communists revolutionaries during the early days of the 20th century; they immigrated to Germany to escape the Tsar’s henchman, well in advance of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. So no one in Germany would know they were Communists, they lied on their immigration papers that they were from Switzerland.

As they were settling into their apartment in Frankfurt in 1909, they completed residency papers for the local police who noted that the Sengers were “Hebraic.” It never occurred to Senger’s parents, the author writes, “that in a liberal, cosmopolitan city like Frankfurt, where Jews and Christians had been living side by side for centuries, the mere fact of being a Jew could ever become a mortal danger.”

The author, born in 1918, describes his neighbors, friends, acquaintances and professional colleagues; what is frightening is how some of them could so easily betray and inflict harm on people they'd known well in advance of the Nazis ever coming into power.

Whether or not they believed what they were being fed by the Nazis is something we will never know. They may have thought they were being good, patriotic Germans. They may have feared for their own safety, thinking they needed to make a deal with the devil; or, perhaps, they wanted all whose lives didn’t reflect theirs exterminated.

Senger’s childhood, with the exception of a few events, was unexceptional. He attended school and did all of the normal things any boy would do – ran around with other boys and challenged his mother and father.

In the 1930s, after the Nazis took power, everything changed. From 1933 to 1945, the Sengers “felt trapped” in their apartment, “expecting the Gestapo or the SA to arrest us (at) any minute.”

They survived the Nazis, in large part, because a local policeman, Sergeant Kasper, risking his own life, perhaps because he liked Senger's mother, altered their registration papers. He changed their religious affiliation from “Hebraic” to “Nonconformist,” thereby keeping the Gestapo on the search for others but not the Sengers.

The Sengers became as inconspicuous as possible so as not to attract the attention of the authorities. But they did have a few a moments when they were convinced they’d be arrested.

One of the more frightening times was when the author needed medical assistance. Unlike European Christians at the time, circumcision was standard practice for Jews. Since the author was suffering from a stomach ailment, his parents knew he’d be required to drop his pants, thereby giving away his religious affiliation.

To make matters worse, the local doctor wore a Nazi uniform. He looked over the young man and even noticed his circumcised penis. Senger told the doctor that his family was from Russia and a particular Christian sect that believed in self-mutilation. The doctor didn’t buy it for a minute, noting that his circumcision looked like the ones performed at a bris.

The doctor kept young Senger’s circumcision to himself. And, as it turned out, this same doctor saved a few Jews who continued to live in Germany, outside of the concentration camps, during the Nazi regime.

As the war progressed, Germany, desperate to fill the ranks of their killed and missing soldiers, started drafting eligible men who were not citizens. Senger and his younger brother soon had their papers to report for a military physical. Here, again, they thought the game was over because, certainly, the doctors would notice their circumcisions.

They may have but the doctors passed them anyway, sending the two brothers to basic training. Senger’s younger brother, Alex, was killed during the war, fighting an enemy he knew would save him. Senger himself survived the war due to some unforeseen medical issues as well as a kindly doctor who drew up orders to send him to a hospital.

One of the book’s more interesting moments happens shortly after the author leaves the doctor who had written his orders. This was weeks prior to the war’s end. Senger was making his way out of the military base when he was befriended by a local man who put him up for a few days. Essentially, the author deserted.

During Senger’s stay at the local man’s house, he met a woman, named Gerdi, who had served in Germany’s army as an auxiliary. He described her as taller, a few years older and “as strong as an ox.” He never says she’s beautiful. In spite of all that, they made love one day. One can’t help but to wonder what it was like to have sex with the enemy. Maybe this proves that hormones can overrule politics.

After the war, Senger became a reporter, working for German newspapers and at television and radio stations.

No. 12 Kasierhofstrass is a gripping account that, at times, will have readers on the edge of their seats. The tension, the fear and the downright fright of living under conditions few can imagine comes through loud and clear in this book.

At times, while reading this book, you have to wonder if the author isn’t suffering from survivor’s guilt. There are times when he’s speaking to his mother, sometimes in an accusing tone of voice.

The author appears to have mixed views about his mother. She certainly ruled the roost. She also did everything possible to keep the family intact – and alive. Compared to joining Germany’s underground, or heading off to a death camp, it may not have been particularly heroic. But by keeping her family alive, Mrs. Senger did all of us who never lived through the Nazis an incredible favor: Her son wrote a rich account about their experiences under a terrible regime.

No. 12 Kaiserhofstrass was first published in 1978 in Germany, and the English translation was published two years later. It can be purchased on alibris.com by searching under the author’s last name. (ItsFourthAndLong is not schilling for alibris.com, although any money they’d like to throw this way would be happily accepted.)

While reading this book, I wondered if anyone, at some point, will write a first-hand account of their times under more recent dictatorships, like North Korea or Saddam Hussein. I hope someone does so we gain some insight about life under these regimes.

And while George W. Bush and his band of Republicans certainly have their detractors, all of those are opposed (or consider themselves oppressed) to his presidency, his policies, his followers, and his government would be well served by reading No. 12 Kaiserhofstrass. Mr. Bush is flawed man but he is no Adolf Hitler.