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The far right can’t get it right

It’s an older story, back from March of this year. I came across it because it has been making its way through the Polish Press in the U.S. of late. Note that the BNP is Britain’s far right political party.

From Lancaster Unity (also here): BNP use POLISH plane in campaign poster despite plans to ban East European migrants

The British National Party was ridiculed last night for fronting its anti-immigration campaign with a picture of a Polish Spitfire.

Its poster for the European elections, for which its manifesto includes a ban on Eastern European migrant workers, shows the Second World War plane above the slogan ‘Battle for Britain’. But Air Force history experts have identified that the aircraft was actually flown by the RAF’s 303 Squadron —“ made up of expatriate Poles rescued from France shortly before Nazi occupation.

BNP party chiefs defended their use of the image and insisted they knew all about the background. But John Hemming, MP for Yardley, Birmingham, ridiculed this claim. He also condemned the far-Right party for using the image of Polish heroism in a campaign that includes stemming immigration from Poland.

He said: ‘The BNP often get confused and this happens because they haven’t done their research. This is just another example of them getting it wrong. They have a policy to send Polish people back to Poland —“ yet they are fronting their latest campaign using this plane. It is absurd to make claims about Englishness and Britishness fronted by this image. It’s obvious they just picked an image at random and they are really clutching at straws if they say this was deliberate.’

The 303 Squadron was the most effective Polish squadron during the Second World War. During the Battle of Britain Polish pilots shot down 203 Luftwaffe aircraft which stood for 12 per cent of total German losses in the battle.

A Royal Air Force museum spokesman said: ‘The Spitfire in the poster can be identified as belonging to 303 Squadron of the Polish Air Force by the code letters ‘RF’ painted in front of the RAF roundel. 303 Squadron operated Spitfires from Northolt, Kirton- in-Lindsey, Coltishall and other RAF stations in the UK between 1941 and 1945 after flying Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain.’

No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron-song

I cannot say how proud I am to have been privileged to help form and lead No. 303 squadron and later to lead such a magnificent fighting force as the Polish Wing. There formed within me in those days an admiration, respect and genuine affection for these really remarkable men which I have never lost. I formed friendship that are as firm as they were those twenty-five years ago and this I find most gratifying. We who were privileged to fly and fight with them will never forget and Britain must never forget how much she owes to the loyalty indomitable spirit and sacrifice of those Polish fliers. They were our staunchest Allies in our darkest days; may they always be remembered as such! — Group Captain John A. Kent DFC, AFC, Virtuti Militari.

Perspective, PNCC, Poetry, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political,

May 29 – Into the midst of riotous squabblers by Juliusz Słowacki

Into the midst of riotous squabblers
   God sounds his gong;
Here is the Slavic Pope, your new ruler;
   Make way, applaud.
This one will not, like Italians before him,
   Flee sworded throngs;
Our world disdainer will fight like a tiger,
   Fearless like God.

Sunshine resplendent shall be his countenance,
   Light shining true,
That we may follow him into the radiance
   Where God resides.
Multitudes growing obey all his orders,
   His prayers too:
He tells the sun to stand still in the heavens,
   And it abides.

Now he approaches, the one who distributes
   Global new might,
He who can make blood circulate backwards
   Inside our veins.
Now in our hearts the pulsation starts flowing,
   Heavenly light;
Power is a spirit, turns thought into actron
   Inside his brain.

And we need power in order to carry
   This world of ours;
Here comes our Slavic Pope to the rescue,
   Brother of mankind.
Angel batallions dust off his throne with
   Whisks made of flowers,
While he pours lotion onto our bosom,
   Pontiff benign.

He will distribute love like a warlord
   Passes out arms;
His strength sacramental will gather the cosmos
   Into his palms.

Then will he send glad tidings to flutter
   Like Noah’s dove:
News that the spirit’s here and acknowledged,
   Shining alone.
And we shall see part nicely before him
   The sky above.
He’ll stand on his throne, illumined, creating
   Both world and throne.

His voice will transfrom the nations to brethren.
   Burnt offerings
Circle the spirits in their march toward
   Their final goal.
Strength sacramental of hundreds of nations
   Will help our king
See that the spirits’ work overpowers
   Death’s mournful toll.

The wounds of the world shall he cleanse, and banish
   Rot. pus and all–
He will redeem the world and bring to it
   Both health and love.
He shall sweep clean the insides of churches
   And clear the hall,
And then reveal the Lord our Creator
   Shining above.

Translated by Sandra Celt

Pośród niesnasek Pan Bóg uderza
W ogromny dzwon,
Dla słowiańskiego oto papieża
Otworzył tron.

Ten przed mieczami tak nie uciecze
Jako ten Włoch,
On śmiało, jak Bóg, pójdzie na miecze;
Świat mu to proch!

Twarz jego, słowem rozpromieniona,
Lampa dla sług,
Za nim rosnące pójdą plemiona
W światło, gdzie Bóg.

Na jego pacierz i rozkazanie
Nie tylko lud
Jeśli rozkaże, to słońce stanie,
Bo moc to cud!

On się już zbliża rozdawca nowy
Globowych sił:
Cofnie się w żyłach pod jego słowy
Krew naszych żył;

W sercach się zacznie światłości bożej
Strumienny ruch,
Co myśl pomyśli przezeń, to stworzy,
Bo moc to duch.

A trzeba mocy, byśmy ten pański
Dźwignęli świat:
Więc oto idzie papież słowiański,
Ludowy brat;

Oto już leje balsamy świata
Do naszych łon,
A chór aniołów kwiatem umiata
Dla niego tron.

On rozda miłość, jak dziś mocarze
Rozdają broń,
Sakramentalną moc on pokaże,
Świat wziąwszy w dłoń;

Gołąb mu słowa w hymnie wyleci,
Poniesie wieść,
Nowinę słodką, że duch już świeci
I ma swą cześć;

Niebo się nad nim piękne otworzy
Z obojga stron,
Bo on na świecie stanął i tworzy
I świat, i tron.

On przez narody uczyni bratnie,
Wydawszy głos,
Że duchy pójdą w cele ostatnie
Przez ofiar stos;

Moc mu pomoże sakramentalna
Narodów stu,
Moc ta przez duchy będzie widzialna
Przed trumną tu.

Takiego ducha wkrótce ujrzycie
Cień, potem twarz:
Wszelką z ran świata wyrzuci zgniłość,
Robactwo, gad,

Zdrowie przyniesie, rozpali miłość
I zbawi świat;
Wnętrze kościołów on powymiata,
Oczyści sień,
Boga pokaże w twórczości świata,
Jasno jak dzień.

My commentary:

“All Poles are…” is one of the most famous misstatements and pejoratives in the history of the world. Whether it comes from misinformation, a lack of historical study, or with an intent to defame, it none-the-less conveys stereotyping which is false at best and slanderous at worst. In that vein, it should be understood that not all Poles are Catholic, and among Polish Catholics few are Ultramontanist Roman Catholics.

Polish intellectuals, and later working class Poles did not regard the papacy as a constant, and at times they saw it as working against the interests of their country.

As far back as 1475, Jan Ostroróg wrote against papal power and church courts and advocated for a tax levy on the church for National defense in Pro Republicae OrdinationePoland, A Historical Atlas by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski. He says in partTranslated by Michael J. Mikoś:

A painful and inhuman burden also oppresses the Kingdom of Poland, which is otherwise completely free, in another way, because we allow ourselves to be cheated and deceived to such a degree by the constant cunning of the Italians, and under the guise of piety, which is rather a falsification of teaching and a superstition: we permit big sums of money to be sent annually to the Roman court, as they call it, in the payment of a big tribute, called the bishop’s tribute or the annates … It is known that the German and Polish noblemen allowed the Apostolic See to collect the annates for only a few years in order to restrain the enemies of the Christian faith and to check the cruel Turk in his attacks. And this is certain: these few allotted years have long since passed, and the annates destined for other uses are channelled elsewhere. It is therefore necessary to stop this false piety, and the pope should not be a tyrant under the cloak of faith, but on the contrary, a benevolent father, just as merciful as the one whom he claims to represent on earth.

In The Role of Polish and American Identities in the Future of the Polish National Catholic Church, Jeffrey M. JozefskiPolish American Studies, Vol. 65, No. 2, Autumn 2008. notes:

Bishop Hodur also encouraged his followers to read the newest generation of nationalistic Polish authors, describing “messianic” writers Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Ignacy Krasiński as “great minds.” These three writers have also been described as “Bishop Hodur’s favorite literary trio.” Messianic literature was popular among the congregations of the PNCC, especially those which had come to label Poland as the “Christ of nations” that would eventually be resurrected. The first PNCC “Special Synod” in 1906 described Mickiewicz and Słowacki as heroes for their courageous literary attacks on the Pope and encouraged every Polish family to own not only the Holy Scriptures, but also the works of these three writers. The synod especially recommended Księgi Pielgryzmstwa Polskiego (Books of the Polish Pilgrimage), as well as mentioning Jan Ostroróg and Stanisław Orzechowski as Polish literary heroes who had advocated for a “national” or otherwise more autonomous Catholic Church in Poland.

Bishop Hodur obviously held Słowacki in high esteem. Słowacki’s poem, cited above, should be seen in historical context as an indictment of a papacy enamored of earthly power, a papacy that needed a change, a Pope of the Spirit. This poem supports Bishop Hodur’s stance against the papacy as it had evolved and, contrary to “popular beliefThe poem is often cited as a prophecy regarding the election of a Polish Pope. Those who cite the poem as such have no sense of Polish history, no understanding of Słowacki as a poet, nor any sense of what the poet is trying to convey.,” was not a premonition of Karol Wojtyla’sWojtyla’s work as Bishop of Rome did much to heal the the notion of Vatican ambivalence toward Poland. His leadership in the fight against Communism is of particular note. His mere election was an ego booster for many Poles at home and in the diaspora. However, his work has not been met with wholesale approval and his concentration on Polish issues has tarred him in the eyes of some Roman Catholics. See John Paul II: ‘Santo, ma non subito’ by John L. Allen Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter for instance. election to the office of Bishop of Rome. Słowacki was advocating for a leader that would be greater than a Pope of Rome, but rather a Pope of the Spirit that would free men and nations to see Christ more clearly:

He shall sweep clean the insides of churches
   And clear the hall,
And then reveal the Lord our Creator
   Shining above.

A critical analysis of Słowacki’s work and his times indicates that Słowacki was anything but an admirer of the office of the Bishop of Rome as it existed in his day.

In Chapter VI – Polonia Semper Fidelis of The Eternal Church in a Changing World: The Relationship of the Church and World in the Thought of John Paul II by Maciej Zięba, the author notes:

The constant threat to the faith, in the beginning from the anti-Catholic policies of Prussia and Russia, later from Nazi Germany and then from the communist government imposed on Poland by the USSR had the effect of making fidelity to the Church the most valued quality to Polish Catholics. In the face of a direct threat to the Faith and an official policy aiming at promoting discord among the faithful, doctrinal controversies or political disputes could have had real and dangerous consequences. Thus building up and maintaining the unity of the Church became the essential task for all Catholics.

This fidelity was not necessarily totally uncritical. The conciliatory policy of the papacy towards the tsarist regime was often criticized in Poland. In turn, when Cardinal Wyszynski was triumphantly greeted in Rome after his release from a Stalinist prison, Pius XII ostentatiously punished him for his political independence (in seeking a modus vivendi with the communist regime!) by having him wait for days for a Vatican audience. Some newer events might serve as examples of the same independence of thought. In August 1980, Cardinal Wyszynski made an appeal to abandon strikes. The workers listened to his words with obvious respect for the speaker, but then quietly ignored them. Again, in 1989, some well-known candidates, supported by the present Primate, Cardinal Glemp, were soundly defeated at the polls.

For Słowacki and other similarly situated Polish patriots the constant betrayals of Polish sovereignty at the hand of the Popes, who supported the Russian, Prussian, and Austro-Hungarian division of Poland, was proof positive that the Popes were not leaders of the Spirit nor protectors of Polish self determination or rights.

In the Review Article, After the Blank Spots Are Filled: Recent Perspectives on Modern PolandThe Journal of Modern History Vol. 79 (March 2007): pages 134—“161, The University of Chicago., Padraic Kenney writes:

Jerzy Kloczowski’s History of Polish Christianity is thus a valuable companion to any encounter with Polish history. The themes Kloczowski emphasizes will probably not surprise any student of church or religious history, but they are not always fully appreciated by other historians. In the early modern period, Kloczowski argues that a drift from rigor toward moderation in religious practice kept Poland Catholic through the Reformation, even as Orthodoxy and Calvinism continued to be part of the common environment. Polish Catholicism was deep but not strict, a folk religiosity in which adherence to ritual and fervent faith did not mean observance of church teachings.

The gap between belief and action emerged most strongly during the nineteenth—century uprisings. Famously, both the Vatican and the Polish episcopate withheld support for uprisings against the Russian tsar; the unity of church and nation is a post—uprising construct. Still, the church enjoyed two signal advantages in the era of partitions. First, it was the only institution that crossed partition borders; thus, to think of a Poland restored was to think of the Catholic Church, too. Second, individual priests—”such as those immortalized in the drawings of Artur Grottger (1837—“67)—”joined the uprisings, especially the January Uprising of 1863. Yet the powerful traditions of both popular and intellectual anticlericalism in Poland—”a legacy largely destroyed by the double blow of Nazi occupation and Communist rule—”can be found only between the lines in Kloczowski’s account. Kloczowski asserts that anticlericalism was a —marginal phenomenon,— restricted to a part of the intelligentsia and isolated pockets of industrial workers. Stauter—Halsted, in contrast, explores growing resistance to clerical authority from the 1880s onward, as peasant leaders came to value the secular schoolteacher more. The relationship of Pole to structures of authority and to cultures of tradition still needs to be examined…

Over and over betrayals came to light as ostensibly Catholic leaders, political and religious, were faced with the bitter experience of Vatican double dealing, sometimes at the hands of their fellow countrymen in the CuriaBishop Hodur met with Mieczysław Cardinal Ledochowski, Prefect of the Propaganda, who roundly rejected pleas from his fellow countrymen who were being abandoned by their bishops.. Słowacki criticized the Pope’s failure to support the insurrection against Tsarist (and Orthodox) Russia. In The Sarmatian Review’sThe Sarmatian Review, issue: 02/2002, pages: 865-869 reprint of Pan Beniowski, Final Part of Canto Five, we find:

But oh my Prophet-Bard! Where are you going?
What harbor beacon lights your way, and where?
Either you founder in the depths of Slavonic atavism
Or with your lightning mind you sweep up
The refuse and drive it at the Pontiff’s triple crown.
I know your harbors and coastlands! I shall not go
With you, or go your false way —” I shall take
Another road! —” and the nation will go with me!

The footnotes to the verse state:

Słowacki also alludes to Mickiewicz’s audience with Pope Pius IX in 1848 during which the Pope expressed disapproval of revolutionary activity. Mickiewicz allegedly grabbed the Pope’s sleeve and exclaimed that God is on the side of the Paris workers. In 1848, Pius IX secretly signed a concordat with Russia, thereby abandoning the cause of Polish Catholics in the Russian empire and joining the reactionary circle of European rulers desirous to retain at any price whatever was left of the old regimes.

From the time of Ostroróg to the First World War, when Roman Dmowski traveled to Rome to ask for assistance in gaining Poland’s independence, and was greeted with open disfavor, Poles have understood Słowacki’s famous statement: “Poland, thy doom comes from Rome (Krzyż twym papieżem jest – twa zguba w Rzymie!Pan Beniowski, Book I)” Which subsequent events proved was more than prophetic.

Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, , , , ,

Soooo…. they’re not stealing ‘our’ jobs

In the no kidding department, a recent study published by the Immigration Policy Center finds Immigration Does Not Increase Unemployment:

There is little apparent relationship between recent immigration and unemployment rates among native-born workers, according to a pair of studies released May 19 by the Immigration Policy Center.

The reports analyze data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census 2000 data . They are the first two installments of a three-part series, Untying the Knot, which seeks to —debunk the frequently misrepresented relationship between immigration and unemployment,— IPC said.

According to IPC, opponents of an immigration overhaul —frequently argue that immigrants ‘take’ jobs away from many native-born workers, especially during economic hard times.—

—We commissioned this report in order to take a serious look at whether or not immigration is in fact impacting unemployment among the native-born and what we have found is that scary rhetoric is not a substitute for good data,— said Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Law Foundation. IPC is the research arm of AILF.

—These findings are in line with other long-term studies conducted around the world which have shown that immigration has very little impact on native unemployment,— Johnson said. —In order to have a serious policy debate, we need good, honest numbers and that is what we believe we have provided in these reports.—

Unemployment Rates Similar in High-, Low-Immigration Areas

According to the reports, if immigrants took jobs away from native-born workers, one would expect to find a high unemployment rates in those parts of the country with large numbers of immigrants, particularly recent immigrants who are more willing to work for low wages and under worse conditions than long-term immigrants or native-born workers.

However, —analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau clearly reveals that this is not the case,— IPC said.

—The level of unemployment in the U.S. is painful, scary and difficult—”so we shouldn’t belittle it,— said Dan Siciliano, senior research fellow at IPC and executive director of the program in law, economics, and business at Stanford Law School. —However, the very notion that immigration has anything to do with unemployment does just that. It belittles the challenge of unemployment,— he said.

Siciliano said the idea that immigration is causally linked to unemployment among the native-born is a —red herring distracting from the real causes of unemployment.—

According to the report, there is —no correlation between the number of recent immigrant workers in a given state, county, or city and the unemployment rate among native-born workers.—

For example, recent immigrants make up 8.4 percent of the population in the Pacific region (including California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii) but only 2.8 percent of the population in the East North Central region (including Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin). However, both regions have nearly the same unemployment rate, 10.8 percent in the Pacific region, and 10.0 percent in the East North Central region.

Another example cited in the report is between New Jersey, a state where recent immigrants make up 7.3 percent of the population, and Maine, where recent immigrants make up 0.8 percent of the population. Both states have similar unemployment rates—”8.3 percent in New Jersey and 8.1 percent in Maine, according to the report.

—Locales with high unemployment rates do not necessarily have large numbers of recent immigrants, and locales with many recent immigrants do not necessarily have high unemployment rates,— according to the report.

IPC said that on average, recent immigrants comprise 3.1 percent of the population in counties with the highest unemployment rates, which average 13.4 percent. Recent immigrants account for a higher share of the population (4.6 percent) in counties with the lowest unemployment rates (below 4.8 percent), the report found.

Immigrants Don’t Impact Minority Unemployment

Additionally, the report found that there was no connection between immigration and unemployment rates of native-born minorities, such as African Americans.

—On the question of race we find that there’s just no connection between immigration and unemployment,— said Rob Paral, senior research fellow at IPC and the principal of Rob Paral and Associates, a research consulting firm.

—The culprit when it comes to unemployment is not immigration,— Paral said.

In the 10 states with the highest shares of recent immigrants in the labor force, the average unemployment rate for native-born blacks is about 4 percentage points less than in the 10 states with the lowest shares of recent immigrants, according to the report.

Similar findings were found for the 10 metropolitan areas with the highest number of recent immigrants compared with the 10 metropolitan areas with the lowest number of recent immigrants.

—The absence of any significant statistical correlation between recent immigration and unemployment rates among different native-born racial/ethnic groups points to deeper, structural causes for unemployment among the native-born, such as levels of educational attainment and work skills,— IPC said.

As I have oft repeated, the people who complain most loudly about immigrants have other, more central issues, an animus against people of slightly darker skin tones, or against Catholics, or for a thousand other less well-informed/reactionary reasons. They’re the first to enjoy cheaper meals, lower cost construction, and the time and energy they saved not having to mow the lawn, plant the garden, or clean the house, all because José, Janek, Engjí«ll, Sonja, or Agnieszka did the work. They rarely speak against wage theft or the abuses these workers are subject to. They close their eyes, pay 10-20% less, and complain — Why can’t they just speak English?

Why? Because yes, they’re talking about you; your greed, laziness, and hypocrisy.

Huw gets it right in his I’m a bad Homosexual Activist and Californians and the Prop 8 thing… posts (thanks to the Young Fogey for the link). We stand to complain about high prices, high unemployment, unfairness from our comfort zone while the person working for us is getting squished. He says:

Making a —just for me society— instead of a Just Society is really rather sinful.

And I say Amen.

The PNCC, a Church founded by immigrants, understands the immigrant experience and honors people of all nations and cultures. The Lord asked us to go and preach to all nations because all are valuable in His sight. Human value is a totality and our call to value each person’s inherent dignity is absolute. That’s makes us, as Christians, as PNCC members, rather radical.

Perspective, PNCC, ,

A class on the cusp

From the Buffalo News: For Class of 1969, a priestly era fades

After 40 years of seismic shifts in Catholic Church,once-plentiful shepherds reflect on what they’ll leave

It took two Buffalo cathedrals and a basilica in Lackawanna to accommodate the ordination Class of 1969. On a bright spring morning 40 years ago this week, 25 young men made solemn vows to serve as Catholic priests in the Diocese of Buffalo.

Afterward, they stood for photos shoulder to shoulder in their pressed white vestments, looking with pious expressions at the camera, as if peering into the future.

Little did they know at the time what was in store.

Most of them ended up as respected pastors and are now approaching retirement. A few left the priesthood and got married. One of them was elevated to bishop and Tuesday will be installed in the Diocese of Syracuse.

The Class of 1969 was one of the largest ever in the Buffalo diocese —” and a stark contrast to the state of priestly vocations now. In many ways, it was a class on the cusp.

Its members were called into a whole different priesthood than the one they ended up learning and practicing. Not that they minded.

—We really did think there was going to be a major change in the direction of the church,— said the Rev. George L. Reger, pastor of Blessed Trinity Church.

The country was in upheaval over the Vietnam War, inner-city riots and campus protests, and the Catholic Church in the United States was in the midst of its own drama, adjusting to a new Mass in English, along with other liturgical and philosophical changes brought about by the Second Vatican Council.

—The sands were shifting under our feet in the institution we were committing ourselves to,— said the Rev. John J. Leising, senior associate pastor of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Clarence.

…

The Rev. Patrick H. Elis, pastor of St. Rose of Lima, even remembers talk of more dormitories being built when he was a theology student at the East Aurora seminary, now known as Christ the King.

—We were unaware of the future dissolution of numbers. We just thought it was going to continue on,— he said…

The sad fact is that most of this class still fails to acknowledge the downside of Vatican II. They expected that they would turn the Church on its head, and that everything would change. It was pure naivete. Things did change and the change was on balance negative because the core elements that had fostered their vocations were thrown out like the proverbial baby with the bath water. The good that came out of Vatican II remains overshadowed by the destruction its purveyors wrought.

1969 R C Ordination in BuffaloThe picture (click on it for a larger version) that accompanies the article, of the portion of the class ordained by the Rt. Rev. Pius Benincasa, was likely the last of its kind, with the new ordinands in Roman chasubles. Those chasubles were thrown out as easily as were the foundations of their vocations.

I know many of these men. Many are personable, kind, and hard working. They are great administrators, great with the people, but attend one of their liturgies — well at least the lectors read what’s in Lectionary. The rest is dodgy.

Thankfully the PNCC offers the tradition that fosters vocations as well as the advances many of these men sought — which we instituted in the early twentieth century. The PNCC made necessary changes, like the abolition of mandatory celibacy, the Holy Mass in the vernacular, and enshrining the democratic rights of each member, in a natural, unforced way. It is why I can call the PNCC home as opposed to the R.C. Church in the United States. The R.C. Church is still trying to gain its footing, something likely to take generations, and not all that certain to occur.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political, , , ,

Dr. Laurence Vance – Christianity and War, Other Aspects of the Warfare State

Dr. Laurence Vance will address the Institute On The Constitution as part of its First Friday program. The program will take place on Friday, June 5, 2009, at 7pm. As with past “First Friday” lectures, this one will be held at 8028 Ritchie Highway, Suite 315, Pasadena, Maryland 21122. Doors open at 6:30pm and the lecture will begin promptly at 7pm. The event is free but because of limited space please RSVP to 1-866-730-9796. Refreshments will be provided.

Dr. Vance’s address will be streamed live, at no cost, on the Internet, June 5 at 7pm (EST).

Dr. Laurence M. Vance is a Bible-believing Christian author, freelance writer, and book reviewer. He holds degrees in history, theology, accounting, and economics. He has written and published sixteen books on the diverse subjects of theology, biblical languages, Bible history, economics, politics, and war. Dr. Vance regularly contributes articles and book reviews to both secular and religious periodicals. He is a regular columnist for LewRockwell a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the editor of the Classic Reprints series, the director of the Francis Wayland Institute, and an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

The “Institute on the Constitution (IOTC)” is an educational effort sponsored by the Law Office of Peroutka and Peroutka of Pasadena, Maryland. It is neither an instrument of, nor an advocate for, any particular political party. Rather, it advocates the restoration of our Constitutional Republic by offering classes, lectures, and products designed to re- acquaint the American people with our history, our heritage, and our Constitution, which is the very foundation of our Republic. You will not find smoke, mirrors, or political correctness filters at our presentations — just real American history, the way it was, the way it ought to be taught.

The following is a presentation by Dr. Vance on Christianity and War at the 2008 Austrian Scholars Conference:

Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, , , ,

Keeping the slaves

From TPM: What Part of Illegal Don’t Conservatives Understand — or Why do They Ignore Wage Theft

Wage theft is illegal. Yet rightwing politicians largely dismiss the problem and most systematically oppose laws to increase enforcement of wage laws. Yet at the same time in recent years, those conservative politicians have been attacking undocumented immigrants as undermining wage standards for native workers. The hypocrisy is palpable, but here’s a lesson: state legislators standing up against wage theft have been able to expose that hypocrisy.

At Progressive States Network, we’ve worked with community groups, advocates and legislators to promote wage enforcement directly as a counterpoint to anti-immigrant rhetoric and promote a policy agenda that builds support for all workers, native and immigrant alike. In states like Kansas, Iowa, and Connecticut, anti-immigrant legislation has been derailed once the issue of the failure to enforce broader wage laws entered the discussion. For example:

In Connecticut in 2007, a bill was introduced that would have made it a criminal offense to hire undocumented workers, but instead it was modified into a state law that goes after all employers who commit workers’ compensation premium fraud in order to cheat workers out of benefits.

When the Iowa Senate in 2008 approved SF 2416, a bill to toughen enforcement against employers who violate Iowa wage laws, it stalled movement in that chamber of an anti-immigrant bill approved in that state’s House and halted anti-immigrant legislation for 2008.

When the Kansas House in 2008 voted to gut an anti-immigrant bill by adding provisions to severely punish employers violating wage laws and exploiting undocumented immigrants, it led to deadlock on a purely anti-immigrant bill in the state Senate that lacked those wage enforcement provisions. Anti-immigrant politicians walked away from their own bill rather than support wage law enforcement amendments.

If anti-immigrant politicians resist such wage enforcement proposals, it just emphasizes that their supposed concern for wage losses by low-income workers is an empty smokescreen for hatred and nativism.

…

The point is that anti-immigrant resentment smolders across the country, partly because of racism and cultural xenophobia, but also with a greater number of people who recognize the unacceptability of illegal sweatshops, but wrongly have been told to scapegoat immigrants and the immigration system. When progressives stand up and attack wage theft directly and demand real enforcement of wage and hour laws, the elimination of illegal sweatshops will help blunt the effectiveness of much of the overall anti-immigrant political attack.

What most don’t seem to ‘get’ is that wage theft and other abuses heaped on workers — and most especially on undocumented workers — amounts to a new system of slavery. Call it indentured servitude or slavery, the effect is the same. State and Federal laws were enacted to protect all workers without concern over their status because to do otherwise would amount to complicity with corrupt employers. Employers who fail to abide by those laws, simply because the worker doesn’t speak English, or is undocumented, or is in some other way powerless, are no more than slave-holders.

People won’t buy goods from China because of its treatment of Tibet, but they feel perfectly content shaving a few nickels off their restaurant bill — those nickels being the unpaid wages owed to a new class of slaves.

These ‘new slaves’ are us. They are our grandparents and great-grandparents, the people Bishop Hodur stood with when they were abused by the coal bosses of Pennsylvania. That is our legacy. I stand with workers, to protect their God given humanity and dignity. As a Church we must stand with workers so that the words of a deceased coal miner won’t have to be recorded again (from King coal: a piece of eastern Pennsylvania history by Jill M. Beccaris and Christine Woyshner in Social Education, January 1, 2007).

Forty years I worked with a pick and drill,
Down in the mines against my will,
The Coal King’s slave, but now it’s passed
Thanks be to God I am free at last. –Tombstone of an anthracite miner in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

Current Events, Perspective, Political,

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

From The Christian Science Monitor: Soldier rampage hints at stress of repeated deployments

Sgt. John Russell was charged with murder Tuesday. He was finishing his third tour in Iraq.

WASHINGTON – Military police on Tuesday charged Sgt. John Russell, a soldier on a 15-month tour to Iraq —“ his third deployment to the country —“ with murder in the shooting deaths of five soldiers at an American base.

Details about Sergeant Russell are beginning to emerge. In an interview with a local television station in Sherman, Texas, Russell’s father said his son was facing financial difficulty and feared he was about to be discharged from the Army. The case has focused further attention on the effect that multiple, extended deployments are having on soldiers.

Fifteen-month tours and repeated deployments are increasing the rate of suicide, divorce, and psychological problems, according to Pentagon data. The shootings at Camp Liberty in Iraq speak to the need “to redouble our efforts … in terms of dealing with the stress,” said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a Pentagon press conference Monday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is requesting to “institutionalize and properly fund” programs to help wounded troops, including those with psychological disorders. Roughly 300,000 veterans have been diagnosed with some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

But a main source of the problem —“ the repeated, extended deployments —“ will probably continue. President Obama is drawing troops down in Iraq, but he is also sending more to Afghanistan, minimizing the impact that the drawdown from Iraq will have on the health of the force…

I saw a bumper sticker the other day, actually two. The left side of the car sported a huge Obama sticker. On the right side there was a sticker that read: Got War — blame a Republican. My first thought was one of sympathy for the poor deluded person who thought things would change. My next thought was to market an updated sticker:

“Got War – blame a Republican
Still have war – blame a Democrat”

obama-cartoon-711310The sad fact is the all of this could be over; we could disengage from our foreign adventures. Unfortunately, the escapades of the Bush neocons are being continued by the social engineers of the Obama administration.

A word to those who think we are getting something out of this: What are we getting exactly? Are we getting plunder? Cheap oil? Security? Labensraum? A resounding no! When these damaged souls return they will be on the street. They will be homeless Vietnam Vets Part 2. They will be the homeless Vietnam Vet but with twice the anger and triple the skills (see the DHS report: Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment [pdf] or the everyday experience documented in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s article: Iraq vets’ troubles appear long after return). They’ll know how to construct lovely roadside bombs, how to kill without remorse, how to weaponize and disguise until — boom. Your neocon/socially engineered plunder and security will go up in smoke like the cities those Vets will occupy.

From the Washington Post:

“There is no front line in Iraq,” said Col. Charles W. Hoge of the division of psychiatry and neuroscience at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, the lead author of the report published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Individuals who are patrolling the streets will be at higher risk of being involved in combat, but folks who are largely located at one base are also targets of mortar and artillery, and everyone in convoys is a target.”

In other words, these Vets will have faced years in situations where the enemy is all around, where danger lurks around every corner. That makes for a wonderful stew of psychological problems.

On top of all this consider the lack of funding the VA receives for veterans health care (especially mental health treatment), the bureaucratic mismanagement of the military discharge process, the social cost associated with caring for those who won’t be on the street because they’re too crippled and too sick to do anything, and the overall economic impact these wars have had (think debt, lots and lots and lots of debt — about 10,000 years worth of debt). Those impacts will last long after the last soldier comes home (which won’t happen anyway as there will always be another ‘engagement’).

What to do? First: pray – really pray because it does work. Next, advocate for better veterans healthcare, wiser policies, peace, and most of all — vote differently. Voting for the same two parties is no different than voting for the same corrupt politician, excepting that the faces change.

“Got War – blame a Republican
Still have war – blame a Democrat”

Perspective,

Wilno, Vilna, Vilne, Wilda, Vilnia, Vilnius

From The Economist: Vilnius — Contested city

THE choice of name for the capital of present-day Lithuania—”Wilno, Vilna, Vilne, Wilda, Vilnia or now Vilnius—”shows who you are, or were. In the 20th century alone, it has been occupied or claimed by Germany, Russia, Poland and the Soviet Union, with only brief periods of Lithuanian autonomy.

Vilne, in Yiddish, was home to one of Judaism’s greatest rabbis, a saintly brainbox known as the Gaon (Genius) who gave his first sermon aged seven and kick-started the great Jewish intellectual revival in the 18th century. —Vilna is not simply a city, it is an idea,— said a speaker at a Yiddish conference in 1930. It was the virtual capital of what some call Yiddishland, a borderless realm of east European Jewish life and letters in the inter-war era. At times, the majority of the city’s population was Jewish. Their murder and the deportation of many Poles by Stalin meant that the city lost 90% of its population during the second world war. Present-day inhabitants of Vilnius may find much they did not know in Laimonas Briedis’s subtle and evocative book about their city’s history.

Poles mourn the loss of Wilno, one of their country’s great cultural and literary centres. Poland’s two great poets studied there: Adam Mickiewicz nearly two centuries ago, and in the pre-war years Czeslaw Milosz, a Nobel prizewinner. Yet both men saw their Lithuanian and Polish identities as complementary, not clashing.

…

In any of the dozen possible renderings of the city’s name, its roots evoke mystery. Wilda, its old German label, comes from the word wild. In Lithuanian come hints of the words for devil (velnias), the departed (velionis) and ghost (vele). That ambiguity is fitting. In its 700-odd years of recorded history, the city has been both capital city and provincial backwater. Outsiders have been struck by its filthy streets and shameless women, and also by its glorious architecture and heights of scholarship. Pilgrims flock to the Gates of Dawn, its most holy Catholic shrine. It has been the epitome of tolerance and a crucible of the Holocaust.

In a modern Europe Vilnius can seem peripheral. Mr Briedis, however, begins by noting that when French geographers recently plotted the mid-point between Europe’s cartographical extremes, they found the continent’s true centre was a derelict farmhouse just outside the city.

Foreign visitors have left few written accounts, but Mr Briedis uses them all as sources. A hapless papal delegation provides the first. In 1324 it tried and failed to persuade Lithuania’s great pagan ruler, Gediminas, to adopt Christianity. He showed no desire to forsake Perkunas the thunder god, berating his visitors for their intolerance. —Why do you always talk about Christian love?— he asked the pope’s men. —Where do you find so much misery, injustice, violence, sin and greed, if not among the Christians?—

Lithuania eventually adopted Christianity, along with a dynastic deal with Poland, in 1387. A cathedral was built on the pagan temple, the holy fires doused and the sacred groves felled. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania flourished. At its height in the 16th century it was a vast multiconfessional empire, stretching to the Black Sea, with no fewer than six legal languages, including Hebrew and Armenian. Even as that declined, the Vilnius style of Baroque architecture ripened in glory, a —splendid autumn— in one of Mr Briedis’s many well-turned phrases, that paid —a gracious farewell to its phantom golden age—…

Mr. Briedis’ book Vilnius: City of Strangers is available at Amazon.

Perspective, Political,

The Church, ecumenism, and politics on the frontier

From EuropeanVoice: Between the pope and the patriarch by Vitali Silitski

The public-relations plan pursued by Alyaksandr Lukashenka will make Belarus’s exclusion from the EU’s Eastern Partnership seem minor.

The launch of the Eastern Partnership in Prague on Thursday (7 May) will lack one of the characters who played a principal role in the run-up to the summit: Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the president of Belarus. His absence will please many EU foreign ministers. But nor will Lukashenka mind greatly.

Lukashenka is not used to harsh words being delivered to his face and he would probably have found too few Western leaders willing to shake hands with him for him to be able to turn the visit into a propaganda triumph.

But there is a second reason why Lukashenka will not mind greatly: he has already achieved a public-relations coup, by meeting Pope Benedict and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Lukashenka’s visit to western Europe over the past 12 years have been restricted to skiing holidays and medical treatment in Austria, so the visit to Rome was a breakthrough.

It may also prove to be a breakthrough for him in domestic politics. Lukashenka’s audience with the pope went down very well with Belarus’s two million Catholics, among whom, according to independent opinion polls, opposition to Lukashenka is three times greater than it is among the country’s Orthodox majority and nearly twice as great as it is among Protestants. In other words, Lukashenka may have managed to disarm the largest bloc of opposition to him in Belarusian society.

…

But to view Lukashenka’s success in Rome as merely compensation for the Prague snub would be wrong. When he met the pope, Lukashenka had a far more ambitious agenda in sight: he was pursuing an opportunity to be the man to arrange a meeting between the pope and the Russian patriarch, and thereby to mend the 1,000-year-old schism between Eastern and Western Christianity.

This might sound implausible. For much of his presidency, for political and geopolitical reasons, Lukashenka has acted as a buttress for Russian Orthodoxy. He suppressed the development of the Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church from its stronghold in Ukraine, suppressed attempts to build Belarus’s own orthodox church independent from Moscow and adopted a repressive law on religion that discriminated against Protestant denominations. His championing of Orthodoxy was symbolised in 2001, when he played host to the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church at exactly the same time that Pope John Paul II was paying a visit to Ukraine.

But Lukashenka has quietly pursued a policy of building up political capital through ecumenism since at least 2002 —“ a year in which he explicitly declared that he would like to bring the Catholic and Orthodox churches together.

…

But the real opportunity to pursue the strategy of ecumenism came this February when Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk became head of the Russian Orthodox Church, replacing the traditionalist Aleksey II. Kirill is no traditionalist: he is polished yet outspoken, open to ecumenism, and PR-minded. Kirill previously served as head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s foreign-relations department. He has already met Pope Benedict, when he was a metropolitan. For many, the question now is not whether, as patriarch, he will meet Benedict, but when.Lukashenka’s entourage has rushed to explore that possibility.

In the months before Lukashenka’s visit to Rome, Lukashenka met the Catholic archbishop of Belarus and paid a surprise visit to Patriarch Kirill. Viewed in the context of Lukashenka’s strategy, it now seems clear that he was trying to secure Kirill’s (and Kremlin’s) his consent for a visit to Rome and to discuss the possibility of a meeting between Kirill and Benedict —“ and, since his return from Rome, Lukashenka has mused publicly about the pope and the patriarch meeting.

If Lukashenka manages to persuade Russia to accept a visit by Pope Benedict to Belarus —“ an offer to which the Vatican gave a measured response —“ Lukashenka would prove himself to be a master of political brinkmanship, for the Russian Orthodox Church considers Belarus to be its ‘canonical territory’. But if he manages to bring Kirill to Belarus when the pope is there, he would secure a place in a history as one of the men who ended the schism between eastern and western Christianity. That could guarantee his legitimacy for years to come, both in domestic politics and in relations with Russia.

…

Lukashenka’s strategy of ecumenism gives another twist to a simple fact: Lukashenka is uniquely placed to play games between the West and the East. It is nearly impossible to isolate him. Lukashenka will find his way to Europe, be it via Rome, Prague or via some other route. That is the third reason why Lukashenka will not mind not being in Prague too much.

Nonetheless, Lukashenka would, of course, like to have as many roads to Europe as possible. By blocking off the route that leads through Prague, both the Belarusian opposition and its Western supporters have therefore lost a real opportunity to force Lukashenka into a serious dialogue on human rights, to set conditions and to extract real political concessions.

Pope Benedict may now have an opportunity to make such demands of Lukashenka. Europe should strive to ensure that the pope, if he visits Minsk, speaks out about democracy and human rights as passionately as his predecessor did. Given that Lukashenka believes that now is the time to play the ecumenism card, Europe should start working on convincing Benedict immediately.

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