The morning after the Superbowl, I had the honor of spending an hour talking with former President George W. Bush. He and the First Lady have read Bonhoeffer and now I’m reading his book.
In remarks yesterday, Laura Bush said George W. Bush was reading my biography of Bonhoeffer! To see The Hill Blog, click here! For today’s Politico article, click here! For the C-Span video, click here! Her comment comes at the 25-min mark. And here’s the Washington Post mention!
A menacing, muscled man strides into the ring, wearing a black t-shirt. On the back in large white letters it reads: DRINK BEER. On the front: F&CK FEAR. The letter “U” is a skull, but looks so much like a “U” that you hardly notice. The man in the shirt is the hero to millions of kids. His name is Steve Austin. (TO KEEP READING, CLICK HERE.)
Will the GOP Sell its Soul to the Devil?
A menacing, muscled man strides into the ring, wearing a black t-shirt. On the back in large white letters it reads: DRINK BEER. On the front: F&CK FEAR. The letter “U” is a skull, but looks so much like a “U” that you hardly notice. The man in the shirt is the hero to millions of kids. His name is Steve Austin.
Fans hold up signs in the auditorium that say “Austin 3:16.” Get the reference? At NFL games, you’ll often see a sign in the crowd that say “John 3:16″, which refers to one of the holiest verses in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him would not perish, but have life everlasting.” “Austin 3:16″ is a deliberate mocking of that verse.
This man is bad and that’s what his young fans love about him. This is a dark world where he’s the hero. There are no good guys here. Good guys are sissies. Even the women in this world are macho — loud and brassy and vulgar and mean — and of course they’re as sexually attired as the medium will allow.
Welcome to the brave new world of Linda McMahon’s WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) empire. She and her steroidally-inflated husband Vince have taken an essentially harmless small-time business — inherited from Vince’s father in 1980 — and have turned it into something infinitely more violent, darker, edgier, and much more sexual. It is now an international business worth billions.
If you think of the WWE as harmless entertainment, you probably haven’t seen it much lately. You probably have an education and a job. Perhaps it makes you think of Hulk Hogan or Jesse “The Body” Ventura — or maybe even of Chief Jay Strongbow, Killer Kowalski, and Ivan “Polish Power” Putzki. But that innocent world was a child’s nursery rhyme compared to the sexualized evil of the WWE today. Most of the vulgarity and vileness cannot be described here, but a visit to youtube can give you some idea of how depraved it’s gotten. Make sure you hide the kids; and yet the McMahon’s have aimed their poison at kids deliberately, knowing the future profits that are at stake.
Anyone who longs for a Frank Capra-style, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington America filled with goodness and Judeo-Christian values should understand that the McMahons are your bitterest enemies. They are to American family values what the Gulf Oil Spill is to the Louisiana shellfish industry. Compared to Linda and Vince McMahon, Hugh Hefner is a gentleman and Jerry Springer is a Mickey Mouse huckster. And the McMahon’s have been so wildly successful at corrupting American youth that they are currently worth half a billion dollars.
But what do the McMahons plan to do with the wealth they have made corrupting our kids and grandkids?
How about buying a U.S. Senate seat?
That is precisely what is happening. If you live in Connecticut, you know this is no joke. But in case you missed it, read Rich Lowry’s column from a few weeks ago here… Or Ann Coulter’s column here…
But could Connecticut Republicans ever accept someone like Linda McMahon as their representative in the Senate? Surely the party of conservative family values would never countenance such a thing!
Unless the GOP was so extremely hungry to score a win — maybe even to win the Senate back — that they were willing to look the other way. Unless they were absolutely desperate…
Flash back to Europe in the early 1930s. The German economy was in free fall. People were jobless and starving and the shame and humiliation of Germany’s loss in World War One was unbearable. Germans had never been more desperate to turn things around.
So when a vulgar Austrian rabble-rouser offered them an opportunity to get back on top — to get back at their enemies and to be proud again — it was difficult to turn down. They had no idea of what he really stood for, and it was difficult for them to care very much, since they so badly wanted to succeed again. But if Hitler could pull them out of their current straits, they would overlook his character flaws. After all, once they were back on top they could always get rid of him.
People who sell their souls to the devil never realize what they are doing at the time. But one man did see. His name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer was a pastor who stood up to Hitler and who was murdered by the Nazis in 1945. He saw what Germany was up against. And he knew that there was nothing more dangerous and more tempting than success. If you offered people success when they were desperate, as Hitler had done, it would be very difficult to persuade them to take a noble stand for what was right. Success was addictive. Bonhoeffer tried desperately to warn the German people against Hitler. In many ways he was a prophetic voice, trying to get Germans to see that they were marching toward a cliff and that their ultimate end would be far worse than they could have imagined.
Needless to say, Bonhoeffer did not succeed, and Germany is still paying the price, eight decades later. But can Bonhoeffer’s warning be a warning to us in America today?
Will Americans learn from the lessons of the past? Let’s face it: the desperation of the GOP to win a Senate seat in Connecticut is shocking and ugly. No one who cares about America should let it stand. Certainly no self-proclaimed conservative should stand for it, and certainly no one who dares call himself a Christian should stand for it. Now is the time to speak up.
But as of today, most Connecticut voters have no idea of what’s really going on. That’s because Connecticut’s cynical GOP leaders love McMahon’s money and her willingness to spend it. And they love the fact that she can win. The key is to keep Connecticut voters in the dark about who she really is and what she represents. So far they’ve been successful — and the primary is on August 9th. Very few people even know that Rob Simmons is on the ballot against McMahon, and that they can vote for him and avoid unmitigated disaster.
Here’s the bottom line: the August 9th primary in Connecticut is nothing less than a referendum on the soul of the Republican Party. If the GOP will elect someone as self-servingly immoral as Linda McMahon in order to win, they will pay bitterly and dearly in the years ahead. They will deserve what they get and they will have no one to blame but themselves.
Just as Germans regret the terrible Faustian bargain they in 1933, the GOP of 2010 will, too. If we believe this is the way to win, we will lose everything. May God help us to make the right decision.
END
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Eric Metaxas is the author of the New York Times best-seller Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy — A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich. For more information, visit www.ericmetaxas.com.
Reading the NYTimes Style Section yesterday morning (yep, I’m straight) I almost spit out my proverbial cornflakes to read an article about President Obama’s embattled social secretary Desiree Rogers… For the full story now at foxnews.com, click here! Please leave a comment.
In what critics are describing as a “shameless effort” to remain relevant, former President Jimmy Carter has agreed to eat a live bullfrog next Sunday night on the CBS program “Sixty Minutes”.
CBS execs are clearly thrilled, predicting a ratings bonanza beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. “The broadcast will be live,” said CBS President Les Moonves, quipping “as will the frog.” But friends close to the Carters are not amused, fearing the stunt will tarnish the former President’s legacy. But Carter remains defiant, describing the act as a “vindication” and as a “valentine” to his rural childhood in Plains, Georgia.
Veteran media watchers are puzzled, calling the whole thing “bizarre”. Some have suggested Carter was stung by the controversy over his remark that cast SC Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst as “racially motivated.” Eating a small amphibian on a nationally-televised program would serve to “turn the page”, with the added boon of possibly revitalizing the former President as a player on the international stage.
Carter was also thought to be upset that “Dancing With the Stars” had recently rejected him as a contestant. Learning they had welcomed the participation of former House Whip Tom Delay was “the last straw”, according to his wife, former First Lady Rosalyn Carter, who told one friend that while casting about for a way to “leap-frog” ahead of his detractors, her husband’s thoughts had drifted to an incident from 1934, when he was eleven. That memory seems to have sparked the idea for the “Sixty Minutes” appearance. But details of this incident remain unclear, although Carter’s late brother Billy spoke of it in a 1978 interview:
“There was an old redneck feller who lived in a shack by the river. Everybody called him ole Frawg, but I never knew why. My brother Jimmy and I would go down there to taunt him and chunk rocks at him. But one time that man taught us a lesson. One rock hit ole Frawg in the small of the back and he went down. Jimmy run over to see if he was still breathing, but as soon as he got close, ole Frawg grabbed him by the ankle! The old feller was just playing possum! He drug Jimmy to his shack and I ran home. Later on, when Jimmy came home he told me that ole Frawg had said, “You boys think you kin get the better of ole Frawg. But ole Frawg gonna teach you a lesson.” Then he reached down into a cedar bucket and pulled out a bullfrog as big as his fist and he talked to it real tender, callin’ it his brother. And then he chawed the critter’s head off. Jimmy started crying, but ole Frawg said it didn’t taste half-bad. He said his tastebuds wasn’t worth a damn on accounta he smoked so much ter-backy. And he allowed as that old frog was in a better place than that stinky bucket. Years later, when he had become a midshipman at Anapolis, Jimmy told me how the story had affected him, and how some day he’d tell the world about ole Frawg.”
Who knew Ronald Reagan could still weigh in on public policy? To hear him, CLICK HERE! It’s amazingly prescient — almost prophetic, really. At the end he mentions Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Serena Williams, and Joe Wilson. Stunning!
To read Ross Douthat’s latest NY Times column, click here. It’s a wonderful column, and it’s extraordinary to think that their deaths were separated by a mere thirteen days. For more on the “pro-life Kennedy” click here.
Eric Metaxas discusses what can happen when government gets involved in life and death decisions, with references to his own book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and to the euthanasia policies of the Third Reich.
As Socrates once said: “Well, I’ll be an egg-sucked mule!” Socrates events are not places where you are likely to get cracker-barrel philosophers — much less bass fishin’ tips, or trick-rope exhibitions. But on June 20th, SITC is proud to welcome former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who will speak on “The Role of Faith in Politics” — and who may well show us how to twitch a hula-popper through the lily pads to lure a lunker out of hiding. (see photo, left.) Unless he means the other kind of bass (see other photo.) In any case, it’s sure to be a big ole mess o’ fun, so if you are in the NYC-area on June 20th, do not miss it! This event will sell out quickly, so hurry! To register and for details, click here.
