Was Christopher Columbus a Hero or a Villain?

 Being ungrateful and not being able to apologize when wrong are two deadly relationship characteristics of any person.  Anyone with these two characteristics would be gone as a friend in my book.  Christopher Columbus has been disparaged and insulted from the very beginning with the Spanish authorities for whom he brought fame and fortune.  Indeed, he was treated like a criminal, arrested and jailed in Spain.  At his funeral, no Spanish official attended.  He died without honor, or thanks.   Jesus made this statement about being a prophet; “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”(Mark:6).  

 

For many in the United States, Columbus is now persona non grata; his holiday of October 12 has been cancelled.  After the George Floyd riots, thug rioters destroyed numerous statues.  Abraham Lincoln is number one with 193 taken down, George Washington is second with 171 and Christopher Columbus is third.   Much of this is done by people who are totally ignorant and ungrateful of what these great men did or accomplished.  There are cities and countries named after Columbus, as in Ohio and Georgia but if you asked some of these rioters for whom were these cities and countries named for, they probably could not answer it.  During the Iraq war, General David Petraeus, who defeated the insurgency and saved many of our troop’s lives, was reviled by the Democrats who opposed George Bush.  They called him General “betray us.” These are not serious people.  They are not grateful nor able to apologize; they are the worst of any citizens.

 

We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.  In the United States, we stand on the shoulders of the most brilliant men who have ever lived:  The founders of our country; people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and others such as Abraham Lincoln.  We owe a debt of gratitude to these men, yet in the recent past, clueless people have tried to erase these men, simply for the fact that they once owned slaves, or do not meet the today’s “woke” standard.  If any of these people had any knowledge of history, they would have known that owning slaves in those days was like owning a car today.  It was a custom of the day.  You cannot measure a society of the past with today’s measure; it must be done in context.  As Jesus said to the those who wanted to stone the woman caught in adultery: “let him/her who is without sin, throw the first stone.”  No one did.

 

Today history is not taught in schools, or at least it is done poorly or not at all.  Children are taught to be “woke” instead and use “the right pronoun.”  How would you like it if the doctor who is to perform brain surgery on you, never learned how to do it, but was taught “wokeism” instead?  This is what happens when we fail to teach history, we have spoiled rotten people who destroy statues.  Mao Zedong erased thousands of years of great Chinese history so he could remake China in the image of communism.  All those who came before him were deleted.

 

If you send someone to do a random street interview on any street or university campus and ask questions about our forefathers, I will guess that very few would answer correctly.  Who was Christopher Columbus?  An explorer or someone who oppressed indigenous people.  Well, look at any society and see if they committed some sins?  What was their final product?  Did the United States oppress any people?  Perhaps, but with whom can you compare what the United States stands for today?  Cuba, North Korea, Russia?  These tyrannical countries oppress people to this day.  Have you tried visiting Russia or North Korea?  Chances are you would end up as a hostage, like the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovic and Paul Whelan, the ex-Marine currently in Russian jails. Which country has a clean record on sins?  Let the one who is without sin throw out the first stone.  Why are people from all over the world crashing our borders to get in?  Is it because the United States is an oppressor or because this is where you will find freedom and prosperity?  Why is no one storming North Korea or Cuba?  They have free health care there.

 

In the late 1980s a very fine documentary was done and broadcast on public television, called “The Magnificent Voyage of Christopher Columbus.  Broadcast on PBS by WGBH Boston and nationwide in the early 1990s.  The Original was seven hours long.  A two-hour summary is still available on Amazon for less than $5.  This is what should be shown in schools.  Click here for the link.  Somehow, I don’t think many woke teachers would do this. Some may.  I’ll cross my fingers.

NIMBY Syndrome in History: Deja vù All Over Again

A few years ago, I stumbled upon a podcast called “12 Byzantine Rulers: A History of the Byzantine Empire” by Lars Brownworth who also wrote the book “Lost to the West.”  I was impressed with the podcast and followed it up with the book.  A big take-away for the story of the extinction of the Byzantine Empire was the lack of assistance from the Christian world of the west, meaning Western Europe. They had no interest in helping the Byzantines repel the marauding Ottoman Turks as they ate away at their territory piece by piece until only the city of Constantinople was left in the early part of the 15^th century. 

 

The Turks, under Sultan Mehmed II amassed a huge army, estimated to be around 80,000 troops and besieged Constantinople in May of 1453 and destroyed it.  The Byzantines had only 5,000 troops to defend the city.  The last emperor of the Byzantines, Constantine XI, and his officials, made a last-ditch effort to beg their fellow Christians in Europe for help but were turned down.  Giovanni Giustiniani, a Genoese nobleman and military commander was one of the few to respond.  The Venetians sent a few ships, but they were of little help.  A handful of other Europeans volunteered but too small a number to be effective.  Giustiniani gathered 700 mercenaries and made it to Constantinople, but they were totally overwhelmed by the superior Ottoman forces, both in number and in weapons.  The Ottomans had just acquired a cannon capable of breaking the famous impregnable city walls of Constantinople. Giustiniani died the month after the fall of Constantinople, at the age of 35, probably due to wounds he received during the battle. 

 

Upon breaching the city walls, the Turks went on a killing spree.  Marauding Ottoman soldiers swept the city killing all they encountered.  Those not killed were enslaved. Why did their fellow Europeans fail to help them?  The Ottoman Turks had been on a conquest for hundreds of years.  I asked Lars Brownworth, in an e-mail, the same question.  There is no easy answer.  

 

The Catholic-Orthodox schism of 1054 AD did a lot of damage, not only in religious matters but in the tense relations between the Greek Orthodox east and the Roman west.  As in a feuding family, they despised each other.  This, perhaps, was a major reason for the Byzantines getting no help from their brother Christians.  A second reason could be attributed to the notion of “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) syndrome; meaning if the danger is not in my back yard, I don’t care.  This is a common malady today.  Many liberals and conservatives in the United States do not want to help Ukraine against the invading Russians for the same reason.  The Europeans were very wrong about NIMBY for they, themselves, became the next target of the Ottomans.  Within a 70-year span after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottomans were at the gates of Europe.  In 1529 the first Siege of Vienna happened but was repelled.  By 1571 the battle of Lepanto took place between the Ottomans and a coalition of Europeans, Spanish, Italians, Austrians and others.  The Ottomans lost the huge naval battle at Lepanto, most of their navy and about 25,000 killed.  This marked the largest naval battle since the Greeks and Persians at Salamis in 480 BC.

 

The Ottomans were not yet finished.  They again tried to conquer Europe with the second siege of Vienna in 1683; they were repelled with the help of a European coalition and the fierce counterattack by an army which arrived just in time, led by the king of Poland, King Sobieski, a brilliant military commander.  Finally, the Europeans realized that cooperating was the way to go. With a NIMBY attitude Europe would have been Muslim today.

 

In a fine history book by Victor Davis Hanson called “The Father of us All, War and History,” regarding the Christian League that fought at Lepanto, Hanson says that France and England refused to cooperate in fighting the Ottomans: “both had long ago cut their own deals with the Ottomans.  Indeed, during the winter of 1542 the French had even allowed the Ottoman corsair Barbarossa the use of their harbor at Toulon to refit as he conducted raids along the Italian coast.” (Chapter 7).   Call it what you want but this was treachery at its worst by brother Christians and fellow Europeans.

 

History is a great teacher, but few ever learn.  Same mistakes are committed over and over, whether its World War I or the appeasement of Hitler in World War II.  Hitler did not learn from Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812; the United States learned nothing from the French debacle in Vietnam or the problems encountered in Korea in the early 1950s.  This same mistake is repeated today.  When will they ever learn? to take a que from the 1950s song by the Kingston Trio, “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?”

 

In today’s Europe, we have leaders like Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, who refused to help Ukraine against the evil Russian regime of the dictator Vladimir Putin.  Now, the first question I would ask Mr. Orban would be:  Sir, your country was viciously oppressed by the Soviet Union for over 70 years.  Remember what the Russians did to Hungary in 1956 when they brought tanks to Budapest to crush you?  Perhaps you never heard of it.  Here is a link for you to look up.  Are you suffering from the Stockholm syndrome?  Similarly, we have some right-wing politicians such as Matteo Salvini in Italy who openly admires Vladimir Putin.  Am I missing something?  NIMBY roars its ugly head again. 

Thermopylae

It’s been said by some that most people are basically good.  I agree with talk show host Dennis Prager and don’t believe that is the case.  Man is a warlike being; history has shown that.  Just one example from my lifetime:  I was born during World War II.  Since then, we’ve had Korea, Vietnam, the Israel wars of 1967 and 1973, the Argentina-British war in the Falklands, the Gulf War of the 1990s, the Yugoslavia civil war, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.  Since 2022 we have a new war in Europe with Russia and Ukraine, the current Israel-Hamas war, and on and on. There has hardly ever been a long period of peace. These are just some examples, there are many other wars around the globe, especially in Africa, such as in Sudan and Nigeria.

Thermopylae

Ancient history is a story of endless wars.  Nothing has changed.  There have been consequential wars in antiquity that are discussed to this day.  I’m speaking of the Greek period, and specifically, the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC and Thermopylae, the famous Last Stand of the 300 in 480 BC between the Greeks and Persian Empire.  Famous Roman Empire battles such as the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, Marathon and Thermopylae are studied in modern military academies to this day.  At Cannae the Roman Army was annihilated by Carthage and their brilliant military commander, Hannibal.  Over 50,000 Romans lost their lives in one day. The most devastating loss of life in Roman history. A killing field like no other. The Greeks were the best fighters of their day.  Soldiers were trained to fight their entire life.  It was the Greek custom that a boy would be taken at the age of seven to live with other boys in a military camp where they were put through some of the toughest physical and mental tests.  The best of the best were the Spartans. Here is a short two-minute video explaining what happened in Thermopylae.

 

The Spartans trained full time for combat.  Most men were soldiers for most of their lives.  To make up for the loss of such large number of men, the Spartans enslaved their neighbors, the Helots.  The enslaved Helots provided the manual labor needed for Spartan society.  The Spartans lived in constant fear of a Helot rebellion.

 

Persian Empire

The phrase, united we stand, divided we fall, is very appropriate in the ancient Greek world.  The many Greek city-states were all independent and fought constant wars with each other.  On top of all the Greek fratricide, their biggest collective threat was from the enormous and powerful Persian Empire; an empire that spanned from Persia to India to the gates of Europe.  It was no secret that the Persians wanted to expand even further to Europe.  Greece was their target.  In 490 BC the Persians, under king Darius the Great, suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Greeks at the Battle of Marathon; twenty-six miles outside of Athens.  Darius sought revenge for the Marathon loss and planned a second invasion but died four years later in 486 BC.  His son Xerxes took up the challenge and sent an army of 80,000 to 100,000 to conquer all of Greece.  Greeks were divided, some favored the Persians, and indeed many Greeks fought their fellow Greeks on the side of Persia.  But Greece, in general, wanted to form a coalition to resist the Persians.  The Spartans were asked to lead the resistance.

 

The Greeks knew that the best route for the Persians was through the narrow passage at Thermopylae.They also knew that they were seriously overpowered by the Persians and stood little chance of stopping them. The best they could do was to slow them down at the narrow pass of Thermopylae.  This is where 300 of the best fighters stood against the enormous Persian onslaught.  The Spartans, led by their charismatic and brilliant commander, king Leonidas, were spectacular in their stance but knew that it was only a matter of time before they would be overwhelmed and killed.  They welcomed the challenge.  This ferocious last stand was so inspiring to the Greeks that even though the Persians were able to reach and sack Athens, a year later, in a counter offensive,  the Greeks were victorious at the battles of Plataea and naval battle of  Salamis. The Battle of Thermopylae not only inspired Greece but has been an inspiration to the rest of the world for 2,500 years. 

In the ancient Greek world, war was meant to be a way of life.  Human dignity was considered little.  The society was taught that death in battle was the ultimate sacrifice for the state and should be promoted. Women were prized for their ability to produce future fighters.  Men who fell in battle were considered heroes.  Men who survived a defeated battle were scorned.  That is what wars were like and still are.  Take, for example, the Russian war with Ukraine.  The Russians want Ukraine as theirs; they care little for the human cost.  This mentality is mainly due to tyrants and the monarchy form of government where all you need to start a war is the order of one man, such as Putin of Russia, Kim Jung Un of North Korea, or any ruling monarch, such as Henry VIII of England for instance who had his closest advisors, even his wives killed at will.  George Patton, the brilliant American general of World War II was quoted as saying: don’t cry for a fallen soldier but be glad such a man lived.  In World War II and the invasion of France on D-Day, men were dropped off ships in some cases in 8 feet of water with their full battle gear and charged open ocean cliffs with German machine guns blazing; over 3,500 were killed that day.  War is hell.

 

History has shown that no matter how mighty an empire is, it will eventually collapse or is conquered.  The little Greek city-states not only resisted Persian conquest but eventually conquered it in 336 BC, 144 years later in the name of Alexander the Great and Greek unity.  This should be a lesson to us, but few will notice it.  United we stand; divided we fall.  No empire has ever been reborn after collapsing.  In the last 100 years we’ve seen seven empires fall:  German Empire, Ottoman Empire, the Japanese Empire, the British Empire, the Austria-Hungary Empire, the French Empire and the Soviet Union.

This piece was inspired from the reading of Paul Cartledge's book cited below.  Cartledge is a history professor at the University of Cambridge in England and an expert in Greek history.  In my reading of history, especially ancient and Roman history, the British excel at every level.  

 

An addendum on the Persian Empire:   Founded by King Cyrus the Great around 550 BC.  They subsequently  conquered the Babylonian Empire after the Babylonians had conquered and taken hostage the Jews of Israel, leading to the 70 years of what became the Biblical Babylonian Captivity.  It was King Cyrus who released the Jews to return to Israel and rebuild their cities.  Only about ten percent returned to Israel.  King Cyrus is mentioned in no less than 30 times in the Bible. The first time 150 years before his birth, in Isaiah 44 and 45.  The Jewish return to Israel started in 539 BC.  They immediately started the reconstruction of the temple but met strong opposition from the local populace.  In 538 BC construction was halted and did not resume until 520 BC.  The new temple was completed and dedicated in 515 BC.  In 70 AD the Romans destroyed the second temple after a Jewish revolt that started in 66 AD and was not crushed until 71AD.

 

Recommended reading:

 

The End of Everything, Victor Davis Hanson, Basic Books, 2024

A War Like no Other, Victor Davis Hanson, Random House, 2006

Thermopylae, Paul Cartledge, The Overlook Press, 2006

 

 

 

Kings, Emperors and Madmen

The Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire) continued after the fall of Rome for another thousand years; like the Western Roman Empire it had the emperor form of government.  It was ruled by emperors to the end in 1453 when the Muslim Turks conquered the last piece of land left:  the city of Constantinople, modern day Istanbul.  The emperor form of government must be one of the worst types of government ever established.  The emperor was all powerful; he was the law, the judge and the executioner.  He could kill you at will or maim you at his discretion.  The citizens had no say in who ruled them.  Many emperors got the job by murdering their predecessor; so a common thug with some personal power and supporters or a military strongman could assassinate the emperor and the next day be proclaimed the new emperor.  Many military strongmen could march on Constantinople and usurp the throne, either by murdering the existing emperor or by popular acclaim by the people.  Many emperors lived in fear of such usurpers and would occasionally either order the death of his potential usurpers or have them blinded; a common Byzantine practice.  In the 13th century when emperor Theodore II died he left the throne to his seven-year old son John IV.  As was the custom a regent was assigned to rule for the child, Michael Palaiologos, a protege of John III, emperor of the city of Nicaea was selected.  After serving as temporary emperor for about five years, he felt secure enough that he usurped the throne by having the rightful heir, 11 year-old John IV, blinded so he could eliminate any opposition.

Emperors have been brutal, tyrannical, and madmen.  Justinian (527-565), for example, had 30,000 people who had rioted against him, murdered in his Hippodrome, in Constantinople. He ordered his best military commander of the empire, Belasarius to block the exits and then systematically execute all inside.  Although Justinian had some success in his reign, many Byzantine emperors were terrible and disastrous administrators.  The empire was vast and difficult to control.  Borders were always in flux; whomever conquered the area annexed it to his.  Arabs, Slavs, Turks, Persians, Russians, and Muslims kept eating away at Byzantine territory.  Wars were a constant.  Many emperors paid protection money to their enemies to bribe them not to invade, draining their government coffers in the process, making it unable to pay their soldiers in many cases.

The Roman Republic on the other hand had a well-functioning type of government up until the time of Caesar, 44 BC.  Most of the Roman territory had already been won during the Republic (see adjoining map).   Prior to Caesar and the emperors Rome had a representative form of government with two Consuls elected by the people.  The emperors, with few exceptions, were a disaster.   The first Roman emperor was Caesar Augustus in 31BC.  As with the Byzantines, many rose to be emperor by assassinating their predecessor. Rome, as with the Byzantines, had some of the worst emperors such as Caligula and Nero.  Imagine, if you will, that our form of government was like that today. Total lawlessness. Disaster and total chaos can’t be too far down the line. For a free online college course see Hillsdale College’s course on the Roman Republic, called “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic.”  The adjoining map is from this course. An excellent course.

After the rise of Christianity with Emperor Constantine in 325 AD, the emperor also controlled the church. Emperors would be crowned by bishops. Emperors could call church councils.   The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD (now the town of Iznik, Turkey) was called by Emperor Constantine.  Here is where the separation of church and state is paramount.  When the two are mixed bad things will happen; religion and politics can’t be separated.  In the Byzantine empire, church leaders were at the mercy of the emperors and had to bend to his wishes.  Any church leader not pleasing the emperor was replaced.  The emperor ruled the church like his empire.

Up to the 18^th century, in England, the King was the law, judge and jury.  He could have anyone who displeased him killed at his command, as Henry VIII did.  Henry VIII took control of the church and governed both at his will.  To this day, the King or Queen of England is the head of the Anglican Church.  Anyone not a member of the Anglican Church has been marginalized and discriminated against since the time of Henry.  Nowhere in Europe will you find discrimination against Catholics as in England.  Today you cannot be a British Prime Minister if you’re Catholic for instance.  Members of the royal family cannot be Catholic.  Catholic Ireland was severely oppressed by the British for hundreds of years until independence came in early 20^th Century. 

The American founding fathers were the most brilliant and savvy men of all time.  They learned from history and designed a government that would be representative and not tyrannical.  Our form of government is a Republic, not a democracy.  Here is a terrific five-minute video description of a Republic by Professor Robert George of Princeton University.  Spanish philosopher George Santayana stated it well “those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Our founding fathers did learn.  Not many others have.

Kings and emperors are selected not by their citizens but by an accident of birth or by usurpers in some cases.  You could be totally insane, as I’m sure Henry VIII was, and be king and tyrant.  You are the law, the court, and the executioner.  You could send thousands of your citizens to their death by starting a war, just because you feel like it.  One person with all the power and millions of citizens toally powerless.  Today, the British monarch has been defanged but other tyrants such as Kim Jung Un of North Korea or Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jing Ping of China have total control; their people have no say.  In China for instance 1.5 billion people are powerless; one man has all the power.   Any of these could start a war killing hundreds of thousands for any reason or no reason. Kim, like Henry VIII is probably mentally insane or deranged; drunk with power, and eager to use it.

The Byzantine Empire, lasted another thousand years by sheer luck but finally succumbed to bad, corrupt government and bad leaders.  It took a long time to end but the seeds of destruction were there with all the tyrants and incompetent emperors.  Santayana was right. 

Recommended reading: 

1.        “Lost to the West” by Lars Brownworth, Crown Publishers, 2009

Lars Brownworth has a terrific podcast on this book called 12 Byzantine Rulers: The History of Byzantine Empire.  Click here for the link.

2.         “The Lost World of Byzantium” by Jonathan Harris, Yale University Press, 2015

 

What is “Separation of Church and State” and is it in the Constitution?

At a church group gathering discussing the Ten Commandments, part of today’s (3/3/24) Sunday readings, I made the comment that in today’s culture you are not allowed to have the Ten Commandments displayed in a public facility.  Immediately one person responded that that is because of the “separation of church and state.”  This is a typical response; many Americans have adopted this misleading impression that the United States Constitution has a separation of church and state:   The United States Constitution does not have such separation.  You will not find it in the Constitution.  This refers to a misunderstanding of what is called The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.  Here is what it states:  

 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

What qualifies as “church” and what does not?   The misunderstanding has been appropriated by many, including, the Supreme Court, in the 1947 case of Everson v Ewing Township, legal professionals such as Erwin Chemerinsky, a well-known law school dean at Cal Berkeley.    The misunderstanding refers to a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church in 1802 in which he gave a sort of clarification of the Establishment Clause.   Professor Robert P. George, a Constitutional law expert and professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University explains it this way: 

 “The separation of church and state” is a phrase that appears nowhere in the Constitution. We have heard of those words because they were written by Thomas Jefferson to a Danbury Baptist Church community in explaining our Constitution’s stance toward religion. He drew the metaphor of a “wall” of separation between church and state.  The truth in what Jefferson is saying is pretty straightforward. When understood correctly, it means that the institutions of the state and the institutions of the church are separate. Under our Constitution, no political figure holds office by virtue of an ecclesiastical appointment, and no ecclesiastical figure holds office in virtue of a political appointment.”

Click here to read Professor George’s entire opinion.  For another terrific explanation of the “the separation of church and state”  Click here for a five-minute video by former Chapman University Law School Dean, John Eastman.

When people make this type of argument, what they are doing is claiming that something is religion when it is not.  What is religion?  Is the First Amendment religion? Was Jefferson’s letter religion? I don’t know of anyone who has made such an argument.  Different people will define it as they wish.  By calling something religion, as in the claim of the “separation of church and state,” they are putting it in a category where it can be easily dismissed without evidence, that is, arbitrarily asserted.  But what can be arbitrarily asserted can be arbitrarily denied.  This falls under the Principle of Reason; Non-contradiction, complete explanation, objective evidence.  To argue that something falls under “religion” or "church" without objective evidence, is an egregious attempt to prove your point by creating a straw man. 

Are the Ten Commandments religion?  How do you define religion?  Is the prohibition against killing or stealing or adultery, or not bearing false witness religion?  And, if so, who would argue that they are wrong or not acceptable?  The Ten Commandments are a manual for right living and a well-ordered society. They can easily fall under natural law; that is, a law written on each person’s heart.  In fact, government is dependent on a such ordered society.  For example, everyone would agree that stealing is wrong.  If you had to prove it, steal someone’s property, and see if they disagree.   Would you have less crime or more crime if a society followed the Ten Commandments?

The United States Constitution is neutral on religion.  It simply states that you cannot have a state religion nor favor one religion against another.  It does not prohibit having a Bible study at a public institution such as a school, as long as it is not required or done by employees of the school.  If you read the article linked above by Professor George, religious activities are allowed if they are balanced and not favor one or the other and if you allow one, you must allow the other. 

 

Corrosive Racism: The Jews

 The history of racism, prejudice and oppression of certain ethnic groups is long and brutal as is the list of ethnic groups.  They include such people as Asians, Hispanics, Blacks, Armenians, Southern Europeans like Italians and Irish, just to name a few.  The Jews, however, have the first position on racism, oppression, and genocide against them, such as the holocaust of World War II.

 

For this piece I will concentrate on Jewish racism and oppression.  From the time of Jesus Christ, the Jews have been persecuted; no, lets back up, they were persecuted even before Jesus, by the Greeks and Romans, for instance.  After the crucifixion of Jesus, the Jews were accused of killing Jesus.  Even the Christian Church, and by that, I mean most of Christianity, oppressed the Jews because they accused them of killing Jesus.  Here is the biggest problem:  Accusing the Jews of killing Jesus totally misunderstands and misrepresents what the crucifixion was all about.  No, the Jews did not kill Jesus:  we did by our sins; you and me.  This is what is called redemption. That is why Jesus was crucified, to pay for our sins.  The Jews no more killed Jesus than we did.  The Romans killed Jesus.  The Jews condemned Him to death, but the Romans could have declined to kill him. This misunderstanding of the crucifixion goes on today among Christians.  In my piece about Pope Pius IX posted in January of 2020 on this blog, titled Pope Pius IX, Pope, King and Tyrant, I made this statement about how Pius IX treated Jews in Rome in the mid 19^th Century: “In Rome, the Jewish population was kept in a ghetto by law.  Jews could not own property, they could only work in some professions, but not others; they could not testify in court.  The Jews even had to pay a large sum each year to support the House of the Catechumens, the church organization dedicated to their conversion.”  On top of that Jews had a curfew.  Anyone not inside the ghetto by a specified time had to sleep in the streets outside of the ghetto.  Suffice it to say, the church was one of the worst offenders against the Jews.

 

After the Hamas massacre of Israelis of October 7, 2023, many Jews all over the world, and especially in the United States were attacked randomly.  Harvard University as well as most of academia, refused to condemn the persecution of Jews.  This is akin to persecuting all blacks because two blacks committed a crime in your city. Stupid is as stupid does as the philosopher, Forrest Gump would say. 

 

In World War II, Hitler rounded up all Jews and sent them to the gas chamber to be murdered simply for being Jewish.  During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews were forcibly expelled from their own country.  I’m from a small Sicilian town of around 3,000 residents in the Madonie Mountains of north central Sicily.  My town had about 53 Jewish households that were expelled during the Spanish Inquisition (Sicily was a Spanish colony at the time).  These people lost their home, their property and everything they had.  The people and governments that expelled these good people ended up suffering for the loss of these good citizens which is immeasurable.  For Jews, in general, are self-reliant, industrious and some of the most productive people on earth.  Some of the best minds in history were Jews:  Einstein and Niels Bohr in science, for instance, and Gustav Mahler and George Gershwin in music, just to name some.  What country would not want to have such people?

Et tu Brute? The Ugly Face of Racism and the Betrayal of Japanese Americans During WWII

 

First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

A Poem by Martin Niemöller  

Et tu Brute? And you Brutus?  Is what Caesar is alleged to have said when he was stabbed in the back by his good friend Brutus in 44 BC.  The annals of betrayals are filled with many examples.  I’ve always been fascinated with such great injustices like the atrocious decision of President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, to arrest and imprison 110,000 innocent, loyal American citizens, and immigrants of Japanese origin. This screams out loud of racism, prejudice, and wonton lawlessness.  Remember that not one, not one case, was ever brought against any of the Japanese Americans that were interned in what they called “relocation camps.”  When I first wrote on this subject in another post on this blog, I called these camps Concentration Camps; my sister-in-law read it and reminded me that they were called “relocation camps” not concentration camps.  They were concentration camps, without the ovens or the killing of the Hitler camps. I’ve read three books on this subject trying to wrap my mind around the atrocities.  The latest one, is a book first published in the early 1970s called “Farewell to Manzanar” by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and her husband James D. Houston.  This book is a personal account by Wakatsuki, who was at Manzanar as a young child.   

The history of this brazen racism goes back to the middle 19^th century.  It heated up in the early 20^th century when racism against Asians rose to a fever pitch, leading to laws that put in stone such racism.  In 1911 the US Bureau of Immigration declared that Japanese Americans born in Japan could not become citizens.  In 1913 the Alien Land Bill prevented Japanese aliens from owning land in California.  The Immigration Act of 1924 severely restricted immigration even from Europe.  A quota was initiated giving Southern Europeans a tiny quota compared to northern Europeans.  Italians, for example, and others were limited to 2% of the Italian American and other Southern European population of 1890.  For Japanese Americans, it was more severe:  Japanese Americans were no longer allowed to immigrate to America.  Prior to WWII Japanese Americans were not allowed to have a fishing license in California, thereby preventing fishermen from practicing their trade.  The act was an insult to the Japanese and other European governments of which they protested vigorously. 

Eugenics is believed to have been a driving force for the rampant racial discrimination.  Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin and collaborator was the father of Eugenics.  From 1880 up until the mid 1950s Eugenics was popular among the U.S. and world Intelligentsia, scientists, corporate leaders, politicians such as Winston Churchill, and even presidents such as Woodrow Wilson.  As many as 31 states had Eugenics laws on the books.  The famous Eugenics U.S. Supreme Court case of Buck vs Bell (1927) is one example, where a young woman, Carrie Buck, as well as her child, were accused of being  “imbeciles” or “feeble minded” without any proof.   She was forced to be sterilized.  The child she had prior to sterilization ranked at the top of her class.  Carrie lived a normal life, married, and survived two husbands.  The accusation was patently false and without merit.  It is no coincidence that racial discrimination had a strong connection to Eugenics.  Many other women were sterilized without their knowledge.  As many as 70,000 women were sterilized without their knowledge. Click here.

Racism and prejudice in general have no rhyme nor reason; it goes against any rhyme or reason; it is counter intuitive and evil because it leads to great injustices.  Asians, and Japanese Americans, in my estimation, and I think it is correct, are some of the best citizens any country could have.  They are self-reliant, industrious, law-abiding, and productive people that contribute to any culture or civilization.  Besides the cruelty of imprisoning innocent people and all that follows from it, the incarceration of entire families was mentally and psychologically abusive.  The dignity of the person was taken away and the result was traumatic and permanently life changing for most, especially men and fathers.  Here is where you see how important human dignity is to the individual; without it you emasculate the person; you suck the soul out of the individual. Wakatsuki’s father who was born in Japan, for instance, was a proud man, a successful farmer and family man.  When they deprived him of his role as a husband and a father, he suffered immeasurable physical and psychological harm.  This is something that cannot be fixed or repaired.  He was first arrested and removed from his family and sent to a camp in Jerome, Arkansas for nine months.  In an emotional reunion when he was reunited with his family at Manzanar, he gets off the bus upon arrival and his family is there to greet him.  Both him and his family are frozen in place for a long time just looking at each other, unable to hug each other.  The pain that was going on with him and his family was palpable.  This was psychological abuse of the worst kind to innocent people.  Psychological terrorism. 

I don’t know if this evil perpetrated against these innocent good citizens was pre-meditated but consider this:  Many of the places where the “relocation camps” were installed were some of the worst places for anyone to live.  Manzanar, for example, was at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in the Owens Valley desert of California.  An unforgiving place.  The summers are brutally hot and the winters brutally cold with gale force winds.  On top of that, the ramshackle buildings the Army put up were of primitive construction.  Wood slats that had openings for the dust to get in making the winters unbearable.  In “Farewell to Manzanar” Wakatsuki describes an episode where they were covered with a half inch of dust in their beds during a windstorm.  I personally visited Manzanar in 2019 in the month of July; the temperature was 105 and the wind was so strong I could not stay outside of my car.  At Heart Mountain, in Wyoming it was brutally cold as well in the winter.  Click here for a fine documentary made years ago by David Ono, a TV anchor on the ABC Channel 7 in Los Angeles.  I highly recommend you watch this. 

In 1945 the camps were closed, and the people released on their own recognizance with no financial aid. Many had lost everything, house, business, and personal property.  They had no job nor anyone willing to hire them due to the heavy prejudice that existed at the time.  Wakatsuki and her family relocated to Long Beach, California and found a place to live on the westside in a communal barracks boarding house.  Racism was still raging unabated. Wakatsuki managed to befriend a Caucasian girl her age. When she asked if she could join the girl scouts with her, the answer was no.  In a powerful example of the racism, they had to endure, she recalls this story about what happened one day when she and her sister were traveling: “We were sitting on a bus stop bench in Long Beach, when an old, embittered woman stopped and said, “Why don’t all you dirty Japs go back to Japan?” She spit at us and passed on.  We said nothing at the time.  After she stalked off down the sidewalk, we did not look at each other.” 

In another black eye for America, there is the United States Supreme Court case of Korematsu vs United States in 1944.  The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, approved of what FDR did with Executive Order 9066 imprisoning innocent American citizens and alien immigrants without due process.  So much for innocent until proven guilty; so much for Stare Decisis.

Recommended Reading:

1.     Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston

2.    Infamy; The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II; Richard Reeves

3.    The Eagles of Heart Mountain, A true Story of Football, Incarceration and Resistance in World War II America, Bradford Pearson

         My previous Blog post: The Rape of Japanese Americans in World War II