JD Vance is a fool on a ship of fools
There is a grove of redwoods in Northern California under which the leaders of 46 United Nations stood in reverent silence to remember the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States of America.
The words on the plaque need no further explanation or examination:
JD Vance came to Europe to smash the alliance that has been preserved for 80 years, and prevented a third world war in Europe.
The Atlantic Alliance stands as one of human civilization’s greatest moral, political and economic achievements. It stands as one of the greatest achievements of the United States to the forward momentum of human progress and dignity. From the ashes of the Second World War came an astonishing epoch of human history. There has never been a comparable instant in history when so many billions of people became connected by prosperity, liberty and opportunity. There has never been an epoch of comparable rising in world history, and now it seems that the engine of progress has become doubtful about the mission.
In fact, Trump, Musk, Vance and their team of imbeciles have made clear that they intend to overthrow what has succeeded and raise up what had been defeated.
We should remember what that was.
Here are the words from Justice Robert Jackson’s summary at Nuremberg, not far from Munich, where JD Vance repudiated them:
It is common to think of our own time as standing at the apex of civilization, from which the deficiencies of preceding ages may patronizingly be viewed in the light of what is assumed to be "progress."
The reality is that in the long perspective of history the present century will not hold an admirable position, unless its second half is to redeem its first.
These two-score years in the twentieth century will be recorded in the book of years as one of the most bloody in all annals.
Two World Wars have left a legacy of dead which number more than all the armies engaged in any way that made ancient or medieval history.
No half-century ever witnessed slaughter on such a scale, such cruelties and inhumanities, such wholesale deportations of peoples into slavery, such annihilations of minorities.
The terror of Torquemada pales before the Nazi Inquisition. These deeds are the overshadowing historical facts by which generations to come will remember this decade.
If we cannot eliminate the causes and prevent the repetition of these barbaric events, it is not an irresponsible prophecy to say that this twentieth century may yet succeed in bringing the doom of civilization.
Yet, that did not come to pass.
The last words spoken by an American president during the 20th century were these words below from President Bill Clinton.
They marked the triumph of an idea and an ideal that was the vision of Franklin Roosevelt from which 10 different presidents of both parties made sure the United States never wavered.
When you read them, understand that they were the product of Republican and Democratic administrations that agreed about the indispensable role that America played in the world.
As we marvel at the changes of the last hundred years, we dream of what changes the next hundred, and the next thousand, will bring. And as powerful as our memories are, our dreams must be even stronger.
For when our memories outweigh our dreams we become old, and it is the eternal destiny of America to remain forever young, always reaching beyond, always becoming, as our founders pledged, a more perfect union.
So we Americans must not fear change. Instead, let us welcome it, embrace it, and create it.
The great story of the 20th century is the triumph of freedom and free people, a story told in the drama of new immigrants, the struggles for equal rights, the victories over totalitarianism, the stunning advances in economic well-being, in culture, in health, in space and telecommunications, and in building a world in which more than half the people live under governments of their own choosing, for the first time in all history.
We must never forget the meaning of the 20th century, or the gifts of those who worked and marched, who fought and died, for the triumph of freedom.
So as we ring in this new year, in a new century, in a new millennium, we must, now and always, echo Dr. King, in the words of the old American hymn, "Let freedom ring."
If the story of the 20th century is the triumph of freedom, what will the story of the 21st century be?
Let it be the triumph of freedom wisely used, to bring peace to a world in which we honor our differences, and even more, our common humanity.
Such a triumph will require great efforts from us all. It will require us to stand against the forces of hatred and bigotry, terror and destruction.
It will require us to continue to prosper, to alleviate poverty, to better balance the demands of work and family, and to serve each of us in our communities.
These words were wise and filled with possibility and promise, but they did not come to pass in the 21st century.
Let us look back to Justice Jackson’s words:
We have not previously and we need not now discuss the merits of all their obscure and tortuous philosophy. We are not trying them for the possession of obnoxious ideas.
It is their right, if they choose, to renounce the Hebraic heritage in the civilization of which Germany was once a part.
Nor is it our affair that they repudiated the Hellenic influence as well.
The intellectual bankruptcy and moral perversion of the Nazi regime might have been no concern of international law had it not been utilized to goosestep the Herrenvolk across international frontiers.
It is not their thoughts, it is their overt acts which we charge to be crimes.
Their creed and teachings are important only as evidence of motive, purpose, knowledge, and intent.
What did the Nazis do?
Why must their crimes be remembered?
Let’s turn to Justice Jackson’s opening statement at the Nuremberg trial as the chief prosecutor of the United States. These words endure:
In the prisoners’ dock sit twenty-odd broken men. Reproached by the humiliation of those they have led almost as bitterly as by the desolation of those they have attacked, their personal capacity for evil is forever past.
It is hard now to perceive in these men as captives the power by which as Nazi leaders they once dominated much of the world and terrified most of it.
Merely as individuals their fate is of little consequence to the world.
What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust.
We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power.
They are symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarism, of intrigue and war-making which have embroiled Europe generation after generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and impoverishing its life.
They have so identified themselves with the philosophies they conceived and with the forces they directed that any tenderness to them is a victory and an encouragement to all the evils which are attached to their names.
Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.
What these men stand for we will patiently and temperately disclose. We will give you undeniable proofs of incredible events. The catalog of crimes will omit nothing that could be conceived by a pathological pride, cruelty, and lust for power.
These men created in Germany, under the “Führerprinzip”, a National Socialist despotism equalled only by the dynasties of the ancient East.
They took from the German people all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights in every human being. The people were compensated by inflaming and gratifying hatreds towards those who were marked as “scapegoats”.
Against their opponents, including Jews, Catholics, and free labor, the Nazis directed such a campaign of arrogance, brutality, and annihilation as the world has not witnessed since the pre-Christian ages.
They excited the German ambition to be a “master race”, which of course implies serfdom for others.
They led their people on a mad gamble for domination. They diverted social energies and resources to the creation of what they thought to be an invincible war machine. They overran their neighbors.
To sustain the “master race” in its war-making, they enslaved millions of human beings and brought them into Germany, where these hapless creatures now wander as “displaced persons”.
At length bestiality and bad faith reached such excess that they aroused the sleeping strength of imperiled Civilization.
Its united efforts have ground the German war machine to fragments.
But the struggle has left Europe a liberated yet prostrate land where a demoralized society struggles to survive. These are the fruits of the sinister forces that sit with these defendants in the prisoners’ dock.
Robert Jackson’s opening and closing remarks span almost five hours. They are regarded as some of the most important words ever spoken in favor of human dignity.
They represent in perpetuity the American position around what happened in Germany, and it is that simple fact that makes what JD Vance did in Munich so obscene.
Germany doesn’t need a lecture from JD Vance any more than the people of Springfield, Ohio, needed to be terrorized by his lies scapegoating Haitian immigrants.
JD Vance came to Europe in a state of arrogance and contempt for the past.
What is this?
You know what it is.
The overwhelming majority of Germans know what the AFD is, and they know what Musk is.
JD Vance is a fool on a ship of fools.
Let us pray that they do not light the world on fire.
Well said, Steve. But more than that, he is the modern rebirth of Nazism, and, clearly, he is a Nazi, through and through. The Nazi salute says it all.
It is amazing to me how a graduate of an elite law school like Vance can be such a liar and a fool. Wonderful piece of history, Steve.