Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Risk Off! Rate Cuts! - As Makes the Angels Weep

The God of the Market

"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population. Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy.

These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry.

If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation


"Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk.  Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets. 

The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention. The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed.

Are you not entertained?  As Egon von Greyerz noted, the next five years are not about winning, but surviving.   So, then let us then proceed."

Jesse, 5 August 2019


“During the Summer of 1929 the stock market was marked by wild swings, violent up and down price movements, that left market participants feeling dizzy and almost exhausted. Whatever may or may not come, now might be an excellent time to take inventory of your finances, and provisions for the future. And you may wish to order your affairs to be more resilient in the face of risks, both hidden and mispriced.”

Jesse, 10 August 2019


“But man, proud man,
Dress'd in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep..”

William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure


"O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.

But if not, even if he does not preserve us, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the images of gold you have set up and commanded us to worship."

Daniel 3:16-18

As a reminder, there will be a stock market option expiration on Friday.

I pray daily that God will give us the light, and the strength, to know His will, and to resist the temptation to join in the hatred, the madness, and the worship of the darkness of this world, that seems to possess so many of our countrymen, day by day.

'But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil.'

Have a pleasant evening.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - Arc of Justice, Rising and Falling

The gold/silver price ratio remains extraordinarily high at 73.

NAV premiums are thin, which is a bit of a change from their more deeply negative trend.

In general, people with whom I speak seem discouraged, disheartened, tempted to hide in apathy and meaningless diversions. Those who promote reform see the monolith of a corrupted governance spoiled by big money that seems impenetrable.  Truth is hidden and whispered, with lies and deceptions abounding, spread by the megaphone of the mainstream media.

It can be discouraging indeed, to see the sense of duty and honour so poorly treated in this triumph of the age of greed.  There is a temptation to see ourselves at some low point, lower than those who have gone before us, and then to wallow in apathy and inaction, in a kind of a sick hopelessness that 'nothing can be done.'

But this is where a sense of history and of human nature can provide to us a great comfort and encouragement to continue on. Liberty and the hopes and aspirations of the common people are always rising and falling, as is the rise and fall of wickedness, and the darker powers of this world that at times would seem to block out the very light.  

And yet if we have read and understood what our fathers and mothers, and our grandfathers and grandmothers and those who went before them faced, it does not seem so terrible now, not at all.

There is only one real difference.  Now is our time to take up the reins of humanity, and stand and work and wait for the inevitability of the human spirit to rise once again, if we will only continue on in our struggle and endure with hope and faith in ourselves and a higher power that arcs, if slowly but faithfully, towards justice. 

And perhaps we might remind ourselves that we have not lost, we can have a personal victory that matters, if we can maintain the spark of love in our hearts.   And bear in mind that the struggle is never over in this world, but that our own struggle only will be over when we go to our final rest, and hand over the instruments of our warfare to those who come after. 

This is the nature of the world and of our humanity, always winning and losing, rising and falling.  At long last, the world will pass away, and does not matter.  Money is necessary, but it is not the end of the game.  Power will not sustain our soul when we are stripped naked. These worldly prizes are not winning, they are snares and traps.  Having riches will not 'enable you to do good.'  It would corrupt and condemn you to a life of graceless desperation.  What matters is how we have lived and loved, and what we bring with us when we finally face the last. 

But for now it is our time to take up the struggle, and to act to promote justice and to prevent the spread of oppression and deceit.  This is our calling.  People may ask, 'Look at the way things are.  If there is a God,  why doesn't He do something about it?'   And He did.  He sent us.

So despite these failings and misgivings, despite the short term triumphs of those who would use the body politic as their personal servant, and harness the moneys of the world as their new armies for plunder and colonization, we might, with some eye to history, take courage in the words of the great lights of history who shine across the ages for us like beacons.  As William Gladstone said in the fight for voting rights for the common people:

"You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side. The great social forces which move onwards in their might and majesty, and with the tumult of our debates does not for a moment impede or disturb-- those great social forces are against you; they are marshaled on our side; and the banner which we now carry in this fight, though perhaps at some moments it may droop over our sinking heads, yet soon again will float in the eye of heaven, and will be borne by the firm hands of the united people of the three kingdoms, perhaps not to an easy, but to a certain and to a not distant victory."

William E Gladstone, Representation of the People Act Speech, 1866

A Virtuous Life Is Found In Kindness, Tolerance, and Reason

One thing that is striking about the modern life is how unfashionable it has become to strive towards what used to be called gentlemanly behaviour.   Perhaps civility might be a more appropriate label, since gentlemanly tends to invoke an image of the well-to-do, well-dressed, and aloof.  Although civility itself is too often cold, a dissembling of rudeness through an overuse of politeness, and politeness often a custom or outward mannerism.

Then let us just say a definition of the virtuous life is one that embraces knowledge, kindness, and tolerance, a humanity fueled not merely by sentiment or a disposition of character, but by reason coupled with a moral sentiment and an abiding regard for others. 

It is at heart a question of 'what does it mean to be human?'   Not so much what can I do, but what ought I to do?   And how do I define or describe ought?  And how ought I treat others?  Or is it better to define myself by the limits of my own will?  Is that what it means to be truly human?

This is fairly basic coming of age stuff, but not so much in a time of the permanently and obsessively adolescent.    In a society that worships the self, power is the coin of the realm, where power is to be found in asserting one's own will over others.  

And beyond all doubt, kindness and tolerance are to be despised as undermining, weakening the will to power.   In power is to be found the definition of all truth, for it dictates all, and does not bend a knee to any other reality but its own interpretation.  Might makes right is written large on the tableau of empire.

Even in such a matter as a most terrible and unjust assault committed on those who may have offended uneducated minds, those who rightly rise to the defense of freedom and tolerance, which as a society we should, can do so in the most intolerant, hateful, and unreasonable of manners.

And in doing so they may think themselves virtuous and wise.  They attack others with the heavy-handed zealousness of the worst true believers whom they despise, when what they believe is only in their own imagined superiority of belief or unbelief, or color or manner or lifestyle, which is demonstrably the vainest of idols.
 

So they can say that since these perpetrators were religious in the most extreme sense of their motivation, 'all religion is deserving of insults and disrespect' because it is wrong, and demean and dehumanize all those who think differently than themselves.   

They see themselves as not in the least selective or extreme, but are free to insult and disrespect others by abusing their freedom, which in itself may be no real fault.  Comedy at its most basic level can often be some abuse of convention or reason, that which shocks our expectations without undue harm.

But then they seem to imagine themselves superior to the worst of those whom they despise, who may act overtly on their similar intolerance and hatred of others.   And so they become unfunny, hypocrites and bullies. 

It is the very hallmark of a smugly self-absorbed mind to commit the same offense as another, while seeking to call out the faults of the other with the fists of their words, and think themselves virtuous and justified because in the kingdom of their own mind 'they deserve it.'

How then are they different from the undereducated and oppressed who in their own ignorance and relative powerlessness resort to violence?  It is like the white collar criminal who thinks themselves morally justified and blameless because they use the pen and the bribe and perversion of justice to steal, rather than the knife or the club.

If there is anything to be learned from all this, it is that we are all capable of enormous hypocrisies and evil, if we think ourselves to be perfect and without fault because we are more than the ordinary human by our superior nature, rising in our own esteem by knocking others flat.  

When it is not just a pathological sickness, this is the most deadly of errors, the first fault of pride, and from it flows a cornucopia of all other injustice and abuses.  In rationalizing ourselves by dehumanizing others, we can therein comfortably become monsters.  And some do.

"It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate...

...his great concern being to make every one at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome.

He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets every thing for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out...

 

If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive.

Nowhere shall we find greater candour, consideration, indulgence: he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province and its limits. If he be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity.

He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent; he honours the ministers of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious toleration..."

John Henry Newman

Reprise: Who Was 'the Frenchman Who Wept' For HIs Country?

Here is an iconic photograph that I have seen in any number of documentaries, generally identified as a Frenchman who weeps for his city as the Nazis march into Paris.

I have always been curious about this photo. I wondered where it came from and who this person was.  It has a certain tragic dignity about it.

Here is what I have been able to discover.

This photo first appeared in print in Life Magazine in their 3 March 1941 issue on page 29.   This is the photo which I show above and not the more tightly cropped versions that are often used in documentaries.

The caption on the photo identifies it as "a Frenchman sheds tears of patriotic grief as the flags of his country's last regiments are exiled to Africa."

So obviously this is not a photo taken in 1940 in Paris, as the French regimental flags had been moved into the south of France in order to preserve them from the surrender.  The flags themselves were not taken to Africa until 1941.

Here is a more commonly available photograph of the same scene.  It is a moment frozen in time.

Marseille sous l'occupation by Lucien Gaillard says that this is a photo of Monsieur Jerôme Barzetti, taken in Marseilles on February 20, 1941.  This is quite some time after the Nazi entrance into Paris in June, 1940.

I have not been able to find out anything else about him and do not have a hard copy of this book.  He does look old enough to have fought in The Great War.  Is he even French, or an Italian émigré who had fled the tyranny of Mussolini?  Perhaps he was part of the Barzetti industrial family from Italy, and related to Federico who later founded Barzetti Pastries?  I cannot say.

I wonder how he fared, and if he was able to see the restoration of France and the end of the war.

The still photo itself is actually taken from newsreel footage that was much later used in a US war film directed by Frank Capra as Chapter III - Divide and Conquer of his series, "Why We Fight." This film was produced in 1943 and begins after the conquest of Poland, and includes the fall of Benelux and France.

Here is the relevant clip from this US War Department film.  Monsieur Barzetti makes his appearance at 54:50 in the film.  It is a war film after all so you might excuse the somewhat florid rhetoric at the end.

Some have speculated that Capra may have staged portions of his series and I would certainly allow for that.  But since the photo of our 'Frenchman who cried' appeared in 1941 in Life magazine,  it is almost certain that had been taken from the newsreel footage of the day, which was sold to various outlets and used to create informative 'short subjects' to be shown at movie theatres.

Capra must have used that same footage in the creation of his own war film two years later.

So now we know something about 'The Frenchman Who Wept."

 

And well may we weep for the loss of our own freedom and tradition someday. 

But who will care?   Does anyone matter?  Why should anyone care for us, and why should we care about this weeping Frenchman, his risings and fallings, his perplexity and concerns, his fears and his sorrows?

Because when the ocean's dry up, and the earth grows cold and dies, as the stars flicker and grow dim in the sky, and creation turns back into dust, Monsieur Barzetti's soul will continue on, vibrantly alive, and his tears will have long been wiped away, by kindly hands.

"De loin en loin, elle vient jeter dans l'âme du profond artiste un peu de sa paix, de sa grandeur mystérieuse, puis elle retourne à sa solitude immense, au milieu des rues pleines de peuple.

Il n’y a qu’une tristesse, lui a-t-elle dit, la dernière fois, c’est de n’être pas de saints."

Léon Bloy, La Femme Pauvre

 

The only sadness, she said to him, in the end, is not to be a saint.

 

 

Late Night Reading: Jacques Lusseyran - the 'Blind Frenchman' - Poetry In Buchenwald

"It is always the soul that dies first, even if it's departure goes unnoticed. And it always carries the body along with it...Man is nourished by the invisible, man is nourished by that which is beyond the personal. He dies from preferring the opposite."

Jacques Lusseyran, Poetry at Buchenwald


"We can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Jacques Lusseyran was a high school student in Paris at the time the German army occupied France in 1940. Although he had been totally blind since age eight as the result of an accident, Lusseyran, who was then sixteen, decided to organize his friends and other students into an underground group to resist the occupation.

“News was needed, surely, but courage even more so, and clarity. We were resolved to hide nothing. For here was the monster to be fought: defeatism, and with it that other monster, apathy. Everything possible must be done to keep the French from growing accustomed to Nazism, or from seeing it just as an enemy, like enemies of other times, an enemy of the nation, an adversary who was victorious just for the moment. From our past we knew that Nazism (Fascism) threatened the whole of humanity, that it was an absolute evil, and we were going to publish its evilness abroad..."

Within a year the group numbered some 600 members who produced and distributed an illegal underground newspaper despite the risk of imprisonment, torture or death if they were caught. Lusseyran describes the mood of both surrender and joy he experienced in the resistance movement:

“I had not a single friend who had anything left to lose. They had given up literally everything except life. . . On my word of honor, the air was different where my friends were. There you could smell joy. Even when they were sad and talking about their own death, the smell of their talk was good and gave you a lift.”

Lusseyran was eventually betrayed by a pro-Nazi student who infiltrated the resistance group, resulting in the arrest of Lusseyran and other leaders of the group.

Following interrogation, Lusseyran was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

In the camp, disease and malnutrition were rampant, and Lusseyran himself became sick and was very near death. But at that point he became aware that a will to live “had taken possession of me and filled me to overflowing ... Slowly I came back from the dead.”

He recalled that “on May 8, I left the hospital on my two feet. I was nothing but skin and bones, but I had recovered. The fact was I was so happy that now Buchenwald seemed to me a place which if not welcome was at least possible. I was free now to help the others; not always, not much, but in my own way I could help. I could try to show other people how to go about holding on to life. I could turn toward them the flow of light and joy which had grown so abundant in me.”

Lusseyran was asked by his fellow inmates to visit the various blocks of prisoners each day to share whatever factual information was available about the progress of the war and to dispel rumors.

The guards allowed prisoners to hear German news reports; Lusseyran was fluent in German and “read between the lines” of those reports to infer what was actually happening. He also received information from time to time via a clandestine radio which the prisoners had hidden.

Lusseyran writes: “The remarkable thing was that listening to the fears of others had ended by freeing me almost completely from anxiety. I had become cheerful, and was cheerful almost all the time, without willing it, without even thinking about it. That helped me, naturally, but it also helped the others. They had made such a habit of watching the coming of the little blind Frenchman with his happy face, his reassuring words, that on days when there was no news, they had him visit just the same.”

In April 1945, he was liberated by the Allies, surviving German massacres of the concentration camps in which some of his friends were killed. Many of his friends had died during the course of the war. After the war, Lusseyran taught French literature in the United States and wrote books, including And There Was Light and Against the Pollution of the I.

He died together with his third wife Marie in a car accident in France on July 27, 1971.

“We had to live in the present; each moment had to be absorbed for all that was in it. When a ray of sunshine comes, open out, absorb it to the depths of your being. Never think that an hour earlier you were cold and that an hour later you will be cold again. Just enjoy.

The amazing thing is that no anguish held out against this treatment for very long. Take away from suffering its double drumbeat of resonance, memory and fear. Suffering may persist, but already it is relieved by half.”

“Life had taken possession of me. I had never lived so fully before. Life had become a substance within me. It broke into my cage, pushed by a force a thousand times stronger than I. It was certainly not made of flesh and blood, not even of ideas. It came toward me like a shimmering wave, like the caress of light. I could see it beyond my eyes and my forehead and above my head. It touched me and filled me to overflowing. I let myself float upon it… I drew my strength from the spring. I kept on drinking and drinking still more. I was not going to leave that celestial stream… Here was the life which sustained the life in me..."

“The Lord took pity on the poor mortal who was so helpless before him… But there was one thing left which I could do: not refuse God’s help, the breath he was blowing upon me. That was the one battle I had to fight, hard and wonderful all at one: not to let my body be taken by the fear. For fear kills, and joy maintains life..."

“I was nothing but skin and bones, but I had recovered. The fact was I was so happy, that now Buchenwald seemed to me a place which if not welcome, was at least possible. If they didn’t give me any bread to eat, I would feed on hope..."

"I was carried by a hand. I was covered by a wing. One doesn’t call such living emotions by their names. I hardly needed to look out for myself…I was free now to help the others; not always, not much, but in my own way I could help. I could try to show other people how to go about holding on to life. I could turn toward them the flow of light and joy which had grown so abundant in me..."

"From that time on they stopped stealing my bread or my soup. It never happened again. Often my comrades would wake me up in the night and take me to comfort someone…I became “the blind Frenchman.” For many, I was just, “the man who didn’t die.” Hundreds of people confided in me. The men were determined to talk to me. They spoke to me in French, in Russian, in German, in Polish. I did the best I could to understand them all. That is how I lived, how I survived. The rest I cannot describe...”

"That is what you had to do to live in the camp: be engaged, not live for yourself alone. The self-centered life has no place in the world of the deported. You must go beyond it, lay hold on something outside yourself.

Never mind how: by prayer if you know how to pray; through another man's warmth which communicates with yours, or through yours which you pass on to him; or simply by no longer being greedy. Those happy old men were like the hoboes. They asked nothing more for themselves, and that put everything within their reach.

Be engaged, no matter how, but be engaged. It was certainly hard, and most men didn't achieve it.

Of myself I can't say why I was never entirely bereft of joy. But it was a fact and my solid support. Joy I found even in strange byways, in the midst of fear itself. And fear departed from me, as infection leaves an abscess and bursts.

By the end of a year in Buchenwald I was convinced that life was not at all as I had been taught to believe it, neither life nor society."

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Remembering

More tiresome histrionics from LavaGirl and the money masters today.

When their positions finally implode, perhaps they will make pretty sparks in the night sky for the children. And then they will be gone, their gifts and talents not only wasted, but their names blackened shamefully, and forgotten as if written in ashes.

Silver is carving out a massive triangle pattern on the weekly chart.

Gold is a little more guarded here, but the next week or so should give it a clearer voice.

Below I remember those who are worth remembering, and forget those who have been weighed, and are found wanting.

On 22 February 1943, Scholl, her brother Hans and their friend Christoph Probst were found guilty of treason and condemned to death. They were all beheaded by executioner Johann Reichhart in Munich's Stadelheim Prison only a few hours later, at 17:00 hrs. The execution was supervised by Walter Roemer, the enforcement chief of the Munich district court. Prison officials, in later describing the scene, emphasized the courage with which she walked to her execution. Her last words were:

"How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to offer themselves up individually for a righteous cause?

Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go."

The White Rose
Fourth Leaflet
Munich, 1942

We will not be silent.

"...It is the time of the harvest, and the reaper cuts into the ripe grain with wide strokes. Mourning takes up her abode in the country cottages, and there is no one to dry the tears of the mothers. Yet Hitler feeds those people whose most precious belongings he has stolen and whom he has driven to a meaningless death with lies.

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 maw of Hell, and his power is at bottom accursed. True, we must conduct a struggle against the Nazi 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.

Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.

Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate.

Everywhere, and at times of greatest trials, men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil. He is a like rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air..."

Please distribute this as widely as possible.

"God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment. And it seems that I can hear God saying to America, 'You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still, and know, that I'm God.'"

Martin Luther King, It's A Dark Day In Our Nation, 30 April 1967

But If Not...

November 1967



April 1967




April 3, 1968, the day before he was murdered for speaking truth to power.


A time comes, for every one of us, all children of God, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian alike, and all who love God and hear these words, when we must choose. We will choose to bear the mark of the dark powers and principalities of this world, or we will refuse, and bind ourselves to the one God in heaven. It may be hard on some, easier on others. But we will all make that decision, and carry the mark of that choice with us forever.

That choice is not made once, but is forged with every action, every day, on our hearts.  So when the final choice is made, we will choose by whom we have served.   And keep in mind that although God is loving, He is also just. And there are sins against the Spirit that even a merciful God will not forgive.

So when you consider your actions, ask yourself, 'Is this God's will? Does it stand in the light of God's witness, His mercy and love? Am I listening to His Messenger, His Word, His Law, and serving the one God, or another, or myself?'

But God reserves justice, and vengeance, and wrath for Himself, and His command for us is simple: 'Thou shalt love the Lord your God, with your whole heart, and your whole mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'



Someone told me that in Germany these days, no one really knows or cares about Sophie Scholl, and the White Rose Society.

I know. I remember. And I care. And in doing so I save myself, je me souviens.

And if I ever meet her and the others like her, who gave themselves up for what is good, who became beacons of light for us in the long, dark hallways of history, I hope I can say, "I did not forget you."

In Honor of the 70th Anniversary of the Munich Students Movement - Die Weiße Rose - 2nd Leaflet

Someone asked me, why bring this up now?  Why remind ourselves of things better forgotten? Why be gloomy or sad, and burden our beautiful minds?

First, because it is after all, the 70th anniversary of an heroic event, a moment when several people laid down their lives for their fellow men and for the truth. And what we remember makes us who we are, makes us the people we wish to be, whether we intend it or not.   

Secondly, of course, it is because throughout history there are lights, great beacons in the dark seas of time, that stand out for us as examples of what it is to be human. Such examples are frequently not 'successful' in the estimation of the world. Winners.  More often than not they give up their lives, one way or the other, quietly or perhaps with some notice, but almost always for the sake of their conscience.  Sometimes they even die ignobly, flanked on the right and left by common thieves. 

We are so low and perverse in our thinking these days, in our expectations for ourselves, that if Mother Theresa or Dorothy Day had given up their great work for the poor and the dying, and left to become actresses in Hollywood, we would smugly say, 'oh, well that is only human.' Why didn't Sophie Scholl forget her calling and her conscience, and aspire to be the girlfriend of a wealthy banker living extravagantly on the misery of slave labor? As if such a selfish and shallow choice is the epitome and meaning of our lives.

And thirdly, because there is compelling evidence and advice in these pamphlets for our world of today, although we can hope it is quite early and still innocent. If you think these things cannot happen here or ever again, amongst a free and educated people, you are under that most arrogant of delusions, exceptionalism.  Every people, every would be empire, that goes badly first considers themselves to be different, better than the rest, above history and even God, uber mensch.

Then they came with clubs, bullets, and gas.  But sometimes it is with finance,  fraud, and official corruption.  If they come for the weakest,  to rob and even murder them, and the people allow it by saying nothing at all, then the hour will be late, and the die may be cast.

And if you cannot see this, see this tendency to rationalize even the injustice and repression in our own time, torture, confiscation, and murder, then perhaps you are in denial, or willfully asleep.

But who am I? What can I do? The whole of the law is this: to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself, to reject greed and fear and the hatred and envy that they bring, and to keep ourselves well for He who has a triple claim on us, through creation, through redemption, and through His own, to us at least, incomprehensible love. He has allowed us to go out into the world and to be free, and our duty is to bring ourselves home safely again at the last.

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'get by.' The ordinary men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies.

Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, love small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you.

But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does.

I choose my own way to burn.”

Sophie Scholl

The White Rose
Second Leaflet
Munich, 1942

We will not be silent.

It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialist Philosophy, for if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. In actuality, however, we face a totally different situation.

At its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one's fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of "his" book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): "It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it."

If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body.

The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars, there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death.

Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system. When thus a wave of unrest goes through the land, when "it is in the air," when many join the cause, then in a great final effort this system can be shaken off.

After all, an end in terror is preferable to terror without end.

We are not in a position to draw up a final judgment about the meaning of our history. But if this catastrophe can be used to further the public welfare, it will be only by virtue of the fact that we are cleansed by suffering; that we yearn for the light in the midst of deepest night, summon our strength, and finally help in shaking off the yoke which weighs on our world.

We do not want to discuss here the question of the Jews, nor do we want in this leaflet to compose a defense or apology. No, only by way of example do we want to cite the fact that since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way.

Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings - no matter what position we take with respect to the Jewish question - and a crime of this dimension has been perpetrated against human beings.

Someone may say that the Jews deserve their fate. This assertion would be a monstrous impertinence; but let us assume that someone said this - what position has he then taken toward the fact that the entire Polish aristocratic youth is being annihilated? (May God grant that this program has not yet fully achieved its aim as yet!)

All male offspring of the houses of the nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the bordellos of the SS!

Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them - or if not of these, then of other equally grave crimes committed by this frightful sub- humanity? Because here we touch on a problem which involves us deeply and forces us all to take thought.

Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that.

It is accepted as fact and put out of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so.

Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?

It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt.

For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all...

Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

Edmund Burke

See also The White Rose, First Leaflet

In Honor of the 70th Anniversary of the Munich Students Movement - 'The White Rose'

"Many people think of our times as being the last before the end of the world. The evidence of horror all around us makes this seem possible.

But isn't that an idea of only minor importance? Doesn't every human being, no matter which era he lives in, always have to reckon with being accountable to God at any moment? Can I know whether I'll be alive tomorrow morning?

A bomb could destroy all of us tonight. And then my guilt would not be one bit less than if I perished together with the earth and the stars.”

Sophie Scholl

The White Rose
First Leaflet
Munich, 1942

We will not be silent.

Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct.

It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day?

If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order of history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other God’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass - then, yes, they deserve their downfall.

Goethe speaks of the Germans as a tragic people, like the Jews and the Greeks, but today it would appear rather that they are a spineless, will-less herd of hangers-on, who now - the marrow sucked out of their bones, robbed of their center of stability - are waiting to be hounded to their destruction.

So it seems - but it is not so. Rather, by means of gradual, treacherous, systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual prison. Only now, finding himself lying in fetters, has he become aware of his fate.

Only a few recognized the threat of ruin, and the reward for their heroic warning was death. We will have more to say about the fate of these persons. If everyone waits until the other man makes a start, the messengers of avenging Nemesis will come steadily closer; then even the last victim will have been cast senselessly into the maw of the insatiable demon.

Therefore every individual, conscious of his responsibility as a member of Christian and Western civilization, must defend himself as best he can at this late hour, he must work against the scourges of mankind, against fascism and any similar system of totalitarianism.

Offer passive resistance - resistance - wherever you may be, forestall the spread of this atheistic war machine before it is too late, before the last cities, like Cologne, have been reduced to rubble, and before the nation’s last young man has given his blood on some battlefield for the hubris of a sub-human. Do not forget that every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure!

Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.

"I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent of the crimes. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."

Traudl Junge, Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin