Since Jewish Exile is on some kind of tropical vacation, I, the humble Spotter Of Yetis, must take up his mantle, from where he inadvertently left it on his kitchen table as he was going out the door, causing him to have the vague feeling that he had forgotten something, until he was on the plane halfway to his destination, at which point he jumped up from his seat shouting, "My mantle! I knew I forgot something!" as the rest of the passengers looked at him in consternation, and for the remainder of the flight he felt as though everyone was staring at him, which they were.*

At any rate, here's some stimulating food for thought, which you may or may not choose to ignore.

How did the Nazis slaughter millions of Jews (not mention gypsies and others)? I'm not talking about the mechanics of it. How, how does a nation become capable of such mass murder? Granted, not all Germans were equally guilty, but nonetheless, the Nazi party was elected into power by the people of Germany.

It is understood that the Nazis veiwed Jews as being sub-human, and therefore had no moral qualms with exterminating them. Their antisemitism** brought that possibility into fact. But there have been many nations with antisemitic feelings, as well as many leaders who have despised the Jews, and none of them ever duplicated what was seen in Nazi Germany. Why Germany? What was special about the Nazis that enabled them to do what they did?

Germany, in the 1930s, was one of, if not first among, the most scientifically and technolically elite countries in the world. Some of their military acomplishments are impressive even today. Their Atlantic Wall consisted of 15,000 structures along the entire coast of the North Sea, the British Channel, and the Atlantic Ocean. In some places, there were also long strings of anti-personnel and anti-ship mines stretching in miles-long lines down the coast. The Germans constructed massive underground bunkers which were untouchable by warplanes, and which were designed to quickly and efficiently bring up supplies from their safe underground storage as they were needed. Their identification and extraction of millions of Jews from among the populace was possible only thanks to then-recent advances in computing machines. What, then, could cause such a modern and scientifically-advanced country to descend to depths which we usually associate only with ancient barbarian societies and empires?

We can come to only one conclusion. Advancements in science are not equivalent to, nor do they lead to, advances in society. The Nazi Party, in Germany, was called the National Socialism Party. Listen to that- "National Socialism." It doesn't sound so bad, does it? It sounds like a theory developed and carefully thought out by scientists and political theorists.
It was.
Germany looked upon morality as it did any other science. Moral questions were put to scientists and philosophers. Morals, they reasoned, are a series of rules designed for the betterment of man. As such, man should be able to determine what it is that will lead to his betterment, and establish rules and morals that will acomplish that task.

This system allows man to remake right and wrong, good and evil, as he sees fit. As long as the scientific process is followed, a society with no moral base is capable of accepting any idea as true and good, especially if it approves of something they wanted to do anyways. With this foundation, the Nazi Party, with its revolutionary ideas of national and international politics, was able to come to power. According to their theories of the history of mankind, it turned out that the Jews were corrupting society and had to go. This was, in fact, demanded by Darwin's theory of natural selection. The best parentage assures the best possible offspring. Normally, nature makes "illegitimate" offspring die due to chronic diseases or disabilities which make them inviable. Normally, superior nations will conquer inferior ones, leaving the conquered to vanish into history. The Jews and Gypsies, then, were parasite nations, living off of others to prolong their illegitimate existence. Worse yet, the Jewish poison of morality taught the world to care for the sick, for the weak and infirm. Therefore, the Jews were a perversion of all that was right in the world, and indeed, were a obsolete and primitive breed of should have by all rights become extinct centuries before by natural selection. This was exactly what the Nazis believed. And they veiwed themselves as being advanced and sophisticated for believing it. With such lines of thought, the Nazis suceeded in turning right into wrong and good into evil.

This is why I'm scared by today's liberals. The ideals of equal rights and treatment is certainly a noble ideal, and their achievement is one of the most positive things ever to happen in the history of the world. However, there is a golden mean. Unfortunately, and scarily, we have passes that line. With the downfall of prejudice to make way for true democracy, beliefs which men once held at their core were shattered. In replacement for those beliefs, they were handed "all men were created equal." While probably true, those words are an oversimplification. Men were told to follow these words, to hold them close to their hearts, and they did. However, when they surrendered their prejudice, men also handed in their morals. With no basis other than this rule of fair and equal treatment to all men, they can only follow it through to its logical conclusion.

Nowadays, it is very un-stylish to advocate beliefs which are based in morals. The morals must always be "backed up" by some kind of logic. We should be careful to recognize and rember that G-d is the true source and arbiter of all morals. When we lose sight of that, and put our trust in rules and truths of our own making, spiritual and physical destruction will be the only result.

Good Shabbos.

*Sorry. I've been reading Roald Dahl recently.
**A word of German origin invented to make the hatred of Jews sound nicer.