More symptoms of insanity on the American right

[fpb]

In yesterday's American Thinker, a man with the Italian name of Bonelli wrote the following, extremely offensive statement:

The United States is different from most other countries in many ways. One unique aspect of our country is that our elected officials, officers of the court, and the military, all pledge their allegiance to the Constitution and not to an office, individual or party. This assures continuity of the ideals set forth by the founders.

As an Italian citizen, I have personally sworn to defend the Constitution of my country when I served in the Italian army. The presumption involved in this ignorant display of insular arrogance is an insult to every constitutional government in the world.

Comments

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

In coming back and reading this post, I can see I may have made the point I was wanting to make, albeit with a sledgehammer. This was not written in a Christian manner and for that I am sorry, it represents my own thoughts poorly and also made you angry.

I do acknowledge that there were folks here in the US that were advocating eucenics and birth control and all that crazy stuff at the same time as/or before Hitler. I am no stranger to Margaret Sanger and her Eugenicist cronies . But things here took longer to be enacted than in Europe. Do you have an idea why that is, being a European yourself? Sanger was thought to be wildly off her rocker at the time and was a far cry from the likes of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Do you not think that Europeans have lost their faith?

I remember you once saying that in some election, your parents had voted against the bishops and for some divorce law. I hope I have not gotten that incorrect. Why do you not think the bishops were successful in influencing the vote if the majority of folks are staunch Catholics? Is there something else at play here? Just honest questions.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

I do acknowledge that there were folks here in the US that were advocating eucenics and birth control and all that crazy stuff at the same time as/or before Hitler. I am no stranger to Margaret Sanger and her Eugenicist cronies . But things here took longer to be enacted than in Europe. Do you have an idea why that is, being a European yourself?

fpb will probably give a better and less ignorant answer, but this is a subject which has interested me for a while and I have my own ideas. (I'd invite correction though.) I would say that Europe was left spiritually vulnerable by the wounds of two world wars fought on her own soil. And in the case of Germany in particular, the wound left by the first of these, rather than having any time to heal, was quickly filled by Hitler's personality.

Still, that might not have happened without Hitler's American patron, Henry Ford, who bankrolled Hitler's rise to power and whose literature the Nazis translated into German and distributed. It is possible I am overstating Ford's role; Hitler had many supporters in America and internationally. But it was Ford's portrait, and no other's, which Hitler proudly displayed over his desk, and Ford whom he identified has his patron.

In a way, it was a blessing. All the same trends were in play in the US, and I think we only stepped back from the brink -- for a time -- because Germany (animated by the concentrated mania of a single personality) raced over the edge so far in advance of us. Even Ford repented when he was faced with the realities of the concentration camps.

Unfortunately the reprieve was relatively short-lived. The US has not always been at the very head of the pack with respect to legalizing the insanity, but it has been very close to it (the legalization of abortion in most Western European countries was after Roe versus Wade), and it is from the US that much of the funding for international abortion and euthanasia advocacy comes.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

(I do also realize that I'm not European. ;)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That does it. I will have to write an article - not because you are wrong, but because your portrait needs filling out.

Incidentally, after the war was over, Hitler's Minister for Labour, Dr.Robert Ley, applied to Henry Ford for a post in his organization. (A.& J. Tusa, Nuremberg, page 133)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That was 1973. I would have to write an article about recent Italian history, but you may take it that the two referenda on divorce and abortion were the low point of the Church in Italy, with a large minority of churchgoers rejecting the Bishops' advice in perfectly good conscience (and a good few priests and bishops being nothing like as supportive as they should have been).

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

A large minority were able to win an election?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

A large minority of Catholics plus the totality of secularists.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

Then how many in Italy are self-identified as Catholic? I recently saw an article that said 99%, which I did not believe.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Heh. That is the $64,000 question. There are very few native religious minorities (although those that do exist, such as about forty thousand Jews and as many Waldensian Protestants, are ancient and respected and punch above their weight), and something like 94% of the population was baptized into the Catholic Church at birth. There is, however, a strong and native anti-clerical and secularist tradition, which was at one time politically dominant in the country, and may well be said to have created the Italian nation. My definition of secularist includes members of my own family who believe in God but say all sorts of things about the Pope, abortion and a few other things.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

Now I am starting to understand how things ended up how they are. Do you forsee a change once these anti-clericals or secularist generations finally pass? To you see a return of the faithful? We are starting to see it here.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The secularist tradition is 150 years old, and its roots go even further back. Do you know which was the last government in Europe to try to start a state-sponsored schism from the Catholic Church? The Grand-Duchy of Tuscany, capital Florence - the very heart of Italy - in 1786. Jansenism, anti-clericalism and a creeping temptation to paganism are part of the Italian landscape, history and tradition. The patriot leader Mazzini, a central figure in the making of the nation, had a Jansenist background; Garibaldi was a Freemason and detested the Church (but was devoted to the Virgin Mary, and lost his temper with a bang when anyone suggested that he was not Christian); and many of our greatest poets, from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, can be counted as Pagan. At the same time, nothing is more central to Italian identity than Dante - the father of our language and of the very way we think about ourselves; and Dante, although he vigorously condemned some Popes and the corruption of the Church, was deeply and unshakeably Catholic.