The Third Founding of a Nation and the Fomentation of the White Rose – an article.

Aristotle: On Politics: "... and further, it is part [of the nature of tyranny] to strive to see to it that nothing is kept hidden of that which any subject says or does, but that everywhere he will be spied upon,... and further, to set man against man and friend against friend, and the common people against the privileged and the wealthy. Also it is part of these tyrannical measures, to keep the subjects poor, in order to pay the guards and the soldiers, and so that they will be occupied with earning their livelihood and will have neither leisure nor opportunity to engage in conspiratorial acts... Further, [to levy] such taxes on income as were imposed in Syracuse, for under Dionysius the citizens gladly paid out their whole fortunes in taxes within five years. Also, the tyrant is inclined constantly to foment wars"

I attended an interesting presentation Monday evening on the historical premise of the Constitution as presented, the “Unwritten Constitution”. It was an interesting take on the reasons and the basis for the Constitution. The presenter showed the intent of the founders, how they formed their opinions from early times in the history of great thinkers and from the basis of the ancient philosophers. We learned why they chose to expound on the ideals of free men as they reintroduced these ancient precepts as they founded our budding nation as a “way of life” while establishing a government for the people, by the people and of the people.

Our presenter was an attorney whom I will identify only as Mike. It was a very well thought out presentation and one that although difficult to hear in many respects, opened my mind to a new perspective that I dare say might make the difference in this cultural war. He highlighted a few points that led me to a refined conclusion. I will attempt to convey to my readers the core truths of this dissertation.

The background of the presentation among other writings, was a book titled “The Road to Serfdom, The Collective Works Volume Two” by Friedrich August von Hayek (circa 1944) and the more recent writings of Claes G. Ryn. Both writings are rather prophetic in nature, so much so that as you read them, you feel as though they were written in the last few months. The presentation was a very telling tale of a nation’s decent into the “Collective” culture; as opposed to the ‘Constitutional Culture’ on which our country was built.

As background, Wikipedia in describing Hayak’s book states,

“The central thesis is that all forms of collectivism lead logically and inevitably to tyranny. He used the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as examples of countries that had gone down “the road to serfdom” and reached tyranny.”

Hayek argued that within a centrally planned economic system, the distribution and allocation of all resources and goods would devolve onto a small group. This would lead to a disagreement about the practical implementation of any economic plan. Combined with the inadequacy of the central planners’ resource management, in turn would invariably necessitate coercion in order for anything to be achieved.

Failure of central planning would be perceived by the public as an absence of sufficient power by the state to implement an otherwise good idea. (Bush) Such a perception would lead the public to vote more power to the state, and would assist the rise to power of a “strong man” perceived to be capable of “getting the job done”. (Obama) For Hayek “the road to serfdom” inadvertently set upon by central planning, with its dismantling of the free market system, ends in the destruction of all individual economic and personal freedom.”

We also were presented the Economic Bill of Rights, better known as the ‘Second Bill of Rights’ written by FDR and he introduced the concept that we are currently in the Third Founding of this nation. The former I did not know existed, and the latter concept I found a very eye-opening description of what is occurring in our Nation today.

The point of the discussion was to begin to understand where our founder’s were going with the writings of the instrumental declarations and the establishment of guidelines from which this country was founded, starting from the perspective of personal and societal responsibility combined with reason; as compared to today’s direction of feeding and controlling all needs, wants and desires of our current culture.

The conclusion being we have one of two choices:

Finding a way to secure our independence and protect our children’s freedom, the freedom in which we ourselves were raised, or if we do nothing, being the very people who will have to explain to our children and grandchildren what it was like to live in a free America and the more difficult explanation of why they no longer live free.

Perhaps an enlightened way of understanding this culture shift would be Gain vs. Greed as opposed to the flattening of the bell curve and a leveling of society that we currently see as populous ideals. The manipulation and framing of the premise being no one believes we should see a starving child and not wish to help.

The Take Away

Four statements made by Mike struck me quite hard and I have been pondering them ever since. I am going to ponder them with you.

1. A well-organized minority can quickly become the majority.

2. The meaning of Constitutional Living, or “Living in Freedom” is simply the act of caring for yourself and your neighbor physically, keeping government at bay and taking responsibility for ones actions. In times of old, if my neighbor and her nine children became widowed, either she would be living in my home, or I would be helping her tend her fields to support her. If my neighbor is a little old lady who finds herself buried in snow up to her ankles, I as a younger individual will go over and shovel her driveway, start her car, put her in the car and drive her down to the grocery store so she can get what she needs. It is a mindset built in the active support of our struggling fellow man.

3. Our society now lives as a “Statist Society”, which is, in short, a welfare mentality perhaps better phrased as “Freedom from Need or Want” as the main driver. It is these thoughts that fill the Economic or 2nd Bill of Rights. Do you see the difference between points 2 and 3? We have gone from “Living and Giving in Freedom” to seeking “Freedom from Needs and Wants”.

Freedom from Need and Want says that I matter and then maybe my fellow man - although he is not my problem. I go to work and I give the government a large chunk of my paycheck. I do not look out for my neighbor personally, but I expect the paycheck I give my government will somehow go to meet my neighbor’s needs/wants after my needs are met.

It teaches me that my money will somehow be returned to the collective in the form of government subsidy so that we can all live in our homes. It also promises that we can pay our bills and party when we want to party. It tells me that it will end world hunger, world pain and world want without my direct involvement or the need to go out of my way for the betterment of society. It is the "easy" way out through apathy and I propose it is a trap from which we will travail to escape. For once it breathes strong, the people suffocate. Never can we have it both ways.

Who can argue against that frame of “statist justice”? You can’t without understanding the difference in ideology. No one wants to say there will be starving children and the framers of this statist system know that and use it to manipulate us.

The difference in ideology is who should feed that hungry child, individuals, churches, charities or the government? Can the government do it better than the neighbor can? If we truly all helped our neighbor through the former 3 avenues presented, would any be starving, would we need the ever increasing appetite of the government? If so, then why when we incorporate the 4th avenue (the government) do we see an increase in poverty? We will always have the poor with us, but which is better, to teach them to fish, or to only give them a fish to feed them for a day? And who really gets that money we faithfully send in to the government. Has it ended poverty and starvation? We keep throwing more money at the problem, yet we seem to actually create more poverty….Why?

4. As we are in the throes of the Third Founding of our Nation, what are we prepared to do to overcome the seemingly inevitable. The First Founding is highlighted by the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the framing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Second Founding was highlighted by the Civil War, went through the New Deal period, ended after WW II, culminating in the 2nd Bill of Rights. This Third Founding in my view could easily be called a “Third Reich” which started with Carter, was slowed by Reagan, was picked up again by Bush Sr., gained strong support from Clinton, accelerated through Bush and is now at warp speed with Obama.

The Third Reich USA style is simply defined by the politicization of everything, the privatization of gains and the publicizing of losses - for now.

History teaches us that with Revolution, blood can and often does flow in the streets. If this is true and with a nation changing as rapidly as is ours, how then does that bode for we the people? How can we avoid the fate of past Revolutions? How can we stop the hate and the division we are witnessing?


Part II - The White Rose Society

I am going to tell you a story of the “White Rose Society”, a story that will not only move you tremendously, but through the reading of just a one of the six pamphlets produced from this movement, hopefully will help you realize once again that nothing is new under the sun. This young organization mobilized many to rise up against fascism and to demand a return of freedom to its people from within Nazi Germany.

The White Rose Society was a student organization in the early days of the Third Reich based out of the University of Munich. It was started by Christian students, Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie Scholl, their friends Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, and their philosophy professor Kurt Huber. They were youthful, innocent, courageous, morally strong college students who stood, taught, and fought against the tyranny, oppression, and genocide of the Nazi regime. They were not Jewish, yet they found the hatred of the Jewish, and the promulgation of a culture of hate through centralized government dictates which were becoming more and more cruel, appalling.

These students, along with their teacher built pamphlets of their ideals, based on the values, morals, and ideals of their faith and of other, wiser men before them. They printed these ideals for all to disseminate. They were true freedom fighters, the human swords of the proclamation of liberty, compassion, and devotion to their fellow man.

They were barely out of childhood, very young adults who wrote the road to freedom. Like many who become human swords, standing for what was right; they were subsequently and very publically beheaded for their beliefs. Their six pamphlets were confiscated by the Gestapo and destroyed at their capture, not that a capture was terribly difficult for such a government machine, as they were students going to school and being proponents of unsanctioned ideals as students are prone to do.

But, like all truth is wont to do, 17,000 of these pamphlets were somehow spared and they made their way to England. The Royal Army reproduced these pamphlets and later airdropped over 5 Million pamphlets over 17 German cities. World War II was not won solely by outside freedom fighters coming into the country in warrior fashion, it was won through the hearts and minds of its own people. I am reprinting the third pamphlet here in its entirety.

The Fomentation of the Ideal – The Third Pamphlet of the White Rose Society
Reprinted here in part.

“Salus publica suprema lex – The Safety of the People Above Law
All ideal forms of government are utopias. A state cannot be constructed on a purely theoretical basis; rather, it must grow and ripen in the way an individual human being matures. But we must not forget that at the starting point of every civilization the state was already there in rudimentary form. The family is as old as man himself, and out of this initial bond man, endowed with reason, created for himself a state founded The White Rose Society on justice, whose highest law was the common good. The state should exist as a parallel to the divine order, and the highest of all utopias, the civitas dei, is the model which in the end it should approximate.

Here we will not pass judgment on the many possible forms of the state - democracy, constitutional monarchy, and so on. But one matter needs to be brought out clearly and unambiguously. Every individual human being has a claim to a useful and just state, a state which secures the freedom of the individual as well as the good of the whole. For, according to God's will, man is intended to pursue his natural goal, his earthly happiness, in self-reliance and self-chosen activity, freely and independently within the community of life and work of the nation.

But our present "state" is the dictatorship of evil. "Oh, we've known that for a long time," I hear you object”, and it isn't necessary to bring that to our attention again." But I ask you, if you know that, why do you not bestir yourselves, why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanized state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right – or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system?

But if a man no longer can summon the strength to demand his right, then it is absolutely certain that he will perish. We would deserve to be dispersed through the earth like dust before the wind if we do not muster our powers at this late hour and finally find the courage, which up to now we have lacked. Do not hide your cowardice behind a cloak of expediency, for with every new day that you hesitate, failing to oppose this offspring of Hell, your guilt, as in a parabolic curve, grows higher and higher.

Many, perhaps most, of the readers of these leaflets do not see clearly how they can practice an effective opposition. They do not see any avenues open to them. We want to try to show them that everyone is in a position to contribute to the overthrow of this system. It is not possible through solitary withdrawal, in the manner of embittered hermits, to prepare the
ground for the overturn of this "government" or bring about the revolution at the earliest possible moment. No, it can be done only by the cooperation of many convinced, energetic people - people who are agreed as to the means they must use to attain their goal.

We have no great number of choices as to these means. The only one available is passive resistance. The meaning and the goal of passive resistance is to topple National Socialism, and in this struggle we must not recoil from any course, any action, whatever its nature. At all points we must oppose National Socialism, wherever it is open to attack. We must soon bring this monster of a state to an end. A victory of fascist Germany in this war would have immeasurable, frightful consequences.

For the entire reprint of the White Rose Society pamphlets, click here.

Ending Thoughts

The oracles of this movement, the brave young men and woman who began it, may have lost their lives to the fight but in their end, the movement continued. I propose to you that this movement galvanized the people, the underground and ultimately, even while struggling to recover through the late 80’s to today, freed an imprisoned population from Nazism and many of communism which is only a different flavor of the same governmental appetite. These countries remain far from perfect, it is a long road back to freedom, but the gray people of the gray breadlines find relief, they can and will, if allowed build nations of Freedom in Living and Giving.

Before we get there, I challenge all to practice what we preach. We must return to the culture from which we came in part. We may not be able to return to a strict construction ideal, but we can certainly return to free market system, where our children can be raised with a sense of personal responsibility. I challenge everyone reading this that we stand for that which we tolerate. If we do so, will that make us the oracles? Could we become targets of a government gone to repeating the failed movements of the past? I can’t answer that question, but I can ask in return, which is worse, to live in a country that suffocates and silences its own or to live in a country in which it is all for one and one for all? A country such as we mainly were as recent as the 80’s, free from nationalization, fearful out of control deficit, and mass control of her people and her businesses.

Please pass this on. Please comment on your take. If the comment appears to disappear after you submit it, be assured it pops into my inbox for approval.