Leadership: Rhetoric and Reality

By Rich Kozlovich

On February 3rd Bill Federer published an article entitled, Health care then guns: Nazis layplan for destroying freedom” discussing Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the few religious leaders in Germany under the Nazis to stand against Hitler and his obscene policies. I couldn’t help but notice some interesting points regarding leadership, rhetoric, reality and how this plays out today.  Here are some dangerous observations I think are worth contemplating. 

In this article he discussed what had become a real moral dilemma for many, but legal under German law of the time. He notes:

“the Nazi aims regarding the German penal code, today announced its intentions to authorize physicians to end the sufferings of the incurable patient … in the interest of true humanity.… Euthanasia … has become a widely discussed word in the Reich. … No life still valuable to the State will be wantonly destroyed.” When Germany’s economy suffered, expenses had to be cut from the national health-care plan, such as keeping alive handicapped, insane, chronically ill, elderly and those with dementia. They were considered “lebensunwertes leben” –life unworthy of life. Then criminals, convicts, street bums, beggars and gypsies, considered “leeches” on society, met a similar fate……. U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stated in 1977: “When the first 273,000 German aged, infirm and retarded were killed in gas chambers there was no outcry from that medical profession … and it was not far from there to Auschwitz.”…..

Interesting article and if never ceases to amaze me how society is now accepting the very things a world war was fought to end.  However, was that what western leaders really fought against, or was it merely inspirational rhetoric to the people. Rhetoric leaders then clearly must not have believed in.  The same kind of rhetoric leaders spew out now, yet it's rhetoric in which they clearly don’t believe. Let's explore this thought! 

There are a few quotes here I find particularly interesting here. Here are a few from FDR regarding Hitler and the Nazis saying:

“Government to him is not the servant … of the people but their absolute master and the dictator of their every act. … The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which seemed to the Founders of the Republic inalienable, were, to Hitler and his fellows, empty words. “Hitler advanced: That the individual human being has no rights whatsoever in himself … no right to a soul of his own, or a mind of his own, or a tongue of his own, or a trade of his own; or even to live where he pleases or to marry the woman he loves; That his only duty is the duty of obedience, not to his God, not to his conscience, but to Adolf Hitler. … His only value is his value, not as a man, but as a unit of the Nazi state. … To Hitler, the church … is a monstrosity to be destroyed by every means.” “The world is too small … for both Hitler and God. … Nazis have now announced their plan for enforcing their … pagan religion all over the world … by which the Holy Bible and the Cross of Mercy would be displaced by ‘Mein Kampf’ and the swastika.”

Amazing, since FDR had been promoting socialist central planning policies from the day he took office, undermining the very Constitution he swore to uphold. His New Deal wasn’t a New Deal at all - it was in fact a retread of all the fascist policies his predecessor – who historians call Americas first fascist president Woodrow Wilson - imposed on America during WWI.  Different names, same policies and many of the same people who worked for Wilson.

FDR was surrounded by Soviet agents, communists, socialists and fellow travelers promoting an even worse movement, communism, which by it very tenets undermines the “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The very unalienable rights he condemns Hitler for abusing.

This was while Stalin was starving tens of millions of his people to death, even though Walter Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize for denying there was any famine at all in Russia. Here’s the sad part - all the journalists from the west and every international western newspaper knew he was lying. As Malcolm Muggerigde said Duranty was "the greatest liar I have met in journalism”. But because British newspapers and American newspapers – especially the New York Times, for whom Duranty worked, didn’t want to make waves with Stalin they not only ignored the truth – they impugned the truth. Has anything changed? Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize that was undeserved and it’s the same Pulitzer Prize the NYT refuses to return.

As for FDR, it wasn’t so long before this that FDR was praising Hitler and Mussolini, and when a group of his acolytes came back from Russia in the 30’s they declared they “had seen the future and it works”, meaning the Soviet Union under Stalin.

As more documents become available the facts surrounding FDR and the history of his administration are becoming more and more clear, including the fact that his administration was filled with Soviet agents, communists, socialists and fellow travelers who were clearly traitors, including one that lived in the White House for two years. It’s also clear it would have been impossible for FDR not to have known that. It’s also clear FDR had to have been a party to their treason.

Another group of quotes that really stood out for me were by Jimmy Carter. The author went on to say:

“Jimmy Carter wrote in his book “Sources of Strength,” 1997: “Rev. Niebuhr urged Dietrich Bonhoeffer to remain in America for his own safety. Bonhoeffer refused. He felt he had to be among the other Christians persecuted in Germany. So he returned home, and … in resistance to Hitler … preached publicly against Nazism, racism, and anti-Semitism. … Bonhoeffer was finally arrested and imprisoned.” Jimmy Carter continued: “Dietrich Bonhoeffer died April 9, 1945, just a few days before the allied armies liberated Germany. He was executed on orders of Heinrich Himmler. He died a disciple and a martyr.” Jimmy Carter concluded: “The same Holy Spirit … that gave Bonhoeffer the strength to stand up against Nazi tyranny is available to us today.”

Is this the same Jimmy Carter who has embraced leftists and Islamists? Is this the same Jimmy Carter that helped overturn the Shah of Iran by refusing him help against the madmen of ayatollah Khomeini? The Shah may have been a dictator who wasn’t the ideal poster child for human rights, but he was a saint compared to those who took his place, which isn't an untypical pattern and outcome for those supported by Carter and his leftist friends. 

This is the same Jimmy Carter who was shocked by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan! A man who was three years into his time in office but just then decided he had to change his opinion of the Soviets.   What could have possibly been in his mind?  Are we to believe Carter was unaware of the communist genocide in Cambodia? Are we to believe Carter was unaware of the butchery perpetrated by communists in Vietnam, Korea, Red China or the mass murders committed by Stalin? The evil of communism was not then, nor is it now, a secret to the rest of the world.

With the help of Congress Carter left the world in a geopolitical mess, and the nation he was supposed to lead in a weakened state.  Weakened by a President with weak character, weak and misplaced values and filled with indecision.  All of which opened a window for the worldwide Islamic terrorist movements of today.  Short of treason, can any qualities be more destructive in a leader than indecision and stupidity?

Jeane Kirkpatrick outlined the legacy of the Carter Presidency:

“While Carter was President there occurred a dramatic Soviet military buildup, matched by the stagnation of American armed forces, and a dramatic extension of Soviet influence in the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, southern Africa, and the Caribbean, matched by a declining American position in all these areas. The United States never tried so hard and failed so utterly to make and keep friends in the Third World. As if this were not bad enough, in one year, 1979, the United States suffered two other major blows—in Iran and Nicaragua—of large and strategic significance. In each country, the Carter administration not only failed to prevent the undesired outcome, but actively collaborated in the replacement of moderate autocrats friendly to American interests with less friendly autocrats of extremist persuasion.”  

John Connally, who was the Governor of Texas, found Carter’s disconnect from reality frightening.

Has anything changed?