When All Else Fails
By Lavonn Brown
On January 3rd, 2016 Donald Trump described his loyal supporters by saying, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters.” Could that be true? What would have to happen to the moral values of the American people for that to happen?
In the early 1930s a new leader was rising to power in Germany. Germany was in turmoil. The people longed for better days. This new leader was saying and doing strange things. For one thing he was promising to make Germany great again. Some people were disturbed by his actions. Yet he had his loyal supporters. They asked, “What if one of these days he stops doing crazy things and brings back the good old days?”
On June 30, 1934 the purge began. Mass executions took place. People who opposed the new leadership were killed by the hundreds and arrested by the thousands for political and religious opposition.
How would Germany respond to this atrocity? With celebration? After all, Hitler was insisting he had saved the nation from serious danger. He had acted only in the interests of the German people to save the nation from turmoil.
Or, would they respond with protests? Marches in the streets? Outrage? The fact is, a strange indifference settled over the nation. Hitler began to receive telegrams of praise, some from prominent religious leaders in America, including Southern Baptists. The populace accepted the violent executions without protest. Rules of right and wrong were upended. No foreign nation recalled its ambassadors or filed protest. The world did not rise in revulsion.
Erik Larson, in his book, The Garden of Beasts, records one further insight worth noting. William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, lived in Germany during those years. He noted that one trait of the German people persisted during all the craziness: the love of animals, in particular horses and dogs. Beautiful horses were well cared for, clean, well fed and happy. Dogs were walked, talked to, coddled and well fed. All this was guaranteed by German law.
So, in 2017, in the light of all the craziness in our country, strange indifference and upending of rules of right and wrong, we Americans can relax. After all, we have strong laws forbidding cruelty to animals; it is punishable by law.
Or as Dodd said, “One might easily wish he were a horse.”
Lavonn Brown is a retired minister who served First Baptist Church in Norman, Oklahoma for 29 years. He lives with his wife, Norma, in Norman.
