"I don't think we put enough stress on the necessity of implanting in the child's mind the moral code under which we live.
The fundamental basis of this Nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days.
If we don't have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the state."
OK, OK, you're waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The answer is
[scroll down]
Harry S Truman
Address Before the Attorney General's Conference on Law Enforcement Problems
February 15, 1950
Mind you, I don't necessarily agree with all this, um, chapter and verse as it were, but I think it provides a interesting perspective in the current historiographical crisis.
[HT: WorldTribune-Editor.]
25 comments:
As a fellow Missouri Son I say booyah for the President and Commander in Chief.
You might want to also visit this link:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13345
Or, read some here:
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/speaks.htm
from which the following is excerpted:
17. What are your views on religion?
President Truman: I am by religion like everything else. I think there is more in acting than in talking. I had an uncle who said when one of his neighbors got religion strong on Sunday, he was going to lock his smokehouse on Monday. I think he was right from the little I have observed. (From a letter to Bess Wallace, February 7, 1911. Papers Relating to Family, Business, and Personal Affairs.)
In my opinion people's religious beliefs are their own affair, and when I don't agree with >em I just don't discuss religion. It has caused more wars and feuds than money, and that seems a shame too. (From a letter to Bess Truman, October 16, 1939. Papers Relating to Family, Business, and Personal Affairs.)
I'm not very much impressed with men who publicly parade their religious beliefs.... I've always believed that religion is something to live by and not to talk about. I'm a Baptist because I think that sect gives the common man the shortest and most direct approach to God. I've never thought the Almighty is greatly interested in pomp and circumstance, because if He is He wouldn't be interested in >the sparrow' alluded to in St. Matthew's Gospel. Religious stuffed shirts are just as bad or worse than political ones in my opinion. (From a handwritten autobiographical manuscript, 1945. President's Secretary's Files.)
[The Baptists] do not want a person to go to shows or dance or do anything for a good time. Well I like to do all those things and play cards besides. So you see I am not very strong as a Baptist. Anyhow I don't think any church on earth will take you to heaven if you're not real anyway. I believe in people living what they believe and talking afterwards.... (From a letter to Bess Wallace, March 19, 1911. Papers Relating to Family, Business, and Personal Affairs.)
There is great talk and commotion about public prayer. Most of it is not of any value. Prayer is a petition to God in whom all Christians pretend to believe. Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists and Confucians worship the same God as the Christians say they do. He is all seeing, all hearing and all knowing. Nothing, not even the sparrow or the smallest bug escapes His notice.... No man needs an intermediary [to pray to God.] This intermediary thing was an inheritance of the Roman Gods Pantheon when a Pontifex Maximus was used to placate all the gods.... I don't believe that an intermediary is necessary for me to approach God Almighty. (From a handwritten manuscript found in Truman's desk after he died. Post-Presidential papers.)
"I've never been of the opinion that Almighty God cares for the building or the form that a believer approaches the Maker of Heaven and Earth. ''when two or three are gathered together" or when one asks for help from God he'll get it just as surely as will panoplied occupants of any pulpit. Forms and ceremonies impress a lot of people, but I've never thought that The Almighty could be impressed by anything but the heart and soul of the individual. That's why I'm a Baptist, whose church authority starts from the bottom-not the top." (From a handwritten manuscript [check], April 13, 1952. President's Secretary's Files.)
It would be interesting to have a chance to sit down with Harry to discuss the dictator Francisco Franco's Catholic Spain, especially as to whether it was a totalitarian regime or an authoritarian regime (the modern debate).
To the best of my understanding Harry was a plain thinking and plain speaking man and my best guess is that he wouldn't get bogged down trying to parse the distinctions. It certainly was a regime that was viciously hostile to the republican and democratic ideals that Truman cherished and defended and it was a decidedly Christian nation with a long Monarchist Christian history presumably built on the ideals of Mosaic law.
Interesting dilemma.
The alternative to Franco's Spain had been a communist one and to discuss geopolitics without discussing communism is to lose the thread. The Vatican and the United States played ball with him as much or as little as necessary.
______________
http://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=379
7 On July 16, Adm. Forrest P. Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations, met with Generalissimo Francisco Franco, Spanish Chief of State, to discuss Spain's possible role in the defense of Western Europe. Secretary of State Dean Acheson's statement regarding the conversation, made at his press conference on July 18, was published in the Department of State Bulletin (vol. 25, p. 170).
Q. To what extent, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT. Well, we haven't decided yet. These are preliminary conversations, to find out just what the situation is with regard to our necessity, and what Spain is willing to do. I think Mr. Acheson covered the thing very completely yesterday.
Q. This is not the result of any National Security Council decision ?
THE PRESIDENT. It is the result of the advice from the Department of Defense.
see also
http://www.concordatwatch.eu/showtopic.php?org_id=845&kb_header_id=34521
Tyranny in defense against possible tyranny is an interesting enough idea in its own right but I'm not sure that it supports the contention that a Christian nation grounded in the principles of Mosaic law is a defense against totalitarianism. Seems to go the wrong direction.
Bringing in America's involvement during the height of its own less than brilliant red panic responses adds nothing.
the contention that a Christian nation grounded in the principles of Mosaic law is a defense against totalitarianism
Whose contention is that?
I'd assumed that you'd read the post.
It would be interesting to have a chance to sit down with Harry to discuss the dictator Francisco Franco's Catholic Spain, especially as to whether it was a totalitarian regime or an authoritarian regime (the modern debate).
--
A knucklehead debate.
Franco's was a military regime with a party-state aspect. Spain neither imprisoned its populace (net emigration running into the seven digits between 1950 and 1976) nor confiscated their property. The most disagreeable aspect of the regime in the economic sphere concerned the effective tenure granted employees (which persists to this day and is imitated in France) and corporatist institutions which imposed procedures and (initially) fixed prices and wages. Spain was as totalitarian in this respect as Hugh Johnson's National Recovery Administration and Kenneth Galbraith's Office of Price Administration.
Franco restored aspects of the confessional state. You find this 'totalitarian'? A more precise word would be 'retaliatory'. The terminal phases of the Spanish Republic incorporated madcap anti-clericalism. The mortality rate during the period running from 1936 to 1939 for clergy caught in Republican Spain outside the Basque provinces was about 1/3. Even prior to the civil war, Republican ministries shuttered every secondary school in the country in order to build a network the Repubican state alone controlled.
Someone once said of Franco, "He had no ideology. None was needed to justify his right to rule". The original Falange and its successors did have a staff ideologist. He was Ramon Serrano Suner. Serrano Suner's objections to parliamentary government were contingent, not categorical. He maintained it was unsuitable to Spain, not unsuitable everywhere. The experience of Spain after 1930 indicated that he was, in discrete circumstances, quite correct.
That aside, Spain, Portugal, and Austria were readily distinguished from Germany and Italy by an absence of vainglorious or revanchist objects. You simply never had the efforts at collective mobilization you had in Germany or Italy.
during the height of its own less than brilliant red panic
There was no panic, except in your imagination. Their was a hostile foreign government with a large army and an international network of subversive organizations. Characters like Ellen Schrecker favored the other side during the Cold War and care not to acknowledge the character of the enemy, so we get meticulous biographical sketches of John Howard Lawson and Annie Lee Moss as a diversion. Characters like Gabriel Kolko had fewer scruples, so we got from him coolly crafted and carefully cropped justifications of the breaking of Eastern Europe. Kolko had no career problems. He was continually employed from 1962 until his retirement, for the most part in Canada.
Mr. Deco, I did not realize that the General's ghost maintained an active PR department. You forgot to include puppies and kittens. Does your firm also handle the Hitler and Mussolini accounts?
Maybe a better measure for this blog would be to reflect upon what the FFs would have thought of Franco's Spain.
I'll take that as a forfeit.
"I'll take that as a forfeit."
Of course you do.
It's not worth the effort to make any extended rebuttal of something that is so shamelessly whitewashed. Of course citizens not seen as loyal to the regime were imprisoned and executed to the tune of thousands to tens of thousands. The press, arts, and entertainment venues ware largely controlled by the regime and the people fed official state propaganda. The Catholic church was officially established by the state and other religions were repressed.
Fortunately for any readers of this comments section that are actually interested, there are oodles and oodles of scholarly analyses available via books, encyclopedia articles and journals as well as scads of secondary commentary. And there's also Google.
And, for technical clarity, I did allude to "totalitarian regime or an authoritarian regime (the modern debate)" Regardless of the label it far exceeded the worst excesses of George the III against the American colonies - and that was a tyranny warranting a revolution and war. And, in real time, it's hard to imagine Franco's regime being viewed as totalitarian in nature by Truman. In fact:
There isn't any difference in totalitarian states. I don't care what you call them-you call them Nazi, Communist or Fascist, or Franco, or anything else--they are all alike. That is not our intention, to tell any country what its internal business should be, how its internal business should be handled. We are hopeful that that internal business will be along lines of most benefit to the individual. I believe in the Bill of Rights. I think that is the most important part of our Constitution--the right of the individual to go where he pleases, to do what he pleases, say what he pleases, as long as he is not materially injuring his neighbors. That is the basis on which our Government is founded, and I think it is the greatest basis in the world for a government. Totalitarian governments do not work that way. The police state is a police state; I don't care what you call it. (1)
You can now carry on with the victory dance.
1) The President's Special Conference With the Association of Radio News Analysts (May 13, 1947) @
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=2155
"being viewed as totalitarian in nature"
Should have read, being viewed as anything but totalitarian in nature.
Anonymous Art Deco said...
I'll take that as a forfeit.
Hijacking our comments section, ignoring Truman's speech on America's Christian roots with the WTF of Francisco Franco, was a forfeit before anyone even took the field.
This was an exhibition game, showing mostly how the left invariably whitewashes our religious history, along with the sideshow of ignoring the murderous ideology that was communism except in re Joe McCarthy.
It's not worth the effort to make any extended rebuttal of something that is so shamelessly whitewashed. Of course citizens not seen as loyal to the regime were imprisoned and executed to the tune of thousands to tens of thousands.
During the civil war, executions behind the lines of civilians were greater in Republican territory by a factor of 2 to 1, in spite of the Republican territory having fewer residents. There were extensive executions by the regime in 1939 and immediately after, not after that.
There is no 'whitewashing'. I've stated matters precisely and you've engaged in gamesmanship,
Fortunately for any readers of this comments section that are actually interested, there are oodles and oodles of scholarly analyses available via books, encyclopedia articles and journals as well as scads of secondary commentary.
Yes, and they support my contentions. You can start with Hugh Thomas.
Hijacking our comments section, ignoring Truman's speech on America's Christian roots with the WTF of Francisco Franco, was a forfeit before anyone even took the field.
I seem to recall that I was not the 1st participant to bring up Franco, nor the 2d.
--
And Jimmyraybob's complaint re Truman was silly. Politicians have priorities and operate within constraints, especially when they are operating abroad. One of those constraints is the character of political life in most times and places. What possible object would have been served by striking attitudes over Franco or Salazar? Most of the the world in 1949 did not run like Switzerland, nor was it a feasible aspiration for them. That says nothing about either political ideals or the genealogy of certain modes of thought.
--
While we're at it, your quotation re Truman's religious views is also irrelevant. Russell Moore and Mike Huckabee do not propose to erect a confessional state or have extended public discussions of metaphysical or ecclesiological topics. Their book is public policy as animated by a common moral sense. There are some appendices to that, mostly concerning institutional arrangements. Neither was a matter of dispute in 1949.
Hijacking our comments section, ignoring Truman's speech on America's Christian roots with the WTF of Francisco Franco, was a forfeit before anyone even took the field.
I seem to recall that I was not the 1st participant to bring up Franco, nor the 2d.
You might be the last, unless Jimmiraybob wants to try his luck again. The counterargument is not that Franco was good, but that the alternatives were worse.
For instance, although history seldom reveals its alternatives, South Korea was a fascist dictatorship for decades but is now reformed. The Communist dictatorship of North Korea remains, beyond reform, beyond human decency.
And no, you were not the hijacker, Art Deco.
While we're at it, your quotation re Truman's religious views is also irrelevant
That was the hijack, in the first comment. Private religious beliefs mean nothing, from Washington to Obama. Only the public ones.
What's all this talk of hijacking? When Al Gore invented the internets there's a reason he called it a comments section. If you feel that I've violated the comments policy - the one that says "We happily encourage any and all comments, whether you agree or disagree with the author's material" - then maybe there's a civilized solution besides going immediately to wounded culture-warrior attack mode.
Sorry to offend you're rightist authoritarian sensibilities. So fragile. I can see why military coups, tribunals, censorship, state propaganda, secret police are so attractive to some.
"Private religious beliefs mean nothing, from Washington to Obama. Only the public ones."
Always trying to make up the rules. I guess that you haven't figured out the difference between public statements and actual beliefs. Take it up with his heirs and the presidential library.
And Tom, Franco wasn't just fighting the commies, he was suppressing any expression that ran afoul of the state and its official church, including repression of Freemasonry as well as the non-commie democratic republicans. He and his generals and subservient politicians and judges and the Catholic church supported his regime until his death, well after the battle with communism of the 1930s and 1940s. The regime's enemies were freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of expression and freedom of action.
And Mr. Deco, precision and accuracy are not the same animal.
Anonymous jimmiraybob said...
What's all this talk of hijacking? When Al Gore invented the internets there's a reason he called it a comments section. If you feel that I've violated the comments policy - the one that says "We happily encourage any and all comments, whether you agree or disagree with the author's material"
I didn't delete you. But it was a hijack. The subject is America's religious heritage, not Francisco Franco. WTF.
I didn't say that you deleted me.
I was commenting on the content and veracity of Truman's comment that you posted.
I still have not derided America's religious heritage.
Now, I am not going to continue commenting. Y'all can dance at my ignominious retreat.
I was commenting on the content and veracity of Truman's comment that you posted.
You cannot comment on it's 'veracity' without a well-understood and contrary conception of the antecedents to a given political culture and set of political practices, a conception you can demonstrate.
"You cannot comment on it's 'veracity' without a well-understood and contrary conception of the antecedents to a given political culture and set of political practices, a conception you can demonstrate."
You've tapped my contemporocedent and postcedent(1) weakness for responding to interpretive jiggery-pokery and, dare I say, applesauce of the purest variety. To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, "Words mean something but,really, WTF?" (OK, I also threw in some prime TVD color commentary.)
Are we perchance an anthropology major? Philosophy major? JD?
And, to answer, I CAN comment on the veracity of a claim if I know what the meaning of veracity means. And according to the Merrian-Webster book on the meaning of words, we find that veracity can, and in this case does, mean "conformity with truth or fact: accuracy."
Whereby I challenged the truth claim that "If we don't have the proper fundamental moral background [e.g., Christianity (2)], we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the state." In other words Christianity was being cited as a hedge against totalitarianism. We here this often today too.
My contra-example was Francoist Spain, thought by many to be a dictatorial, authoritarian, some would say totalitarian (3), and Catholic-sanctioned regime that spanned the life of Franco (some 35 years). This regime was brought about by a military coup that overthrew a democratic, constitutional republic. Following Franco's demise it transitioned back to a monarchy and then a constitutional democracy.
So, the comment had direct relevance to the post and was not a hijacking or a leftist modernist secularist commie (insert favorite pejorative here ______) attack against "America's religious heritage." Unless one man's personal opinion or one political, philosophic, or religious sect's teachings constitute "America's religious heritage."
1) Yes, I am breaking new ground.
2) "The fundamental basis of this Nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul.
3) Such as Harry S. Truman
And, of course, "here" should be hear.
And, to answer, I CAN comment on the veracity of a claim if I know what the meaning of veracity means. And according to the Merrian-Webster book on the meaning of words, we find that veracity can, and in this case does, mean "conformity with truth or fact: accuracy."
No you can't, because Truman's claim is not a wholly simple statement of fact. There is an implicit sociology to it, right or wrong. Saying it's lacking in 'veracity' is silly.
My contra-example was Francoist Spain, thought by many to be a dictatorial, authoritarian, some would say totalitarian (3), and Catholic-sanctioned regime that spanned the life of Franco (some 35 years). This regime was brought about by a military coup that overthrew a democratic, constitutional republic.
While we're on the subject of 'veracity', there was no military coup, there was a civil war. That civil war succeeded two years of antecedent political violence. And to refer to the Spanish Republic as 'democratic, Constitutional' is no more valid than to refer to Juan Domingo Peron's regime in that manner, bar that Peron actually had a majority of the public behind him, which Manuel Azana and his confederates did not.
I will withdraw "veracity" and submit one or more of the following words and/or phrases in its place: plausibility, robustness, likelihood, strength, credibility, merit, truthiness, value, authoritative necessity, validity, and/or soundness.
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