“The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?”
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On Feb. 23, 1836, the Battle of the Alamo began with Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launching an assault on the Alamo Mission near modern-day San Antonio, Texas. The siege lasted 13 days until Mexican forces overwhelmed the mission.
On Feb. 23, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington, D.C., after dodging opposition mobs in Baltimore, Maryland.
On Feb. 23, 1903, Cuba leased Guantánamo Bay to the U.S. “in perpetuity.”
On Feb. 23, 1945, during the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 5th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest peak and most strategic position, and raise the U.S. flag.
On Feb. 22, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friend, Christoph Probst, members of a close-knit group of University of Munich students calling themselves “The White Rose,” were executed after being caught distributing leaflets urging Germans to resist Hitler and the Nazis. [For more see today’s commentary.)
On Feb. 22, 1980, the U.S. hockey team defeated the four-time defending gold-medal-winning Soviet team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000 spectators at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The victory of the youthful American college players beating the Soviet squad, considered the best in the world, became known as “The Miracle on ice.”
On Feb. 22, 1732, George Washington, who would go on to become “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” was born in Virginia.
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Christoph Probst
Every word that comes from Hitler’s mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of Hell, and his might is at bottom accursed. True, we must conduct a struggle against the National Socialist terrorist state with rational means; but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war.
From the fourth leaflet by “The White Rose”
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Choosing Liberty
At 5:00 pm today, I’ll close my office door and take a few minutes to quietly reflect upon heroism, honor, courage and fealty to truth.
I’ll grieve for those who’ve suffered the sometimes tragic consequences of correctly answering Patrick Henry’s historic question: “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”
Sixty-nine years ago today, at 5:00 pm Munich time, three German youths — Sophie Scholl, her brother, Hans, and their friend Christoph Probst — were put to death by the Nazis. They were decapitated, guillotined, within hours of being found guilty in a show trial.
Their crime? Standing up against the most evil crime imaginable.
The charge was treason — treason committed courageously against the Third Reich. Richard Hanser’s 1979 book on the subject is aptly titled, A Noble Treason: The Revolt of the Munich Students Against Hitler. Sadly, it’s now out of print, but thankfully still available.
The Scholls had a history of standing up to the Nazis. Hans was arrested in 1937 for involvement in the German Youth Movement, an unapproved group. In 1942, Hans and Sophie’s father, Robert, the former mayor of Forchtenberg, was imprisoned for several months for telling his secretary, “This Hitler is God’s scourge on mankind.”
So, perhaps it was no surprise that the Scholls helped organize a group known as The White Rose, comprised mainly of students at the University of Munich. These young people saw Hitler and the Nazis as pure, unadulterated evil — as a threat to all that is good and true.
They were convinced that most Germans felt the same way. But they knew folks were too afraid to speak up, to stand up, and to resist the evil in front of them. After all, the price would almost assuredly be death, and life is mighty dear.
The White Rose dissidents found the courage to put the “lovely intangibles” of justice and decency and truth ahead of safety and even life itself. In addition to painting “Down with Hitler” graffiti on buildings in Munich, the group produced six pamphlets from June 1942 until February 1943 urging Germans to rise up against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The leaflets were distributed to students at the University, where they caused quite a stir, as well as throughout Germany — some even making their way to occupied countries.
The White Rose leaflets and anti-Nazi graffiti unnerved the Gestapo. After all, this brazen public rebuke to their authority might inspire others to rise up in opposition. In a state otherwise tormented into silence, the totalitarians were frustrated in their inability to find and crush this resistance.
Then, on February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie were caught distributing leaflets at the University, and promptly arrested. Hans was only 24 years old, Sophie just 21. Hans was carrying a note from Christoph, a 22-year old medical student, who was quickly arrested as well.
Afraid of public sympathy for these young people, the Nazi state moved quickly, putting the three on trial just four days later, on February 22. Roland Freisler, chief justice of the People’s Court of the Greater German Reich, came in to preside, and to lambast and scream at the three “traitors.” At one point, the judge asked how the three could turn against the country that reared them. Sophie stoically responded, “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare to express themselves as we did.”
The judge sentenced all three to death. Hours later, after the Scholls’ parents had visited, but before Christoph Probst’s wife, who was in the hospital having their third child, could see her husband one last time, the three were taken to the guillotine. Hans Scholl’s last words were: “Es lebe die Freiheit!” (Long live freedom!).
The Scholls and Probst were not the last of The White Rose activists to die for speaking truth to tyranny. Co-conspirators Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf were put to death later in 1943, as was University of Munich Professor Kurt Huber, in whom the students had confided. Others involved in the effort were sent to prison.
Professor Huber, believing, unlike his young friends, that Germany would still win the war, said at his trial, “We do not want to fritter away our short lives in chains, even if they are golden chains of prosperity and power.”
Today, I’ll think about the Munich students’ revolt against Hitler. And thank them. And thank all those, today and throughout history, who have risked, suffered, or died, because they chose liberty.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Venture capitalist Eric X. Li, in an op-ed for the New York Times, “Why China’s Political Model Is Superior,” credits the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre with producing the “stability” that “ushered in a generation of growth and prosperity.”
As for America, Li explains that our problem is an “expanded” political franchise, “resulting in a greater number of people participating in more and more decisions.”
“Elected representatives have no minds of their own and respond only to the whims of public opinion as they seek re-election,” Li informs, and “special interests manipulate the people into voting for ever-lower taxes and higher government spending, sometimes even supporting self-destructive wars.”
Mr. Li points to California and predicts an American “future” of “endless referendums, paralysis and insolvency.”
But wait a second . . . Americans have no initiative or referendum powers at the national level. The people didn’t vote for this level of taxes, spending, war or massive debt – our elite political leaders did that. Too much control by the people? Hardly. Too little.
Note that the national government most affected by initiatives and referendums is Switzerland, which also has the world’s highest per capita income.
But, as Li tells us, “China is on a different path. Its leaders are prepared to allow greater popular participation in political decisions if and when it is conducive to economic development and favorable to the country’s national interests . . .” After all, “political rights . . . should be seen as privileges to be negotiated based on the needs and conditions of the nation.”
Those negotiations have left Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in a Chinese prison.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”
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Expiration Date
Lots of talk and worry has been expended over an unfortunate aspect of the ancient Mayan calendar: it was calculated to run through 2012 but no further.
Some folks, placing inordinate weight on pre-Aztec American time-keeping, think that spells the end of the world.
As preposterous as the movie about this was, there are a few things to be expected at the end of this year that have a touch of the hand of Doom.
Bush-era tax rates expire, for instance.
Isn’t it strange how a lowered tax rate must expire, but higher rates don’t get a similar sunset treatment?
Anyway, on December 31, 2012, tax rates go up. The Washington Post relates that some folks are calling this “Taxmageddon,” and it could be a disaster for our faltering recovery:
Overnight, the marriage penalty for joint filers will spring back to life, the value of the child credit will drop from $1,000 to $500, and the rate everyone pays on the first $8,700 of wages will jump from 10 percent to 15 percent.
The just-agreed-to payroll tax reprieve also has a built-in expiration date, so FICA withholding will go up 2 percent as well.
Though folks are running scared about this, politicians are girding their loins for a big fight. Or “negotiation.” Or something.
Meanwhile, no real cuts in spending can be expected, especially if President Obama wins in November, as seems increasingly likely.
And the U.S. government continues to borrow an additional six billion dollars every business day. I fear more than one thing is set to expire.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Nicolaus Copernicus
Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heavens as its center, would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves.