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The Reign of Nazism

Apr 4, 13 12:35 AM

When the Wehrmacht entered the Rhineland to re-take it, most were not armed. Due to a shortage of troop vehicles many rode bicycles. Hitler’s rearmament project was just getting started. While his shift of economic focus had been completely diverted to the military, the move was only a temporary fix. Construction projects were expensive, both in material and labor costs, and they created jobs; they couldn’t be put on hold. Soldiers needed to be paid, too, as did party members. Hitler’s plan was to expand Germany on a grand scale – that would generate quite a bit of revenue.

He suggested an “Anglo-German Alliance”, inviting Italy, Britain, France, Poland, China and Japan to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact. Only Italy and Japan signed the Pact. I think Hitler made the offer knowing full well that European nations would refuse; upon their refusal, he publicly stated his aim of Lebensraum, or “living space” for the German people. The pact strengthened ties with Japan and ended German support for China (whom Japan was trying to conquer); as a result, Hitler lost essential raw materials that China produced.

The issue didn’t faze him. On March 12, 1938, Anschluss was declared, and Austria was reunified with Germany. Hitler also wanted the Sudetenland – another “buffer zone” set up by Versailles, one that was home to a large number of ethnic Germans. A secret political plan to excuse military action against Czechoslovakia, which governed the Sudetenland, was hatched, but it was summarily canned when Hitler realized that he was still dependent upon oil imports and Britain’s superior navy could bring those imports to a grinding halt if he was too aggressive too soon.

The French and British were so averse to the idea of going to war again that they were willing to do anything to end it before it began. While Hitler’s plant in Sudetenland stirred up trouble on the ground, Hitler met with British PM Neville Chamberlain, French president Edouard Daladier, and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in Munich on September 29, 1938. The Czechs were deliberately left out of the Munich Summit. Chamberlain returned to London declaring “peace in our time,” holding the Munich Agreement aloft.

Hitler, meanwhile, was publicly disappointed that Germany didn’t have an excuse to declare war. His rearmament began faltering for lack of raw materials, particularly iron. He finally cracked and cut the military budget, but he refused to sit still for long. On March 15, 1939, Hitler invaded and conquered Prague. The Allies condemned him again, but refused to do anything tangible. The British vowed that Poland was their line in the sand and any German effort to invade would be met with military resistance.

Hitler took it as a challenge. He signed a non-aggression pact with Russia to set the stage for war and ordered the invasion of Poland (what most don’t know is that the pact also included a promise to split Poland between Germany and Russia, securing Russian military assistance). France and Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, but did not actually respond.

While all of this was going on, a plan to systematically rid Germanic Europe of the Jews was being put into place. Hitler was merely one man in a historic string of hardline anti-Semitic Europeans (to include Martin Luther), but he was the culmination of beliefs that the Jews were responsible for all of the world’s ills. Whereas political enemies and “moral” enemies (particularly homosexuals) were seen as salvageable, Jews were race enemies and – along with Gypsies and Poles – to be eradicated.

Dachau actually opened in 1933. At the height of the Third Reich, some 42,000 concentration camps were being operated, primarily in Germany, Austria and Poland. Shoah (literally “The Calamity”, known to most as The Holocaust) did not begin with a bang; rather, it began with a slogging gait, slowly introducing injustice after injustice until it became an act of pure horror. In April 1933, Jewish businesses were boycotted. Throughout that year, Jews were banned from nearly every respectable profession in Germany – law, medicine, and agriculture chief among them. Hereditary Health Courts were set up to order the sterilization of “undesirables”, mostly those who had physical or mental impairments.

In 1935, Hitler passed the “Blood Laws”. They stripped Jews of German citizenship, barred Jews from marrying non-Jews, and forbade German women from working as maids in Jewish households – in essence, they deprived all Jews of any semblance of civil rights. In footage from Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), Hitler gives a speech in which he says, “if international-finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging the nations into yet another world war, the consequences will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” Jewish scholars began leaving in droves around this time, with the upper- and middle-class Jews hot on their heels. Despite the globally-recognized persecution of Jews in Germany, the 1936 Olympic Games were held in Berlin.

On November 7, 1938, a Jewish teenager named Hermann Grünspan walked into the German embassy in Paris and assassinated Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath in retaliation for the persecution of some 12,000 Polish Jews in Germany (they had been forced from their homes, herded onto trains and forced back to Poland, only to be left in the snow when the Polish government refused to allow them entry). The act was used as an excuse to take more drastic action. Almost immediately, a wave of new pogroms now known as Kristallnacht began; by the end, 7,000 Jewish businesses had been vandalized, every synagogue in Germany had been either badly damaged or destroyed, and an estimated 100 Jews were dead (although the true figure is unknown). It was also used as an excuse to ban Jews from owning any kind of weapon, particularly firearms (which the Nazis required registration and permits for anyway, and now knew where to go to collect them).

Jews were forced to wear a yellow cloth badge in the form of the Star of David so that good Aryans would know whether to have civil dealings with them. Many tried desperately to leave, but with most countries enacting strict laws to halt the flow of Jewish immigrants, it became increasingly difficult. With the opening of Dachau, Jews in German-held territories who gave any excuse at all were sent to concentration camps. In 1940, they were relocated to ghettos while their homes were given to German citizens.

In April 1940, Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway. A month later he took France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The British, having realized that they should have acted long before this point when Winston Churchill had first warned them, invited Churchill to be the PM and began fighting the Nazi onslaught. Hitler badly wanted to take England and ordered London to be firebombed when the Luftwaffe failed to upstage the Royal Air Force. He asked Russia for help, but Stalin’s emissary refused. Hitler quietly ordered a plan to invade Russia for their insolence.

He didn’t know it, but he had just sealed the fate of the Third Reich. The rest of the world feared that they would never defeat him. Nobody knew where this massive conflict would go.

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A Time For Equality

Mar 27, 13 2:59 AM

When I was born, being openly gay was only acceptable in certain parts of San Francisco. Even in the Castro, police would harass known gay people. Everywhere else? Forget it. New York City wasn’t even partially as progressive as San Francisco was. I’m getting ahead of myself, though.

With the collapse of Nazi Germany (the third installation of which I will post tomorrow), a gay-rights movement sprang up in Europe, the UK, and the US. I think it may have been spurred on by the revelation that the Nazis had targeted homosexuals for extermination along with the Jews. The original movement gained a surprising amount of steam considering the conservative social sensibilities of the time. In 1966 LAPD officers raided Compton’s Cafeteria to arrest men dressed as women and a riot broke out – the drag queens and transgendered patrons destroyed the place. The next day, they went back to the cafe and smashed the newly-replaced plate-glass windows again (because, you know, destruction is the only way to get your point across when you’ve barely attempted to talk). In 1969, NYPD officers raided the Stonewall Inn, one of many mafia-owned gay bars.

Maybe I should explain here what laws were like in America at the time. Even in places that are now known as firmly leftist – Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco – there were decency laws. Some were targeted specifically towards those who identified as G, L, B, or T – in fact, it was illegal to knowingly run a bar or restaurant geared toward homosexuals. Men were not allowed to wear women’s clothing and women were not allowed to be too masculine. Laws for women were specific enough in some areas that in New York, for instance, a woman was required to wear at least three pieces of feminine clothing. Anyone caught in violation of public decency laws was subject to immediate arrest. Police harassment was commonplace. The First Amendment did not carry the same weight that it carries now; you were allowed to speak freely and express yourself, but if you ran afoul of the morality laws you no longer had those rights.

Nobody can accuse me of not knowing or understanding gay history.

Mafia crime families knew that clubs catering to gay patrons were cash cows waiting to be exploited, so they opened the first regular gay bars in Greenwich Village. They overcharged for drinks and watered down the booze, but they also paid off the police to make raids on their establishments less frequent. On June 28, 1969, four NYPD officers barged in to raid the club. Patrons began to refuse to produce IDs, so the officers decided everyone was going to jail. Male officers frisking lesbians all but sexually assaulted them. The few who were released assembled a crowd outside, even gathering passing pedestrians to witness what was going on. Finally, a lesbian being dragged out was beaten for complaining that she was uncomfortable – she called to the crowd that had gathered, at least 150 strong, to “do something!” They did. A mob of around 500 or so gravitated to the area within minutes and construction materials, particularly boards and bricks, ended up being used. Police officers had to barricade themselves inside the bar they’d raided to protect themselves. Rioters then tried to light the bar on fire, even tore a parking meter out of the ground to break the door down. Riots continued for at least five days, with multiple fires being set.

The riots were bound to happen, but Stonewall was too extreme. Much like the Black Panthers on the heels of Dr. King’s assassination, the Stonewall rioters did more to damage the cause of gay rights than they did justice. It is a good thing that gay rights organizations began to sprout nationwide, but what was the cost? Much of America began to fight back in subtler ways. It would be another thirty years before gay rights movements would be acceptable in any form. Decency laws are still on the books in some areas, merely being ignored because it’s too time-consuming for police to enforce them. Sodomy laws were already on the books in some states, but many – including my home state of Texas – enacted them in the years following Stonewall, not to be overturned for 40 years.

I explained that so I can explain this: I don’t think that a Supreme Court ruling striking down all state-level gay marriage bans or even DOMA is going to be a positive thing for gay rights. I think it would, yet again, set our cause back significantly.

The arguments being made by social conservatives about gay marriage right now are so ridiculous in many cases that I’m having a hard time keeping a straight face as I listen to them. The sanctity of marriage? Really? We have a divorce rate soaring well above 60% and they want to prattle about the sanctity of an institution that the overwhelming majority of our society abuses at an alarming rate? There’s the argument that gay couples cannot procreate. Out of curiosity, does anyone have the latest figures on married couples who either actively refuse to have children or simply can’t have children? Do we now expect all married couples to produce a child for their marriage to be valid? Yeah, I didn’t think so. My personal favorite so far is the argument that children being raised in gay homes are more prone to being ostracized – more simply, bullied. I’m sorry, but how is that my fault? Is it not YOUR prejudices that teach your children to treat other people that way? If you know your kid is being a jerk, it’s up to you to correct their behavior. It’s not my issue and I won’t be disrespected because you’re too prejudiced and lazy to do the right thing. Your religious misgivings about my sexual orientation do not deserve recognition in the law of the land any more than Sharia does.

At the same time, history has proven that gray areas like this (yes, it is a gray area, whether we like it or not – we can’t yet be classified as a race and subcultures do not count) draw intense backlash when the courts issue broad rulings too quickly. As evidence, I present Proposition 8. After the California State Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in the state, the backlash was swift and severe. Prop 8 gained popularity among far more than conservatives in the state. California voters gave Obama a resounding victory – the same people who voted for him also voted yes on Prop 8, making gay marriage illegal once again and proving that opposition to gay marriage crosses political ideologies and is not confined merely to the GOP. Why? Californians of all stripes and party affiliations were saying that the courts, comprised of judges who are not elected, are not the final authority on what the people are willing to accept. Enough liberals in California were not yet prepared to allow gay marriage that the half-hearted, snarky anti-Prop 8 campaign was doomed to failure.

And the gay left is still blaming conservatives. Forget looking inward to figure out how we can change our message, we want someone to blame.

Our society has come a hell of a long way since that late summer raid in 1969. Despite those leaps forward, the gay left is acting as if marriage equality is a life-and-death struggle. We’re not being persecuted by government agencies. We’re not being hounded by the police anymore. I’m not going to be tossed in the clink because I have short hair and my clothing couldn’t be remotely considered feminine. The argument has now turned from ending oppression to government-sanctioned happiness, and really, I don’t need the government to give me a blessing or any special privileges – I’d still love my girlfriend with wild abandon and not give a damn who sees me holding her hand or kissing her in public.

We need to learn that there is a time for all things. Not all forms of equality are going to happen overnight, and my greatest fear is that the Supreme Court would hand down a ruling that would throw the gates open for gay marriage just so society’s pendulum can begin to swing the other way and we’ll end up with hard-line social conservatives at the helm that will undo so much of what we’ve accomplished. It can happen. It has happened before. Now that the real struggle is over, we need to back off a little bit and work on winning hearts and minds.

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Open Invitation

Mar 24, 13 11:32 PM

Thanks to a friend, I recently rediscovered a blog called Skipping To The Piccolo. I don’t agree with the author all that often, but I thought he was a good writer and I started following him and even joined his Facebook following. Today, he posted this picture, shared from a group called “Americans Against the Tea Party”:

liberal.conspiracy

First of all, that he’s aligned with that group tells me that he’s remarkably anti-conservative – more so than I previously thought. Second, I posted a comment – pretty tasteful. I told him that if this is what liberals really think of conservatives, that we dislike science somehow, then liberals need to study up on us some more. His reply? “Mel – maybe conservatives need to stop letting people like Rick Perry speak for them.” My response to that was somewhat long, but I basically told him that with the likes of Dianne Feinsten talking about gun laws and rights and Obama disrespecting the military and military families at every turn and expecting that we’ll believe him when he claims to support us, liberals have plenty of people we consider stupid in their ranks. I wasn’t trying to cause trouble, I was pointing out a truth that many gay liberals choose to ignore: there are stupid people on both sides of the aisle. Stupidity is a human condition and knows no party affiliation, much like anti-gay sentiment (hello, California! Proposition 8!).

He immediately called me a troll and banned me from his page. I guess tolerance means you’re not allowed to disagree.

I try not to make things personal, but the gay liberal vs. gay conservative battles have gotten really nasty more recently, and I’m getting really tired of it. Gay liberals have begun to make everything as personal as they can. I’m not just a self-loathing closet case; I should just kill myself so the gay liberals can use my story to bash conservatives, at least according to my old friend Cliff (his exact words were “take that gun you carry and put it in your mouth so we can put your picture on YouTube and get rid of the Republicans!”). I should be beaten and left to die on a fence post so I know how it feels according to Anthony (as if HE knew how it felt). I should have my head shaved, my throat slit, and my body hung upside-down from a lamppost just like the Nazi collaborators were at the end of WWII according to Bill (that comment was bravely posted on Advocate.com – and he is a college professor, or used to be).

Until the gay left changes the way they speak and behave, there can be no end to my posts on just how intolerant and downright hateful the left can be – particularly the gay left. I’ve written about life on the gay liberal plantation and the mystery of “tolerant” gay liberals among many other similar posts, and yet still I get nothing but sneering and derision. It was a living hell coming to grips with the fact that I was a lesbian ten years ago, but it didn’t hold a candle to how hard it was to tell the group of gays who supported me during that time that I wasn’t going to change my political affiliation. Cliff and Anthony were among that group and their words hurt in ways that nobody in my church or extended family ever could. After I spent my entire life wondering why I was different, I figured out why and ended up being rejected yet again because I didn’t agree with the rest of the group.

Oh, but they want to put a stop to bullying. How sweet.

Liberals need to understand how hurtful they can be. I have, on occasion, lumped all liberals together in a post. I can’t say that I’ve ever attacked them as being traitorous and I certainly have never wished harm or death upon them. I’ve never claimed to be tolerant, although I’m far more open-minded than any liberal I know. I’m not just bragging. If anyone has a respectful, thoughtful rebuttal, I’m always open to it – I don’t get cheeky until someone insults me (which is quite often, actually). Even then I’ll still use facts and figures to back up what I’m saying because I don’t use my emotions to navigate political issues.

So David, you good Christian man, take this as an invitation: be the open mind you say conservatives need to be. The only people who have ever been banned from this blog or either of my Facebook pages are the ones who have insisted on constant personal attacks or threats. I like it when people disagree, at least as long as they do so intelligently. If you want to win people over to your way of thinking, turning your back on them when they disagree is not the way to go about it.

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The Rise of Nazism

Mar 12, 13 12:15 AM

Here is Part II of my five-part series on Nazism and how it still poses a danger.

When the NSDAP became the second-largest party in German politics in 1930, Reichswehr officers were banned from membership in the party. In September 1930, months after massive NSDAP wins, two Reichswehr officers were arrested and tried for being members of the party (which they did not deny). Adolf Hitler made a highly-publicized appearance as a defense witness at the trial. He promised that the NSDAP – the Nazis – were not an extremist organization and that they only sought to enter politics through legal means. He calmly expressed a desire to respect the laws of Germany. By now, Mein Kampf had been released in full and had become wildly popular among the working poor.

President Paul von Hindenburg had appointed Heinrich Brüning as the chancellor. The pair had begun to form a plan for staving off the economic depression that had upended German recovery – ruling by emergency decree, they had decided to enact a series of massive spending cuts that were extremely unpopular with poor and middle-class voters (and, unwittingly, set the stage for what was to come). Despite their unpopularity, the austerity measures were put into place, cutting wages for government workers (including laborers), welfare benefits for the unemployed, and raising taxes on those who made more. To say that Brüning was unpopular is a spectacular understatement – he was generally hated.

The growing dissent among the people made it all but impossible for Hindenburg to combat groups such as the Nazis and the various German communist parties.

Hitler, however, was not a citizen of Germany yet and couldn’t run for public office. An associate came up with a solution to this; on February 25, 1932, the Nazi interior minister of Brunswick appointed Hitler to the Reichsrat (the German version of the House of Representatives – the Reichstag was essentially the German version of our Senate). Shortly thereafter, he unsuccessfully ran against Hindenburg in the presidential election. The defeat was by no means a resounding one; not only did he win a sizable portion of the vote, Hitler also established himself as a force to be reckoned with in German politics. During the election, he promised peace while at the same time promising to end the ongoing humiliation that was the Treaty of Versailles.

The German government was still in disarray, though, and a group of highly-powered and wealthy Nazi party members, along with certain well-known businessmen who had given money to Hindenburg, wrote a letter begging him to appoint Hitler as chancellor. While many other wealthy German citizens and politicians mocked Hitler (calling him “the Bohemian Corporal” behind his back, referencing his lack of an education and his military service being his only real claim to fame) and admonished Hindenburg not to give the man any power, Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint him as the chancellor in the hopes that the position would stop him from running in the next election.

Hitler was no simpleton, education lacking or not. He knew that the arrangement was meant to be temporary and he had no intention of giving it up; he insisted on Nazi members Wilhelm Frick and Hermann Göring being appointed with him to positions that gave them command of most of the police throughout the country. Hitler then convinced Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and hold elections – the plan was cut short when, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag burned to the ground. I agree with Nazi historian William Schirer that Nazi party members set the fire so they could use it as a rallying cry (I would suggest his book “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”).

The day after the fire, Hitler used his power to suspend all basic rights and allow indefinite detention without just cause or a trial. He immediately ordered the roundup of all known and suspected communist party members and the Nazis gained nearly half of the seats in the new Reichstag – not enough for a majority. It required that he be somewhat diplomatic, but he still managed to ban several members of another party. Then, on March 23, 1933, a vote was held on the so-called “Enabling Acts”. The acts would give the Nazis what amounted to absolute power for four years, even giving him the ability to alter the German constitution without a vote. Hitler needed a two-thirds approval for the acts to pass, so he made a promise he had no intention of keeping – he promised members of the Center Party that president Hindenburg would still have his veto power. He continued to promise peace both to his opposition and to the people.

With crowds outside the Kroll Opera House screaming warnings that what was going on was a major threat to Germany, Hitler was set up as the Fuhrer.

Immediately, Hitler began to dispose of any who either opposed him or gave him reason to believe they would eventually oppose him. All non-Nazi political parties were banned. Trade unions, which he had expressed such love and respect for in Mein Kampf as essential to protecting German workers, were disbanded and a centralized Nazi group set up in their place (the German Labor Front). By July 14, 1933, the Nazis had complete control. SA leaders, sensing danger in Hitler’s control, attracted too much attention and after just one year in power Hitler had them rounded up and shot. He still promised peace.

Then, Hitler had the Reichstag pass a law that would combine the office of the chancellor and the president upon the death of Hindenburg. The law was a violation of the Enabling Acts, which barred Hitler from making any changes to the office of the president (it was one of the few things he wasn’t allowed to do), but that didn’t matter with the Nazis in control. Coincidentally (or not), Paul von Hindenburg died on August 25, 1934. There was now no legal means by which he could be removed from power.

With the SA now morphed into the SS (Schtuzstaffel, or Protection Squadron), Hitler could silence all opposition. He made his intention to re-militarize Germany known by ordering military leaders to have the Wehrmacht ready for war by 1938. When two high-ranking officers immediately objected, the SS invented evidence of prostitution and homosexual acts to have them removed. Shortly after Hindenburg’s death, Hitler appointed an economic minister whom he ordered to prepare the economy for war as well.

In need of money, Hitler ordered all enemies of the state to be arrested and their assets transferred to the Nazis. He ordered construction to begin on a mass scale, intent on showcasing the greatness of Germany. Unemployment dropped drastically as rearmament and major construction projects began in the lead-up to war. He continued to make promises that while he was going to end the de-militarization of buffer zones set up by the Treaty of Versailles – particularly the Rhineland – that his intentions were completely peaceful.

While he promised peace in public, behind closed doors he was planning Anschluss (making Austria part of Germany again) and ending the restrictions on the German military and arms imposed in Versailles. In March 1935, after yanking Germany from the League of Nations, Hitler announced the Wehrmacht would expand to 600,000 troops. He also announced the founding of the Luftwaffe and the expansion of the navy. One year later, in March 1936, German troops moved into the Rhineland. Britain and France did nothing but protest. Still, Hitler promised peace.

The rise of Nazism was complete.

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The Birth of Nazism

Mar 10, 13 8:04 PM

A couple of years ago, I began a series based on a very long college essay I was writing. I decided to start over…here is part one of five.

Young Adolf Hitler was an artist. Most people who don’t follow history closely don’t know this important fact about the man. When he was a teenager, his father insisted on sending him to a technical school so he could learn a trade skill that would make real money; Adolf, raised by a very strict authoritarian father (Alois) and an oversympathetic, doting mother (Klara), deliberately failed at school in his teen years in the hopes of forcing his father to enroll him in art school.

We all know now that his drive was fruitless. Adolf was Austrian and he grew up with friends who believed that Austria belonged to Germany. German nationalism was strong in the run-up to WWI. Only after his father’s passing did Adolf finish school and he only passed by the skin of his teeth – he still wanted to be an artist, and his mother supported his ambition. He ended up living as a bohemian in Vienna while he attempted to gain acceptance to the Art Institute of Vienna. Twice he was turned down because he didn’t have the “aptitude” for painting. By 1909 he’d been selling watercolor landscapes to tourists in Vienna for four years and was living in a homeless shelter. In 1913 the government finally turned over his father’s estate and Adolf moved to Munich.

Adolf’s Austrian citizenship was set aside when he volunteered to join the Bavarian army in August of 1914. He was made a messenger (a job that was extremely hazardous at the time) and was highly decorated – earning the Iron Cross, both second- and first-class, along with the black wound badge. He was wounded at least twice during his duties. When the Germans surrendered in 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles was signed, Adolf was enraged. During speeches later in his career he proclaimed that, as he lay in a hospital bed blinded by mustard gas, he knew that he would be the one to liberate Germany.

He knew that his career options were nonexistent, so he stayed in the army for the newly-formed Weimar Republic. In 1919, he was assigned to infiltrate the Deutsch Arbiterpartei – or the DAP, in English the German Worker’s Party. It was an anti-Weimar socialist organization formed to represent the working poor and push socialist ideals. During a meeting one evening, Adolf got into a row with a member who suggested the unthinkable: Bavaria separating from Germany, forming with Austria and creating an entirely new country. DAP founder Anton Drexler was so impressed with Adolf’s oratory skills that he immediately offered the young soldier membership in the party. Adolf left the army and joined in 1920.

He rapidly rose to a leadership position. His public speaking skills were so natural that he was described as “mesmerizing” and “hypnotic”. The year he joined, Adolf changed the name of the party to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsch Arbeiterpartei – the NSDAP, or the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. The very first syllable is pronounced “Nazi”.

And so, anti-communist socialism became an officially-recognized political party in Germany.

Adolf the artist designed the new NSDAP logo, a swastika – a symbol commonly used by many cultures prior – in a white circle superimposed on a red background. In just one year Adolf had brought a few thousand members into the ranks, but in 1921 a small but vocal group within the leadership attempted to oust him as the party leader. Adolf angrily resigned; the group knew that without him, they would disintegrate, so they offered him anything he wanted to remain. He insisted on being the Fuhrer, the only recognized leader of the NSDAP. His wish was granted. He also formed the Sturmabteilung, or SA – the NSDAP’s “stormtroopers”.

In 1922, reparations payments as ordered by the Treaty of Versailles helped cause the hyperinflation of the German Mark – German paper currency essentially became worthless, at around 8000 Marks on the US Dollar. This further angered the NSDAP, which now commanded a force of thousands of members alongside thousands of SA to do Adolf’s dirty work. Since the Weimar Republic couldn’t get France, Britain, and the US to accept paper Marks anymore, the French moved in and occupied the Ruhr to ensure that reparations were being paid in goods – specifically coal and industrial materials produced in German factories. It got worse when the workers in the mines and factories went on strike; the government printed more money to keep paying the workers.

Germany had descended into economic chaos. In 1922, while Germans were taking wheelbarrows full of worthless Marks to the food lines to buy basic items, Italian fascist Benito Mussolini etched his name into the history books with his March on Rome. Adolf Hitler, growing ever angrier at the state of his beloved country, was taken by Il Duce – so much so that he decided to emulate his actions. On November 9, 1923, Adolf ordered 600 SA to surround the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich. Weimar state commissioner Gustav von Kahr, who had refused to entertain the notion of including Adolf in any new government and laughed the man out of his office, was speaking to a crowd of about 3,000. He dramatically marched into the auditorium surrounded by 20 of his NSDAP associates, fired a round into the ceiling and proclaimed that the government of Bavaria had been taken over and nobody was allowed to leave.

The Beer Hall Putsch ended the next morning after a mass crowd of 2,000 couldn’t figure out exactly what to do and were scattered by a force of only 100 soldiers (incredible considering that most of the rioters were former soldiers themselves). Adolf was taken into custody two days later, and on April 1, 1924, a judge eternally sympathetic to the cause of the accused in his courtroom sentenced Adolf to a measly 5 years. He only served eight months. The Putsch may have been a technical failure, but it ended up being a massive propaganda victory for the NSDAP. Adolf’s prison guards showed him respect and even pledged loyalty to his cause. It was during his imprisonment that he dictated Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess.

On December 20, 1924, Adolf walked free. He didn’t receive the hero’s welcome he expected; during his incarceration, the economy had greatly improved and politics had become far less violent since workers did not feel nearly as put upon. What’s more, the NSDAP had become a banned organization in Bavaria and Adolf himself was barred from public speaking. He refused to give up, though. In January 1925, he promised government officials that he would only seek political power through honest public elections. He was hoping to have the ban on the NSDAP lifted, although he still wasn’t allowed to speak. Instead, Mein Kampf was published, and in 1925 the first volume was published to wide praise from the general population. He and his associates moved to Northern Germany to re-found the NSDAP. Joined by a group of highly skilled community organizers, Adolf Hitler went to work slowly working his way into government – he had realized that a sudden takeover would never be tolerated.

Then came the Great Depression. In October 1929, the US economy crashed and sent the still-recovering German economy into a tailspin. Millions lost jobs. President Paul von Hindenburg began ruling through emergency decrees. Adolf and the NSDAP, long telling the people that the Treaty of Versailles had been grossly unfair, found their stride during this time: they promised to end the promises of Versailles and renew pride in Germany.

In 1930, NSDAP members – all previously unknown to the public – won 107 seats in the Reichstag. The rise of Nazism had officially begun.

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What Right Did They Have?

Feb 28, 13 6:26 PM

(Author’s Note: my good friend Meredith wrote an excellent piece on the recent emerging stories of journalists being intimidated by members of the Obama administration. Click here, read, and give her some love!)

Someone whose opinion I have long valued just dropped a bomb on me. He no longer believes that the Jews had a right to found the Nation of Israel.

His question to me? “What right did the Jews have to displace the people living in the Palestinian Mandate?”

I’m going to answer that here, because apparently The Economist ignores the fact that Israel has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and believes that Israel had no right to be founded. The common argument has become one of turning the spotlight on us (deflecting is a poor way of winning an argument, by the way) – how would we, as Americans, feel if the Mexicans decided that they wanted to finally carry out Reconquista and take back the Southwestern United States by force? Well, first of all, Mexico wasn’t originally Mexico – it was taken over by the Spaniards, and if you really wanna get technical, there are indigenous people who were murdered and displaced by the ancestors of today’s Mexicans, so really, they don’t have a claim to their own land if you look at it that way.

But I digress.

Nations and cultures the world over have hated the Jews for centuries. If you go back far enough, it really started with Roman Christians a few generations after the crucifixion of Jesus blaming the Jews for “murdering” Him. (Side note: my take on that is that it’s ridiculous to blame the Jews. Jesus Himself didn’t have to die – He could have killed everyone who came for Him with a snap of His fingers, but He made the choice to go to His death willingly because all of mankind needed a way to get to God, and His sacrifice was that way.) This attitude carried over until the mid-1400′s, when Jews were restricted to very, very few professions – one of them being the middle-age version of banking. For centuries, it was one of the only real professions Jews were ever allowed to hold anywhere. They became adept at saving, lending, and larger economic principles because they had to.

Jews scattered to the four corners of the world never lost their longing to return to the Israel that had been founded by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In 1881, the First Aliyah began due to severe persecution of Jews worldwide – pogroms in Europe and Russia. In Russia, the assassination of Alexander II ended up being blamed on the Jews and they had to flee en masse. The overwhelming majority of the 3 million or so Jews came to the United States, but about 25,000 went to the area that once was Israel – which, at the time, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

At the time, there were already sizable Jewish enclaves in major cities in the area, particularly Jerusalem. The financial industry wasn’t established at all in the region, and most of the new settlers had absolutely no farming experience, so a British lord (whose name escapes me at the moment) gave them some help.

In 1904, the Second Aliyah began – and more than 40,000 Jews immigrated to the region, all expelled from Russia and Yemen. The Kishinev Pogrom kicked it off. In April 1903, an article in an anti-Semitic Russian publication claimed that a boy found dead and a young girl who committed suicide and was declared dead at a Jewish hospital were actually murdered by Jews who wished to use their blood in the preparation of matzah for Passover. The pogrom was led by Russian Orthodox priests and calls to kill the Jews were made as entire Jewish neighborhoods were leveled. By the time it was over, 49 Jews were dead, nearly 600 wounded and thousands were homeless. The very next year, Aliyah began – and in 1905, a second pogrom born of anti-Czar protests left 19 Jews dead, more than 50 wounded and hundreds more homeless.

It should be no surprise that Theodor Herzl would give birth to the World Zionist Organization. Jews were hated everywhere, to the point of mass murder. They needed a home – more than they knew. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire during WWI, the area known as Palestine (so named by the Romans, “Palestina”) became a tribal area with no government. Arabs quarreled with Jews in the area, sometimes had all-out battles with them, but that was nothing new – Jews weren’t wanted anywhere they went. The Russian Revolution led to the murder of 100,000 Jews and another 500,000 being turned out of their homes.

Then came the Nazis and Shoah. The pogroms escalated until Jews were forced out of their businesses, then their homes, then their ghettos – then their lives. between six and eight million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis (along with three million other “undesirables”, including homosexuals and gypsies). By the time Shoah had begun, there were around 200,000 Jews living in the British Mandate of Palestine. Muslims in the area rioted in 1920, protesting continuing Aliyah. Also, America had enacted severe limitations on immigration and the British were tired of trying to quell Muslim riots against Jewish immigration so they banned Jews from immigrating to the area – the Jews literally had nowhere to go. They had to immigrate in secret.

The area known as Palestine has never been an actual nation. It was originally a tribal region populated by farmers and shepherds until the Muslims came in and slaughtered them all – by 1938, the Palestinians were made up of the descendents of the Muslims who invaded and took the area by force (which led to the Crusades, but that’s a different argument). Jews made up nearly 35% of the population in the region by the end of WWII. Muslims in Palestine were so opposed to the Jews living there that Britain finally had to give up and leave. While the entire area from the Mediterranean all the way to the Eastern border of modern-day Jordan was originally supposed to be Israel, The United Nations had to come up with a compromise. The Jews needed a home, and the Muslims in the Palestinian Mandate hated the Jews just as much as the Russians and Europeans did. Their compromise? Two states: one for the Jews, one for the Muslims. 20% of the land originally promised as Israel became Eretz Israel. The rest became Transjordan.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion declared Israeli independence. On May 15, every surrounding nation – Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria – declared war and attacked Israel. Some 700,000 Palestinians left – many will try to tell you that they were kicked out, but in reality, the majority of them left of their own volition. Only about 100,000 had been expelled from their homes and Israel later offered to allow them to come back, even offered citizenship and full rights as Israeli citizens; they all refused. It was Muslim Palestinians who began the violence against Jews settling in the area, and the Jews had to fight back; eventually they started hitting back afterwards to make it clear that they weren’t going to be pushovers. It still hasn’t ended.

Israel today is more accepting than any other Mideast nation. Whereas gays and lesbians are tortured and killed by Muslims in neighboring countries, they are welcomed in Israel. The Israelis have also contributed more to science, agriculture and economic issues than all of the Islamic republics combined. Yet we have gay groups in America standing against Israel and supporting groups that would murder them if they visited.

Golda Meir, one of my heroes, said quite succinctly, “there will only be peace when the Palestinians decide they love their children more than they hate us.”

What right did they have? I think it’s pretty clear.

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It Just Can’t Happen Again

Jan 27, 13 1:57 AM

Somewhere between 400,000 and 600,000 marched for life in Washington, DC on Friday, January 25. There wasn’t much said in the media – in fact, the last time one of the MSM shills interviewed someone about the abortion problem in America, Andrea Mitchell slapped down Juleanna Glover – after Glover had called herself “deeply pro-life” Mitchell insisted that she call herself “anti-abortion” in order to “use the term that I think is more value-neutral.”

Half a million people marched. That’s pretty impressive. Guess how many marched in support of gun control in Washington, DC the next day?

The best guess anyone is willing to offer is “thousands.” That’s it. Nobody is willing to say for sure because the left-wing media knows full well that it won’t come close to the volume of people that showed up for the March for Life.

I, personally, am thoroughly disgusted by how biased the media is being right now.

They have made clear that they don’t give a damn about the facts. They aren’t interested in actually protecting children; they see Sandy Hook and other mass shootings as a stepping stool to complete gun control, eventually even an outright UK-style ban. They have always wanted guns to be banned. Guns are only used for killing, you see. For that reason we have no right to own them. If you ask Sylvester Stallone, he’ll tell you that “it’s not 200 years ago, we don’t need this [the Second Amendment] anymore!” Yes, he actually said that. In fact, he said it in 2008 when he endorsed John McCain for president.

I hate to tell you this, Sly, but we do need it now. We need it more than ever.

The most disgusting thing about the march for gun control yesterday were the signs that said, “We Are Sandy Hook, We Choose Love.” Really? You think that because you are against guns, you are somehow more loving than I am? Let me explain something…I love every child in my family. Every single one of my nieces and nephews is a gift from God. I love them so much that if anyone ever tried to harm them, I would kill that person with my bare hands. I would rather they see me kill a person who is trying to be violent than have to bury them. What would I say to them in the aftermath? That there are bad people in the world, and you should never choose violence, but you should always be ready to defend yourself if the need arises. Yes, I believe those children are worth far more than the animals trying to murder them. Yes, I would be willing to kill to protect them. Yes, it is because I love them. The fact that anyone would accuse me of not loving those kids is an insult that I refuse to abide.

March organizer Molly Smith said she was “horrified by it [Sandy Hook].” Do you think we weren’t? Does anyone really believe that those of us who believe in and actively exercise our Second Amendment rights weren’t absolutely tortured at the thought of what those families were going through, what those children experienced in their last moments of life? There is a word for those who do believe such nonsense: narcissists.

My little brother has picked up a gun and gone to war twice because he loved his country and his family. He didn’t want us to have to survive another 9/11. He didn’t want his wife and children to live in fear. A good friend of mine died in that war because he believed in freedom and taking the fight to the bad guy rather than cowering and begging for mercy. Other friends came home in pieces because they believed in the cause of freedom. Now you want to tell them that they can’t defend their families on their own soil, in their own homes? You want to tell them – tell ME – that we cannot be trusted with the same tool that won our freedom in the first place and has won peace many times since?

Perhaps the absolute silliest parallel drawn during the gun control march came from 78-year-old James Agenbroad. He carried a sign that read, “Repeal the 2nd Amendment.” He said, “you can repeal it. We repealed prohibition.”

I don’t think Mr. Agenbroad really understands what he’s saying here. Prohibition was an outright ban on the manufacturing, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages. It lasted from 1920-1933. You could drink, you just couldn’t brew or distill or transport the stuff (making it a little hard to drink). Prohibition was a spectacular failure. It did absolutely nothing to stop alcohol from being produced, sold and transported – in fact, it made the trade a more lucrative business. It was Al Capone’s business.

You cannot make a point about gun control – repealing the Second Amendment and banning and confiscating all civilian-owned firearms – by invoking the repeal of a law that banned alcohol. If you don’t understand the ludicrosity of his statement, you are beyond my help.

What do you do when someone like Adam Lanza shows up with guns that the law prevented him from buying to shoot innocent people? Well, first you hide. Then you call 911 to beg for rough men and women to bring their guns to shoot him and stop his killing spree. There is nothing wrong with being afraid and wanting to hide. The problems come when you expect me to do what you’re doing. It will never happen. The fact that I see how evil people can be and am willing to stand up to them does not make me dangerous, nor does it make me different.

I’m not sure how much more I can take of these blithering nitwits declaring that “it just can’t happen again.” You keep saying that, and yet you’re setting us all up to be walking targets.

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Please, Make It Stop!

Jan 10, 13 8:45 PM

Many of my friends have been posting a video clip of Alex Jones on Piers Morgan telling the British liberal elitist that “1776 will commence again” if the government tries to take our guns. They all think it’s great, but they forget who he is.

Jones is a 9/11 truther, a bona fide member of the tin-foil hat brigade who was interviewed along with several other truthers for a History Channel special on 9/11 conspiracy theories – toward the end of the special, he compared himself to Galileo, saying, “I’m saying the world is round, I’m saying that 9/11 is an inside job, I’m showing the official story is a fraud, a flat Earth theory, and I know I’m going to be vindicated.” Later, outside the Denver Mint (near the 2008 Democratic Convention was taking place), Jones went on a screaming rant during which he chased Michelle Malkin around the crowd, calling her “evil” and “a monster”. In an interview after that incident he claimed that he was set up, that his voice was normal, he was being polite and just asking a question – but that Malkin’s “people” created the video as disinformation.

In short, Alex Jones is a couple of french fries short of a Happy Meal.

I can’t stand the guy. He’s an embarrassment to the conservative cause. Completely aside from fudging the fact that 1776 actually wasn’t the start of the American Revolution (it had been cooking for years prior to the outbreak of the actual war, with the Tea Party occurring in 1773 – yes, I really am that cheeky), Jones did exactly what Piers invited him on the show to do: have a complete meltdown.

Jones fudges a few points in his long-winded growling and howling session. He states that out of 11,000 supposed gun deaths in America in 2012 (a figure that can’t be backed up since statistics won’t be available until next year), 74% were gang-related – that is false, and he never says where he gets his ridiculous statistics. The most recent statistics available from the FBI show that in 2011, 12,664 homicides occurred. Of that number, right around 68% were committed with firearms – 8,583 exactly. About 53% of all homicides occurred during the commission of another crime (burglary, robbery, auto theft, rape, etc.). According to the statistics, only about 673 homicides in 2011 were inter-gang in nature – that’s about .5% of all homicides. Oops.

Rather than calmly countering Piers’ questions about gun murders in the US as opposed to the UK (something that’s easy to do if you simply compare violent crime rates as a whole), Jones just calls him “a Hatchet Man of the New World Order” and then tells him to set up a boxing ring. Jones is a one-man wrecking crew; Piers knew what he was doing when he invited him, and Jones played right into it. He beautifully made the Limey’s point that those of us who support the Second Amendment are all drooling mouth-breathers who don’t know how to have an intelligent conversation.

He is the pathetic caricature that President Obama paints all conservatives as. Sadly, the media is only to happy to give him airtime because of it.

Not quite two years ago, however, Ted Nugent went on Piers Morgan’s show and very articulately took him out to the woodshed on gun control. It’s so beautiful it almost brought a tear to my eye. You aren’t going to see Nuge or John Lott on Piers right now…he’s too busy building the aforementioned narrative.

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Tragedy, Made Easy

Dec 5, 12 2:07 AM

It’s hard to think about what Jovan Belcher may have been thinking early Saturday morning when he shot his girlfriend at his home (in front of his mother, no less). In the past two days he’s been described as laid-back, jovial, hard-working and dedicated. It has even been reported that while he played for the University of Maine he joined the Male Athletes Against Violence Initiative. After shooting Kasandra Perkins, though, he drove to Arrowhead Stadium for Chiefs practice – only to thank his coach and general manager for what they’d done for him and later turn the gun on himself.

As tragic as this is, people can’t simply take in the gravity and mourn what’s happened. It wasn’t even 48 hours before leftists in the media were calling for an end to the “gun culture” in America. Bob Costas spoke of the issue during halftime on the broadcast of the Cowboys/Eagles game, agreeing with a Kansas City writer that “If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.” Mike Lupica of the NY Daily News declared that “Murdering this young woman, 22, and then killing himself in front of his coach and his general manager was made easy by a gun, because a gun always makes it easier.” It hasn’t even been two days and too many people have pinned this on guns.

Costas quoted KC writer Jason Whitlock, who also wrote, “Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.” While I agree with his remarks that Roger Goodell should have cancelled Sunday’s game in KC, I could not disagree more with one of his final statements: “Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.”

Here again, we see the phenomenon of those in a position of high visibility using a senseless tragedy to try to push an agenda. Rather than take a deeper look at society’s problems, they are quick to blame the gun. It’s easier that way because we don’t have to look at ourselves or ask what really does need to be changed – and how we got here in the first place. Blaming the gun absolves us of having to do or say anything that really might make a few heavy-hitters remarkably uncomfortable.

Sorry, Mr. Whitlock. It’s not the “gun culture” that drives young men to pull out the gats and start spraying rival gang members with bullets. “That gun was just irresistable, it made me feel like a man!” said no murderer, ever. I’ve been a corrections officer, and I know exactly what the problem with our culture is – but you don’t want to hear it. That’s why you’re so quick to blame a culture that really doesn’t exist in your quest for an answer.

When I was a kid, rap was just coming into the mainstream. Back in the 80′s, rap wasn’t nearly as violent as it is now. It wasn’t exactly peacenik music, but rap took an extremely dark turn in the 90′s when Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls (among others) came onto the scene. Suddenly, we had a new brand of “music” (if you could call it that) that glorified gang membership, selling drugs to get rich, flaunting illegally-gotten gain and being extremely violent. It carried the objectification of women to an entirely new level, even glorifying rape. Shakur was killed in 1996, but as of last year has sold 75 million albums. The man had the words “thug life” tattooed across his abdomen. Snoop Doggy Dog has sold more than 30 million albums to date. He’s a declared member of the Crips, was in and out of prison before making it big. As a convicted felon, he’s barred by federal law from owning a handgun but has been very proud in flaunting the fact that he has guns and has been arrested on multiple weapons violations. Dr. Dre founded Death Row Records, has sold tens of millions of albums and has launched the careers of some of the biggest names in rap, including Snoop, 50 Cent, Eminem and The Game. I won’t even bother trying to quote rap lyrics because most of it would be blurred out and the editors would still need me to apologize.

Video games are also vastly different than when I was a kid. I had Pong and Frogger when I was little, followed by Super Mario Bros. and Kid Icarus as a teenager. Nowadays? We have the Grand Theft Auto series, a wildly popular game that has the player building a criminal empire from knee-breaker to high-roller – usually while getting revenge on another double-crossing bad guy. That series alone has sold 114 million copies across five versions.

Does anyone really still labor under the delusion that guns, and not pop culture itself, are to blame for the rise in violent tendencies? I started off in juvenile corrections. If they hadn’t taught us the statistics of youth involved in crime in the academy, we certainly would have learned the common denominators while walking the beat – the overwhelming majority of kids who have been adjudicated as delinquent and sentenced to real time come from single-parent homes, and those that knew both of their parents had one (usually their father) who was a convicted felon. Most of them were woefully undereducated; in fact, I lost track of how many were completely illiterate. They couldn’t have told you the difference between a noun and a verb, but they could have excused their glorification of the thug life so eloquently that they could almost make a believer out of you.

We were once a society that frowned upon having a child out of wedlock. Now we’re seeing astronomical rates of illegitimacy coupled with rapidly dwindling interest in education (and when someone tries to say, “hey, I made a mistake, don’t do what I did,” they’re derided by the press – Bristol Palin comes to mind). Whereas education was once important to America, we’re now at the bottom of the global pile and we’re trying to defend the educational system that has been an abysmal failure since my childhood. We have so-called experts telling teachers not to grade with red ink and teachers who don’t believe in homework or giving a student a failing grade because it’s too negative – then we expect these ill-prepared children who have no idea how to grow up to go out into the world and make something of themselves. All of this while they listen to violent music, play violent games, and glorify the lives of hardened criminals who get featured on VH1 for writing music while in prison. Discipline has all but gone the way of the dinosaur as liberals have managed to blur the lines between discipline and abuse. All of this in the name of self-expression – a purely emotional concept that teaches extremes that children should be learning to control, not vent.

I don’t believe for an instant that Jovan Belcher was violent. I think he may have had head injuries common to NFL players that contributed to his tragic end. Let’s not kid ourselves, though – all of these people now claiming that the ease with which he obtained his gun and the supposed gun-loving culture we live in made this happen are deluding themselves. Rather than look inward to see what we could change, they’d rather find another culprit so they don’t have to question all of their other beliefs about life and society. It’s unfair to the families of Belcher and Perkins to shift that blame. It’s tragic for future generations that we’re not willing to be honest.

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The Mystery of “Tolerant” Gay Liberals

Nov 28, 12 3:14 AM

A friend who reads the blog was recently quoted in a New York Times article about lesbian conservatives. I was surprised – it was very tasteful, something I hadn’t expected from the Times. My hope that we might be looking toward actually being respected for once was immediately dashed when Bruce over at GayPatriot linked an op-ed from Advocate.com about “The Mystery of Gay Republicans.”

If I wasn’t angry before, I certainly am now. In fact, I’m downright pissed off.

Broadway diva John Carroll is the author, and considering the fact that I’ve been openly hated (and even threatened) in the comments section of multiple articles on that website – to the point that I no longer post comments there – I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I am appalled at his open hatred and intolerance. I have to ask, where is all of this tolerance the gay left keeps preaching?

Carroll sings the worship of Obama and describes his elation at the President’s re-election, then goes on to detail everything the President has done for the LGBT community. True enough, he ended DADT – it didn’t happen in a vacuum, though. There were Republicans who wanted to see the policy end. I have friends and family in the military who never saw a point to banning gay and lesbian troops from serving, all of them conservative in nature. What else does Carroll claim the messiah has done?

Well, he signed the Mathew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Act into law. So what? How many times have I asked why we need a law to make our lives more valuable than the lives of straight people? Why do we need a hate crimes law in cases where the murderers were already sentenced to death? What are you going to do – resuscitate them then execute them a second time? If you’re like most liberals who are against the death penalty, what more can you give Matt Shepard’s killers than life in prison without the possibility of parole? Do you really think that sentencing them to 400 years is going to send a message that people should stop and ask, “hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t beat this guy to death…after all, I might be kept in prison until my corpse has rotted!” It’s one step closer to hate speech legislation. Sorry, but that’s no great leap forward in gay rights.

What about his executive order to all facilities that accept Medicare/Medicaid patients to immediately allow patients to be cared for by their same-sex partners? That wasn’t just for us, kids. It was a blanket order forcing hospitals to allow patients to decide who they wish to see and who will make decisions for them. What that order doesn’t have power over are situations where the patient is incapacitated and there’s no living will in place (I learned in EMT school to have one, and my significant other is listed on it along with my father). If you get into a wreck and you are brought to the hospital in a state of unconsciousness, the hospital still has every right to restrict your visitors to immediately verifiable relatives. We’re still not onto anything major here.

He announced that the Dept of Justice would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. I’m sorry, but how is this supposed to make me happy? He didn’t say he was going to work to repeal it, he just said he wouldn’t defend it anymore. That is what we riding the fence, and it’s a tactic commonly employed by politicians looking to seal the gay vote in their bag. By not openly supporting DOMA the way he did during the 2008 elections, he gets on your good side. It’s his way of making you happy without having to anger the rest of the liberal base. Believe what you will but there are many Democrats who still believe that homosexuality is wrong and gay marriage is an abomination. Ask Bill Clinton, who signed it into law. Ask Democrats Robert Byrd, Dick Gephardt, James Clyburn, Gary Condit, Dick Durbin, John Edwards, Steny Hoyer, Jack Murtha, Chuck Schumer, and Bart Stupak – every single one of them supported DOMA when it was passed, and not a single one has come out to say it should be repealed although most of them are still in Congress (two of them died while in Congress, having never admitted they were wrong to vote for it). Republican Bob Barr, on the other hand, helped write the bill and he has vocally come out in saying he was wrong and DOMA should be repealed.

I’m sorry…that last bit didn’t fit the narrative very well, did it?

He expanded benefits for federal employees to unmarried, same-sex partners. Fantastic. My life is already better. Not much to sing about, since the VERY Republican state I live in, along with the very Republican state that Sarah Palin hails from, allow the same kind of thing for the same-sex partners of State employees as well.

He directed all federal agencies engaged abroad to “promote and protect” the human rights of LGBT people in foreign countries. That’s rich…you mean the rights of 12 men currently awaiting execution in Libya for being accused of being gay? How about the rights of gays in Uganda who face stiff jail sentences or even death for engaging in homosexual sex acts? Oh, I know – they’re talking about protecting the rights of gay people in Egypt, Iran and Gaza! (Meanwhile, back on the farm…) Barack Obama has favored Sharia-led nations and their rights for his entire administration, and we have heard him pay lip service to protecting the interests of gay people abroad, but action is scarce. I sincerely doubt that Carroll (or any other gay liberal) could name a single instance in which any member of Obama’s cabinet has made even a half-hearted attempt to intervene on behalf of any gay person in a foreign country.

Oh, but he came out in support of gay marriage! WOOHOO! Hold on there, Sparky. All he did (yet again) was pay lip service to the issue. He may claim to support our rights to marry, but he currently calls it a “state’s rights issue” (the same thing the gay left got mad at McCain for saying back in 2008, as I recall) and told MTV flat-out that gay marriage was not going to be an issue he is willing to take up in his second term. Here’s the telling part, though: he blathered about his supposedly personal beliefs about gay marriage for a couple of minutes before getting to the part where he said he wasn’t willing to approach the issue. Not one of you have called him out for merely claiming to support it and not being willing to do anything. He was playing every one of the gay liberals who voted for him like a fiddle and they let him get away with it.

Gay liberals talk about how we, as conservatives, are willing to merely take scraps from the Republicans’ table. What on Earth do they think they’re doing? They’re supporting a party that lies to their faces. At least I know exactly where I stand with Republicans. Plus, they’ll sit down and talk to me while they won’t give the likes of Carroll the time of day. Why? Because they know that I care about their rights, too, and I’m not being so brazenly insulting that they can’t stand to be in the same room with me.

Instead of wondering how their bastion state, California, could possibly pass Prop 8, now they’re breathlessly asking what Obama can do during this term to further the rights of gays in America. Sorry, folks. This term won’t be one for the record books. He’s not actively trying to repeal DOMA, he’s not interested in fighting for gay marriage, and he’s not even broaching the subject of adoptions for gay couples.

The comment that really roasts me is where Carroll says, “So basically a vote is cast for their bank account while they remain spiritually bankrupt.” Wait just one damned minute. Is that not the exact same kind of line that the gay community has so despised American Christians for? Super-religious Christians are famous for calling gay people spiritually bankrupt. I listened to it all throughout my childhood. He’s willing to make a moral case out of his arguments, but he dismisses the moralizing of the other side as being…what, irrelevant? Who decides who is right? Whose morality is the right one? How do you know that your brand of moralizing is somehow better than the ones you’re so mad at in the first place? Somehow, in an article written about the desire for tolerance, you manage to come off as a self-righteous, arrogant cretin, especially when you congratulate yourself for turning your back on a gay Republican at a party.

Maybe I should tell myself that it gets better.

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