Green Energy
In Berlin, a referendum to re-introduce religion as a school subject failed. So the students will go on attending "ethics courses", which had been introduced three years ago.
Over at CathCon, Chris Gillibrand states under the header Communists defeat Religion in Berlin:
It is certainly not the first one. Germans love totalitarian ideologies. They can't exist without one. That is why they are embracing Islam so enthusiastically.
The extent of the destruction of the souls of the people in East Germany is fathomless and the worst is that they are really feeling nostalgic about it. (Which supports the first point I made.) A side-issue in this context is the implied hypocrisy. Everybody would get a seizure if somebody would open a restaurant where you can "relive the Third Reich experience". But the second German dictatorship is quite alright. (This is a legitimate comparison, not an intellectually dishonest and ethically doubtful equation.)
Don't get me wrong, the people in Saxony are kind, helpful and friendly. They have never been, after all, Prussians. But they have been robbed of the core of their being. The only group that managed to resist to a certain extent were the Catholics.
This soullessness, the Communist nostalgia and anti-Christian sentiments of the people from the East are now exploited by demagogues from the West and Atheism and Socialism/Communism are speedily filtering down from the East to the West to form a Brave New Germany.
"But is it then democracy?"
Why, yes! Who says that democracy doesn't support the self-destruction of the people? [End of my reply.]
I have forgotten who said that people who don't believe in God anymore believe not in nothing but in everything. That may be true for the "hip" new Left in West Germany who consider themselves avantgarde. In the East they really and truly believe in nothing. Only a small minority has escaped the virtual death of mind and soul, a sizeable intersection of which is Catholic. The rest just vegetates along from day to day, in a way happily so, or at least not unhappily. Happiness and unhappiness are, in a way, concepts too complex to be applied to that way of life. Maybe it will take forty years again to revive them, they had, after all, had to live under Communism for forty years, but I doubt it. Almost half of that time is already over. The next generation, who has not consciously experienced Communism, if at all, ist just as bad, if not worse. The regime has erased any trace of joy, discernment, good taste and manners ("style"), of responsibility, achievement and optimism.
I am sad.
Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.
- Shame
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Green Energy
Opium for The People
In Berlin, a referendum to re-introduce religion as a school subject failed. So the students will go on attending "ethics courses", which had been introduced three years ago.
Over at CathCon, Chris Gillibrand states under the header Communists defeat Religion in Berlin:
Lower turnouts in the East, all former Communist parts of East Berlin voting against and all of West Berlin voting for.My reply: I am from West Germany (the Protestant part of Westphalia) and I am living in the East (Saxony) now since September 2006. I think that qualifies me to make an educated guess. Actually, it's more than a guess. You say: "Two interpretations- either East Germans are rejecting what they see as another imposed ideology after they so enthusiastically embraced first Nazism and then Communism or all those years of atheistic indoctrination worked, "Religion is the opium of the People".
Two interpretations- either East Germans are rejecting what they see as another imposed ideology after they so enthusiastically embraced first Nazism and then Communism or all those years of atheistic indoctrination worked, "Religion is the opium of the People". But is it then democracy?
What a world we live in! There are now restaurants in West(!) Berlin where you can "relive the East German experience". Clearly the residents in the East have still not got over communism.
It is certainly not the first one. Germans love totalitarian ideologies. They can't exist without one. That is why they are embracing Islam so enthusiastically.
The extent of the destruction of the souls of the people in East Germany is fathomless and the worst is that they are really feeling nostalgic about it. (Which supports the first point I made.) A side-issue in this context is the implied hypocrisy. Everybody would get a seizure if somebody would open a restaurant where you can "relive the Third Reich experience". But the second German dictatorship is quite alright. (This is a legitimate comparison, not an intellectually dishonest and ethically doubtful equation.)
Don't get me wrong, the people in Saxony are kind, helpful and friendly. They have never been, after all, Prussians. But they have been robbed of the core of their being. The only group that managed to resist to a certain extent were the Catholics.
This soullessness, the Communist nostalgia and anti-Christian sentiments of the people from the East are now exploited by demagogues from the West and Atheism and Socialism/Communism are speedily filtering down from the East to the West to form a Brave New Germany.
"But is it then democracy?"
Why, yes! Who says that democracy doesn't support the self-destruction of the people? [End of my reply.]
I have forgotten who said that people who don't believe in God anymore believe not in nothing but in everything. That may be true for the "hip" new Left in West Germany who consider themselves avantgarde. In the East they really and truly believe in nothing. Only a small minority has escaped the virtual death of mind and soul, a sizeable intersection of which is Catholic. The rest just vegetates along from day to day, in a way happily so, or at least not unhappily. Happiness and unhappiness are, in a way, concepts too complex to be applied to that way of life. Maybe it will take forty years again to revive them, they had, after all, had to live under Communism for forty years, but I doubt it. Almost half of that time is already over. The next generation, who has not consciously experienced Communism, if at all, ist just as bad, if not worse. The regime has erased any trace of joy, discernment, good taste and manners ("style"), of responsibility, achievement and optimism.
I am sad.
Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.
- Shame
American Spectator: Twenty Years Ago, America Stood for Freedom By Andrew Cline on 11.9.09 @ 6:08AM Among the many thousands who attempted to escape the prison known as East Berlin was a man named Wolfgang Engels, who in 1963 stole a tank and drove it...
- Names Nobody Knows Anymore
60 construction workers building the Communist showpiece Stalin-Allee, the "first socialist avenue in Germany" in East Berlin went on strike on 16 June 1953, to demand a reduction in recent work-quota increases. They called for a general strike the next...
- Lest We Forget: In Memoriam Peter Fechter
Many of my non-German readers will have never heard of Peter Fechter. Who was Peter Fechter? Peter Fechter was a bricklayer from East Berlin. He had tried to flee from the GDR (German Democratic Republic) to the free West together with his friend Helmut...
- The Disbanded People
60 construction workers building the Communist showpiece Stalin-Allee, the "first socialist avenue in Germany" in East Berlin went on strike on 16 June 1953, to demand a reduction in recent work-quota increases. They called for a general strike the next...
- The Editrix Is Back!
It is good to be among the living again. ;-) Thanks to all who have stood by me and Roncesvalles during my time of forced online-abstinence. I will write about my new life in ex-Communist East Germany soon. The culture shock is considerably bigger than...