The war softened the hearts of many Germans. One German remembers shopping during the time of the brutal Allied bombing of Berlin, the “shopkeeper was talking to another customer whom she knew and said, ‘This is the punishment for what we’ve done to the Jews.’ And she dared to say that much, although I was a stranger in her shop.” […]
The Fascist movements in Italy and Germany came to power with assistance by large gangs of fascist thugs who bullied, beat up, and sometimes murdered their opponents. These fascist thugs were drawn from the millions of veterans of the bloody fighting in the tranches of World War I. After assuming dictatorial powers Mussolini promised the Pope that he would reign in his thugs, but this was a promise he never fully kept, in part because these fascist gangs were hard to control, in part because he wanted to remind the Pope who was really in charge, who alone could rein in the gangs. […]
One detail about the passers-by does stand out: they were religious, devoted to the worship of God: a priest and a Levite. This detail should not be overlooked. It shows that belief in God and the worship of God are not enough to ensure that we are actually living in a way pleasing to God. […]
The absolute disrespect shown to our President Barack Obama by many Republican Congressmen, Fox News, and the Tea Party movement was both deeply offensive and also reminded me of similar insults thrown about during the Jim Crow lynching years of our ugly history. It was the rise of the Tea Party movement that meant I now had an ugly choice, I could either support the party of morals, or I could support the party of compassion, but the choice was not really that ugly, because if you are not compassionate, than any morals you wear on your sleeve for show are fake morals, because compassion and morals go together. […]
Copyright 2017
