"A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

No matter your political ideology, we must do all we can to keep our Republic! 

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SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. Today is Tuesday, August the sixteenth, twenty twenty-two. In today's episode, I will be talking about a very sobering topic, and you might be wondering what can be sober about the title of the podcast, which is A Republic, if you can keep it. Well, by the end of the podcast, I think you'll understand why I have titled this podcast in the way that I have. To lay some of the groundwork for this episode, I want to start off with the definition of a few terms, and I'll start off with the definition of self-government. Self-government is government that's under the control and the direction of the inhabitants. It's a control of one's own affairs. Some of the synonyms are restraint, self-discipline, and self-mastery. The next term is republic. A republic is a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law. At the end of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a woman asked Mr. Franklin, Well, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy? And with no hesitation, apparently, Mr. Franklin said, A republic if you can keep it. Obviously, it seems that Franklin knew that there was going to be enormous power that was going to reside in a body of citizens, and that we would have citizen representatives, which I think really, really underscores the wisdom in that quote, that we do have a republic if we can keep it. The next term that I want to define is republican with a small R. Republican is to have the characteristics of a republic, meaning representatives that would be elected to represent the people. It's also favoring and supporting or advocating for a republic. So in other words, governing in a republican way is to advocate the principles of a republic. Recently, my wife and I took the opportunity to visit the Houston, Texas Holocaust Museum. And if it's been a while since you've visited a similar museum or that you've perhaps read about the Holocaust, I recommend refreshing your memory about that awful, awful part of history. Having said that, I have two more terms that I would like to discuss. The first is totalitarian. Totalitarian is of or relating to centralized control by an autocratic leader or hierarchy, authoritarian or dictatorial, particularly despotic. And the last term is a despot, which is a ruler with absolute power and authority, one exercising power tyrannically, a person exercising absolute power in a brutal or oppressive way. Now all of the terms that I have used thus far come from the Webster's mobile app dictionary. I provide that for informational purposes only. At the Holocaust Museum in Houston, guests have the opportunity to take a self-guided tour, which is what my wife and I did when we visited. There are photographs, there are written explanations as to what happened. There are also numerous videos that you can watch when you go there. And as I said, I highly recommend doing it if you've not had the chance, or go to another museum that's near your location. For the balance of the podcast today, you'll get me essentially narrating what I saw when I visited there and using the things that I saw and comparing and contrasting those things to some of the things that are happening in our current government that I think are a little bit alarming. Actually, very alarming if I was to be quite honest, and of course I am. The last episode that I did, I talked about this idea of cultural warfare. And that's exactly the thing that took place in Nazi Germany. It was a cultural attack on a specific group of people. And as you walk through the museum, you come to various placards, and on those placards, there are pictures, there is written text. Essentially, it's your guide and your progression through the museum, getting from the beginning of the Holocaust to the end and the liberation by the United States and other allies. So to begin with, the question was asked: how could it have happened? Meaning the Holocaust. It was Nazi Germany's attempt to annihilate the Jewish people in Europe and defame Judaism. There were also other groups of people that the Nazis persecuted, people like Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, homosexuals, people who had disabilities. I mean, essentially, it was people who didn't fit within a certain parameter that the government or the Nazi regime thought they should fall into. I might add to that the displays that I observed in the museum were not so much random, but the way that I selected them perhaps may have been a little bit random. I came across things that I was interested in, obviously, and it was those things that I took some screenshots of and wanted to remember. And perhaps midway through the exhibit, I mentioned to my wife that I needed to do a podcast about my experience there. And so here we go. So next I came across a display that talked about the denial of civil liberties. And it stated that during his rise to power, Hitler blamed Germany's many problems and suffering on the Jews' supposedly malicious influence. Now, if that's not the most irrational thing I've ever heard, or close to the most irrational thing I've ever heard, to blame others for your problems, that absolutely makes no sense whatsoever. Yet, in our government today, here in the United States of America, we have political parties who are doing that very thing. And please understand that my comparing and contrasting from the Holocaust to our government, in no way am I suggesting that we are anywhere near where the Nazi Germany government was. We're not. My point, however, is that we need to be aware of the progress or the lack of progress and the things that are happening in our society that could one day, believe it or not, lead to something like what happened with the Nazis and the Jews and every other group of people that they persecuted. From the same display talking about the denial of civil liberties, it said that Hitler ordered boycotts of Jewish lawyers, doctors, and merchants, and gradually stripped Jews of their rights as German citizens. The Nazi propaganda ministry organized public book burnings to destroy, quote, unGerman works, including those by Jewish authors. Clearly, this is or was an attempt to pit the us versus them mentality. He incited hatred and bigotry, and we see this kind of thing happening in our society today. If you don't believe a certain way, you're subject to cancel culture. You're not patriotic, or you're attacked on social media, or all the above. Now, most despots or tyrannical leaders don't just wake up one morning and say, Man, you know what? I think I'm gonna kill a bunch of people that I hate or have a bunch of people that I hate killed. That's not typically how it starts. And that's true with anything that anyone does. Most people, whether they're serial killers or bank robbers or any other crime, they don't just wake up one day and say, Yeah, I think I'm gonna do that. Things progress over time. And the the more that the individual gets down into that rabbit hole of what I would call evil or lawlessness, there's a lot of things that have to take place before they get to a level like Hitler was or any tyrannical leader happened to be in the 20th century. And I don't mean to necessarily dwell on the negative and the things that happened in this way and the way that a serial killer evolves. I mean, even great athletes or great musicians, great actors, people who do anything that's great, they don't wake up one day and say, wow, check me out. I'm Michael Jordan. I can do a 360. No. People have to work and they have to practice and they have to do the things that are necessary in order for them to be really, really good at their craft. So all I'm saying is that no matter who you are, there's an evolution. There's something that takes place within the mind, within the body, that ultimately leads to either a really good end or a really terrible end. The next display that I came to at the museum was something that I thought and think is really troubling, and that is the Nazi indoctrination of youth. The Nazi propaganda ministry, they tried to get young Germans to essentially brainwash young people. It created educational materials for schools. They created children's books, games, and they even had lesson plans that was used to indoctrinate these young children. And that is a great evil as far as I'm concerned. And it reminds me that in this country, in public education, private education is one thing, but in the public school system, there should not be discussions about critical race theory or the sexualization of little children. Little children, especially those in elementary school, should not be exposed to critical race theory or even learning about sexualization or sexual orientation or anything like that. Their minds are not developed enough to understand what it is they're hearing. But this is exactly what the Nazis did to indoctrinate their children. In its first year, the display says, which was 1933, Hitler youth enrolled more than two million children. By 1939, membership was mandatory and all other youth organizations were disbanded. In contrast, Jewish children were barred from even attending school. How disgusting and demonic that was. It's just incredibly troubling to have been reminded about this history that some people are trying to eradicate. So in my view, history can be, and in many cases was terrible, heinous, but to not teach it, to not tell people about it is a crime in and of itself, I believe. The next display talked about going from exclusion to persecution, and it said that Nazi laws incrementally expelled Jewish citizens from German politics, culture, economic life, and even social groups, and that these propaganda campaigns portray Jews as enemies of the state. We can never ever allow anyone in this country to exact any sort of propaganda campaign that essentially takes the rights away from American citizens. This must never ever be allowed to take place. Next, I want to mention just a couple of the decrees that were on the wall displayed in the museum. And there were, I want to say, dozens of these different decrees that were displayed for patrons to read. One of these decrees, which was passed in July of 1937, was a decree that banned Jews from public gardens, sport grounds, and restaurants, and also German spas. Now, think about a time in our recent history where that kind of thing was enacted on the people of this country. If you're thinking about the COVID restrictions that were enacted, then you and I are thinking on the same page. And true enough, it's hard to compare a pandemic with a tyrannical dictator like Hitler, who denied citizens the right to attend various functions just because of their culture and their race. The point I'm making here is that whenever a government gets heavy-handed and denies its citizens basic rights, then we should be concerned and we should, in an orderly and law abiding way, push back on some of these things if we don't like them and do something so that a minor inconvenience or restriction today doesn't become something that completely takes rights away from people. And all of these restrictions and these decrees that I saw displayed were denying basic rights to people in a society for no apparent reason other than they just were not the right culture or the right group of people. Another decree that I saw was a decree that forbid Jews to purchase, own, and use firearms. That was passed in November of 1938. Now, I'm aware of the Second Amendment in the United States of America. I'm also aware that this can be a contentious issue with some people, like many issues in our country. But the right to be able to self-defend, the right to be able to protect one's person and one's family should never ever be denied to law-abiding citizens. Period. One of the things that I liked at the museum that they did was they posed some questions, and on the placard, the heading of those placards, it said, to think about. There were generally two or three questions on each of these displays. One of these displays, their questions were, why did the Nazi regime keep placing ever more restrictions on Jews? The answer seems obvious. It was that the Nazis were trying to rid society of Jewish people. And on the same display, there was a question, why did so few Germans come to the defense of Jews? Well, that answer seems obvious to me because Hitler had truly instilled in people the fear of the devil to the point where people were scared to help their neighbors for fear of what might happen to them. And really, it's hard to blame people for not wanting to do anything for fear that something might happen to them or their family. It's a really, really sad and terrible thing that happened and that Hitler exacted on the people, both the Jewish people and German citizens alike. The final question on that particular display says, or asks, why should we be wary of any instance of the removal of rights, however minor it might seem? This is what I was talking about a little bit before. We have to be aware and concerned of the things that our government does to strip away the rights of citizens. No matter how small or inconvenient it may seem, we have to be wary of it because if we're not and we don't pay attention to it, we're gonna wake up one day and realize, wow, what happened? Where did all the rights go that are guaranteed to us by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? I hope that's a question that none of us ever have to ask ourselves ever. Now, in the case of the Jews, of course, they would try to escape, but there was a display that said that Hitler's decrees against Jews left them powerless in the face of Nazi aggression. Without civil rights and citizenship protections, Jews were isolated from society and vulnerable to persecution. And ladies and gentlemen, that's exactly what happens in our society, whether it's the media, politicians, or anyone else, when they pit one group of people against another and then seek to deny basic rights, it does nothing but heap persecution on that person or group of people. And we see this all the time in our politics. If you don't believe a certain way, if you're if you believe that abortion should be legal or you believe that abortion should be illegal, it regardless of what side a person comes down on, the opposing sides make it so terrible for the other group of people. And again, that's the beauty of our constitution, ladies and gentlemen. We have the right to disagree with one another, but it's a right that we have, and that right should never be taken away. We should never have our government leading the charge to take rights away from people. That should never, ever happen. I don't care who it is. I don't care if somebody has a belief that is 180 degrees different than mine. They have the right to have that belief, and they have that right to not be persecuted because of that belief, and vice versa. Now, another display that I saw at the museum had to do with deportations and really death of the Jews. They, the German government, that is, created these ghettos, these centers where the Jews lived. One very famous one, of course, was the Warsaw Ghetto, and it began in the summer of 1942. And over the next year, more than 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto died in its gas chambers. In 1943, following the Warsaw Uprising, in which thousands of Jews were killed in combat or murdered, the Nazis destroyed the ghetto, sending the last remaining prisoners to the killing centers. Now, do you think that prior to what Hitler did, that any of the German people had any idea what might actually happen to people? I don't think so. I don't think that they ever thought that their leader would round up people and brutally murder them in just about any fashion possible. And for the German people, they may have realized it, but by then it was too late. And the government, through their propaganda machine, had already sent fear into the people, where they were extremely scared to do anything or to help in any way the Jewish people. Now it's true that there were situations where some people, civilians, participated in the killing of Jews. And that's just even more despicable than the original sin, I suppose. It's just it's terrible. Another display talked about the direction. Conditions of the ghettos. And it said, experiences varied in each ghetto depending on the location, size, and population density. Extreme misery, however, was common to all. The Nazi policy was to inflict pain and physical harm, restrict food and medicine, undermine community cohesiveness, degrade victims, and drive them to despair. Each new Nazi decree or regulation escalated the suffering. Before the gas chambers were built, tens of thousands of Jews were already dying in the ghettos from starvation, disease, and hardship. Ladies and gentlemen, it's impossible to go through any of these Holocaust museums or to visit anywhere where evil has taken place and not feel extreme sadness and extreme pain for what that particular group of people had to go through and endure. It's despicable and it's beyond melancholy. The next display that I saw was the Einsatzgruppen or the deployment groups. They were mobile units that were modeled on death squads deployed during the nineteen thirty-nine invasion of Poland. Their orders were to kill anyone perceived as a threat to Germany's advance, including communists, partisans, saboteurs, and especially Jewish men, and later Jewish women and children. Roundups of victims were usually conducted in full view of non-Jewish neighbors, who often participated not only in identifying Jews, but also in killing them. Here's some more questions on a to think about display. Why did people turn against their neighbors? What is the danger of standing by while other people's rights are violated? What responsibilities do we have to those in our communities? How did individuals' actions directly or indirectly affect the events of the Holocaust? So again, I couldn't care less about your political viewpoints. In fact, I encourage you to explore and find out and discover what you believe. That is a right that you will always have. It's a right that I will always have, and we'll have these rights if we elect people who support and defend the Constitution and make sure these rights are preserved for everyone. Because, ladies and gentlemen, the danger of standing by while the rights of others are violated is an atrocity that none of us can be or should be guilty of. We can't sit back and just say, oh, you know what, that doesn't impact me any. It's I don't believe that, so I'm not worried about it. No, one day they may come for what you believe, and then what are you going to do? My guess is you'll be looking for somebody to help you and to protect you. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I need to wrap this up, but I want to end with talking about some people who were, as far as I'm concerned, extremely brave and heroic. The first is of a Japanese diplomat by the name of Chiyun Sugahara. And what he did is he issued thousands of visas so that Jews could try to escape the Nazis. He did this on his own, which I'm sure he was living in fear every day of his life, to the point where when he got on the train, he left all of his blank visas and his stamp for people to do their own visas so they could try to flee the Nazis. Wow. Incredible. Mr. Sugihara said, After much struggle and torment, I ultimately reached the conclusion that humanity and compassion come first. I risked my career and duly executed my mission without hesitation. I'm confident even now that I did the right thing.

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Mr.

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Sugihara, I'm convinced you did the right thing as well. Wow. Here's another one. This is from Hannah Sins, S-Z-E-N-E-S. I'm sure I'm not saying that name correctly. She was Hungarian. She trained as a parachutist in Palestine and she was recruited into a British commando unit, and she was actually dropped into Yugoslavia in 1944 to fight with the Jewish resistance. She was actually captured by the Nazis and tortured for five months before she was executed. She was known to have said I could have been twenty three next July. I gambled on what mattered most. The dice were cast. I lost. Greater love hath no one than this to give his or her life for another. Another hero was a man by the name of Raoul Wallenberg. He was a Swedish diplomat. He was sent to Hungary to help save Hungarian Jews from Nazi deportation. As soon as he arrived in Budapest, Wallenberg contacted Jewish communities and began distributing certificates of protection authorized by the Swedish government. He set up more than 30 safe houses and repeatedly intervened to rescue Jews from Nazi arrest. His heroic and tireless efforts saved thousands from being transported to killing centers. Apparently, Mr. Wallenberg's demise is a mystery, but in 1989, his passport from June of 1944 was returned by the Soviets in 1989 to his family. Mr. Wallenberg was known to have said, I will never be able to go back to Stockholm without knowing inside myself that I'd done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible. Another individual who did a lot for the Jewish people was a man by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Now he was a Lutheran pastor and theologian. He was one of the first German clerics to oppose the influence of Nazi ideas on German Protestants. After World War II began, he joined the resistance, tried to arrange contacts between it and the Allies, and supported efforts to help Jews escape abroad. He was arrested in 1943, imprisoned in Berlin, and then sent to Buchenwald and Flossenburg, where the Nazis executed him in 1945, a month before the war ended. I'll end with two quotes from Holocaust survivors who settled in Houston, Texas. The first is from Walter Case. He said, quote, change isn't happening fast enough. You must make it happen faster. When you see injustice happening, stand up. End of quote. The second is from Dr. Anna Steinberger, who said this, quote, Holocaust Museum Houston is an important educational center to remind people that hatred, apathy, and prejudice can lead to disasters like the Holocaust, and that all must learn to live in peace. End of quote.