Islamic and Christian extremists, pot pies and candy canes

By Rev. J.J. Purcell

Can the lessons of the Nazi rise to power, beginning in 1920s Germany, and the Holocaust (1939-1945) be looked upon as a dark warning of the past for us living in 21st century America?

I think it is worth a few lines.

I am an American; a citizen of the United States of America, born in the 1960s. My father and uncles fought in World War II and Korea. My cousins fought in Vietnam. And, American popular culture changed its face and attitudes so many times in my lifetime that I have lost count of their occasions.

No one in the 1970s needed to actively remember Nazis. Our fathers fought them, and some of our family lived through it and others did not. Everyone not only saw the chilling documentaries about the Nazis and the Holocaust, but we also heard about them from parents and grandparents. As a boy, I thought there was little difference between Satan incarnate and Adolf Hitler. I was not alone in this.

I will not mark the years that followed the 1970s by political movements, wars, fashions, celebrity headlines, scientific achievements or rock bands. It is enough to say the years passed until now -- the eve of 2015.

There are extremist Muslims at home and around the globe who seek another genocide. The world has already seen so many of this kind of fiend. This time, these people want to murder basically everyone on the planet who does not subscribe to some smallish cult of Satanic hate someone somehow codified on a camel's back somewhere in Southwestern Asia some centuries ago. This law basically restricts everyone about anything that might represent a full life. Further, women and children lose all personal value and murder is permitted to run through their lands like streams. They are seeking to grow this psychosis over any border that can be found.

At home in these United States, the KKK and American Nazi Party were finally in a well-deserved decline and were only menacing shades from the past before now. For some unholy reason, Christian extremists have found a friend in the Republican Party. Today, their brand of 'Christian Sharia' is trying to be spread like a contagion on Conservative Media Networks, like Fox.

These so-called "Christian" political extremists have actively voiced, and loudly, their want of usurping the American political process given us by our Founders and, instead, seizing control of our state and disallowing Progressive thought in any hall of power. They speak of murder, racism, sexism and Islamic genocide glibly. They wish to empower every mad redneck with a firearm and as much liquor as they can drink and set them loose on innocent town streets.

If someone wanted to create a speed bump for these hellish movements, they might well study the Nazi rise to power in Germany, and the Holocaust. Because surely, these extreme groups have each decided to work on different ends of the blueprint laid down by Hitler and his cronies.

I have studied in seminary, but I must have missed the section where it said Our Lord Jesus Christ was a fan of guns, mad killings, murder, genocide, racism and repression of science, humanity or humility.

In a time when this country needs to be cohesive to face the threat of International Terrorism by insane Muslim fanatics, our nation is just inches short of a Civil War with mad Christian fanatics. Sardonically, if only we could get the two groups together in some border outside the borders of the Continental United States, how much better the world would be for all.

The Muslims who are not truly Muslim could vent on the Christians who are not actually Christians and they could expend themselves on each other without shedding anymore innocent blood or promising to murder the American World, built by the brightest people in the world to be operated by the dumbest.

Do not take any of this lightly, if anyone would, because the world has seen the likes of these moronic "Tea Party" vandals before, just as they have seen these hellish Islamic minions who preach murder. And either or both of these groups could and may infect the world and turn what is light dark, and what is fresh into something acrid.

I pray I will naturally pass before I might have to see the world I love so dearly transformed into a disfigured, disgraced version of itself -- as comely as a horribly deformed fetus in a pickle jar at a sideshow.

I would not have immortality for all the treasures of Babylon. I have a feeling all the best parts of history, American or otherwise, have already occurred. And, given the fact this nation shirked the yoke of slavery only 150 years before, the Great American Highlight Reel is not as long as it should otherwise be. Yet, slavery only proved that even in America lunacy can be institutionalized.

Today, the American race is more vicious, entitled, short-sighted, undeserving, boorish, uncultured, less sophisticated, inept, murderous and bumbling than ever before in our chronicles, which began in 1776. We no longer possess an American Dream, only American Nightmares we wish to share with all of the world. In turn, in the spirit of reciprocity, the world would like to share its nightmares with us Colonials.

Speaking of the world, Islam is experiencing its own civil wars, which threatens to discredit that formerly well known religion of peace and prosperity and give it the likeness to all of nothing more than a frothing mad dog in the streets, who would be better to be put down than understood.

In-between this, people are trying to have gentle lives of love and usefulness. And soon, maybe decades, the remnant of the Garden given humanity by God will be a fetid, spoiled place of languish and desolation. And, before that, I would gladly have my Judgment and be on my merry way.

What is the cause? Forget the lengthy explanations. I will tell you the cause. It is not new and there is nothing innovative about it: Evil men want power. It has been the same since the Great Flood. Evil men would rather make Hell of a Garden and be its prince than live in a Garden and be another gardener.

The American Presidential Election every four years is no longer a hunt for excellence. Instead, every four years, American elect the most corrupt, sometimes dumbest aristocrat that can be found and elevate him to the role of chieftain. Occasionally, a great person is elected to the office. But, in the Modern Era, such things are strictly an accident and any honorable acts one might try to make are quickly eradicated by the mountains of slack-jawed morons that present themselves as Senators and Congressmen.

I urge no one to action. If anything, I would simply look to distraction while awaiting some fresh horror that some fiend or other will unleash upon an unsuspecting, sedated citizenry.

What a 'Conservative' Really was

President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) was the United States' 26th chief executive and was termed a "Conservative" in his approach to government. The successor of President William McKinley was Republican and was an acknowledged leader in the "Progressive Movement."

As well as being a cowboy and war hero of the Spanish-American War (c. 1898), he was also 'conservationist' in the true spirit of the word. His Presidential Administration was hallmarked by protective tariffs and lower taxes, strong anti-trust laws that challenged monopolies of goods and services, food inspection standards and state parks. Roosevelt was determined to set aside a great number of federal parks all across the country, so that development and mining did not ruin pristine areas of the country through the long march of time.

Though a hunter, Roosevelt understood the need to preserve not only land but also certain wildlife in the U.S., and so he established laws to protect endangered species. Yet, the initiatives he aimed at insofar as his  domestic policy (be it protective tariffs, anti-trust laws, taking on monopolies, ensuring the sale of healthy food) were all truly pointed at preserving the resources of the United States.

He sought to preserve/conserve U.S. lands, indigenous species, jobs, businesses and commodities. And, he was not an international thinker. He believed that it is best for all for Americans to make or grow things in this country, sell them here, have people with adequate pay able to buy those goods and to keep those things that make this country great out of private hands so they would not be destroyed.

It is a misinterpretation of "Conservative" today that narrow-minded thinkers have done to claim relation to any of Roosevelt's ideas. He never would have gone for the North American Free Trade Agreement. The thought would have been ridiculous to Roosevelt's mind. Likewise, the notion of wanting to end employee rights in favor of conceding our entire nation to the hands of business was something he did not brook at the turn of the 20th century and I am sure he would have felt no less strong about it in the 21st century.

The idea of using American resources to bolster other nation states around the world, which leave the U.S. poorer for its philanthropy would never have made it past his desk.

Yet, so-called Conservatives' platform includes: No rights for workers, relaxed anti-trust laws, the sale of more government property for development in the private sector, the reduction of protective tariffs so the goods U.S. companies made overseas (stealing jobs) could be sold in American markets cheaply and relaxed standards from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

How on earth would a group of people so petty, self-centered and mindlessly greedy come to the conclusion they were "Conservative," given the fact that one of the nation's first real Conservatives was aptly labeled for his work in conserving American resources and markets. Meanwhile, modern Conservatives are preoccupied with destruction and legal violence to American markets, workers and standards.

No. Roosevelt would not have bought into these Conservatives. Because in his time, "Conservative" was linked to "Progressive," not 'Regressive' or 'Oppressive.' It will make no matter to modern Conservatives if they are right or wrong about what they call their standard. They are a group of people who wish to know nothing from other people, much like the old Know Nothing Party (to which they are kindred spirits). Hopefully, one day the modern Conservative meets the same end as the Know Nothingers of days past.