WORLD MATTERS: U.S. conservatives poorly served by the Fox News media culture

By UWE SIEMON-NETTO

A nauseating remark by Donald Trump on Fox News about Germany this week made me wonder if today’s American and European conservatives are living on the same planet – assuming for the sake of an argument that this network is the authentic voice of conservatives in the U.S.A. Discussing the Euro crisis on Greta van Susteren’s “On the Record” show, Trump said: “Germany is trying to take over the world economically; they weren’t able to do it militarily.” This was preceded by a breathtakingly boorish divination of dire prospects for French President Nicolas’ marriage once he and his wife Carla Bruni have left the Elysée Palace in Paris. 

Now, before I let off steam about this claptrap, let me disclose this much about myself: I am a firm conservative of the European stripe. If I were a U.S. citizen, I could never vote for “pro choice” candidates or politicians favoring same-sex marriage. Like American conservatives, I want governments to be small and taxes low. I oppose the nanny state and entitlements. I support free enterprise, hard work and responsible lifestyles. I am a conservative because I want to “conserve,” in the original sense of the Latin verb, conservare, the Christian civilization we inherited including its religious, educational and cultural treasures, its civility, good manners, its emphasis of historical knowledge and critical thinking.

There are differences of course: I do not consider myself depraved because I like fast trains, speak foreign languages and never felt a desire to own a gun, and I see no merit in ethnic or national bigotry; I have learned in my childhood in Germany the hard way where this kind of rhetoric can lead. Still, irrespective of these Old World peculiarities, I have always held it self-evident that conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic are bound by shared values and presume this still to be the case.

Yet I feel politically homeless in contemporary America, a country I love; I despise the mindlessness reflected in Mr. Trump’s glib statement, which is emblematic of the discourse in the type of electronic media where he is seen and heard. Is this conservative? Not in my book. It is unintelligent and inelegant, two adjectives I do find incompatible with the grace of real conservative thought. It troubles me that Americans seem unaware of the catastrophic impression this makes on those Europeans who should be their natural friends and allies. They watch Fox News’ lowbrow talk shows on the Internet with dismay and see them, in the absence of alternatives, as true mirrors of American traditionalism. When I telephoned friends in France and Germany after the Socialist victory in the French elections, they emitted identical sighs: “If only American conservatives would give us any reason for hope!”

Back to Trump: He seems clueless about the distasteful company he is keeping by trumpeting out his ugly clichés before millions of Fox News spectators: the company of Greek anarchists, neo-Nazis and Communists burning German flags in the street of Athens and caricaturing Chancellor Angela Merkel as a brown-shirted, swastika-toting fiend, or advocates of irresponsible inflationary policies of the very type Fox News pretends to be fighting in America. In his postmodern inability to think in proper analogies, it did not occur to Trump that Germans abhor this behavior just as much as Americans loathed morons burning their national flag and spelling the name of their country Ameri-kkk-a in the 1960s.

Oh, now I get it! Perhaps in Trump’s mind solidarity is a leftist term and not something conservatives do to each other, at least not from the perspective of the kind of conservatives we are discussing here, the “me”-conservatives unbound by codes of honor worth conserving, just as the rest of the “Me” culture. Again, I suspect that a majority of conservatives might not belong to the “Me” variety; but they have chosen not to invest in a voice that can be heard and seen around the globe, a shortsighted omission.

What exactly is it that Trump, in line with European leftists and extremists, dislikes about today’s Germans? I say today’s Germans, those 90-odd percent of us who were not even around when Hitler came to power. He admits that Germans have done “unbelievably well,” and he surely cannot claim that they have accomplished this by force of arms or knavish tricks. I posit that they reaped the fruits of doing what Germans always do best: hard work, precision engineering, making beautiful products of the highest quality that sell well around the world, maintaining sound labor relations, training their workers superbly, and exercising fiscal responsibility. I believe Germans have by now earned the right to grab Trump by the lapels and thunder: “How dare you liken our honorable behavior to the shameful deeds a criminal regime has committed before you were born!”

Or is it that in his mind only Americans are virtuous when they work hard and well and behave prudently, whereas Germans doing the very same thing are by definition Nazis light? What must Germans do to receive the approbation of Trump and similar hypocrites? Must they become sloppy? Must they go on strike all the time like French railway workers? Must they produce rubbish in order for others to get a larger share of the market? Should they have followed the American example, much bemoaned by Trump and his fellow Fox commentators, of destroying their own economy?

Trump’s insult to Western Europe’s most populous nation could be dismissed as crude drivel if it were not one exceedingly rare item of information about Germany, or for that matter any other Western European country except Britain, broadcast by America’s premier “conservative” cable network, which is too mean to base foreign correspondents in continental capitals and apparently too hick to cover the Continent instead of badmouthing it almost daily. I will never forget the thigh-slapping hilarity in a Fox talk show when a panelist proclaimed a few years ago: “The only trouble with Europe is that it has too many Europeans.” By God, this was unadulterated Nazi diction! I am proud to say that in Germany this kind of rhetoric would be treated as a hate crime.

As a journalist who has learned his craft with the Associated Press, I am disconsolate that for world coverage on the evening news I must go to the English-language Al Jazeera program, compliments of PBS, if I want to avoid networks whose liberal slant I find objectionable. Why don’t conservative billionaires like Donald Trump see a need to invest in a restoration of genuinely “fair and balanced” journalism in this country that used to be the international leader in high media standards? Why for that matter don’t other wealthy conservatives worried about the decrepit state of our craft? Why is it that responsible media people, and here I include myself, only meet uncomprehending stares when panhandling for funds to launch, not a mouthpiece for right wingers, but simply a responsible, cosmopolitan, professionally well-crafted mass publication, printed or electronic. For democracy to survive, we need an abundance of solid facts to reach the electorate, not more half-baked opinions posing as “conservative.”

Contrary to what Fox’s smug talk show hosts will have you believe, the frightening collapse of journalistic standards is by no means an exclusively left-wing phenomenon. The so-called conservative media outlets are no better. Take Germany. Fox’s listeners don’t know that Germany, the world’s second largest exporter, maintains the third-largest NATO contingent in Afghanistan, after the U.S. and the United Kingdom, and that German soldiers are also dying in the Hindu Kush. Never do the journalistic poseurs talking over their interview partners in prime time offer a detailed report of a compelling international saga that is as much a human interest as a political story: Whether you like Germans or not, the Herculean act of one middle-aged East German pastor’s daughter and scientist, Angela Merkel, carrying the rest of Europe is a stirring occurrence in the history of Western civilization, especially if you consider that Germany has just had to spend nearly €2 trillion ($2,7 trillion) to repair the disastrous damage 40 years of Communist have done to its eastern territories. But to understand this you have to know history.

When discussing health care, these pundits ridicule the British and Canadian systems but never mention Germany’s, which is the world’s oldest, having been started by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1883 in order to stave off socialist alternatives. It is really irrelevant whether this omission is due to prejudice or ignorance; the consequence is the same: these “journalists” keep their public ill informed at a time when international perils call for well-educated voters.

Donald Trump said, “Germany is trying to help Germany.” So? He complained that the euro was not created “for the betterment of the United States.” So? Isn’t it a little narcissistic to demand that only things serving the betterment of one country should be permitted elsewhere in the world? He also claimed that the whole European project was directed against U.S.

No! The European unification process resulted from the lessons wise and eminently decent men of the caliber of Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, Alcide de Gasperi, Paul-Henri Spaak, Charles de Gaulle and others had drawn from the bloody fratricide of two World Wars. It was a human endeavor and therefore subject to human fallibility. Perhaps in hindsight Germany should never have agreed to a joint currency that included Greece, which was not ready for it. But that was one price she had to pay for France’s acquiescence to her reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Instead of ridiculing Germany or accusing her of ill intent, Mr. Trump should be thankful that he has never experienced the horror that prompted Europeans to act the way they did. I am ten years older than Trump; I have lived through it, which is why I don’t long for a repetition. European wars have never been good for Americans either. Mr. Trump should have thought of that, but he hasn’t.

Moreover, it seems illogical for a champion of free enterprise to view the competitive intentions of the European Union as detrimental to the United States, as Trump insinuated in his interview with Greta van Susteren. Have I missed a class at school? Is not competition what free enterprise is all about? Why should peaceful competition be fine on a national but not on an international level, as long as both sides subscribe to the same principles of freedom?

I would not have lowered myself to venting my anger here about the utterances of a billionaire buffoon had 55 years in international journalism not taught me to appraise most somberly the state of the world we are living in. From this I can only draw one conclusion: American and Continental conservatives need each other today more than ever; but I mean real conservatives determined to conserve our civilization, including hard work, fiscal discipline, entrepreneurship, a commitment to the sanctity of human life and, yes, international civility, which I found lacking in Donald Trump’s superfluous remarks.

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.

A German Remembers Vietnam

By UWE SIEMON-NETTO

I am flattered to have been asked to speak to you today almost half a century after I first arrived in Vietnam as a West German war correspondent. That was before the first American combat forces landed in Da Nang. It was then that I developed a passionate love for your country and its people who honor us Germans by calling us “Đức,” which also means virtuous.

One day, a member of a band of homeless newspaper boys living on Tu Do Street in Saigon, approached me and said, “You are Đức, my name is Đức, so we are both Đức, and I have a deal for you. If you allow my friends and me to sleep in your car, we’ll protect it and keep it clean for you.

I had rented on a semi-permanent basis a Citroen 15 CV, a “traction.” This was a huge and very thirsty French car built in the year I was born. Its door locks had gone. So it was just as well somebody watched over it. Sometimes seven or eight children slept in this machine, keeping it immaculately clean inside and outside.

I always parked it on Tu Do opposite the Continental Palace, next to the Café Givral, if you remember it. It became more than just my means of transportation; more importantly it became a vehicle of friendship between Đức, the newspaperman, and a bunch of wonderful kids led by Đức the itinerant vendor of the Saigon Daily News, the Saigon Post and many other papers.

This friendship lasted on and off until my traction became a casualty of the Têt Offensive in 1968 and the street kids disappeared from Tu Do for a while.

I wonder what has happened to Đức since then. Maybe he is now living in the United States, perhaps he is sitting right in this room. It would be wonderful to speak and laugh with him again; he was a great kid.

Not that I spent all that much time in Saigon; I often accompanied your troops into battle. And there I observed ARVN doctors and medics intrepidly trying to save the lives of wounded men. Perhaps some of you and I have met -- near Quang Tri, Hue, Pleiku or Plei My, Nha Trang, or in the Mekong Delta, or at the POW camp on Phú Quốc Island.

This was in early 1965.

Later that year I compacted my spine when an American MedEvac chopper I traveled on was shot down west of An Khe, and so American doctors looked after me. But never mind the nationality of military doctors and medics: In my five years in Vietnam I greatly came to appreciate the sacrifice, courage and professional expertise of all of you, Americans, Vietnamese, Koreans and Australians.

So you and I might have met. I was hard to miss when I visited your units, for during those early stages of the war I was often the only West German correspondent in South Vietnam, and my badge identified me as a German.

For one brief moment I even became your comrade-in-arms by capturing a Vietcong.

This was actually quite amusing. Here is what happened:

In February of 1965 I attached myself to an American Special Forces A-Team and participated in a parachute exercise west of My Tho. I hit the ground. I rolled up my chute and noticed that the ground gave under my feet. I stepped back. The surface popped up again. I hopped with both feet forcefully on that small spot. The surface sank. I heard a groan. Again I stepped back, removed a layer of grass and discovered the camouflaged plastic helmet of a VC and the nozzle of his antique M-1 rifle.

First I lifted the gun out of the hole, then the VC. He was a slim little guy in black pajamas, and he was shivering. I told him: “Courage, camarade, pour toi la guerre est fini.“ I don’t know if he spoke French but he surely understood what I was saying: “Take courage, buddy, for you the war is over.” Now he smiled.

I turned the VC and his rifle over to the Americans but kept his plastic helmet as a trophy. For the next 46 years it lived in my library until my friend Dr. Quy van Ly and his wife Chau came to my house in France last October. So I gave the helmet to them as a souvenir. Not that I had performed a great heroic deed.

Still, I was glad to help out. So here it is – the helmet. This was my trophy. Now it’s yours. It will be in your war museum here in Little Saigon.

Now, this was a benign incident whose memory I cherish. A few weeks later, I had a distressing experience west of Nha Trang. But it was significant for my understanding of my assignment. For it showed me the true face of the Vietnam War. The reason why I will now elaborate on this event is that it illustrates why so many Americans have never quite grasped what this conflict was all about.

President Richard M. Nixon later cited my report about this incident in his book, The Real War. So pardon my vanity if I quote a United States President quoting me: Nixon wrote: “…German journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto provided a vivid illustration of how communist guerilla groups use terrorism to effect their purpose. Siemon-Netto, who accompanied a South Vietnamese battalion to a large village the Vietcong had raided in 1965, reported: "Dangling from the trees and poles in the village square were the village chief, his wife, and their twelve children, the males, including a baby…"

The Vietcong had ordered everyone in the village to witness this family first being tortured, and then hanged. "They started with the baby and then slowly worked their way up to the elder children, to the wife, and finally to the chief himself. ... It was all done very coolly, as much an act of war as firing an anti-aircraft gun…"

All these were Nixon’s excerpts from a story of mine.Nixon explained that this is how the Communists won the hearts and minds of the rural population. They did not win hearts and minds by acts of compassion but by the most merciless forms of intimidation. The villagers told me that the Vietcong cadre had entered the village several times before and warned the chief that if he did not stop cooperating with the South Vietnamese government there would be severe consequences.

But he remained loyal, so they returned in the middle of the night and woke everybody in the village to witness the massacre during which a propaganda officer told the people: “This is what will happen to you if you don’t join us; remember that!” I am ashamed to admit that I can no longer recall the name of that village. But that doesn’t really matter because this sort of thing went on all over South Vietnam every night back then.

Yet the American public was largely unaware of this because their media did not tell them. In the daily press briefing in Saigon—the infamous five o’clock follies – episodes like this were reduced a mere statistic. The briefers would routinely inform correspondents of the huge number of “incidents” that occurred in the previous 24 hours.

This sounded like a sales report: “I Corps, 184 enemy incidents; II Corps, 360 incidents; III Corps, 225; IV Corps, 480.” That was that. No details were given. That would have been impossible anyway, given the large number of this kind of incidents in 24 hours.

We journalists had no way of researching all these particulars, unless we stumbled into such an event as I did when I accompanied a battalion of the 22rd ARVN division. Yet what I saw there near Nha Trang was actually enormously significant because it represented the essence of this particular stage of the Vietnam conflict.

Acts of terrorism to cow the civilian population were characteristic of the second phase of the guerilla warfare strategy developed by Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the defense minister of North Vietnam.

I seriously doubt that so many Americans would have turned against the Vietnam War, had their media continuously described of these acts of inhumanity that occurred everywhere in South Vietnam. They didn’t, partly because journalists did not have the means to do so, partly also because many reporters and their editors simply had another agenda. I said: many –not all.

Three years later, during the Têt Offensive in Hué, I stood with my colleague Peter Braestrup of the Washington Post at the rim of a mass grave and overheard him ask an American television cameraman: “Why don’t you film this scene?” The camerman answered: “We are not here to spread anti-Communist propaganda.” This showed a shameful mindset of many of my colleagues, a mindset that I believe was instrumental in shaping the desire of the American public to end this war almost at any cost.

Gen. Giap knew that this was going to happen. He knew that American voters would tire of this war. For he knew the weaknesses of a free society very well, notably its short attention span. Sixty years ago, he wrote: “The enemy” – meaning in reality all Western democracies – “does not possess the psychological and political means to fight a long drawn-out war.”

He prophesied the war fatigue, the peace moment, the hypocritical inclination of ideologues to overlook the hideous nature of a totalitarian revolutionary movement; the inclination to accentuate the shortcomings of one’s own side; the allegedly corrupt nature of the “allies” democratic societies are sacrificing their young men for; and eventually the desire to “seek an honorably way out,” and “peace with honor,” and an equitably negotiated settlement.

What was so remarkable about the media’s role in Vietnam was that some American correspondents, who later became strong antiwar advocates, were well aware of this danger. On January 13, 1965, the celebrated American columnist and historian Stanley Karnow quoted Giap’s statement about the inability of free countries to fight protracted wars and warned his readers about the consequences of this dire flaw in the fiber of any democratic system.

And yet before long, Karnow led the pack of writers agitating for a so-called “peace with honor,” knowing all too well that a truly honorable settlement was unobtainable.

Today we hear echoes of this with respect to Afghanistan. Again we hear calls for a negotiated settlement. We hear about secret talks between the United States and the Taliban. No thought is given to what compromise this totalitarian movement could be expected to stick to.

What would such a compromised entail: That instead of being forbidden to learn how to read and write, women will be allowed to learn half the alphabet? That for the first five years after a Taliban takeover only half as many alleged adulteresses will be stoned to death as used to be the norm before the Taliban were chased from power? That women will receive only half as many lashes as they used to when their ankles to be seen under their chadors?

A dozen years ago, the leading American feminist group, the National Organization of Women, published dramatic accounts of he Taliban’s ghastly human rights abuses against women on its website. Today it wastes no thought on the high probability that these abuses will be repeated once NATO has withdrawn its forces because these abuses are as much inherent in the ideology of radical Islamists, as gulags were inherent in Communist ideology. Those of you who experienced Vietcong internment know what I am talking about.

I believe that all of us have mission to be witnesses to history – you, the veterans of this war, and we who covered it. We must keep the memory of historical truth alive for the benefit of those who follow us. We must keep reminding the media in our host countries of their pivotal role in the preservation of freedom. We must warn those who come after us of the dreadful consequences of bad journalism, academic hypocrisy and a bored electorate’s lack of resolve. You are in the best position to do this. You have seen and often suffered so much.

Let me add something here: I am a Christian, and an amateur historian. As a Christian I know who is the ultimate Lord of history. And as an amateur historian I know that history is always open to the future. Putting these two factors together gives us hope – hope for Vietnam, hope for Afghanistan, hope for mankind. We are not the masters of the future. But we have a calling to help make this a better future.

Therefore we have not seen great evil deeds in vain, nor have we suffered gratuitously. There is a reason for all this, and the reason is that we are able to tell future generations what really happened, regardless of the many lies that are being told about Vietnam over and over again.

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology & Public Life in Capistrano Beach, Calif.

Easter, Santorum and fatal narcissism in the West

This column appeared on April 6, 2012 in freepressers.com

By UWE SIEMON-NETTO

As Christianity is set to celebrate its highest feast in the church year, a Christian from overseas may be forgiven for asking his American coreligionists two troubling questions concerning the faltering campaign of Sen. Rick Santorum and the trivialization of life-and-death concerns in the current electoral season of the western world’s most religious nation.

Here we go:

1. How come after 56 million legal abortions since Roe v. Wade in 1973, even conservative pundits reproach Santorum for giving priority to “social issues”? For starters, this term is a diabolical misnomer for mass killing. A social issue might be whether you wear a tuxedo or tails at a glamorous ball; whether you, a commoner, should court a princess or, on a different level, whether workers should be given three or four weeks vacations per year. There’s nothing “social” about depriving an unborn baby of his or her chance to ever be social in the sense of interacting with other human beings. The genocides perpetrated against millions of kulaks in the Soviet Union, Jews in Germany, Cambodians in Cambodia and Tutsis in Africa were not “social issues”; so by what right should the annual annihilation of more than one million fetuses be euphemistically reduced to a bagatelle in such a hypocritical manner?

2. For a second time in my career as a journalist I am observing Americans tire of an unpopular war. This confirms the harsh analysis by the former North Vietnamese defense minister, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, that “the enemy,” meaning Western democracies, lack “the psychological and political means” to fight protracted armed conflicts. So once again deadlines for a NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan are set, secret negotiations are being conducted with the enemy; it seems a “given” that eventually the Taliban will return to power in Kabul. Here is my question to ordinary Americans: How come your feminists are so mute about the consequences of this probable outcome for their Afghan sisters? How come you don’t call them to task for this?

You might argue that these two topics are unrelated. I beg to differ: Both are the brood of a self-centered a way of thinking, which is threatening the survival of free societies not just in America, but anywhere in the Western world. Check out, for example, the website of the National Organization of Women. Its top issues are “Abortion and Reproductive Rights.” Then type “Afghanistan” into the website’s search field, and you’ll read indeed the horrors women endured under Taliban rule: They were publicly hanged or stoned to death if accused of adultery or prostitution. They were beaten for showing a bit of ankle or wearing squeaking shoes. They were forced to live in poverty, deprived of proper medical care and even of the sun.

All this was penned by Karen Johnson, a former NOW vice president – more than a ten years ago. Her stirring article, “The Day the Music Died: Women and Girls in Afghanistan,” can still be downloaded, but it is an old piece that has not been updated for a decade. The frightening prospect of Islamists subjecting women once again to terror and oppression in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world is simply not on the radar screen of the American women’s movement or its political allies; “choice” is, and that’s another diabolical misnomer. Talk about narcissism!

As a pervasive cliché in the American political discourse will have it, Santorum and the other Republican hopefuls aren’t faring too well with women voters, especially the educated ones with good incomes, primarily because of the so-called “social issues.” There you have it: It requires sophistication to be on the right side of “social issues” and to ignore the fate of brown-skinned sisters on the other side of the globe. I doubt that this is a just appraisal of American womanhood. Sophistication? What about common sense? What about one’s innate understanding that the killing of the innocents and the abandonment of fellow human beings conflict with natural law, the universal moral code?

It is not my place as an alien residing in the United States to tell Americans whom to vote for. Anyway, it appears that Sen. Santorum might not be the Republican Presidential candidate this time around. But as we Christians are about to rejoice in Christ’s resurrection, which is our greatest source of hope, I, a Lutheran Christian from Germany, salute Rick Santorum, a Roman Catholic Christian in the USA, for relentlessly and stubbornly reminding the electorate of the sanctity of human life. This might not get him elected in November. Still, it was a stunning surprise indeed that he made it to second place in the Republican primaries, thus proving that his voice was heard at least among the less erudite, simple people comparable to the most faithful listeners of the Risen Christ whom to emulate all Christians are called.

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Capistrano Beach, California.

Press Ignores Routine Black Success Stories

From the April 5, 2012, edition of The Wall Street Journal

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

Rick Nagel's response (Letters, March 31) to Juan Williams's "The Trayvon Martin Tragedies" provides a sad testimony of the current state of journalism. Why do we read and hear so little of those black "entrepreneurs, fund managers, attorneys, teachers" who once studied under Mr. Nagel and similar teachers?

As a former foreign correspondent covering this country for decades, I blame the dearth of curiosity and imagination among assignment editors and reporters for this. Rather than dig up exciting stories about such remarkable people, they perpetuate clichés by parading out opportunistic and boring characters such as the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who should have long been relegated to dotage in obscurity.

You rarely find out much about competent pastors of healthy black congregations. When I lived in downtown Washington, I attended Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, an almost all-black parish a 10-minute walk from the offices of the capital's leading newspaper. Not once did Mount Olivet's elegant and Gospel-centered sermons, its fine liturgy and educated, successful members attract media attention. The problem was that they were too "normal"; they did not fit stereotypes as readily as Messrs. Sharpton or Jackson.

Is it good journalism to ignore what's excellent and normal? Trust an old newspaperman: It is not and does harm to all of us, especially African-Americans.

Uwe Siemon-Netto

Laguna Woods, Cal

FAITH MATTERS: Santorum was right to mention Satan

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

On the eve of the Republican primaries in Michigan and Arizona I would like to direct an urgent appeal to Sen. Rick Santorum: “Please keep talking about Satan; somebody’s got to do it!” This is not meant facetiously. Even though I am neither a U.S. citizen nor a Roman Catholic I am pleading with Mr. Santorum not to waver in his civil courage, as the martyred German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have described Santorum’s intrepid display of faith.

The effete snobs of this world, to resuscitate one of Spiro Agnew’s priceless observations, poured barrels of rancor over the Senator when Matt Drudge discovered a thoughtful and erudite lecture Mr. Santorum had given at Ave Maria University in Florida discussing a 200-year assault by the “Father of Lies” on the institutions of the United States – first academia, then the Church, the culture and politics.

He was slammed from all sides, and perhaps most annoyingly by Father Edward Beck, a befuddled Catholic priest and television commentator who appeared on the O’Reilly Factor with ashes imposed cruciformly on his forehead. Clearly neither he nor O’Reilly had bothered to listen to all of the Senator’s theologically coherent remarks. Beck said Santorum’s words did not “appeal to people more in the middle;” Santorum was “to the right of most Catholics.”

One wonders at what seminary Rev. Beck had studied systematic theology and what his grade was in this discipline. Maybe he missed the part about the Devil as a real being locked in a cosmic struggle with the Creator. Maybe he followed liberal German and American theologians who had reduced Satan to mere allegory, no more than a symbol for the unpleasant things occurring in our era, the holocaust, for example, or – dare we mention it? – the wanton slaughter of 56 million unborn babies since Roe v. Wade in 1973?

If it seems unstylish to discuss this Father of the Lie, why then bother with Christ’s redemptive work on the cross? Was this indeed “divine child abuse,” as some feminist theologians liked to opine over a decade ago? In that case, why call yourself a Christian? Why, for some fluffy Higher Being’s sake, have your thinker’s brow contaminated with cruciform ash on the first day of Lent?

It’s not for me as a foreigner to say whether, politically speaking, Mr. Santorum is the best Presidential candidate for my host country. But there is a reason why this decent man, whose campaign is woefully underfunded, appeals to so many voters, Catholics, evangelicals and traditional Protestants alike, though perhaps not Protestants of a certain mainline genre. The reason is a deep-seated sense among ordinary people that something has gone very wrong with this once so decent society, and similar civilizations in Europe and Down Under.

The mass infanticide, the destruction of orders of creation, such as marriage as defined as a union between one man and one woman, and the appalling greed, are testimony to what Helmut Thielicke, another German theologian who defied Hitler, described as of “a fatality of guilt [Schuldverhängnis] brooding over the world, over its continents and seas,” in other words, the work of Satan. To mock this fatality of guilt, as liberal clerics such as Father Beck do, is theological malpractice of the worst kind, especially in Lent. They might not see it that way, but ordinary people do.

Back in 2008, Sen. Santorum correctly defined the current state of America – and, one might add, the entire Occident – as one of war: “not a political war, not a cultural war, but a spiritual war.” And then he asked, “If you were the Devil where would you attack?” Well, where? At the institutions that had made this country great. And the second of the institutions he listed was the Church, primarily the Protestant Church because it was instrumental in shaping America; actually with this remark Santorum paid implicit homage to Protestantism’s outstanding role in the history of this nation. But of course he was deliberately misunderstood as being “judgmental.”

Listening to him, I did not sense a hint of Schadenfreude in his rueful statement, “We look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country, and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.” Who could argue with Santorum on this point? He might have mentioned that in his own church, too, the Devil had been at work, to wit its sex scandals and the eagerness with which many Catholics are following Protestantism’s bad example. However, Santorum certainly has the support of as illustrious a Protestant as Archbishop Peter Akinola, the former Anglican primate of Nigeria, who called the consecration of an openly homosexual cleric as Episcopal bishop of Concord, N.H., a “Satanic attack upon the Church of Christ.”

Is Santorum right to stress matters of faith in his campaign? Of course he is. He is not imposing any kind of religion upon state the but honestly informing the voters where he stands. Four years ago, he quoted from a newspaper interview with then-Senator Barack Obama where he was asked: “What is sin?” Obama answered: “Being out of alignment with my values.” This prompted Mr. Santorum to tell his audience bluntly: “So now we have the first truly presidential candidate. Clearly defining his own reality.”

This is in synch with the motto of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), the fearsome grand master of postmodernism: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Of course, Mr. Obama has said nothing illegal, but surely it is Sen. Santorum’s right and obligation to lay open to the voters the profound chasm gaping between him and the contemporary elites, including evidently the reigning President. One of these two views is Christian, the other ethically scarily ambiguous; this is Crowley’s belief system, which has led us to the societal brink we are staring at today

Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto, a veteran foreign correspondent, is director of the Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Capistrano Beach, Calif.

Foolishly Obdurate

By UWE SIEMON-NETTO

In "Europe Cries Wolf, Britain Calls its Bluff" (Wall Street Journal, Opinion, Dec. 27, 2011) Andrew Roberts baffled me with this haughty punchline: "King George VI actually rejoiced after the fall of France, writing in his diary: 'Personally I feel happier that we have no allies to be polite to and to pamper.'" Then Mr. Roberts states: "That is the true voice of Britons, and one that David Cameron has articulated superbly." Perhaps it is the proverbial Teutonic dearth of a sense of humor that made me chuckle at the wrong place here. But evidently this illustrious British historian fails to see the irony in the prospect that without allies to be polite to the U.K. might not have Bentleys that in reality are Volkswagens, or Rolls Royces produced for them by BMW. Given the obduracy of Robert's conclusion, mules might just be the fitting form of transportation for the money handlers of this island's financial service industries once it is unchained from cumbersome friends, provided Britain's demented animal rights lobby allows these stubborn beasts to be used for man's convenience.

(From the Letters to the Editor section of the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 31, 2011)

For once proud to be a German

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

It’s been more than two years since my last visit to Germany, my native land. This time I traveled home at the height of the Eurozone crisis. I returned to California just before Christmas filled with pride in my compatriots.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not particularly proud of the fact that Germany is now the leading power in Europe. She has been thrust into this role much against her instincts and desires. It had been far too cozy to be prosperous, financially stable and the world’s leading exporter for decades, leaving the unpleasant chores of global direction to others, notably the victors of World War II.

Moreover, I am in no position to say whether or not Germany’s positions in the current global predicament are wise. But then nobody’s sapience seems to be reliable in the present situation, not even the sapience of Princeton-based Nobel laureates and other economic sages who keep telling the Germans to be less productive and more spendthrift, in other words, act against their better judgment and experience, supposedly for the common European good.

No, what made me proud was the discovery that Germans simply refused to reciprocate the hateful slurs of British tabloids whose “journalists” seem to have learned their craft by reading the polemics of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister.

There exists no equivalent in today’s German language for ethnic smears such as “krauts” and “huns” (for Germans), “frogs” (for the French), “wops” (for Italians) and “wogs” (for anybody hailing from territories east of Dover) that are common currency in British mass-circulation dailies, sometimes in the news pages and regularly in their blogs.

Over the years, the Germans have learned to laugh off these symptoms of the steady decline of England’s media standards that has been accelerating steadily ever since union folly and publishers’ greed have laid barren Fleet Street, that once spectacular bastion of the Angelo-Saxon journalism, which was my professional home for a while nearly half a century ago.

Nobody I talked to in Germany seemed to take offense when columnist Simon Heffer warned in the Daily Mail newspaper of “Germany’s economic colonization of Europe” and opined in a different article, “Where Hitler failed by military means to conquer Europe, modern Germans are succeeding through trade and financial discipline. Welcome to the Fourth Reich.”

Why do the Germans not care? “Well, the English have always been a little absonderlich; that’s why we love them so,” said Michael Rutz, the former editor in chief of a leading German weekly; the agreeable word, absonderlich, is usually translated as “strange” or “bizarre,” but actually has a more charming and subtle connotation.

The other day I discussed the benign reaction of Germans to British and other hatemongering with the editor of a highbrow political journal published in Washington. He said: “The difference is that the Germans still read.” This is true. Germany is less affected by media atrophy than most comparable Western nations. If a German does not know what’s going in in the world, it is his own fault because every major city has at least one but usually several local papers covering regional, national and international affairs, and, equally importantly, cultural events and thought, and then of course there exist national dailies and weeklies of superb quality.

The owner of a newsstand in Munich’s central railway station recently an editor friend of mine that his shop keeps an astounding average of 3,200 papers and periodicals on display.

Because of this Germans are in a better position to put international events in a proper perspective. Of course they did read that Eleftheria, the Athens daily, twice ran an image of Chancellor Angela Merkel in a storm trooper’s uniform on its front page. But they also read that thousands of Greek professionals are busily studying German to find jobs in Germany, where they are well received.

I was stunned to find that even modestly educated Germans seem to bear no malice against Greeks whose country they now have to bail out. Nearly 310,000 Greek immigrants live and work in Germany, and their number is rising. They make good, hard-working citizens, run wonderful restaurants, usually speak German well and delight the natives with their good humor.

In a 250-year old Cologne inn named “Em Kölsche Boor,” Pericles, a Greek waiter serving me a sturdy fare of broad beans and smoked bacon, regaled our table with this joke pertaining to his motherland’s economic predicament: By happenstance, three housepainters showed up at the same time at the portal of paradise, an Armenian, a German and a Greek.

Saint Peter told them, “This is a fantastic coincidence. The Pearly Gate needs a new paint job. Let me have your quotes.” The Armenian told him he would do it for €600. The German asked for €900. The Greek took Saint Peter aside and said, “€3,000.”

“Three thousand! Are you nuts,” Peter cried. The Greek smiled, “Think of it,” he said, “You’ll get €1,000, I’ll get €1,000. We give €400 to the German to keep his mouth shut, and the Armenian will do the work for €600.” The guests howled with laughter. It was fun to have Greeks in Germany.

I had come to Cologne on a 200 mph train from Paris where the general mood seemed morose. The railway unions had voted for one of their perennial Yuletide strikes intended to spoil the Christmas joy of the rest of the population; thankfully, though, this immense nuisance was eventually averted. Some Paris maîtres-penseurs, intellectuals and journalists of the most irritating sort, raised the specter of a new wave of “Germanophobie,” in response to Germany’s increasing power.

The Germans I questioned about this laughed it off, and rightly so. This alleged “Germanophobie” was a chimera in the minds of people utterly out of touch with this season’s dangerous realities. Down in southwestern France, where I have a home, I meet for my regular Saturday morning tipple with the mayors and councilmen of the surrounding villages. Their view of Germany was quite different.

“Tell your Chancellor to stand fast,” they urged me, “she must remain tough. We admire the Germans’ hard work and fiscal responsibility. If only we had followed their example years ago!”

These were not isolated voices. According to some polls, more than 70 percent of the French citizens feel that way, and this is also expressed in most of the blogs in the online editions of France’s national newspapers.

Of course the crisis might eventually catch with the Germans, whose unemployment rate is currently at a record low, and whose industry is booming due to massive demands from around the world for German products. But when I boarded my flight to California at Frankfurt Airport, a left behind smiling, contented compatriots preparing for a joyous Christmas and bearing good will against their less fortunate neighbors.

And this observation made me very proud to be a German.

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International has been an international journalist for 55 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.