Donald Trump recently visited Warsaw, Poland and gave a speech defending the Western Civilization.Trump has been a divisive figure, but I shall admit, I really enjoyed his speech. After listening to so much patronizing political correctness from our leaders, it is refreshing to listen to Trump. Let me give you some highlights from his speech.
Trump: It is a profound honor to stand in this city, by this monument to the Warsaw Uprising, and to address the Polish nation that so many generations have dreamed of: a Poland that is safe, strong, and free.
Trump: “ We are also pleased that former President Leck Walesa, so famous for leading the Solidarity Movement, has joined us today, also.
Trump: For two centuries, Poland suffered constant and brutal attacks. But while Poland could be invaded and occupied, and its borders even erased from the map, it could never be erased from history or from your hearts. In those dark days, you have lost your land but you never lost your pride. (Applause.)
In the summer of 1944, the Nazi and Soviet armies were preparing for a terrible and bloody battle right here in Warsaw. Amid that hell on earth, the citizens of Poland rose up to defend their homeland. I am deeply honored to be joined on stage today by veterans and heroes of the Warsaw Uprising. What great spirit. We salute your noble sacrifice and we pledge to always remember your fight for Poland and for freedom. Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.)
This monument reminds us that more than 150,000 Poles died during that desperate struggle to overthrow oppression.
From the other side of the river, the Soviet armed forces stopped and waited. They watched as the Nazis ruthlessly destroyed the city, viciously murdering men, women, and children. They tried to destroy this nation forever by shattering its will to survive.
And when the day came on June 2nd, 1979, and one million Poles gathered around Victory Square for their very first mass with their Polish Pope, that day, every communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down. (Applause.) They must have known it at the exact moment during Pope John Paul II’s sermon when a million Polish men, women, and children suddenly raised their voices in a single prayer. A million Polish people did not ask for wealth. They did not ask for privilege. Instead, one million Poles sang three simple words: “We Want God.” (Applause.)
In those words, the Polish people recalled the promise of a better future. They found new courage to face down their oppressors, and they found the words to declare that Poland would be Poland once again.
As I stand here today before this incredible crowd, this faithful nation, we can still hear those voices that echo through history. Their message is as true today as ever. The people of Poland, the people of America, and the people of Europe still cry out “We want God.” (Applause.)
Needless many secular journalists became mad after hearing this speech. Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post, Peter Beinart in the Atlantic, Julie Davis in New York Times, Amanda Marcotte in Salon, they all attacked President Trump for giving a speech in defense of Western Civilization. According to secular, godless journalists, defending Western civilization is nothing more than a defense of nativism. They say defending the West is nothing but racism, racism and racism. But Western Civilization should not be seen in racial terms. Secular progressives have been promoting disdain for the West and its values.
The Western Civilization has given many great things to the world.
Great Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Philo, Cicero, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Abelard, Maimonides, John Locke, Immanuel Kant
Great scientists like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Robert Hooke, Newton, Robert Boyle, Einstein, Max Planck
Great poets like Geoffrey Chaucer, Lewis Carroll, Samuel Coleridge, George Eliot, Jane Austen, William Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling, John Keats, Shakespeare, Lord Tennyson, Percy Shelley, Maya Angelou, T.S.Eliot, Robert Frost
Great Christians like Thomas Becket, John Wycliffe, Pascal, Martin Luther, Erasmus, Thomas More, William Tyndale, John Wesley, Billy Graham
Great leaders like Martin Luther King Jr, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Edmund Burke
Great reformers like William Wilberforce, Savonarola, Johannes Hus, John Calvin, John Knox, Philipp Melanchthon, Harriet Beecher Stowe
Great writers like C.S.Lewis, J.R.R.Tolkien, G.K.Chesterton, Malcolm Muggeridge
Great philanthropists like Florence Nightingale, Mother Teresa, Bill Gates
Great protesters like Maximilian Kolbe, Martin Luther King Jr,
Great musicians like Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Handel, Brahms, Tchaikovsky
Great entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Sam Walton
Great economists like Adam Smith, Joseph Schumpeter, Milton Friedman
Great skeptics like David Hume, Diderot, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens
The West gave freedom to skeptics like Hume, Darwin and Dawkins, to criticize its institutions, traditions and beliefs. Try that in China or Saudi Arabia or Iran or North Korea, you will see how far you can go with free thought and free speech. So, there is nothing wrong with defending the West. The secular progressives are on a pursuit to remove all Christian icons from the landscape.
We used to say, Christendom. The secularists banished that term, you can still say, ‘Muslim world’, but not ‘Christendom’.
We used to say, Crusades, Crusade on Cancer, Crusade on drugs etc. The secularists banished that term. They describe Crusades as West’s attacks on peaceful Muslims. In reality, Crusades were waged to protect the West from invading Muslim armies. But secular historians rewrote the history. Crusades are described as a series of wars waged by Christians on peaceful Muslims. So, now, we can no longer use the word crusade to describe anything nobel, like crusade on cancer, or crusade on drugs, crusade on poverty etc. They made ‘crusade’ a bad word.
We used to say, Before Christ, and Anno Domini. The secularists banished those descriptions. BC is changed to BCE and AD is changed to CE. AD stands for Anno Domini, in the year of our Lord. We used to say, ‘such and such a thing happened in that year of our Lord’. That is no more allowed. We can only say, ‘Common Era’ or ‘Before Common Era’.
We used to say, Merry Christmas. The secularists banished it, now it is happy holidays.
We used to call Sunday, Lord’s Day, now it is just another weekend.
We used to start classes in the school with prayer and Bible. The secularists banished those practices, now all children must take lessons in Darwinism, cultural sensitivity and diversity. So, in the past few decades, the relentless dechristianization of the West is going on steroids. Now, here comes Donald Trump reminding the West of those three precious words: ‘We want God’
We want God: Predictably, atheists are angry, how dare he mentions God in a public speech?
Where did Trump give this speech? in Warsaw, Poland. One of the bloodiest battlegrounds in the Second World War. Throughout its history, Poland was mercilessly crushed from all sides. Not long ago, I traveled through many regions of Poland, you can still see the ravages of great wars all over that nation.
Poland and Eastern Europe were repeatedly invaded and attacked. Yale historian Timothy Snyder called this region, ‘Bloodlands’. During World War II, an estimated 26 million people died on the Eastern Front alone. Think of that for a moment, 26 million people getting killed just on the Eastern Front of the Second World War!
Nazis and Soviets, both attacked Poland. Nazis attacked from the West and Soviets from the East. The Nazis under Hitler and Soviets under Stalin. One thing common between Hitler and Stalin was their atheism. They were born in Christian homes, but they rejected God in their youth. Both of them were committed to secular utopias devoid of any reference to the God of the Bible. Hitler wanted to build a thousand year Reich when the whole world would be under the feet of Aryan race. Stalin wanted to build a thousand year Communist utopia when the whole world would be under the feet of Socialists.
Nietzschean Atheism: Many atheists get upset when I say that Hitler was an atheist. They say, don’t you know, Hitler was born in a Roman Catholic home? True, Hitler was born in a Roman Catholic home, but he stopped attending mass after he left home. Publicly, Hitler appealed to Christianity to impress the German people. If you want to become US President, you would try to impress Christians until election day, right? That’s what Hitler did. He promoted an Aryan Jesus Christ who fought against the Jews. Hitler actually started academic institutions to drain Jesus of all His Jewishness. But privately, he disparaged Christianity as a religion appropriate only to slaves. Once he won the war, Hitler wanted to exterminate Christianity throughout Europe.
A person is judged by his worldview. What is your worldview? Christian worldview is there is a God, who created the universe. He chose a group of people called Jews to be His first messengers. Through the Jews, God entered into human race in the person of Jesus Christ. Human beings became sinners after violating the commandments of God. Jesus died for the sins of all human beings and offered a way of reconciliation with God. Jesus will come back to this world to establish His millennial reign. God will judge all humans on the great Day of Judgment. Briefly, that is the Christian worldview. Did Hitler espouse this worldview? No, he did not. He was not waiting for a Jewish messiah, he wanted to be the aryan messiah. He wanted to bring his own millennial reign through Third Reich.
If you love Jesus, you would love the Jewish people. A true Christian would never become an Anti-semite. But Hitler hated the Jews. Last time I visited Poland, I spent a whole day at Auschwitz Concentration Camp. More than 1.1 million people were slaughtered at Auschwitz on the altars of Nazi ideology. Hitler once said, ‘I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of a conscience, imperious, relentless, and cruel’.
No Christian would talk like that.
To be a Christian, you must embrace the Christian worldview and make Jesus your Lord and Savior. So, Hitler, being born into a Roman Catholic family would not become a Christian.
If you use such standards, Richard Dawkins also should be considered a Christian because he was born in a Christian home and embraced Christian faith until he was a teenager. But in his teens, Richard Dawkins left Christian faith. He studied Charles Darwin and became an atheist. That’s exactly what Hitler and Stalin did. They were born into Christian homes, they embraced Christian faith only until they were teenagers. Then they studied Charles Darwin and became atheists.
Hitler followed Nietzschean atheism while Stalin followed Marxian atheism.
Friedrich Nietzsche lived between 1844 and 1900. He was born in a Christian home, his dad was a Lutheran pastor. Interestingly, Nietzsche started to study theology with the hope of becoming a minister. Then he studied Darwin, Schopenhauer and David Strauss. Soon, he would declare, ‘God is dead’.
Today we have many charitable atheists in our society. They say, let us take care of the poor, let us help the needy, let us assist the weak, you don’t have to believe in God to help poor people. These are Christianized atheists. But, Nietzsche took his atheism to its logical conclusions. He said that the idea of charity was born out of slave religions. Nietzsche called Judaism and Christianity as slave religions. He proclaimed the death of God and the birth of Superman.
What I like about Nietzsche is, unlike modern atheists, he was honest about logical implications of atheism. He predicted that, because we’ve killed God, twentieth century would become the most violent century in human history; because we’ve killed God, tyranny would rise; because we’ve killed God, morality would lose its foundation; because we’ve killed God, human life would lose its meaning and significance; because we’ve killed God, despair and nihilism would descend on our communities. Nietzsche said, ‘Man is a rope, tied between beast and superman – a rope over an abyss’.
Nietzsche’s famous book, The Will to Power, became the favorite book of Hitler. The Nazis invented a new meaning to ethics based on Nietzschean philosophy. They initiated a grand project of erecting the Nietzschean Superman. This Superman has will to power and lust for knowledge.
In his book Mere Christianity, C.S.Lewis contrasted Christian ethics with Nietzschean ethics. The Chronicles of Narnia has seven books. The last two books, The Magician’s Nephew (1955) and The Last Battle (1956) feature Andrew and Jadis. These two individuals are ruthless, Machiavellian villains. They represent the spirit of Nietzsche’s Superman. They reject God, they reject the gospel, they possess boundless and unquenchable will to power and lust for knowledge.
That is what Hitler found in Nietzsche’s atheism: will to power and lust for knowledge.
Marxist Atheism: Stalin found his Will to Power in Karl Marx. Marx was so impressed with Darwin’s theory that he sent a copy of his famous book Das Kapital (1867 – 1894) to Darwin. Marx unveiled a godless utopia before the world. Religion is the opiate of the masses that must be eliminated. Communist nations made atheism their official policy. They destroyed churches, murdered pastors and enslaved millions.
Stalin’s official biographer Yaroslaysky recorded a story by Stalin’s schoolboy friend Glurdjidze. At the age of thirteen, Stalin was already declaring that there was no God.
Glurdjidze: I began to speak of God. Joseph heard me out, and after a moment’s silence he said: ‘You know, they are deceiving us. There is no God -’
I was astonished by these words. I had never heard anything like it before.
‘How can you say such things, Soso?’ I exclaimed.
‘I’ll lend you a book to read,’ he replied. ‘It will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from anything you can imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense.’
‘What book is it’ I asked.
‘Darwin’, he said. ‘You must read it’.
Stalin was supposed to become a minister. His mother sent him to a seminary for that purpose. But in the seminary, he became an atheist and rejected God. Stalin and his friends wreaked havoc on the people they ruled. He inaugurated a violent campaign against independent farmers, who were arrested and deported to Siberia. Communist activists went into the villages and confiscated all hidden supplies of food. During Holodomor, hunger reigned across Ukraine, leading to cannibalism in many towns. The Soviet troops were seizing all grain from people. They also posted posters on the walls: ‘To eat your own children is a barbarian act’.
That’s Holodomor. ‘Don’t eat your children’ a government admonishing its citizens, that happened just a few decades ago in the Eastern Europe. They knew the direct impact of atheism. They knew the tyranny of godless governments.
In December 1933, American communists attacked demonstrations of Ukrainians against Holodomor in Chicago. Walter Duranty (1884-1957) won Pulitzer Prize for his reports about the Soviet Union. He worked as head of the Moscow bureau of The New York Times and dismissed the reality of the famine caused by Soviet atheists. The New York Times later acknowledged that Duranty’s work constituted, “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper”. That’s the fake news of New York Times 70 years ago. Fake News is not new, folks. Back in 1950s, New York Times was reporting, ‘Stalin’s regime is so wonderful, we should have it everywhere’. That was the golden age of fake news, fake journalists like Walter Duranty were winning Pulitzer Prizes.
But Jesus said, ‘Ye shall know the truth and truth shall make you free’. In 1966, Poles celebrated the 1000th anniversary of the arrival of Christianity in their land. Christian teachings on liberty inspired people to raise against their Communist oppressors. Atheist leaders in the government tried to cripple the celebrations by stealing the religious icons. In 1981, Pope John Paul II visited Poland. He addressed a congregation of over two million people in Katowice. His words, ‘This right is not given to us by the state. ‘It is a right given by the Creator’ reinvigorated millions of people against the tyranny of the atheists.
In Prague, Czech Republic, Jan Hus Memorial was unveiled in 1915 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Jan Hus’ martyrdom. Jan Hus (1369-1415) was born in Bohemia and a forerunner to the Protestantism. In 1415 he was burned at the stake for heresy against the doctrines of the Catholic Church.When Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule, sitting at the feet of the Jan Hus Memorial became a non-violent form of protest. You would be punished if you go anywhere near the statue of Jan Hus because his inspiration might induce you to rebel against the tyrannical rule of Communism.
The Baltic nations also followed a nonviolent approach with their ‘Singing Revolution’ and brought their Communist regimes to an end. Author Guntis Smidchens described in The Power of Song how the people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania confronted the military power of Soviet Union and achieved independence through singing and non-violence.
“Where then is my fatherland?
Now I want to name it:
Wherever sings the Estonian tongue,
Remaining true to God above!
Yes, that is it! (repeat four times)
My fatherland, and my happiness!
Yes, my happiness, yes, my happiness!
Here I live, an Estonian man,
In my Lutheran faith,
I do work and God I thank,
He does good to me each day,
And I feel joy (repeat four times)
That God’s truth and merciful love
Will not forsake me, though I am dust.
This is called Singing Revolution. People were simply praising God and tyranny of atheistic communism soon extinguished in Baltic states.
George Santayana said, ‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. Many atheists and progressives are mad at President Trump for saying ‘We want God’. Jesus said, Ye shall know the truth, and truth shall make you free’
Truth and liberty reign together, just as falsehood and tyranny oppress together.
God is the source of all truth. And without His truth, there is no liberty.
You may not like every thing he says, but when Trump says, ‘We want God’, we should say, ‘Amen, brother’
References:
1.https://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/08/reviews/010408.08erlangt.html
- Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland.
- Hitler by Thomas Ferenczi
- Paul Johnson, Stalin: The Kremlin Mountaineer
- Robert Payne, The Rise and Fall of Stalin
- Jasper Backer, Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine
- Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the state in central-eastern Europe
- Guntis Smidchens, The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution