DIGG THIS

“The picture Ortega y Gassett draws of the mass man is not an attractive or flattering one, but Ortega is not a snob who simply excoriates the appalling habits and tastes of those below him in the social scale. For him, mass man is the man who has no transcendent purpose in life, who lives in an eternal present moment which he wants to make pleasurable in a gross and sensual way, who thinks that ever-increasing consumption is the end of life, who goes from distraction to distraction, who is prey to absurd fashions, who never thinks deeply and who, above all, has a venomous dislike of any other way of living but his own, which he instinctively feels as a reproach.”

~ Theodore Dalrymple

The national colors of the European nations are well represented on the faces and body parts of the spectators during major soccer games between the countries. During the 2006 World Cup games Germany was a spectacular host to the nations of the world featuring its new stadiums, brothels and high-tech entertainment in their country. It also sported, for the first time in decades, its national colors of black-red-gold with a renewed national pride.

National pride is something Germans had never really known in their history before the First World War. The many states that battled Napoleon during the Liberation Wars in 1813 called out to unite under one nation to reach a German national identity. Hitler managed to instill a perverted national pride in his countrymen due to the aftermath of World War I. This sort of national pride, as it was briefly displayed during the Nazi years, quickly ended with the horrific discoveries of death camps, Gestapo tactics, racial hatred and the lunacy of its political leaders. Since 1946 German national pride has never been publicly displayed in the way it is exhibited in the US or Great Britain.

Pride stems from a sense satisfaction that one receives through achievement, through possession or through being associated with the best of a group or class. It is within human nature to indulge in these little pleasures if not to find value and self-respect. An overindulgence of pride can change matters rather fast by exhibiting treatment of haughtiness and disdain toward others. It drains a lot of energy and resources to continually feed pride as its original meaning gets lost in the hunt to sustain this false sense of security.

National pride is a well-known trademark of Americans. In the past it has meant identification with a country that esteemed liberty for all, individual rights, personal ownership, private contracts between two individuals and the right to bear arms in defense of one’s property. It set this nation apart from the rest of Europe and the world by being the first of its kind, in a class to itself and capable of producing, achieving and possessing the best of the best. Or so it once was. These days the symbol of the state, the eagle, has, over time marked its territory again. It has been taken over by institutions and special interest groups that steal the people’s resources and pursue their own interests at all cost. Pride is now found in a collective state power and not in any earnest, personal accomplishments.

The eagle is an ancient symbol. The German coat of arms features a golden or yellow field (background) with a black eagle facing to its right with red beak and claws. It is one of the oldest state symbols in the world. Its roots go as far back as the Holy Roman Empire. The eagle itself reaches as far back as antiquity in which the eagle was thought to be a messenger of the gods. It symbolized Zeus in Greek mythology and Jupiter to the Romans. The eagle became a military symbol in that he also represented courage and strength and was displayed on the banners of military campaigns.

Charlemagne resurrected the symbol of the eagle in 800 AD as he rebuilt the Roman Empire. He placed a golden eagle on top of his palace in Aachen. The coat of arms as it now appears first surfaced during the 1400′s in the Codex Manesse featuring a picture of Heinrich VI. During the early years the eagle did not represent the state but more an idea of stately order as the Holy Roman Empire was above any national identity. Over the centuries it became entwined with state authority and became a symbol of liberty and later identified as a national symbol in surrounding nations.

The colors of red-white were one of the oldest identification of the Hanse towns (i.e. Hamburg, Bremen, Danzig) and were part of their city crests. The imperial colors of the many crests during the Holy Roman German Nation were reflected under black and gold and were used in most imperial cities or free cities. Legend even says that during the coronation of Friedrich Barbarossa in 1152, the red carpet on which he walked from the cathedral to the Romerplatz in Frankfurt was later divided amongst the citizens and waved as little flags.

The colors of black-red-gold did not reappear again until 1813 when the idea of a German national state became the thrust for liberty from the occupation of Napoleon. The Lützow Free Corps (Lützower Jäger), a voluntary unit of the Prussian Army during the Liberation War under the leadership of Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow, featured red cuffs on their black civil frocks with gold buttons. Their volunteers received no pay and mostly included students, citizens of various German states, and foreigners who had armed themselves at their own expense. Many of their members had strong national leanings such as Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (founder of the national gymnastics club).

Although the black Sunday frock was the most uniform clothing item amongst the citizens and upper class alike, it became the basic color of the corps. Gold-colored brass buttons were easily available and their lance pennants were in red and black. Friedrich Förster, a captain in the corps with Eleonore Proschaska (one of the two women who joined the corp.), reported that he first saw the flag of black and red with golden fringes at the Dresdener Werbestube of the Lützower Jäger. Apparently the women of Berlin dedicated the flag made out of satin with the inscriptions "Mit Gott fürs Vaterland." Here it is noteworthy that its meaning of this phrase was entirely based on liberating and defending an occupied homeland by a foreign force under Napoleon. The flag was not used in battle, as the king prohibited the use of it.

In 1815 the tri-colors became integrated into the flag of the first student fraternity of Jena (Burschenschaft). Many of the students were once volunteers of the Lützow Free Corps. The idea of the students of Jena was to exemplify German unity and especially the "Virtues of the Nation." The fraternity chose the slogan of "Ehre, Freiheit, Vaterland" (honor, liberty, homeland). Their flag of red-black-red contained the symbol of a golden oak branch with golden fringes.

The German people were hoping for a country-wide constitution that would unite them in one nation. The process was slow, and the political hack-job done by the Vienna Congress in 1815 left many disillusioned. The dukedom of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach was one of the first states to receive a partial modern constitution that included the freedom of the press, liberties to express opinions publicly and the right to freely assemble. The German states were now under a loose confederacy that included thirty-nine states along with the kingdom of Prussia and Austria.

In October 1817 the student league of Jena invited prominent representatives of various universities and students all over Germany to come to Wartburg. The occasion marked the 300th anniversary of Martin Luther’s theses and the battle of Leipzig in 1813. The tone set by some of the professors who called for a unified education that would shed the provincial man and make ways for the new universal man. Lorenz Oken, doctor of medicine, came close to the idea of traveling and working freely throughout the country regardless of regional origin. He wanted to go beyond ones identity of being Bavarian, Franconian or Prussian. He failed to see that patriotism and tradition are culturally tied to one’s heritage and place of origin.

One of the visitors was Hans Ferdinand Massmann, under whose direction the students burned books and other items that symbolized their opposition. Among the things burned were the Code Napoleon, an Austrian corporal stick used for beatings, a Prussian uniform, works by Jewish author Saul Ascher, Russian writer August von Kotzebue History of the German Empire, Scherer Wadzecks works against the art of gymnastics, Carl Leberecht Immermann’s critique to the student league, and many more.

Even the German author Heinrich Heine was not pleased with the events that took place at the Wartburgfest. In 1840 he writes in one of his memoirs that "… on the Wartburg ruled a narrow Teutomanismus, one that cried of love and faith, but whose love was nothing but hatred toward that that is foreign, whose belief existed in irrationality, and in their ignorance knew nothing better to do than to burn books." Heinrich Heine was once quoted as saying "It was only foreplay, since where books are burned; people will be burned in the end." The quote was in reference to the burning of the Koran in one of his dramas called Almansor. A chilling reality indeed when irrationality becomes law.

The mid-19th Century was filled with romanticism and ideals of nationalism. The romantic painter Phillip Veit featured one of his most famous paintings of Germania during the national assembly in the Paulskirche of Frankfurt on May 18, 1849. The ruling principalities agreed to an assembly after the March revolutions of 1848. The members of the representative committee of the ruling princes accepted the tri-colors in order to appease the people although they were one of the strongest opponents of the democratic movement. The colors became the decorative note of the assembly.

The national assembly itself consisted of reformers of various political associations. Amongst them were socialists, bourgeois left-wing republicans, liberals and conservatives (traditionalists) with the strongest representation coming from the center. About 585 members attended the meeting of which the majority had a high-school diploma. More than a fourth had a university degree. The bulk of the members were former members of a corps or fraternity. Many of the professionals were high-school teachers, professors, lawyers, judges, civil servants with few representatives of artisans and farmers. The assembly received the nickname Professorenparlament (parliament of professors) and became the most drawn out event in order to find a common ground for their constitution.

The demands made by the revolutionaries varied by association but the core idea presented five major categories: Freedom of the press, creation of a German parliament, right to arm local communities, the constitution and the creation of a national state. The many committees and endless disagreements eventually lead to very little. Although it is said that the assembly became a democratic role model for the modern constitution, it was little more than a futile process wanting to harmonize opposing ideas and beliefs. The moral principals that in spirit can unite many without losing one’s cultural identity got lost in the melting pot of streamlining the national state.

The German language in itself was not necessarily an agent of unity. The cultural, religious and regional language differences have always been apparent between the Prussian and Austrian empires. Although they were part of the German Confederacy, the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 finally settled the question of the German Union with Prussia becoming the imperial and military leadership of the new German nation. The colors symbolizing the revolution for democracy disappeared and gave away to the imperial colors of the German Kaiser. The pride of the nation was now festered in the state’s military power, educational system and a new welfare that took the form of protector and dispenser of social benefits.

The contrast between the German desire for a national constitution and the US Constitution is startling. The American colonies wanted a republic that had little to do with centralized federal authority over their individual states or personal lives. What united the Americans was not so much their language as it was their desire of self-governing their local regions under the protection of their Constitution. It was the absence of hundreds of politicians and academia that allowed the free citizens of their early states to go about their business. Starting out with only fifty-five state representatives, the US Constitution was formulated and birthed in 1787 by a small group of people that managed to understand the idea of liberty wasn’t granted by government but is an inherent God-given right.

It was from 1840 through 1900 that Germans began to migrate in large numbers to the United States. After the failed Revolution in 1848 over six million Germans alone settled in the new land prior to World War I and were known as the Forty-Eighters. It was one of the largest ethnic groups of immigrants and eventually came to make up seventeen percent of the population. They brought with them their own personal talents of craftsmanship, engineering and agriculture. But their ideology for a national state seemed to have finally been realized as many of them joined the Union during the War Between the States in 1861.

Germany’s national colors symbolized democracy with strong leaning toward both nationalism and socialism for all the various political fractions besides the aristocrats. After the defeat of World War I, the Weimar Republic returned to the use of black-red-gold colors as their national flag. Adolf Hitler’s national socialists preferred the use of black-white-red with the swastika becoming the addition to the eagle. In May 1949 Germany officially made the tri-colors their state flag as did the former East Germany. The tradition of the flag was to represent unity and freedom. It was to remind of freedom of ideas, the idea of personal freedom which is to be the basis of Germany’s future state.

Only how much freedom is to be realized by the individual when his desire to freely pursue his personal education comes under the guardianship of the state? How much freedom is there really available when a small business is taxed so that his neighbor is sponsored by public money to open another? The black hole of nationalization under the guise of federal power continues. The rights of the individual are eclipsed and abused. The more streamlining that is done to appease thousands of different special interest groups leaves less remaining to the private man.

National colors are very appropriate for sporting events. One can cheer for their home team to win and be proud of their results or angered over their loss. The individual man disappears into the crowd and sways with the rhythm of the spectators. No special features of an individual are recognized as everyone hides behind their favorite color. Then, in a harmless way, he becomes mass man with no real distinction of his personal likes and tastes. Then he is safe for a few moments to forget the rich heritage of his own ancestors and sacrifices his personal freedom on the altar nationalism.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] is a native German who moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

DIGG THIS

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.”

~ George Washington, Farewell address

Dr. Ron Paul’s message of non-interventionism in foreign affairs quite often receives the wrong interpretation by political "experts," his opponents or the Media in general. Not getting involved in other nations’ business somehow is seen as creating isolationism here in our own country. Or so they seem to think. To the contrary, it is this bully approach of political entanglements and artificial nation-building treaties that will eventually drive a country into a self-imposed isolationism with detrimental effects to its citizens. A harsh reminder should be WWII whose explosive start in 1939 was a direct result of the Versailles treaty by the victors in 1918 which left Germany isolated with a hack-up job of its natural borders. It was already vulnerable and left in the hands of a new mythological figure whose promise of renewal was to achieve long-lasting greatness through total war. The new enemy, of course, was another race, religion, and ideology whose motive is to delude their race and overtake their culture and way of life; however, the discernment of such matters was not left to the individual or to the community to decide but to the legal and political mechanism of the state. The mythical greatness of the state and its politics eventually failed them, and its security network with its bureaucracy and military power could not protect them from their fate nor could it achieve victory over what they believed to be "evil." What remained left of a country in ashes was once again under new occupational forces. In the end came a division of the nation that lasted forty years and left a third of its people trapped behind the Iron Curtain.

On October 7, 1949 the German Democratic Republic’s (DDR) one-party government, known as the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), which the Soviets placed in power, proclaimed the most eastern territory of former Prussia as a "socialist labor and farm state." Its eventual isolationism was the result of a reverse effect by an interventionist policy of its superior organ that reigned over its occupied territories and countries: the Soviet Union. The DDR remained behind in development and growth not because of non-interventionism but because of total internal control over citizens and an economy to which it dictated every move to old, young, rich and poor, free or slave on how to buy and sell its goods and which had no private ownership. And this wasn’t just unique to the Eastern block countries. It seems to be a universal fact in history that when government assumes control over matters that should be left to individual citizens, it turns into a vehicle of destruction that only looks to its own ends.

When I was ten years old my father took me to the East German border which was not far from my former home. I looked over to the "other Germany" whose people once were my countrymen. I remember always hearing about it, but had never before seen it with my own eyes. The place looked abandoned and desolate on the other side, since no human life was allowed to come near its borders. The guards and their machine guns were the only human activity along the intimidating prison border. The fence stretched out for miles through fields and forest and divided anything that stood in its way. The guard towers and barbed wire fence gave me an eerie feeling as I’d heard stories of people trying to escape with the guards having orders to shoot anyone trying to "flee" their country. Mines and other devices were strategically planned along the fence within the East German territory. A total of 872 German people went to their deaths trying to escape from communist rule between 1961 and reunification.

I questioned what they were trying to keep out. It was obvious that the threat must be close. What didn’t immediately become apparent was that it was freedom itself that they feared. The fence made a visible protest against Western ideology and goods in reaching the minds and needs of the people in the East. In other words, they kept the “corrupting” influence of the West out. Only later did I become aware that the real purpose of the fences was to keep their citizens in — imprisoned as workers in an egalitarian society where individuals lived as slaves to the state in return for social and financial security. It was a place where personal freedom often remained an unreachable dream only a few miles away, where economic and national security became their daily torment in every sense of the word. It was a country ruled over by an oppressive government whose minions relied upon spying as a means of controlling their own people, and where its non-transparent and covert operations instilled mistrust and fear into their own neighbors and family. It was a country that saw a threat in anything outside their self-created fencesu2014threats that challenged their economic and political philosophy, while the state-controlled media deluged the citizenry with continual propaganda on the “success” of socialism. The fear of liberty drove East Germany into forty years of isolationism that missed the progress into the technological age.

The labor and farm state required workers in order to build products for job security that it could sell abroad for hard currency which was then used to support the retired populace with meager pension checks. The usefulness of the aged and retired quickly expired for the state, and many of them, now seen as useless, received passes to leave the country. But the capital of hard cash, which was in the hands of the sate, never trickled down to the general population. Its investments re-appeared in a gigantic military-industrial complex that only served the greatness of the empire and its political cast. Their homemade products remained ultimately "cheap" and undesirable for most Western standards. Their famous "Ersatz" goods lacked the quality and ingredients needed to make a long-lasting impression on any international consumer, but were adequate to pacify the people. The world market was closed to any citizens with entrepreneurial spirit who had the talents and expertise to create and build, but could not buy any goods with their worthless currency on the open market nor did they have access to such markets other than through illegal means. They had no legal right to establish their own businesses. Ron Paul understands that Trade Unions, NAFTA or the North American Union, if implemented by government intervention, are a direct assault on free trade and will yield similar results.

Ulrich Biele writes:

"An engineer who had been born and raised in the DDR told me once, engineering skills, or the lack thereof, had never been a problem there. Central planning was the main cause of disasters. There were “enough” producers of four stroke engines in the socialist world, so the Germans were limited to producing two-stroke engines. Innovative conceptions were either ignored and suppressed — or stolen and sold for Valuta to the imperialist Klassenfeind. One of the basic occupations of the Stasi, why they happened to be bored on spying out the intimate details of their citizens’ lives."

Their production lines also lacked the efficiency to deliver goods in a timely manner to their own citizens who were paying in DDR-Mark. It took an average citizen twelve to fifteen years before he was able to buy his first state-manufactured car, the Trabant. The two-cycled engine car with the sound of a lawn mower is now heralded as a piece of Eastern nostalgia, and yet the price of this car took almost an entire life savings before a family was able to afford it. A low-performance car, the standard edition of a Trabant carried a hefty price tag of over 12,000 DDR-Mark. A Trabant 601 S could be purchased for as little as 6,000 DeutschMarks in 1980, chump change in the West. But the sole reason for the Trabi’s not conquering the Western streets was its poor quality and lack of comfort.

Foreign companies on the other hand could order whatever goods they wanted — and received payment in Valuta (local expression for the West German Mark and other interchangeable currencies) — with no delay at all. Several companies had specialized in buying DDR goods for Valuta and had them delivered to DDR clients and even managed to gain some profit out of that. Some of these companies were covert operations of secret services of both blocks, and some were privately owned companies.

A country so controlled by its own political and social interventionism under the distant guidance of Moscow may look good on paper when one considers that everyone had a job and that prices for basic goods remained constant in relation to their pre-war status. All basic needs like groceries, energy, rent, and public transportation never had any price increases. The average monthly income was around 1,290 DDR-Mark in 1990. That’s an increase of 1,025 DDR-Mark within a 40-year time span. Yet their resources were "limited" — a word often used to explain their shortages. There was, however, no shortage of fiat money or labor. The consequences were a huge black market for whatever product or commodity imaginable and a culture of bricolage. Despite all the fiat money that was in circulation and in bank accounts, one still could not buy what wasn’t there. Empty shelves greeted the East Germans in every shop or store where only common comrades were allowed to buy goods using their DDR-Mark. It is interesting to note here that any fiat money is an inflated and worthless currency that requires a well-armed military and industrial power to protect its existence. It is not backed up with any real value such as gold, but rather through a banking system that is entirely dependent on the state as it is customary in most military dictatorships such as it was in the Soviet Union.

However, abundance greeted patrons of Intershops along the highways that were well traveled by foreigners. In theses shops the East German Mark would not be accepted, but hard foreign currency was welcome. Visitors, mostly traveling on business or family visitor’s passes, could buy merchandise well below the production cost. From caviar to cameras or (good) black and white film, construction materials, cars, and even hunting or competition guns of outstanding quality, especially Drillings from Suhl. Customers could order items and have them mailed directly to a location in the West. These shops were off limits to the East Germans. And of course there was a lot of illicit trade under scrutiny of the Stasi, a trap in order to further the absolute control of the state. Many foreign tourists were recruited for intelligence work in the West as a tradeoff for a long prison term.

DeutschMarks and Dollars could move things instantaneously. Corruption was the logical consequence of shortages. Anyone who owned “blue tiles,” as one hundred DeutschMark bills were called in Eastern Germany, could bypass official channels and get whatever he wanted — and Stasi scrutiny as a bonus. This was one of the factors which led to the fact that one third of the entire population had been filed as in active service to the secret services. Many groups of “regime critics” consisted solely of spies from different departments, be it “Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung,”"Staatssicherheit” or military intelligenceu2014all busily filing reports about each other.

My mother once recalled a trip to East Berlin, which she took by bus. As the bus reached the border control, she felt as an immediate suspect of high treason. Since Westerners liked smuggling in sausages, jam, butter or bread or any other little luxury items for their relatives, my mother and the rest of the passengers had to get out of the bus and leave their personal possessions behind. In order to give meaning to their authority and most likely make an impression of their post, they spent impregnable moments staring at the passport and the passenger’s face, as if trying to find the slightest differences between a 5-year old picture and the actual person. After passing through the unfriendly border control, each visitor is required to make the daily currency exchange of 20 DeutschMark to DDR-Mark. East German money was worthless outside East Germany, and it was difficult to spend the money within the country as well. There were no shops or restaurants in which one could spend it. She ended up not spending most of it. It was a criminal cycle that excluded the citizen in order for the state to feed itself.

Such was life in an isolated land that became a satellite state of the Soviet Empire after its military occupation in 1945. The red flag of sickle and hammer ruled over a vast territory of smaller nations with different religions, cultures and languages. The Soviet communists not only corrupted the rule of law of their own nation, but eliminated it and replaced it with a corrupt system that destroyed the culture and human decency in the satellite nations. The state became the provider, decider and executer. Like hostages, they were captives in their own country who were not allowed to build personal or business relationships with anyone outside their designated zone. The oppressive existence crippled the spirit of an entire generation. Seventeen years after reunification, East Germans still struggle with trusting in those principals of liberty that require personal responsibility for individual achievement.

Tyranny then spawns hatred toward those who impose their ways on others. When this imposition comes through government-orchestrated coups, financial aid to support other countries’ military actions, or economic sanctions, the consequences of such actions rarely benefit the citizens. In most cases, it is the citizen who is then called to shed his blood for the self-serving decisions made by his own government. Often this bailout is accompanied by shameful slogans that tell the soldier it is his patriotic duty to once more redeem his government from the consequences of its own idiotic mistakes.

With all the centuries of such government meddling in the life of people, we should be enjoying everlasting world peace by now. However, so far none of this has happened. And it never will as long as elected or imposed governments isolate men’s peaceful relations from one another to establish themselves as the deciders over human life.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] is a native German who moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, Texas. Ulrich Biele [send him mail] is a consultant in Munich, Germany.

Sabine Barnhart Archives

DIGG THIS

The more the state plans, the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.
~ Friedrich Hayek

Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee.
~ Ludwig von Mises

Each year in early October my grandfather summoned my entire family to come to his farm and harvest potatoes. Hunched over on all fours, each person quietly filled their buckets with these “earth apples." Each year he used a different field for his crop. One year he would plant potatoes, the next year beets or wheat. The potato replaced the grain diet on the European continent. It became survival food, especially during the two World Wars. Dumplings, potato salad and mashed potatoes are only a few potato dishes found in a long list in the European cuisine. The easy adaptability of the potato to grow almost anywhere in the world can produce an annual crop of 322 million tons of potatoes. Many African countries greatly benefit from growing the potatoes because they make them more self-sufficient in their food production.

In the age of nation building, stamping out of global warming, and driving for energy self-sufficiency, the new state appointed rival of the potato is maize, which is better known as corn — the yellow cob-born grain used in the production of ethanol fuel. As a blend with gasoline, biofuel powers automobiles and farm equipment. Its environmental friendly side effect is to reduce greenhouse gases, and some say it is the key to everlasting energy security in the future.

Ethanol fuel production received its first stimulus after the Arab oil crisis in 1973. During 1978 the US federal government sealed the project with the Energy Tax Act authorizing tax exemptions by blending gasoline with 10 percent ethanol. A floodgate of free money opened up for farmers and ethanol producers as the energy and agricultural departments spent billions of dollars on subsidies. This year’s estimates are between $5.5 billion to $7.3 billion of our tax dollars to be handed out to corn growers.

The incentives for farmers to grow corn in the US is not to meet the needs of a market that entails a healthy profit. Instead, they plant corn because they get paid to do so by a federal government interested in ethanol production. And as it turns out, producing ethanol is an expensive process. Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) out of Illinois, one of the largest producers of ethanol, received as much as $10 billion in subsidies between 1980 through 1997 along with favorable tax breaks costing taxpayers an average of $30 for every dollar ADM earns in profits. Add to that the $500 of federal and state subsidies it takes to reduce one metric ton of CO2-equivalent, one can literarily say that it is governments who heat up the globe by burning cash.

This year corn production has already increased by 15 percent over last year. Even President Bush, not a green lover but excited about ethanol, is expecting that farmers will plant 90.5 millions of acres of corn in 2007 in order to meet the demands of ethanol production of 132 billion liters by 2017. Corn prices already went up by 50 percent. The average price per bushel of $1.95, which had held steady over the past eight years, jumped up to $3.05 in January of this year, and is expected to rise as high as $3.40.

Corn is feedstock. It is consumed not only by humans but also by hogs, chickens and cattle. The drastic side-effect of higher corn prices is now reflected in the higher prices in the grocery store. The price of food went up 3.9 percent last year — faster than the inflation rate, which ranges around 2.7 in 2007. In particular, pork, beef, milk, eggs and poultry show drastic increases in their prices. So do fruits and vegetables. Considering that most people spend an average of 10 percent of their disposable income on food, higher prices in grocery reduces the spending on cars, homes or clothing. Health Nazis should also be concerned, since these higher prices drive people to cheaper processed foods that add to increased health risks in the poor segment of the population.

The US Federal Government’s targeted goal is to replace gasoline with corn-based fuel as an alternative energy source. This has caught the attention of poorer countries. Mexico, for example, is gradually replacing agave, a spiky-leaved, large plant which grows on high and arid land and takes eight years to reach maturity, with corn. Agave is the main ingredient for Tequila. Mexico produced 25 to 35 percent less agave this year and farmers take less care of their agave crop in favor of higher corn prices. The World Food Program (WFP), which recently stated that it can no longer feed the poor due to the impact of biofuel demand on food prices, is foolishly encouraging African and Latin American countries to take advantage of the rising demand of biofuels by planting corn; a popular world practice that is now devastating 900 million of the world’s poorest which rely on the UN feeding program.

It is quite clear that the state-inflated demand for corn is causing a global imbalance in food production. Farmers are replacing a variety of vegetables and fruits with corn due to the higher profit-per-acre corn brings. The two-year practice of crop rotation for corn drains the soil and requires more fertilizers on the following soybean crop. The additional cost ends up with the consumer. As food prices rise, it is the poor who suffer most from this inflated demand for biofuel. It is a burden that most people cannot afford as inflation keeps rising because of irresponsible spending and government debt.

The federal budget for the fiscal year beginning this October called for $2.9 trillion dollars in government spending. It includes increases for all the various cabinet-level departments. Among them were a 5.4 percent increase for the Department of Energy and 3.6 percent increase for Agriculture. According to Richard M. Ebeling, President of The Freeman, the average US household would have to shell out approximately $25,845 in taxes to cover the budget. Include with it the US federal government’s pre-existing liabilities of several trillion, and the average US household would have to pay an additional $31,000 a year for 75 years to pay off the debt already incurred by government spending. How can an average income household cover the basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter when tax burdens already devour the wages of a lower income population? Poor people only become poorer as spending continues.

Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul seems to be the only congressional member who understands the global effects of subsidies. During his second presidential debate the question came up about oil profits. His response was: “I don’t think the profits are the issue. The profits are okay if they’re legitimately earned in a free market. What I object to are subsidies to big corporations when we subsidize them and give them R&D (Research & Development) money. I don’t think that should be that way. They should take it out of the funds that they earn…”

Here lies the answer to many of the energy questions. Let the private sector find a solution to new energy sources. Already technology advances at a rapid speed and its products remain ultimately competitive on the market where prices drop and become affordable to the average consumer. Just think of recent changes from VCRs and phonograph records to DVD’s and CD players, and the addition of cell phones and portable computers to modern life. All are now available at reasonable prices to low-income households. Industry continually comes up with new inventions that contribute highly to communication, organization and entertainment. The only sectors that remain high in cost with outrageous prices are sectors that are under government regulation and control: health care, medicine, education, housing, and now food prices. It would be a life-saving act of mercy to close these various departments of government, if people want to have a future for the next generation.

The trouble caused on the global market by the federal government’s sponsored ethanol industry increasingly outweighs the good it does. The idea of sacrificing food production in the name of biofuel as a future source of energy is an irrational concept. The consequence of higher food prices due to corn production hasn’t come from consumer choice but from government coercion. If the demand for energy is increasing, and biofuel is the answer, then where will the world grow its food? The big believers in a government supported biofuel industry might have to prepare for another big tsunami to hit the shores of Third World countries and at home if this insanity isn’t stopped. Just don’t blame capitalism if and when it comes.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] is a native German who moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

DIGG THIS

It was in the fall of 1967 when I embarked on my 10-year school career in Germany. My mother dressed me in a short white skirt, knee-highs, and sandals. She twisted my unruly hair in a set of pigtails adorned with white ribbons. The leather satchel I carried on my back was a gift of my grandmother. In my hand I held the famous Schultüte (school cone) whose content of goodies was to sweeten my anxiously awaited day.

The small schoolhouse still conformed to the old way of holding school with three or four grades sharing a classroom. Centralized school reform hadn’t hit the rural parts of Bavaria yet until the following year. Only 23 years earlier my mother was a first grader in the same schoolroom. Her morning greeting to her teacher was a dutiful "Heil Hitler" in the Roman Imperial fashion. The schoolroom, as did every private household and institution, featured the idolized image of the Führer on the wall. Morning prayer remained a tolerable function for the schoolchildren.

Unlike in my mother’s days, the idolized image of the State had disappeared from the wall. Prayers were still allowed in this dominant Catholic state at that time. The imagery of the National State no longer had a visible presence in my classroom (no picture of a head of state, no national or state flag); however, its legal and constitutional influence over all German school children remains anchored in Article 7 of the German Constitution. It reads:

Article 7

1. The entire school system shall be under the supervision of the state.

Little did I know that starting my Elementary school years was "in the best interest" of my legal guardian over education, the state. I was being, after all, sozialisiert. In laymen’s terms, this meant that I received my first compulsory and obligated introduction to a life outside the security of my family unit according to the conventional wisdom of pedagogical experts and academics on how I need to properly adjust and develop to the social order of society and as such to the imagery of a good (National) citizen.

Like all children, there were times when school just seemed like a nuisance to me. "I don’t want to go to school today" is the common reaction for children going through this phase. The standard answer of my mother has always been: "If you don’t go to school, then I will have to go to jail." I thought she was joking. She wasn’t joking. The German school system upholds compulsory schooling, which demands that all children of school age must physically attend a public or private school whose educational system is under the supervision of the individual state (Bildungshoheit).

The law enforces compliance with financial fines to the parents and eventual imprisonment if they persist in keeping their children out of school. One religious organization received fees as high as 130,000 Euros in the state of Hessen for homeschooling their children. Parents have been imprisoned for not paying the fines they received for keeping their children out of state schools. In 2005 state authorities forcefully removed a 15-year-old girl from her family for psychiatric evaluation because her parents chose to teach Math and Latin at home to avoid having her repeat a grade again in school. A 16-year-old girl was sentenced to two weeks in jail for missing one month of school. Three large fines did not bring her back, thus imprisonment is to be used for disciplinary action. Another family was fined 150 Euros for not letting their child attend a school play, which was against their belief, and the father was later imprisoned for not paying the fine.

This is the dilemma in which several German families who wish to homeschool now find themselves. Their decisions to homeschool do not necessarily have to be religiously motivated. If a family wants to avoid the teaching of evolution or wants to spare their child the rigid drill of school conformity, they should be able to do so. Also parents should be the ones who best know their children’s interests, talents and how to motivate and guide them into the right direction to fulfill their potentials. Good parents want the best for their children, and if they find the time and energy in teaching them "…within responsibility before God, the spirit of Christian charity, humanity and love of peace, in the love for the People and homeland…" — as the state of Baden-Württemberg had it once quoted in their school law book in 1983 — then they are actually upholding their responsibility as legal guardians. Accountability then falls on the parents, since it is neither the right of a child nor the right of the state to conform the young to their own image.

The issue is not highly publicized in German news, nor does the right of parents to educate one’s own children find favor in the German courts, nor with politicians and the general public at large. The German states and the Federal Government do not see a conflict with compulsory schooling upon religious grounds. The constitution again cancels out that right in Article 7:

(2) Parents and guardians shall have the right to decide whether children shall receive religious instruction.

(3) Religious instruction shall form part of the regular curriculum in state schools, with the exception of non-denominational schools. Without prejudice to the state’s right of supervision, religious instruction shall be given in accordance with the tenets of the religious community concerned. Teachers may not be obliged against their will to give religious instruction.

Several European states have compulsory education laws which do not enforce the physical presence of a child in public schools, but which require the child to be educated according to the standards of the sovereign state. Austria permits homeschooling with a state-approved curriculum, and a state-approved school periodically supervises testing. Switzerland allows families to homeschool children with occasional visits by a state official as long as the sate school plan is upheld. Denmark hasn’t had compulsory schooling since 1855, and gives financial aid in the purchase of materials to parents. Other countries that allow homeschooling are Australia, Sweden, France, Great Britain and the United States.

Germans greatly pride themselves in their educational system. Their country is, after all, known as the "Land of Poets and Thinkers." The Germans’ intelligence is largely reflected in their engineering, inventiveness and the quality of their craftsmanship. But so is their love for order, their almost obsessive-compulsive cleanliness, and the creation and maintenance of a large state bureaucracy. They masterfully cultivate and thrive on making life sometimes more complicated than it really needs to be. Permitting the right of parents to educate their young at home does not quite fit into the mind-set of a state-educated German Citizen and his collective teachings.

It seems as if they think that the liberty to deviate from a “National Plan” will threaten their very existence, as it has been known since 1871. This is when Imperial Prussia first instituted a nation-wide compulsory schooling to help form a national identity in a land that yearned for democracy and national unification after the Napoleonic wars. Young Germania needed an educated and obedient Volk in order to provide the work force to prosper and a strong, obedient military to defend itself.

Germany was also the first country to introduce state certification for teachers, which had the intended effect of that raising the standard of teaching. Germany’s children were now under the influence of continued reform such as Neuhumanismus (New Humanism) and psychobabble academic philosophies with Kantian influence. Streamlining the mind of children in accordance with these “intellectuals” established the ground for a socialist mentality, which is still prevalent in the German population.

John Taylor Gatto boldly explains the Prussian motive for compulsory schooling in his book The Underground History of American Education:

The Prussian mind, which carried the day, held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army; 2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; 4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed.

Germany’s vocational schooling and education has its roots in the Middle Ages. It was during the 12th Century where guilds organized the teaching of their profession so that craftsmen could become masters. Parents taught their children the craft and gave them the education. As far as academic education went, the first university was founded in Heidelberg in 1386, and the remaining educational organization was under the control of monasteries and Latin schools. Education was mostly reserved for nobility, clergy and bourgeois upper class.

In 1524, during the Reformation, Martin Luther began to emphasize the need to establish and maintain Christian schools. In his letter "To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools," he addressed the civic leaders of Germany and all beloved German citizens with the urgency that councilmen possessed — more than parents — the resources to establish schools, and that it is their moral duty to promote the kingdom of God (from their position of power). His good intentions created a conflict between Church and State, which was eventually settled by the Kingdom of Prussia. During the 18th Century, Prussia became the first country worldwide to establish a free and compulsory primary education. The guardian over Germany’s future school education was now under state control. The mentality carried on through history until it found its way into Germany’s Fundamental Law. Hitler only refined it during the Nazi era by indoctrinating Nazi ideology into the curriculum.

In 2000 Germany received a major blow to its school system. A study conducted by PISA (Program for International Student Assessment), showed that Germans scored very low in Math, Reading, Science, and Problem Solving. These were embarrassing results for a country that prides itself in its intellectualism, which systematically erased the basic function of parents and gave it to the state in the form of welfare.

The results were somewhat better in 2003 but still haven’t risen to a satisfactory level.

Surprisingly, the study also showed that the less money a country spends on education, the better the scores. Free education does not necessarily raise the standards of achievement. Germany is now feeling the backlash in their society. Its top university ranks 45th place worldwide. This places Germany in 4th place with seven universities ranking in the top 100. A recent decision to allow individual states to charge a basic fee of 500 Euros was met with major student protest throughout the country, thus proving that a sense of entitlement is a major characteristic of socialism.

Although Germany’s individual states have autonomy of their school education, the line between Federal Government mandates and state regulations have become more and more blurry. In the aftermath of the shock of the PISA study, officials called for further school reforms that would unify the educational system across the states. The Federal Government supplies half of a state’s school finances with the rest contributed locally. Funds are never adequate since most states find themselves bankrupt. A recent survey of the population shows a major support for centralizing the educational system across the states. The fact that so many parents rely on the state to raise their own offspring is a sad legacy for the future.

At this time roughly 80 families in Germany are being persecuted for choosing to educate their own children. It is estimated that maybe as many as 300 children are being homeschooled. The concept is gradually taking root throughout the country with strong support coming from the US and from religious groups that are not of the state-sponsored Churches (Evangelical and Catholic). Germans are still very skeptical toward religious groups such as the Baptists and Pentecostals, especially now that Christian missionaries are settling in their country. These independent denominations are often viewed as cults since their communities seem to prosper outside the mainstream culture.

It is not only religious groups that wish to have a choice in homeschooling their children. There are many parents who are dissatisfied with the way their children are brought up or treated in contemporary German schools. The threat of drugs and the casual attitude toward early sexuality may be enough reason for a parent to protect their child from early u2018sozialisieren’ according to the opinion of a PhD academic. However, the fear that homeschooling can create a parallel society warrants no proof, since neighboring European countries permit homeschooling quite successfully.

Germans are very studious by nature. If parents want to spend the time educating their own children, which many mothers already do by helping with homework, then the capacity to flourish in a "living room environment" can only stimulate the curiosity of a child. Parents are, after all, an idolized image to the child. It is this sacred image that the state is now distorting with its constant meddling in family affairs and disrupting the authority and guardianship parents have over their children.

None of these families are seeking to abolish the educational system. They only wish to have a choice in the techniques and content of their children’s education. Knowing about evolution or how to protect against sexually transmitted diseases isn’t making anyone a better welder, banker or auto mechanic. Neither will the daily interaction with one’s peers in a classroom provide the foundation of moral character, nor will it develop the characteristics that make us virtuous creatures.

The fact remains that families — parents and siblings — provide the foundation for children’s abilities to interact with their immediate environment. If a parent provides this labor of love for a child, then all of humanity is to rejoice in their decision. An independently thinking child is capable of making decisions when presented with choices, and is able to solve problems and figure things out for himself. He or she will be less reliant on state charity, and probably will want to emulate the ways of his parents — marry and have children.

Several homeschooling families have left Germany and gone abroad. They find refuge in the United States, Australia or Ireland. Over 150,000 Germans have left the country in 2004, and more leave each year in order to find better opportunities for themselves, shows that a good part of the educated population is saying Auf Wiedersehen to their homeland. The declining birth rates aren’t helping the welfare state either. Only 1.34 births per woman aren’t enough to facilitate the cost of social welfare, social security and socialized health care. The Federal Government calculates that maintaining the present level of benefits will require an average rate of 2.1 children per woman. The gap is being filled with asylum seekers and immigrants who often aren’t willing to integrate, neither into their society nor into their school system.

Judges and politicians are in denial about the benefits of homeschooling and are determined to enforce the law. Evidence shows that homeschoolers score higher in almost all categories when tested against public or state-educated students. Germany still relies on certificates and diplomas for graduates to be successfully employed. Their four-system education determines the type of career a young person will be able to enter. Prestige also comes with higher education. A doctor, teacher or attorney still carries a lot of status in the German society and receives the ear of the policy makers.

Now 40 years later I find myself facing my own school history. The recent events over homeschooling have left me shocked to say the least. I was still educated in the drill of repetitive study and memorizing. I was never good in Math. I lacked the confidence. My German writing was satisfactory, though grammar was never my strongpoint. The greatest asset I was left with was a foreign language: English. It was in the English language where I excelled in later years. I began to study Math at a local Junior College, took English grammar and writing classes, and aced them all. Natural curiosity led me to study more history, science, and my own religion. During the process I discovered freedom. The self-taught knowledge became mixed with my personal experience and I began to accept certain truths to be absolute. I realized I had to make choices in life, and self-education became the best defense against that which wants to extinguish the reverence of life. In my lifetime this always included parents and God. I have u2018unschooled’ myself ever since without becoming a hermit or a social dropout.

German families and their homeschooled children are way ahead of where I was. They are taking great challenges and risks in order to give something to their children that many of us never had nor ever will have. They give the sort of time, energy and love to their offspring that can never be found in a sterile school environment or with teachers that expect all children to act, think, and talk alike according to the outdated school model of an Imperial Prussia that has long since ceased to exist.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

DIGG THIS

There are very few outspoken voices of the classic-liberal sense in Germany raised in support of a free market economy. One of these voices is Roland Baader, economist and member of the Mont Pelerin Society, who makes an appeal to a German speaking audience in his new book Das Kapital am Pranger. With some tongue-in-cheek humor and with a passionate approach to defending liberty, he unravels the misuse of words and gives them their rightful place and meaning. Each chapter guides the reader out of the socialist maze that has kept entire nations confused and captive. He convincingly shows how the erroneously used concepts surround capitalism and how the false accusations made by its political and intellectual opponents have clouded the judgment of the German citizens. The book serves as a wake-up call to a people whose survival hinges on this very truth.

Last year’s publication came during a time when the German nation has placed capitalism on the open market to be publicly pilloried by its political caste. This is not surprising; the free-market has been chained to the German legal system and its political figures for over a Century. For the last four decades capitalism has been made subservient to the socialist politicians and populace, which has crippled not only the performance of the German economy in general, but has also fostered a general Weltanschauung that grew to distrust the moral order of an unhindered free market system.

Mr. Baader, a student of Friedrich A. von Hayek, refers to this system as Scheinkapitalismus (pretend capitalism). In his first few chapters of the book, he sets up the rhetorical idea of a free market for his reader. He defines capital as human capital (i.e. knowledge, education, skills, imagination, and talents) and the application of human capital leading to the creation of tangible property and financial wealth, their natural interactions and ultimate benefits to man, his community, his country and the world at large. Capitalism, in that sense, is not an invented ideology, as its opponents would like to argue. It is based and thrives on the free and peaceful cooperation of people, who are also known as market participants. The concept of capitalism is therefore a natural order without any (political) force or coercion.

A large part of the emphasis in his writings, which are heavily influenced by the Austrian School of thought and Ludwig von Mises, is to refute the leftwing slanders against capitalism that it creates corruption and fosters injustice and immorality. He points to the historical facts on how the majority of people were poor, oppressed and without rights to any liberty prior to the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the modern era. From the 20th Century, the author uses examples of the former GDR (East Germany) and USSR to show the dire consequences of a centrally controlled society that is absent of entrepreneurial spirit and private capital.

Roland Baader brings up several but often little-known examples of how the suppression of a voluntary exchange between people in those communist states always found its way into the criminal world through the black and gray markets. Despite the ill intent of the leaders of those nations, and their police (Stasi and KGB), laws did not prevent the natural order of the free market from emerging, as it prospered illegally, which forced a great shortage of popular and mostly imported items and the relative abundance of the state-companies own produced Dreck.

Herr Baader further describes how the well-developed shadow economy behind the Iron Curtain not only served as an outlet against the thievery of the state but, oddly enough, as a last ditch attempt by the regular folks to keep from sliding further into abject poverty.

The creation of the German welfare state has similarly affected the behavior of its citizens. The working-class German might look for illegal work to supplement his income in order to offset the heavy tax burden and social contributions, which may leave him only with a third of his income. Bribery and special favors have become bargaining tools not only in politics, but also in private enterprise as well. A competitive employer or employee is often publicly ridiculed as a Streber (striver) or a nerd. Mobbing in the workplace and in public schools are only side effects of a society in which competence and personal accomplishment are belittled. Germans, like Americans, have noted an alarming increase of aggression against those who want to be successful.

The once legendary German work ethic and drive for perfection, while not yet completely demolished by the socialist mentality, have been subverted in many instances. This has further eroded the ability of German companies to compete on a global market where the high quality of German products remains a signature characteristic, but where their affordability is a long-forgotten past. Legislated wages and labor protection laws have been detrimental to the German economy whose performance is ultimately stifled by their oppressive legalism.

An outspoken supporter of the minimal state, Baader challenges the accepted misinterpretation of the noble ideas of “profit, entrepreneurship, liberalism and trade/globalization” that have had their lexicon hijacked by a domineering Left. Their negative slogans within the mainstream of the German culture have degraded and sneered at the very notions that brought Germany its economic miracle between the late 1940′s to 1960′s. Similar sentiments existed prior to 1933 in the German mind-set and Mr. Baader emphasizes that the degradation of these concepts always lead to poverty, destruction and war.

What remains of today’s economy is a nearly-empty granary after hungry socialists and a misguided public have raided the troves to fatten up the state-cow. Both Germany’s public media, with its two major state-owned broadcasting stations which charge every radio and TV owner a monthly fee of 17 Euros, and its state-run education system, have been instrumental propaganda tools that have served as mouthpieces for socialist ideas. Mr. Baader believes that nothing will change for Germany until at least 18 to 20 percent of intellectuals in these influential institutions comprehend the essence of capitalism (including those who call themselves "capitalists"). He mentions the dire need of a private think tank along the lines of IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs) which is found in most of the larger industrialized nations. Germany, he sadly states, is the only industrialized nation on earth without such a branch.

Page after page, the author unmasks the illusion that an economy and the wellbeing of Bürger (citizens) depend on the interference of a centralized state. He places strong criticism on politics in which he rightly states the political power plays: poor against rich, young against old, patients against doctors, consumers against producers, men against women, smokers against non-smokers, etc. This, Mr. Baader writes (paraphrased), creates a continually heated friction which only fuels the fire of envy and jealousy. It has an appealing attraction to special interest groups whose votes are solicited by political advocates to represent their rights.

Briefly mentioned in his book is his observation that Germany still has private ownership; and yet its bureaucracy has heavily burdened that ownership with laws which limit the rightful use of one’s property, which in turn narrows choices and limits the supply of products and services. Germany is only a miniature reflection of what the political monstrosity of the EU resembles. Its original idea as a vehicle of economic cooperation between the European nations has grown out of all proportion until it has turned the Continent into a political wasteland. Brussels squanders billions of Euros annually on farm and energy subsidies in the hands of an organizational structure that comes to resemble more and more a political tool of economic destruction rather than unity.

EU-enforced mandates already restrict private contracts, as ordered through the "Anti-discrimination Law," which is a sure start down the "the path of stupidity." Baader explains that economics unites peoples, and that what could have been a peaceful exchange between individuals in these old cultures is being destroyed by its political rulers. EU executive committees are thus creating disorder, conflict, and hostility which hinder the natural flow of a peaceful market.

"It is the long absence of politics that brought man out of the Stone Age," says Baader, who continues to say that "dictatorship does not grow from politics announcing evil deeds; but from its promises to bring more happiness, wealth, more security and justice." He quotes the great philosopher, Edmund Burke, who says: "The Thing (politic), the Thing itself is the abuse." It is the wisdom of these words that does not penetrate the understanding of the social and political engineers who would like to control the free interaction of people by placing them into legal straight-jackets designed to "reform" their fallen natures.

It is precisely this false mentality that has eroded the moral ground in das Abendland (the Western World). A society whose politics takes on a "semi-religious character" will gradually force the removal of any competing influence over people’s lives, which in the West has always been the Christian Church. Social justice has become a misused political and Christian expression that, as of today, is, as Baader quotes W.S. Schlamm, "the death slogan of the vertical civil war."

People must ask the question why they want to be governed by social justice rather than morals. The book makes a striking comparison between this ideology, which killed 30 million people under Mao Zedong in China, and capitalism, which has brought 300 million Chinese out of starvation and poverty. Its irrational reasoning lies in "social rights" and a misuse of the concept of justice that has transgressed against personal rights. The coercion by the state to enforce social justice through political force is an act of injustice when judged by morals. It unquestionably leads to loss of personal freedom and eventual totalitarianism.

The book comes at a critical time with a plea made especially to the citizens of Germany. It is not a book that merely preaches to the choir; it can also reach the undecided. It can be an enlightening revelation to those questioning the current political and social dilemma in Germany, and provides many in-depth examples specifically to the German nation. Roland Baader is a supporter of a minimal state, which means that free citizens must reclaim their right to self-govern their communities, cities, and counties. "Capitalism: Those are people themselves. Only in capitalism is there a natural order. Only in capitalism can there be liberty and dignity of life," writes Baader. "This only happens when people know what it is and is not."

Roland Baader is a minority in his crusade to reduce the power of the modern state, which controls both the economy and human behavior. His publication is a rarity indeed, since classic-liberalism has very little public exposure in written print or in the media. Junge Freiheit is the only publication available in hard print for which Herr Baader also writes occasional articles. There is a great need for German citizens to be educated about capitalism, its benefits, and its ultimate link to their well-being. The final six points in his last chapter on the characteristics of capitalism should arouse a serious debate within the mind of any reader and make him or her ponder over the erroneous teachings that have been pounded into the heads of students and workers for decades.

Das Kapital am Pranger and all of his other books are only available in the German language. Considering that Engel and Marx started off with their writings in German as well, it would be a delight to see Roland Baader’s book reach the same crowd.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

Nowadays the welfare state is trying hard to re-reform itself by cleverly disguising its scheme as altruistic actions. Since the need to stuff bodies into the military uniform has been waning, one hopes, the demand for fresh meat has been coming from the ever-expanding German welfare state. The new scheme to produce more babies comes as a result of Germany’s financially disastrous central planning that is falling short of the workers/producers to the ratio of consumers/pensioners. The intention of its design is to produce a greater workforce to support the aging baby boomers, and so the potential German wombs-in-waiting are told to get cracking in order to save the failures of the state once again.

The Family Ministry, another invention of the state and headed by a mother of seven — Frau Ursula von Leyen (CDU), is consulting its crystal ball, the moon and the stars in finding methods on how to persuade the Germans to produce more babies. The Minister and her socialist-Christian cabinet members of good intentions have reached another brilliant solution: Either one parent or both parents, if they divide their leave time, may take care of their newborn for one year by taking off from their job and receive up to 67 percent of their net income or up to $1,800 a month from the government. Comrade Putin has similar ideas for his country’s birth decline, which he probably copied from Comrade Stalin (materi-geroyi).

The financial incentives have not worked so far. The state has done an incredible job in brainwashing the masses with its contradictory messages that overpopulation creates global poverty or that the eco-system is falling apart. People who follow this popular mantra will often make the decision not to have children and believe they are helping make this world a better place. Others believe that the real reason for not having children are women who cannot find the right partners, or that a man does not want to take the risk of being financially ruined. The obvious reasons are overlooked. Since accountability and self-responsibility is not a criteria required by the welfare state, people will try to get away with as much as possible in every aspect of life.

Germans refuse to see that their federal government’s social engineering in affairs of business and family is the real culprit for their ailing economic and social problems. Not only is it creating stagnation in growth, but also makes the need of a man and his efforts to provide for a family obsolete. Why provide for a wife and children, if the welfare state has taken that role away from the man? Not only is his role being diminished; but his efforts in making smart business decisions for himself — regardless if self-employed or hired — is always hindered with regulations, mandated requirements of certificates or union enforced demands.

The result is self-defeating and devalues his purpose and role as a man. But the state goddess, who rejects the masculine role of the man and father as the true authority over his family, rarely considers that role as legitimate. She prefers dependency of all her taxpaying children to keep her in power and control. Why should any man wish to re-produce if the law tells him to pay as much as 45 percent of his income to the state? The rich and the childless get punished for their lifestyle with the highest taxes.

Wherever the state giveth, the state can also taketh; the Director of the Institute of Economic Policy at the University in Cologne, Johann Eekhoff, demands that social security for the childless is to be cut in half. "This kind of reform is long overdue," says Eekhoff, a former State-Secretary of the Ministry of Economics, "since the system can only function if it is financed by future generations." The mandated and enforced policy of Germany’s social security system has become a trap in which future children are to be sacrificed. Although attempts have been made to allow private investments for retirement, the welfare state will continue to find loopholes in which the citizens of Germany are called upon for more and more self-sacrifices that will be in the best interest of the state.

For the average middle-class earner, the little he is left with he barely can invest in his house and a small savings account. If a man is only wanted as a sperm donor and taxpayer for something he is not even allowed to own and control himself, his uselessness must turn on him as some kind of self-loathing. There is a high price to pay for a society, when the role of a man is being re-defined by an incompetent bureaucracy that cannot beget children itself but then goes further and turns him into an ejaculator for the state. A man and woman, whose importance in the grand scheme of things, are reduced to their reproductive organs only serve as a donors and nothing more.

The German intellectual man with his long history of political and economic failures by worshipping the state as the answer of bringing social justice and equality to all people has not yet learned the danger in that lesson. He allowed himself to be lured into a spider-web in which Ordnung and an abundance of socialist laws control his life as unquestionable superiority over his life. No deviation of his habitual and stubborn social-political pattern is allowed to penetrate his safe world in which he thinks he dwells. He whimsically obeys the call to hand over all of his rights to state authority while the black widow is waiting in the wings.

Although with women being strongly represented in the labor market, as many as up to 40 percent of those with academic education choose not to have children. The questions have been raised that Germany’s traditional stance of the role of a Hausfrau and mother are holding women back in their careers. High taxes make it not feasible to get back into a career and the choice for full-time daycare is not available as it is in countries such as the US. Most daycare centers or Kindergartens are under city or state funding and do not provide all-day services. The fees are generally low compared to privately owned full-day cares, and allow low-income parents to drop off their children.

Many mothers only return to part-time work collecting their basic minimum wage of 400 Euros a month. Other countries, such as Sweden, Norway or Iceland, have not been given financial incentives to have children, but allowed women to enter the labor market easier and as such were able to maintain their birth rates. But even in these scenarios, the available daycare programs are often mandated by the state. New thoughts are sprouting up in Germany to force employers to provide daycare for working mothers so they can bring their children to work. These new regulations only will bring additional cost to the employer and oversteps the private development of this market.

However, if the natural role of both husband and wife is allowed to unfold without any constraints and regulations from the state, there would be no need for taking a man’s earnings by the welfare state and re-distribute billions of dollars each year. It will give all new mothers the freedom to choose raising her children without a lot of financial worries. The legitimate Lady of the House or Hausfrau would promptly remove Jezebel, the welfare goddess of the 21st Century, and expose her for what she is: a fraud. A Hausfrau would certainly set herself up as the rightful mistress of her household. The family ministry department and its central planning committee would not influence her actions. A Hausfrau is known for her economic sense to budget her money, to attain goods and groceries at the best possible price and to provide a home for her family within the means of the family income. After all, her multi-tasking skills run the household with a business sense without neglecting the nurturing of her own children. These are chores and tasks still being performed by millions of women all over the globe that require no special intervention by economic socialists.

If a man has the freedom to work where he wants for the best offered price, and be rewarded for his efforts, and is permitted to keep most of his earnings, he most likely is willing to get married and start a family of his own. Together, both husband and wife would discuss their private affairs in their bedroom, solve their problems, make plans for the future and make babies. None of these actions require a permission slip, certificate or qualification exam, or financial bribing by the state, because man and woman are designed to handle their private affairs in their best interest.

A man’s problem solving and long-term planning skills make him in charge of his life and family. His usefulness motivates and brings him pleasure and most likely the respect of his woman. All these positive assets make a couple productive. The decision to return back to work after a woman had children is often an economic decision and should remain a private matter. There are financial hardships that could befall a family that may require a woman to return to work. Room needs to be given to allow both man and woman to enter the labor market for whatever reason without the state punishing that decision through higher taxes and labor regulations.

Women in highly-developed ancient cultures such as Sumer, Egypt and even the ancient Jews allowed women to own property and conduct business and were often documented in clay tablets of their laws and ancient scriptures. The idea of women managing the affairs of her property isn’t as revolutionary as modern women like to think. It derived out of a need when women became widows early in life with children and as such were able to retain their possessions for their children. Their rights were limited, but the objective was to preserve ownership in order to have an income and to pass it on to one’s children. A woman has always managed the affairs of her household and her characteristics and value are highly praised in the famous verses of Proverbs 31:10-31. It would make an excellent read for a Family Minister that shows how useless her position really is. It is the involvement of the state that has always destroyed this structure in society.

Wendy McElroy sums up the value of a mother perfectly in her article Mother’s u2018Work’ Doesn’t Warrant Paycheck. She writes:

Women who stay home are lucky enough to be able to choose personal benefits over economic ones; stay at home mothers have refused to value their time in dollar signs. When Salary.com refers to sitting up with a sick child as ‘over time’, it commercializes and cheapens that act of love for both stay at home and working moms.

It is similar to placing a dollar value on intimate marital relations because, after all, those ‘services’ are available elsewhere for a fee.

When you define the value of family meals in terms of cold cash, then you’ve lost the importance of what’s really going on. When you convert acts of love into acts for profit, you’ve lost at life itself.

Germany’s Elterngeld law and its methods on how it is extracted from the populace through high taxes totally devalue the act of marriage and the life of children. It has not liberated woman, but kept the true meaning of a Hausfrau and mother in bondage. The state tries to change the motive for having children for its own purpose only. A mother who chooses to stay home and raise her children has always been an act of love. It is not, because she is being paid by the state to do so. If she wants to prevent raising a generation of freeloaders, whiners and complainers who won’t appreciate her, she has to help remove the spider web wrapped around her husband’s head. Only together can they slay the beast that wants to take their children.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

The Germans, as all people, are guided by a belief system. It is the catalyst that influences man’s thoughts and actions and on how he perceives and sees his world in which he lives. They can be, depending on a philosophic underpinning, a combination of a set of ideals, personal experiences or a famously high German IQ. The political belief that holds firm as the German standard is a democracy. It’s a notion that people with completely opposite ideas can come together to some form of consensus with a united policy where every minority, down to Planet Earth, is protected by a myriad of laws. Every success is shared to some extent with the rest of the society.

The strongest influence a belief system holds in a democracy is when it captures the hearts and minds of the majority. It can either bring freedom, prosperity and life, or it will enslave man and bring disaster and death. Unfortunately, as those with a modicum of knowledge of the recent German history know, the latter has dominated over the last 125 years. It also depends on how much of that belief system is based on truth. And, with truth it is understood that its principles and teachings stand firm in their longevity and hold true during any time frame in history and in the future. The underlying teaching is inspiring, hope-giving and exhibits a love for one’s neighbor. A teaching based on these foundations contains wisdom capable of being perceived by all people.

Whether that wisdom is yet to hit Germany is debatable. The country has been soaking in socialist brine for almost 140 years after liberalism was defeated in 1848 during the European Revolution. The end of liberalism left a big void to be filled. The vacuum it created was quickly filled by socialist thoughts of Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow (1805—1875) with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels being of greater influences. Since their writings and literatures were first written in German, it provided opportunities to reach a large population during the 19th Century. In 1875 the German Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei (SAP) merged with the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei (SDA) and as such founded one of the first unified worker parties in Europe. Their agenda stood in opposition to the German Imperial Reich and became outlawed with the “Sozialistengesetz” (1878—1890) under Otto von Bismarck. A re-organization tripled their support, receiving almost 20 percent of the votes during the 1890 Reichtagswahlen and officially becoming the SDP (Socialistische Deutsche Partei).

Their supporters consisted of mostly protestant and non-denominational industrial workers, as well as from the broader middle class. The ideology of its followers mainly promoted workers’ rights and labor unions. Their beliefs slowly infiltrated into civic life by founding many clubs within each community; building a strong network of organization. After WWI the party created coalitions with civil center-left parties and became the breeding ground for a charismatic figure like Hitler to ride through the democratic process with a few aggressive methods, like busting heads of its opposition. Teamsters would be proud.

In 1933 the political landscape of the Weimar Republic consisted of NSDAP with 288 seats, SPD with 120 seats; the Catholic Centre Party with 93; the Communist Party with 81; and the Nationalist Party (DNVP) with 52 seats and all others with 23 seats. The overall belief system of the population by a large measure was in socialism, nationalism and its competing ideology, communism with a much smaller Catholic minority.

Munich, Bavaria, with its historical Beer Hall — “Alcohol that inspired Putsch” — is basically a middle-class German city, and very dominated by socialist principles. Although Bavaria is largely Catholic, and one of the few states still promoting Christian values, its politicians — much like its brew makers — are capable of putting together some odd concoctions. One of these odd concoctions is CSU, a Christian Social Party. It is a uniquely Bavarian party and sister party to Angela Merkel’s CDU (Christian Democratic Union). Bavaria’s capital still remains the seat of socialism. Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of the most left-wing publications in the entire country, is headquartered in Munich and is an influential mouthpiece with its dominant belief system.

For a keen observer, the pervasive influence of this ideology can be felt everywhere. Upon arrival it takes an effort see beyond the beautiful landscapes of rural Germany, its legendary rivers and majestic mountains; the awe-inspiring old cathedrals or listening to a brass band play in their traditional lederhosen. It can be quite overwhelming to take in all the history this country has seen. Any tourist would be remiss not to sample its zillion brands of world-class beer, wine, sausage and song. Traveling from place to place, one cannot help but notice the juxtaposition of the different epochs. Some towns and cities are over 1200 years old; others are as modern as modern gets. The negative influence socialism had, and still has, will not be initially visible to a tourist when he or she first visits the country until he starts talking to a German about his belief system, or begins to wonder why everybody is wearing the same colored pants with dyed red hair.

The original root of Germany and subsequent success, which Germany often prides itself, are the stories of individual people. Their belief system was often opposite to the current citizen. Germany’s culture was not founded on an intellectual, man-made philosophy and its collective followers; but derived through the Christian religion, trade, craftsmanship and a desire for higher learning during the Renaissance. No German citizen can take credit for what someone else achieved, but it becomes apparent when national pride can temporarily smooth over one’s own defeat and mediocrity. It is the mind-set of collectivism in which one’s troubles get carried away and merged into an image of power and control.

Among the famous German inventors was Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press in 1440 and revolutionized printing. Felix Hoffman invented the aspirin. More famous names are Karl Benz, Alois Alzheimer, Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin, Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludwig van Beethoven (just to name a few); all these minds and geniuses did not receive their inspiration from obedience to a collective desire or some egalitarian kolkhoz. They were driven to discover, invent, write and compose because of something other than their belief in their state-government and its quirky philosophy. The only proven function it is capable of producing is to suffocate man’s spirit through continual intervention in human affairs.

To keep the memories of old greatness, the old cultural landmarks are being preserved with the subsidies from the local and federal government. The argument can be made that state subsidies preserved the old buildings and historical landmarks and would be reasons to support its socialism for the greater good of the community. The argument can also be made that government funds to universities finance research and give everyone opportunities to receive free higher education. But what is rarely acknowledged is the detrimental effect of the state-controlled education where top minds head abroad to conduct research and get paid in the process. How much more could have been achieved through private enterprise to finance the preservation of historic buildings and churches or private schools? And the most horrible thought for many Germans would be the idea of allowing families to home-school their children. The federal government has made this option obsolete in their constitution, and elevated itself as the only guardian over the minds of children. Imprisonment awaits those who do not send their children to public schools.

The idea of deregulating the social network, legal support and protection of the state is a devastating thought to a German state-citizen, and would probably bring on a state of hyperventilation. After almost 4 or 5 generations of being brainwashed with socialist propaganda in schools and universities through intellectuals of the same ilk, the younger generation is not even close to understanding the reality of what the real world is like. Strikes and protests organized by labor unions will be an increasing occurrence in Germany over the next few years. France’s recent student revolt of a labor law allowing employers to fire younger workers during the first two years without an explicitly disclosed reason, may easily become a reality one day in Germany.

The idea that someone might actually have to pay for education, that a job is not a life-long guarantee with mediocre performance; nor that benefits are a worker’s right but a privilege, that doctors actual need to be paid for their services, and that nothing is free in life is an incomprehensible concept to a generation who for decades was brought up in the milieu of socialism. Their fears and paranoia are to be consoled through more and more laws protecting their entitlement. Even if it means lower standards of living by a declining income per capita and increasing unemployment and social hardship; they would rather support a perverted state-government than seek to free themselves from its clutches.

The overall GDP per capita in Germany is only 10 percent higher than the average EU25 income per capita, which equates out to roughly $27,000. Luxemburg, Ireland and Switzerland are three of the highest income countries in the European Union. With the stagnant economy, it may not be long until the German living standards compete for the lowest among the EU members. This is when the function of the political apparatus has achieved its purpose. Equality. It finally balanced out to the lowest denominator. Socialists can then congratulate themselves for a job well done.

Germans have forgotten the economic miracle of the early 1950′s under Ludwig Erhard that brought them economic growth and freedom, and made them a giant in the export market. Since the late 1960′s socialist mentality again used the democratic process to find itself in the perfect position of suffocating Germany’s social and economic structure. It successfully has killed all self-governing communities and centralized them into larger cities. The states pledge their allegiance to a glorious state government, if they want to get assistance and grants. It took the modernized state only 40 years to run down its economy; bankrupt its states and cities, only to a raise a new generation of entitled and melancholic people who continually bemoan their situation.

It is impossible to make any rational or factual arguments with anyone whose belief is in socialism and big government spending, especially when their beliefs are so strongly reinforced by popular intellectuals. It will most likely result in an emotionally heated disagreement that brings no results. Their most common defense to deflect a rational argument will be their insistent blame of capitalism or persons in their opposing political and social Weltanschauung. They will use the standard collection of popular socialist buzzwords as if they were coming straight out of Marx’s mouth.

The only way to come out of their denial is when their belief system fails and lets them down. The betrayal would let them see the deception of false promises that only brought them tragedy; a tragedy those older generations of Germans still remember. However, how history is taught in order not to forget the mistakes of the past has been the failure of state authorities in many Western nations. The belief system of a people-friendly philosophy will always be a strict observer of teaching history in the proper context. Reality is always reflected in an accurate recollection of the past and not altered by making heroes out of murderers; worshipping and glorifying a state-run institution that preaches protection from the reality of life.

This is where Germans failed. Their recent WWII history, although documented in great detail in movies, books, and articles, never explain the root cause of the successful support of Hitler’s agenda which democracy helped elect. It never taught the real threat of socialism that replaced their moral belief system; but adopted it again after the post-war years. Since the state is responsible for the education of the young, it would contradict itself by telling the truth, since its survival depends on the ignorance of the majority. Germany’s political engine elected to march down the road of political correctness in order to be redeemed in the eyes of the international community. It created a fictitious reality in which the intellectual thoughts of 140 years of Sozialismus are still the predominant force that reflects their warped worldview.

As Germany’s economic situation worsens with dissatisfied and increasingly pessimistic people in every Bundesland, its new coalition administration will make little difference to change the real cause of their problems. Their daily squabbles between the two right and left wing parties on how to best re-distribute their high taxes between the many different social programs, how to best smother a private business with more regulations and taxes or how to best regulate their health care system to death is an ongoing battle of the Bundestag.

A German reads and sees this nonsense daily in his morning paper and in the news media; enough to make him choke on his breakfast roll. Is he able to recognize that the monster he created with his belief system is only mirroring the lowest nature of man? Abandoning a belief system that bears no fruit or very little is having to admit defeat; a blow to any human that relied on bureaucracy to get him through life. Replacing it with a belief system that can actually bear fruit in abundance would be the first step in turning his current depression around.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

During my teenage years I used to study an atlas and maps from my geography class for fun. I enjoyed looking at all the different continents, finding rivers, mountains and cities, and trying to imagine what life would be like in these far away places. There was another girl in my class who was as nerdy as I was, and often we would sit in the garden under the old Trumpet tree behind the schoolhouse and thumb through our atlases.

So, I was a little familiar with the locations when my brother would tell me about his trips to Dubai, and Namibia, Malaysia and Tunisia. Or, when he made his trip to Scandinavia, South America or the Far East. Not only did I have a vision where it was located, but he also brought it alive with his impressions of the people and their food.

I remember my father also traveled occasionally out of the country. He once went to Egypt and brought me back a blouse. He told stories of visiting the pyramids and sitting on a camel. He specifically praised his taxi driver, who had invited him to his home where he met the man’s entire family. My dad seemed like a changed person. All his children and my mother sat around the table, while my dad had to tell us his entire experience about his trip. The more he told us of his trip, the more I wanted to see the world.

I know that many famous people have traveled the globe with adventurous tales and some have been captured in many epic poems. The Odyssey by Homer comes to mind. Then there was Sir Francis Drake and his travels during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Marco Polo and Lewis and Clark. Either a monarch or government funded their travels and expeditions, or they were traders and merchants and used their private funds for their travels.

However, I am more captivated of other people’s stories when they are being told in person. A very dear friend of mine grew up in the former Soviet Union. He has told me stories of growing up in a place that always seemed cold and gray to me. As different and difficult as life has been for them, he was able to find little sparks of hope in his family life that can somewhat resemble tradition and culture.

He began telling me about the Dachas that reminded me of the little garden houses in Germany. There, people could actually grow some vegetables, fruits and potatoes for their own use. People spent the summer months in these small cottages. As simple as life was on this small private space, it formed a life-long memory for my friend where he could remember good times.

Although I have never been to this place, I could strongly relate to what he shared with me. I was familiar with gardens, and sitting outside during the summer nights visiting with relatives. I knew of singing with raised glasses (even if it wasn’t Vodka but beer) and of grandmothers putting us to sleep. The foreign, cold and strange place now received a personal association. It was quite obvious that families all over the world look out for each other even under the most oppressed circumstances.

There is something very attractive and mysterious about men who have traveled and seen many places. It is very intoxicating to me when they describe the places that they have visited. They can bring their surroundings to life with their words without my ever having been there myself. They appear secure with who they are, don’t feel threatened nor overly anxious. I suppose that the foreign is no longer intimidating to them. They have battled their own fears privately and emerged as men, some even with endearing characteristics.

I noticed that knowledge in people creates a strikingly similar response in me. A man who has knowledge with understanding knows of many wonderful things to talk about. He skillfully can lead his listener into places that were often off limits to an immature mind. There, he can masterfully lift one’s thinking a notch or two, and search out new thoughts that only lead to new insights. And, most importantly, men with a vision and knowledge are never boring. They find humor under the most unusual circumstances and are not chronic whiners and complainers.

Going beyond the boundaries of one’s physical homeland can often be a scary and nerve-wrecking move. One encounters strange languages, different customs, unfamiliar terrain and sometimes a lot of inconveniences taken for granted back home. It’s as if a child had his apron strings cut in order for him to explore the unknown and forbidden lands of mythological giants and monsters. It can also be the beginning of unraveling lies and misconceptions he was admonished to believe his entire life.

These are people who make an effort to break away in order to discover the truth behind the myth. They are brave enough to encounter the locals and find out about their customs. They would show an interest about their history and their culture. They are not afraid to taste the local cuisine nor do they expect things to be like it is back home. If anything, their return will make them appreciate home with a new richness that wasn’t there before.

Traveling is a personal challenge that many men still want to experience. It’s the last frontier to break away from the old familiar ways and discover something new. The renewal generally brought progress to man. He returned with new technology, medicine, music, poetry and goods. Sometimes he discovered these things in another land, or he found it at the edge of his own universe — in his mind. But what he conquered and discovered; he owned his experience. This personal and very private knowing is something that could not ever be stolen and taken from him. It’s an eternal gift that would carry him through his entire life and shape his character.

Travelers left behind their legacy in their writings, charted maps and treasures they brought back. They were read, and inspired others to follow into their footsteps. Yet, no matter how much information was left for someone to follow, each man had to make his own way by overcoming his weaknesses and fears. They faced natural obstacles like the weather, cliffs and rivers, wild animals, hostile tribes and diseases; a challenge that my brother still encounters while sailing the ocean. Being faced with 45-knot wind in the middle of the night out on the Atlantic around the rocky Canary Islands made even my brother feel his vulnerability.

Obstacles are part of life. They can make us stronger, teach us a lesson or we outgrow them. No matter how often people like to remove them for us, they have no idea how they deny a man the challenge to succeed in his own right. That’s why men became sailors, enlisted in the military or made their fortune by traveling to a foreign land. They all wanted to prove to themselves that they could make it somehow out there in this world on their own among their peers, and make a name for themselves.

I never saw the world like I wanted to, but I have seen it in another way. I found pleasure in learning. For several years now I have made it my own challenge to learn about history, science, religion, culture and human behavior. I just go with the flow of what strikes my curiosity and piques my interest and read whenever I find some time. The pleasure comes in sharing this knowledge with a few selected friends, penning some of it in my articles and applying a lot of it in my everyday life.

I am fairly certain I will never set foot on a sail boat in the Atlantic Ocean. But, there are, after all, people like my brother. And, with a bottle of Chianti on my kitchen table my brother slowly rolls a cigarette with Dutch tobacco as he embarks on another sailor story. I am his only audience. I anxiously sit in my chair twirling my hair with one hand. My other arm is grabbing my legs, which are raised to my chin. And, with eager anticipation I soak in word by word the story of my brother, the sailorman, who takes me to the faraway places I most likely will never see in person.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

It is worthwhile to examine what groups the German population consists of: Native West and East Germans, third generation Turks, Russians, and various other non-native groups from as far as Pakistan, India Sri Lanka and Ghana Burqina Faso.

The deep trench between East and West is still clearly visible even after the collapse of the German "Democrapic Retublic" 17 years ago. The average unemployment of almost 12 percent does not give an accurate picture. In the eastern parts of Germany the average is above 20 percent. In the larger cities it is much worse. Many of these youths, who only experienced poverty and social welfare, have no chance of ever finding employment. Their parents are often unemployed and this is going to become a family tradition.

Political parties, of course, see an opportunity in these situation, especially the more pronouncedly socialist (Nazional- and otherwise) ones. A socialist ideology requires keeping people in denial. It prefers shifting blame to the evil capitalists who move jobs to Poland, Ukraine or Chechnya. It is therefore vital for the survival of the welfare state to continue its rhetoric of equality and social justice. A socialistic government can only thrive for as long as it has reason to scare the populace with the threat of globalization. It can punish those who are profitable by charging high taxes and regulate the labor market. That itself will pay for the "poor and tired masses" to find protection and safety under the eagle wing of the state.

Funny enough, white supremacist groups cash in where these people are on the lowest steps of the pecking order. In Eastern Germany, except for Berlin, Turkish people are much lesser represented, as the former GDR had imported preferably Vietnamese "Guest" laborers. These laborers were in a precarious situation after the Iron Curtain’s downfall. Vietnam is the only country worldwide where its own citizens need to apply for an immigration permit in order to return to their homeland. This was more often than not denied. The post-reunification immigration legislation intended to send immigrants back to Vietnam, but these plans failed. Anyone with the faintest intent to improve their situation left for good. Those who remained were the most disillusioned and uninspired and the worst educated.

The situation is only marginally better in the West. What the unemployment figures hide is revealed by the figures counting those on social welfare. These people neither have an education nor any chance of finding any sort of employment. They also have not ever entered the labor market. Especially in larger cities education is disastrous to say the least. The Grundschule (grammar school from grade one to four) can’t cope with the facts that up to 60 percent of the children don’t speak German as their first language nor do they speak it fluently. Their parents often do not speak any German at all, disregarding the fact that many of them, especially Turks, are second or third generations living in Germany.

Teachers are helpless and being confronted with a motley band of Russian, Turkish, Polish and various other origins. Many of these abused children, who are neglected not only by their parents but deprived of any sort of education by the school system, will never learn to read a complete sentence in German. That alone is an almost certainty to exclude them from the labor market right from the start.

A viable solution to this problem would be to provide teachers who share the native language of these children and teach classes consisting of members of one ethnical group only. Of course, especially the leftists would cry bloody murder, as this would be the end of their way to enforce multiculturalism. There is no lack of appropriate candidates. The basic necessity is to bring these pupils as close to the German language as possible with no or insufficient support of the parents — who more often than not depend on their children when it comes to dealing with German authorities. They have no clue how to decipher the simple task of reading an invoice of a utility company. This solution would be cost-neutral from the very start and would almost instantly turn out young, motivated people who are able to join the work force.

Even schools with a solid majority of native German-speaking pupils can’t cope with the problems as they are being disabled by various "reforms" from "New Math" to a reform of orthography, which replaces grown complications by invented ones, similar to Orwellian newspeak. A commission of bureaucrats had decided, that, of course in order to help the children, several things must be spelt differently. What was a "Stengel" is now a Stängel," a "Ballettänzerin" is now a "Balletttänzerin," "sogenannt" is now spelt "so genannt" no matter if that makes sense or not. The letter "ß" is practically abolished. Some people deliberately ignore this nonsense. Several great newspapers do the same, like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Others are obedient. The official intention was to help people with an invented mental disorder called "legastheny" to improve their reading and writing skills. Mainly due to lousy teaching, these people now make progress of sorts. They still continue to make spelling mistakes, but these misspellings are different from the previous ones. Wow! The purportedly unintended consequence is that young folks simply can’t understand writings in the traditional orthography.

If books are printed in various older fonts like Fraktur or even Sütterlin, they are completely lost. Each new reform keeps lowering the standard of education a little more than its predecessors. It is not exactly a wonder or miracle that approximately four million Germans are functional analphabets.

Each year German politicians are rallying about job training for youths, as if the power to create jobs comes from the almighty state. Every time they are surprised that tens of thousands of youths will not find their way into the labor market. During the 1960′s a nine-year Volksschule education was sufficient for most apprentice positions. These youths were able to read and write a mostly clear German. They knew the math that they could use for most professions such as it is used in carpentry, retail or technical drawing. Most youths today, especially boys, will flunk miserably. To be a boy with only a ninth grade education is the direct way into social welfare or a criminal’s career. This is less true with girls of the same education, since they can still find their way into the workforce. Regardless of women’s lib or not, they are still expected to work in menial jobs until they marry and start a mother’s career. There are welfare dynasties of third generation whose members never ever have worked a single day for money.

The largest minority in Germany are some two million Turkish people of the third and fourth generation with no intentions of getting naturalized. Only a fraction has assimilated. Many are forming a cultural exclave and keeping to themselves. Often brides are imported from Turkey where they were raised the more traditional way than the girls who have been born and raised in the German Diaspora. The rising strain between the German/Christian and Turkish/Muslim cultures does not exactly help to integrate them. These tensions are being enhanced by political hate-mongers on both sides. Eruptions like the recent riots in France are merely a question of time.

The second largest minority comes from the former Yugoslavia. Many of them are victims of the wars after the collapse of the Yugoslavian state. They are among the most integrated minorities in Germany. It was less difficult to flee Poland or Yugoslavia’s oppressive governments from behind the Iron Curtain during the 1970′s. East Germans trying to escape were dealt harsh treatments after their capture by authorities, if they weren’t shot. People had incentives to reach freedom and wanted to integrate into their new homeland. Many entered professional jobs and were able to speak German well. The rewards were freedom, financial independence and a new support system of friends and co-workers in their communities.

The third-largest minority comes from the former Soviet Union. Most of the elders are more or less of German ethnic origin and had to suffer badly from this fact during the rule of the communists. Some of them even speak a little German. Many of their children only speak Russian and are not at all inclined to integrate, not even to learn the language of their new homeland. There is a vast Russian-speaking minority in Germany, which resists all temptations to open itself to the German society. They have no inclination either to join the labor market. Social welfare is much easier. Entire family clans have moved to Germany after the rust holes have opened in the Iron Curtain with every member being granted an easy u20AC 50,000 loan, which can be repaid through social security payments. The persons over 65 years are entitled to collect without ever having contributed a Pfennig or a Kopeke.

The process to receive asylum status often takes years of bureaucracy. Before being accepted as entitled to receive asylum status, the applicants are "tolerated" living in barracks and are subject to extradition without previous notice. They are barred from all ways to earn their living and are practically without rights. Not until they are granted asylum status are they allowed to live indefinitely in Germany. As long as they "enjoy" asylum status, they strictly live off social welfare and food stamps. Some may even supplement their free income through drug trafficking, car theft and prostitution. Children do copy the behavior of their real parents. Welfare recipients and others benefiting from the state’s re-distribution will act similarly in their behavior — entitlement to freebees through immoral activity. "Vater Staat" has now bred a new wave of immigrants who want to be taken care of rather than be given the freedom to earn their living. A competitive labor market with its division of labors can easily absorb the right people who wish to work for money.

What once was a fine propaganda coup when only a few could collect the benefits has now turned into a boomerang since the borders are open. It has attracted a free-lunch mentality of immigrants. Many Germans are still buying into the protectionism of their federal government’s meddling in many aspects of their lives. This includes the environment, their employment, and education. They are now paying the price for their "unconditional" laws that were to protect their way of life and to prevent a repeat of their past. This newly developed multicultural society of fragmented language skills with a state-regulated labor market is now slowly crumbling an old culture under the burden of their own creation. Moral values and work ethics are gradually being assimilated into a political correct society. It sentences those willing to work to a life of unemployment and rewards those unwilling to work to a life-long welfare check.

People naturally tend to integrate into a society if they are given motivation through rewards. Germans could turn their immigration problem around with less labor regulation allowing more competitiveness on the open market. The types of services that foreigners can offer would reflect a pallet of new flavors ranging from new ethnic grocery stores to restaurants and deli shops. It would offer legitimate businesses that could mirror cities like Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York or even Hong Kong. Self-employed people tend to cater to the local population to better their investment. Language skills would improve out of necessity and parents have a reason for their children to learn and speak the local language. It would attract qualified immigrants whose profits contribute to a higher standard of living rather than destroy it through state-imposed interference with its charitable welfare existence. The common good would not be paid for by the taxpayers but furthered by the earnings of legitimate workers that contribute to their own support. The new generation of Germans can be of different ethnic origin, maintain their religious affiliation and still speak their native language. The source of their success lies within their shared language and their willingness to adopt ethics and values that are universal throughout the civilized world. Integration into society would then be voluntary and not of a mandatory nature that all too often reflects the dark years of Germany’s own history.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company. Ulrich Biele [send him mail] is a consultant in Munich, Germany.

Sabine Barnhart Archives

The inflamed hatred against Wal-Mart is attracting all the usual left-wing suspects, from women’s rights activists, environmentalists, as well as the academia elite. All groups are eager to join the madness. With the support of the political Left, the anti-Wal-Mart activists want to prevent the expansion of the retailer into their communities. Protesters want to enforce internal policy changes as well as interfere with the retailer’s merchandising.

The charges made against Wal-Mart by the "I know better than thou" crowd, include paying low wages to its employees, the company’s steadfast opposition to forming labor unions, environmental issues, not paying overtime and not stocking emergency contraception for women (the morning after pill) in their pharmacies and lack of providing adequate health insurance for its employees. One of the biggest complaints is that Wal-Mart destroys small businesses. The list goes on, and we can probably include that Wal-Mart is responsible that there is no world peace on earth as well as global warming and every hurricane from Andrew to Gamma.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer had a phenomenal growth over the past 20 years that currently generates annual sales of $250 billion. The fast expansion in the US that began during the mid-1980′s has now reached 3,700 US stores. When Wal-Mart began entering the urban markets it increased its sales area from a modest 40,000 square feet to over 100,000 square feet of space. During the mid-1990′s the company expanded abroad with 1,500 stores worldwide. It has locations in South America, Canada and in 1996 entered China. In 1998 Wal-Mart began opening stores in Germany and currently employs over 1.6 million associates worldwide. For the past 43 years the discount store chain provided low-priced goods to its customers, which by 2005 includes 138 million customers per week.

The company’s sheer size invites unwelcome attention, usually from those interested in a parasitic source of income. The meddling of busybodies in Wal-Mart’s private affairs has specifically become popular in blue states like Maryland, where unions and competitors are urging the state legislator to pass a bill that requires companies with over 10,000 employees to provide health insurance benefits. Anyone who understands a little bit about retail knows that there is a high turnover of employees. The majority of people employed in retail stores are part-time employees, such as students and teenagers who are often covered by their parents. Part-time workers require no health insurance. Many are married looking for a second income that already have insurance through their spouses, or are hired as seasonal help. The majority of full-time employees receive medical and dental benefits, with profit sharing and 401(k) plans as well as stock options. The company also offers life and disability insurances to its associates. Benefits offered by employers are, after all, a privilege in the first place, and not an entitlement. The employer, as the owner of his own business, has the right to see what’s best for his business. It is the private decision of the employer that determines how he wants to reward those who work for him.

California’s reliable proto-Marxist UC Berkley Labor Center wants to hold Wal-Mart responsible for $86 million a year in state aid. The research claims that Wal-Mart employees rely on food stamps, Medicare and subsidized housing in order to make a living. Should the Wal-Mart hater crowd in California succeed in forcing the company in raising its wages and providing more benefits to its employees, prices will raise to cover the extra cost.

The desire to up Wal-Mart’s cost-price structure completely ignores the fact that the majority of customers are lower income citizens. The higher cost will invariably be passed on to the customer. The retailer operates on a fixed and very low profit margin. A recent independent study completed by Global Insight found that Wal-Mart saved each American household on average $2,329 in 2004. The study also concluded that Wal-Mart also had a net positive economic impact in the form of a .9 percent increase in real wages and the creation of 210,000 jobs nationwide. The availability of goods and groceries at a low cost to poorer neighborhoods supplies an economic group that would otherwise not be able to afford the higher priced goods from Wal-Mart’s competitors.

While it is true that competition with and from Wal-Mart can result in similar but less efficient businesses closing their doors, it can save its average customers money that can be spent in other business and investments. The additional savings can be invested in retirement funds, a car payment or even an overdue vacation. Many towns had to reinvent on how to attract new business to replace those that closed.

East Texas is known for its many antique stores in its small towns. North Texas towns, such as Grapevine and Granbury, are popular for their specialized stores of arts and crafts. The empty buildings attracted new businesses like day spas, ice cream parlors, deli shops, pubs with live bands, and wine shops. It has attracted tourism from upscale clientele who like to settle in the formerly rural areas as urban metropolises spread out further and further. New restaurants have sprouted up as well as custom-made clothing stores. It requires creativity and ideas to attract a new and often wealthier customer base that supplies different kinds of goods and services not found at Wal-Mart.

The average savings of groceries can be 10 percent or more when comparing Wal-Mart’s cost to major grocery store chains. Many stores such as Kroger, Tom Thumb and Albertson’s require the customer to attain a card in order to receive the daily or weekly specials from their ads. If one does not have the card, the customer is out of luck and will have to pay the higher prices. Wal-Mart on the other hand, has no such gimmicks. The prices are available to all customers who will be able to benefit from their specials without the usage of their preferred customer card. Here the retail giant makes no privileged distinction toward its customers. Yet, Wal-Mart’s direct time- and often money-saving approach is the one being foolishly criticized.

Another factor that rubs socialists the wrong way is Wal-Mart management’s socially conservative leaning. It occasionally influences the type and marketing of the chain’s merchandise. It chooses not to sell sexually explicit magazines and books but maintains the rights to sell firearms. Both decisions can be seen as a moral issue. Wal-Mart pharmacies decided not to keep the morning after pill because of its low shelf life, which faces vociferous protest from the left-wing groups such as the Farmington State College student. They envision themselves entitled to having the product easily available. The protesters claim that the company harms women’s health. College students want to blow this issue into a woman’s issue that is entirely outside the responsibility of the company. More than likely a competitive pharmacy will carry the item in question.

This animosity comes from a long held and unfortunately popular belief that a business has no right in making its business decisions. According to their anti-business philosophy, private companies must conform to a "public interest" as defined by them. Surely the Wal-Mart protesters would only purchase items they decided to own without being coerced into making this decision. Yet, they ignore that free market is what truly defines this so-called private interest.

This is not to say that a business has no moral obligation. Any success of a business depends on its moral conduct not to steal and rob others of their property, not to murder for a profit nor to lie about its products. It shall not envy the profit of others, but achieve its success through honest competition. It has no other responsibilities and certainly has no "social responsibility" towards people whose own lifestyle can be considered morally corrupt. The company voluntarily gives $170 million a year to local communities and non-profit organizations.

This of course gets overlooked when self-anointed environmentalist like one Lindsay Robinson thinks that Wal-Mart destroys lush farmland that could provide sustenance for more people. Her claims are that it makes people more car-dependent and the drive to Wal-Mart raises the amount of greenhouse gases emitted and causing consumers to use more gas. By this logic, we would be back to using the sickle — no doubt, with the hammer attached — in no time. How does Robinson propose to feed 138 million people weekly?

Wal-Mart is a supplier who can feed and clothe the poor. The population growth in both urban and rural areas relies on an efficient supply line that brings the needed goods to the people at the best prices. In general, if people can afford a $900 flat-screen TV at Wal-Mart they can also afford a car and the required fuel bill. The majority of low-income families live better than a family did 100 years ago. These families possess items that were considered luxury items only 40 years ago. Does Lindsay Robinson propose to control all supplies and goods as done in the former USSR where people arrived at empty shelves after standing in line for several hours waiting? Population growth requires adequate supply of food to the people. The many choices to shop for goods at an affordable level have never been as available as it is today. Removing these choices from the consumer would create far more trouble for the urban population than Robinson’s concern of greenhouse emission.

The recent Kelo decision by the US Supreme Court to legalize the immoral behavior of removing privately owned property for bigger business has concerned many private citizens and small businesses. Wal-Mart has been known to be a willing partner with city officials in attaining some of their properties in that manner. Although some of the businesses only leased the property, city officials still offered Wal-Mart subsidies in favor of their business. Wal-Mart plays a part in this scheme but it is the cities themselves who play favoritism in their politics. Wal-Mart should closely examine their involvement, since freedom and wealth can only exist without the coercion of government action. Wal-Mart’s own future depends on exercising their freedom. As a private business, success largely depends on maintaining these values and morals.

A point that has not widely been discussed is the vendors and services that benefited and grew as Wal-Mart did business with them. Many services employed by Wal-Mart remained competitive and aggressive in their innovation of new technology. The company I work for has grown and moved abroad with Wal-Mart because of the service we offer to them. Not only did this growth create dedicated teams of roughly 600 of our own employees that service Wal-Mart exclusively, it also spurred on the development of our own technology and invention that was able to meet the growing needs of Wal-Mart. The newly developed technology kept us competitive in that we could generate even more business from other retailers with similar needs.

The accumulation of new capital gained through the association with Wal-Mart allows both small and larger businesses to upgrade their technology that can only improve business. That in turn only creates the demand to hire more employees creating new jobs. We currently employ over 40,000 people on three continents, because to a large part our growing success was jump started with Wal-Mart.

The hate campaign against Wal-Mart reflects the late Weimar Republic Nazi oratory when Hitler’s election slogans were directed against free economy in general and certain prosperous businesses — many of them Jewish owned — in particular. They were deemed “Non-German in their zeal for profit.” Never mind that their reason for being profitable was in their success in catering to the German citizens themselves. Hitler’s dubious grasp, his promises of greater Germany despite the NSDAP’s destructive economic planning do seem to resonate once again.

Today’s socialism still has contempt for those who produce for themselves and their target markets without paying at least a lip service to the “greater social good.” It completely disregards the benefits and freedom the market has brought to a growing population that can meet the basic needs of all people. Culture and progress only come through private ownership and freedom of choice. Neither socialism nor its destructive legalism can produce what the moral power of a free market can do.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

Special interest groups are continually trying to manipulate government to change the process that kept Americans independent from their government. The meddling began the erosion of a system that flourished on rewarding those people who gave their best efforts. Government interference in the job market and private business is creating a new type of people who believe that they are entitled to jobs for which they are not qualified. Others look at some jobs as being beneath their dignity and won’t accept lower paying jobs even if it pays the bills; at least temporarily. Then there are jobs that could be done by a capable person; yet laws and regulations, such as licensing, hold people back from working in their preferred field.

America has been "thrown a wrench" at its core function that made this country successful over any other Western nation. The encumbrance has created government dependent and entitled people all across the board. They demand fairness and equality, rather than base their qualifications on job performance. Employers are more and more losing rights to hire based on their preference and fire those who are unproductive. The process is observed under the watchful eye of the government collecting annual statistics from all employers. What it doesn’t show is that employers are still rewarding employees who give their best and see value in their long-time employees. That holds true for most private companies that have no labor unions.

I first became acquainted with American economics while attending a Catholic boarding school in a small town in southern Germany. It was my geography teacher discussing the "the land of opportunities" and its economic miracles with us pupils. It was 1977. Other than being the year of Jimmy Carter becoming President of the US, Elvis Presley’s death, and ABBA selling more records than the Beatles, it was also the year where I learned about America and her history and industries. As a high school student, I probably didn’t learn more than the average US student. What really struck me though was the idea that one could be a "dishwasher" one day and a "millionaire" the next. It was the idea that everyone had a chance of escaping despair through hard work even if it meant meager beginnings.

Several years later I found myself to be one of those US immigrants when I moved to Texas. Quite insecure with my school English, I didn’t think anybody would hire me. My minimal work experience in Germany looked very lonely on a rsum. An acquaintance finally suggested I should apply at a nearby department store. It was a national department store chain that has since gone out of business. And, to my amazement, I was hired on the spot making a whopping $4.15 an hour. I was thrilled and nervous at the same time.

I was given one of those mustard-colored smocks and was assigned to the menswear department. My supervisor was a short lady from Brooklyn, New York. She kind of took me under her wing, taking on a motherly role. Her Italian heritage definitely played that part well, and I liked her no-nonsense approach to her work. We got along well. For the first time I experienced America’s work ethics, long hours, the natural ethnic diversity and how Americans accepted me into their midst. I never felt discriminated against as long as I showed up for work and did my job. I did, because I was grateful for the opportunity to work. However, I won’t deny that I whined many times about my sore feet at the end of the day.

Listening to elevator music in a department store was the most mind-numbing part of my job. Hearing the same songs over and over again was a nauseating way of spending my time folding shirts and straightening pants. I was glad for every customer that interrupted the mundane with questions. It engaged my mind with actual conversation and thought. The only problem was the Texas accent. I had slight difficulties to say the least. Trying to understand the words along with my limited language skills often lead me into embarrassing moments.

Once, a man in his mid 30′s considered buying a t-shirt for his son. The t-shirts could be purchased with a horoscope sign at the front. As he looked over the choices, he mentioned to me that he wasn’t sure of his son’s sign. He only knew that he was born in September. I knew the sign but didn’t know the proper word in English. I made a quick translation in my mind, and proudly proclaimed to him "Sir, your son is a virgin!" The man turned to me with a somewhat shocking expression and answered, "I would hope so; he’s only 12." I later found out that the word I was looking for was "Virgo."

Another time I answered a phone call where a lady with a heavy Texas accent asked if we carried any "flash-waters." Already nervous from barely understanding her, I figured she meant something to the effect that cleaned toilet bowls. I ran into the housewares department and looked for all sorts of toilet bowl cleaners with the word "flash-waters." Bewildered I rushed back to the phone, and somewhat out of breath told the impatient voice that I couldn’t located any "flash-waters" but we do carry 2000 Flushes. I think the poor lady became quite upset with me, because I could not understand her. I thought the best way of fixing our communication problem was asking her to spell the word for me. It turned out she meant "fly swatters." The word itself was lost in her dialect. I think by that time I sat on the floor exhibiting a very bad hair day. I almost cried with relief that I hadn’t gone completely crazy yet.

I continued learning new words and about business transactions. There was a lady with big Texas hair who worked in payroll. Her name was Bonnie. She called everyone "hon’" or "babe" and I didn’t mind. She was the first one who explained the meaning of "bubba" to me. She liked chewing gum and spoke with a Southwestern accent. It was Bonnie who handed me my first earnings. It was passed out in cash stuffed in a small brown envelope. I looked at it for several minutes not quite believing that I was handed my wages in cash in a tiny envelope right down to the penny. I was not yet aware that automatic deposit was not a preferred option of paying wages in the US at that time.

Several employees were promoted to higher positions. They became a department head with more responsibility and higher pay. Some even were offered to participate in the management program and worked as assistants. I noticed that this happened quite frequently. We had two managers and two assistant managers, who I will call "Fred" and "Mikey." Both were young and ambitious. It was very obvious to me that they wanted to succeed. They were both hard working and friendly individuals. Fred once saved my life while unpacking a box of socks. A scorpion sneaked into the box somehow, and just when I was about to reach for another package, Fred grabbed my hand and yanked it away from the scorpion.

Mikey and Fred were a pair similar to the Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel comedy greats. They acted self-assured with a tendency to be awkward in their body movements at times. Both sort of looked funny in their white short-sleeve shirts and black ties that always seemed to end up with a food stain somehow. Mikey was short and round and Fred was tall and skinny. Often one of the guys’ shirttails hung over their pants or a shoelace was untied. I loved those guys. They helped me when I had to prepare for a big sale and assisted with heavy loads. Neither one of them had the Gary Cooper charm, but they both responded courteously to their customers and were forthcoming without having to point it out to them first. I guess that’s what made them management material even if they didn’t look their best at times.

After only working there for six months, the manager offered me a promotion to the housewares and hardware department. I was to be a merchandiser and my job description included re-ordering and stocking merchandise, setting up new displays and general housekeeping. The promotion included a pay raise of 35 cents, which brought my hourly wage to $4.50 an hour. I couldn’t believe that I was actually offered a promotion. According to my brief interview, they were happy with my job performance. My move to the new department included new challenges with a pay raise.

My new job consisted of a lot more physical labor than in my previous position. I had to bring down merchandise from our upstairs warehouse, place it on a conveyor belt and back on a cart to haul it to the sales floor. It was a chore that I repeated many times over in one day. My two part-time assistants were high school kids. They came in after school or in the evenings. I remember talking to them about school and how strange it was that so many kids work while attending school. The kids really impressed me. They wanted to pay off their cars or make some extra spending money.

I worked in the department store for six more months before the chain closed down its doors. I don’t think I would have continued in my position, but it did give me the boost that I needed to prove myself capable of working in a foreign country. Although I was a young immigrant, spoke with a strange accent and misunderstood many phrases, Americans accepted me. My fellow workers did not ever ridicule me for being different.

There was a keen interest in people wanting to know more about Germany and what it was like living there. Many had German ancestors and were interested in my country and our customs. I had to explain several times though that I did not escape to come to the US. I actually came from democratic West Germany and not communist East Germany. Some people had Germany confused with being a communist country where people were kept inside by their police and border guards.

After my job ended, I found another entry position with similar pay that allowed me to travel all over the Southwest. I am still with the same company and worked myself into new positions until I ended up working for the executives in our Southwest division. With each promotion I learned something new from the people I worked with or worked for. Each time I was very thankful that I was given a new opportunity to improve my skills.

I will not ever forget my first American job. It was an entirely new experience that introduced me to the original American ideal of making a living even if it meant washing dishes or mopping floors or folding pants. I was just glad I was hired. I knew that I was overqualified according to the education I received in Germany, but I didn’t care. The work was hard, and for the first time I had to work on Saturdays and Sundays. A very unusual work schedule, indeed, for a young European who never had to work on weekends.

But I was given a chance, an opportunity, to establish my own work ethics and to challenge myself despite the language barriers and cultural obstacles. I wanted to be independent and contribute to my existence here. My first job gave me that chance and it showed me my weaknesses as well as my strengths. There were many times when I wanted to give up, because of a bad day. I also knew I wasn’t a quitter.

Of course there are people that will say it was easier for me, because I was young, blonde, female and white. Sure, that can be an initial impulse to hire someone depending who is in charge of the hiring. However, in all of my experience, girls hired only for their appearance had no staying power. People that stay on their jobs or have an accomplished career are usually reliable, accountable, and responsible with integrity. They are willing to learn and adapt to changes. Even the most challenging supervisors or managers can be a catalyst for personal and professional growth. I don’t think that special consideration for gender, race or a license can teach anyone these fundamental work ethics that should be part of our human character.

In all of my working life, I’ve seen that reward comes to those who don’t mind doing minimal work at first. They also don’t look down on those who do. Many people started at entry-level positions, and most don’t forget their roots. Those who don’t respect this simple guideline often want to create problems or end up quitting. It is also my experience that there are people who look for blame in their supervisors or employers. Most issues can be resolved if everyone is doing the job they were hired to do. Nobody is forcing anyone to stay.

Even when unfortunate circumstances strike and one loses a job, life can often lead one into a better place by finding a different field all together with a new success story. The options have always existed, and several of my friends have been down this road that actually made life better for them. It is often complacency and fear of change that holds a person back. What I admire in these people is that they changed their circumstance and made something out of themselves despite the obstacles. They didn’t ask for government handouts to get them through their transition period. They made it with the support of their family or friends, and often on their own.

Everyone is given opportunities in life. Sometimes the breaks may not come right away depending how one views success. But as long as people are willing to pursue their dreams through their willingness to work, even if it is at first a low-paying job, it can keep one independent and not under the dependency of the state. The US is still one of the richest nations in the world. America can maintain that status if people would adapt the attitude of the early US immigrants. It would keep private citizens in charge of their destiny, and reduce the dependency of the state. It is the independence of a private citizen that government fears most. An independent citizen can deflate state power and crush its false parental rights. Something the framers of the Constitution knew very well.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

He also became disturbed, when his neighbor did better than him. It turned his actions into a bloody and painful history of legalities and wars. The ancient stories teach about human nature and how to nurture it into a good life. They also show repeated patterns of disasters if man refuses to be obedient to simple prohibitions. In the book of Genesis God executed his first judgment over Adam and Eve by banishing them from the Garden of Eden. Man and woman were guilty as charged by eating from the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and committed the first sin. Sin cannot co-exist with perfect order and had to be expelled. Their form of discipline was to leave the comfort of paradise. They had to enter the wilderness where man was to discover their moral compass again through personal trials and rewards.

The biblical story of Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve, tells of the first act of murder blotting the earth with innocent human blood. Cain killed his brother Abel over envy. Cain’s offer of sacrifice to God was less pleasing than his brother’s and was rejected. Able gave his best while Cain held back. He kept the best for himself and only offered the mediocre results of his labor. Abel’s innocent death left the descendents of Cain to wander the earth. They still search for happiness and continually encounter sin through repeated wrongful behaviors that bring feelings of guilt and rejection.

Feelings of guilt keep man in a state of perpetual anxiety that requires relief. These feelings can settle into a deep depression if not relieved. Feelings of rejections inflate his perception of reality. He constantly tries to alter it by constraining his environment down to his level. It gives him control over fears. Tribes and cultures throughout history began the practice of finding an innocent human or animal sacrifice to relieve him from guilt and to be accepted by his gods. A man’s guilt without redemption could not bring mercy. A man’s offer of his innocence (guilt free) is still the best part of himself. It is the only part that becomes acceptable to produce a good life and a bountiful harvest. People and society were, and still are, manipulated if these feelings are left on their own. They become trump card in the game of politics and relationships.

The Jewish religion had stopped the pagan practice of innocent human sacrifices. The Christian religion teaches salvation through the ultimate spotless sacrifice of Jesus Christ and puts an end to all sacrifices. However, the wisdom of these teachings cease and are forgotten when people’s desire for justice is continually being controlled by Cain’s envy. It has killed many innocent people in his bloody battle to control guilt and rejection.

Guilt and rejections are still personal hurdles that any of us must deal with at one time or another regardless if one is religious or not. Most of us know guilt brought on by our own doing. All of us know rejection or have rejected another. There is an inherent desire within each human being of wanting to be disciplined and corrected in order to relieve us from guilt. Children are very receptive to discipline, because the correction of their parents can give them a sense of direction. Appropriate guilt of one’s own actions is the right balance that allows for self-examination and contemplation to improve behavior. It is followed with remorse, and, a price to pay for the wrongful act (redemption).

Continual rejection by others also demands an intellectual understanding that can be the first step in learning about one’s self through introspection. Knowing and observing how we think and react to our own feelings are keys that can unlock doors to our intellect and wisdom. Feelings are part of the human make-up and serve as guideposts that only point to our own state of being. They can let us know what needs to be adjusted, fine-tuned or simply enjoyed. Feelings only serve as messengers that can lead us out of our self-absorbed emotional life into wholeness that includes our mind and spirit. Feelings are neither good nor bad; they just are. They require, however, to be restrained through rational reasoning before they bring us down with impulsive reactions that harm.

Great thinkers and philosophers emerged through the ages that tried solving man’s violent and deathly history that he created with his bloodthirsty practices. Everyone searched for a way back to Eden. Some arrived back to the original teachings of ancient biblical wisdom that giving the best part of one self is always pleasing in the sight of God. It can be brought out in the form of labor, learning, as well as personal acceptance of responsibility and kindness to one another. It also requires the adaptation of a moral law to keep his community in order. This gives him a contract to protect his possession and a right to defend that what he paid for.

Others have rejected it completely and proposed their personal irrational reasoning. Their powerful message rejects the ancient truth. It requires very little thinking and discipline from their disciples. It only requires that their feeling of guilt can be temporarily soothed by absolving guilt through blame and by approving their current perception of their world image as reality (which may change again with another feeling). It totally supports the notion that not giving your best justifies Abel’s death. Envy and self-pity support their theories. It has enslaved entire nations in losing their freedom with their quest for social justice.

Karl Marx empowered the working class in Western Europe by placing guilt on owners of the means of production during the 19th Century. His envy over the reward that capitalism offered hard-working individuals (giving their best), did not sit well with him. In his view, he felt that the new Abel of modern times deserved Cain’s judgment. Social justice was his answer and remedy that would fix his world. He held up the label of "exploiters" to a receptive working class, who forfeited their rights of free employment. Labor unions were created to enforce regulations on their employers in exchange for security. He was also able to play on the feelings of rejection to the lower economic class by proposing equal distribution of wealth between the poor and the rich. His message of equal distribution of wealth pulled the strings in those who felt rejected and left out. Like Cain, his followers wanted to kill Abel all over again. The result of his philosophy spread into Eastern Europe that was followed with the Bolshevik Revolution and Stalin’s regime. The total death toll will never be known. It’s estimated that during 1924—1954 roughly 51 million innocent people died through war, extermination, and starvation in Russia. All this in the name of equality, security and social justice creating a state that was to resemble Eden at its final stage. It never happened. In 1989 the Soviet Union crumbled apart. It returned the natural boundaries of original states that were forcefully kept together for 60 years.

The First and Second World War have been the most devastating causes of guilt man has ever imposed on himself. Each time Germany was given the verdict of "guilty." During World War I it had the blood of 6.5 million civilians on her hands. During the Second World War the death toll of civilians rose to 30 million globally. This is not even including the military casualties. Approximately 760,000 Germans died of starvation during 1914—1918. The guilty verdict of the First World War did not sit well with an already rejected and beaten populace.

The US stock market crash in 1929 required foreign loans to be repaid. After a chain of related events, this raised Germany’s unemployment rate to 4 million by 1930. Hitler’s campaign promised tax cuts and price control, defeat of communism and distribution of wealth. He criticized profits made by businesses and even promised to crush the power of the labor unions. His speeches were never clear on how he intended to accomplish this great task. The rejection of the harsh Treaty of Versailles was Hitler’s main campaign theme and helped him turn guilt into aggression.

Although similar in their roots of ideology, competing communism was greatly despised by National Socialism. Its evil twin, the Communist Party, had one of the strongest representations in the Weimar Republic along with the Social Democratic Party. Hitler’s National Socialist Worker’s Party (NSDAP) finally succeeded in gaining parliamentary majority in 1933. Violent tactics as exhibited by the Sturmabteilung (SA) Brownshirts against socialists and communists did not sit well with the people who were hesitant in electing his party into parliament. Hitler found new ways to manipulate the population through fear and anxiety by claiming that a Bolshevik revolution was planned for Germany. This bold move paved his way to the chancellor position with the support of the industrialist who persuaded Paul von Hindenburg to accept.

A shameless in audacity propaganda campaign  kept even the doubting masses on the side of the new state. The Nazi Party, now in full control of the government, only needed to find a sacrificial lamb to take the brunt of their hate. Such lamb first came in a convenient form of communism. It was further twisted to fit the basic Nazi racial ideology of virulent anti-Semitism.  From that point on, Judaism and communism became inseparable from one another in the official diatribes of the Nazi propaganda apparatus. A “Jew-Bolshevik” became an indistinguishable amalgam of ethnicity, religion and ideology that targeted all Jewish communities simultaneously regardless of the actual individual beliefs. Given that amalgam, a Jew was found then to be guilty of at least one of the three accusations, most often the one that could not be avoided — being born to the wrong parents.  Having been made a criminal from birth, the entire people then became a subject of an organized persecution by the state, which outlawed their right to exist. Gypsies awaited the same fate. The need to avenge blood for blood had made its entrance into the 20th Century. Man continued his obsessive-compulsive behavior to relieve his anxiety brought on by guilt by finding human sacrifices to pay for sin.

Germany’s brief spiritual, economic and technological revival fueled by her powerful war machine ended with the death of her Fhrer in 1945. His fear of rejection and falling into the hands of justice was too much for him to bear. He never uttered one word of admittance of guilt for his actions. Hitler felt that the German people should go down with him; after all, he proclaimed, they deserved it. He felt no remorse over his actions nor did he care what happened to the German population after the fall of his Reich. Albert Speer, Minister of Armament, was given the orders of scorched earth to destroy all infrastructures. Speer, whose architecture was greatly admired by Hitler (his own art was rejected), disobeyed orders to blow up factories, bridges and buildings all over Germany. He wanted to spare civilians from a total loss. Ironically, the allied bombings took care of that in selected cities throughout Germany during the last six months of the war, killing thousands of civilians. Hitler shot himself hidden away in the depth of his bunker while Berlin and the rest of his country burned to the ground

The victors of WWII debated over how to execute justice. A great number of the German military personnel and the top Nazi party officials, along with the SS/Gestapo leaders, were put on trial to face the post-war tribunals all across Europe. An attempt by a victorious party to use law and order to highlight the barbarity of the losers, if not the victors themselves, were the first attempts by a military tribunal to charge individuals who knowingly committed crimes. Yet, the burden of retribution to repay the loss to the victims and survivors was still left with the population whose taxes also financed the war efforts in the first place.

Old guilt and shame hid in the hearts of people who turned all of their energy into rebuilding their lives and economy. Trying to put the miserable years of war and starvation behind them, Germans turned their now smaller nation into a powerful economy through newly found freedom with hard work. People possessed a sense of pride in their organizational skills, craftsmanship and performance for excellence. It turned their naturally gifted talents into a new purpose and away from the Prussian military image. Germans wanted to show the world that they had more to offer than goose-stepping while greeting the Fhrer in Roman fashion. Germans experienced a taste of freedom for the first time.

After 1945 the balance of powers was divided by the Iron Curtain cutting a clear line between Democracy in the west and totalitarian regimes in the east. Yet, no political arrangements could guard against the mutation of perverted ideologies that thrive on guilt and rejection. They have survived in the form of socialism and found support both in Europe and the US. The scales of Justice continue to tip to her left. Justice is to be objective, as the blindfold in her image suggests. Yet, her sword in her right hand cannot strike real justice when guilt is deliberately applied to those that are innocent. Abel did not commit his parents’ sin; but died in the hands of his brother’s envy. The tragedy of this lesson only continues when prohibited behaviors are repeated.

Biased judges, that favor the philosophy of the affirmation crowd, only pervert justice when siding with them in their verdicts. These judges live by a lukewarm philosophy, indeed, for it does not serve truth. The accusations of those who feel rejected and victimized demand laws that affirm their temporary and feeble perception of their circumstances. Her scales can only balance out with truth that judges an actual offense of a law committed by an individual. This truth is reflected in laws that have proven to be true over very long periods of time. The consequences of disregarding these laws can be found in the tragic stories of human history. The wars of the 20th Century still continue in the legal court system and is known as the culture war.

The most powerful tool in this new type of warfare is the media. It can create images and stories that require little thinking but are appealing to the feelings of her viewers and readers. The media has perfected what communist Russia started and Joseph Goebbels perfected during the Nazi era. Goebbels was a writer of novels, poems and plays whose work was rejected by publishing companies. Berliner Tagblatt, a local newspaper, also rejected him as a reporter. Goebbels became instrumental in controlling the propaganda against the allies and against the Jews, who he blamed for his rejection. Today’s opponents that battle the right hand of justice are those who use the media as a mouthpiece for their supposedly good intentions. They demand political actions through legal proceedings to social and economic issues by blaming others groups that are not directly responsible for their circumstances. The legalized spirit of inappropriate guilt has settled over the free world with a vengeance and birthed the new term of political correctness.

It is both ironic and sad that democracy, in whose name the free world spilled her blood, enabled political correctness. The process has removed more individual freedom from its US citizens than ever before. It actually resulted in a sharp rise in criminal activities and sentenced many of the previously able to a life of welfare checks and food stamps. If at all, it took away incentives to use one’s talents, whatever they may be, to climb out of poverty and the despair. It unleashed a never-ending cycle where behavior must be controlled by unproven laws that are being imposed on all citizens who were not guilty of the charges. America’s racial divisions as well as the gender war can all be traced back to guilt and rejection. It now demands a new sacrifice, liberty, for actions not committed by anyone in particular. The rejected Cain of today’s culture gets easily offended when truth tries to reason with him. Rather than give the best of himself, he demands fairness with his emotionally charged sense of justice. Mediocrity remains his calling card and reflects in modern society’s lowered standards of expectations.

Even as Europe recovered from Hitler’s attempt to establish Großdeutschland, it never really revived a healthy spiritual and philosophical era. Although, in the years following WWII, the state’s interference in the economy was fairly low, it never discarded its belief in a general socialist philosophy that existed since the 19th Century. It continues to hold on to its vision of equality that true social justice can only exist with redistribution of wealth. The EU 15-member parliament in Brussels is designed to improve the quality of life for the citizens for its members by reducing the economic gap between the countries. The strategies will be challenging, especially if 90% of the population in the 10 newest members have a per capita GDP less than 75% of the EU average.

The EU has a relatively poor performance over the past 10 years and heavily focuses on conserving energy and environmental friendly enforcements. This attitude reflects in people’s work ethics and their productivity. An average 6-week vacation, paid sick leave and doctor prescribed spas retreats are costly entitlements that workers have enjoyed and misused for years. Meanwhile, many of the new EU members, especially in the Baltic Sea region, have embraced capitalism with great vigor and are applying the pioneering spirit of early capitalism. One can’t help but wonder if the new EU members will soon create a redevelopment plan for the ailing economies of Germany and France.

European culture also faces the challenges of Asian and African immigration that are escaping the tyrannies and abject poverty of their countries. Outwardly, the Europeans embrace tolerance for the newcomers but this tolerance is slowly destroying the grand old heritage of these legendary nations. The philosophy of social justice holds the state responsible to help the tired, poor and huddled masses. Yet, reality plays out differently. Europe already has to deal with frequent labor strikes, high unemployment, high taxes and a shrinking indigenous population. Supporting an influx of immigrant workers has only complicated matters when the support comes through their social network.

The brave spirit of early US immigrants also followed a desire for a new life. They found it in the frontiers of a new land. The state-sponsored welfare did not exist. People were willing and determined to take great risks in pursuing their own happiness without any state assistance. A free nation of individuals produced wealth and progress with a "just (or free-market derived) social justice" until the Great Depression changed America’s politics.

Germany is a nation that is still influenced by this old guilt from her past. The economy has been driven down with welfare benefits and labor restrictions. Since 1989 it had to pay for an expensive reunification to former East Germany. The increased involvement of the state has legislated enough tolerance and regulations that created one burden after another to eventually move the economy to a standstill. It has made every effort in complying with extensive EU regulations that turned their country into one big bureaucracy. People feel more entitled than wanting to give their best. The falling rate of marriages and births is a sure sign of holding back the best. It can no longer support their aging population. The cultural decay is only enabled by an ignorant socialistic parliament that sits on the guilt of its own past. The irony escapes the politicians and the media. Socialism is still the religion and the culprit that slowly runs a country into the ground. The nation is manipulated by labor unions and price control. Millions of euros are spent annually in farm and energy subsidies only costing the taxpayers. Sadly, there still exists a great dislike for those who profit and succeed in business. Hitler was able to use the Bolshevik Revolution as a threat. Now left-wing politicians are using the "evils" of capitalism as a threat to their security. The opposition Christian Democratic Union is too afraid to make a move whose political philosophy is still socialism.

The German Renaissance of the Middle Ages has given the world original thinkers, artists and inventors that have revolutionized society. Germany can only celebrate them but new talents go abroad to develop their talents as well as their profitable businesses. Support for welfare doesn’t really produce a love for liberty and original thought. Germany’s unemployment rate of 5 million shows that much. The brief post-war period of the 1950′s has given Germany the freedom to thrive economically. It has produced original innovation. Selling manufactured goods on the world market made Germany one of the top leading exporters. Craftsmanship of products branded with "Made in Germany" translated to quality.

Names like BMW, Porsche, Siemens, Bayer, Mercedes Benz are still known as the best of the best. Germany’s healthy export contributed to the country’s fast growing success. It includes shipbuilding, iron and steel production, machine tools as well as the precision machinery, optics and pharmaceuticals. However, Germany’s muse that inspired her poets, musicians and painters and thinkers lies frozen in fear. She’s still waiting to be liberated along with her beaten entrepreneur spirit. State education has driven down Germany’s excellence of higher learning into mediocre performance. An international PISA study conducted in 2000 put German schools on a very low performance level compared to other countries.

Today’s Cain still challenges those that produce and give their best. He continually wants to lower the standards with mediocre performances. Rather than bring up his own level of accomplishments, he discards the inputs — effort, investment, and determination — that are needed for success. In his new and better world he wants to avoid rejection and apply guilt wrongfully using the power of the state to lower standards. The blindness of his purely emotional sense of justice drains people from being motivated to give their best. His actions have strengthened governments into power-hungry state-run institutions that swallow up a man’s rightful earnings to be sacrificed for a collective, for which he is not responsible. History shows that legalization of fabricated charges and affirmative-based laws will bring a country down in every aspect. It drains it of energy and life. Freedom is still based on admitting one’s own guilt and search for a fuller life even after rejection. It brings the vibrant and flourishing spirit of the pioneers that motivates to give the best to produce the best. The success that comes with it belongs to achievers who refuse to buy into mediocrity.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

"Mom, you have to look up the Constitution and the Bill of Rights online for me. My teacher wants us to read it over, because we are talking about it in class. You know tomorrow is Constitution Day!"

I became curious as to what she knew about it so far. We already talked about the Revolutionary War a little. So, I started questioning her. "Tell me, what does the Constitution represent? Did your teacher discuss this with you?"

"Yeah, it means that we have freedom," she answered.

"That’s how it was supposed to operate," I said. "But tell me, what does freedom mean to you?"

She paused briefly and concentrated on her answer. I could almost see her thoughts and then she promptly answered with "Well, it means that you are free to do and say what you want," and continued with an afterthought, "but not really; because you can’t just go out and kill someone either. That’s not right. It’s actually a bad thing to do so."

This was getting interesting. I tried to come up with a question to make her think more about that subject. "That’s true. What prevents people from going out and do such a terrible thing?" I wanted to see if she could arrive at the cornerstones that stop people from an unruly lifestyle.

"Hmmmm….well, it’s against the law to murder." She looked at me with her big curious eyes to see if I had more questions for her to answer. Then she remembered and said, "we also talked about the Bill of Rights; and there are 10 of them, and they start with the letter A."

"You mean amendments?" I asked.

"Yes, those." She agreed.

"What else has ten laws that tell us basic rules on what not to do?" I asked her knowing she should be able to answer that.

"You mean the Ten Commandments?" she asked.

"Yes, those, and how do you know that when you disobey one of those, you’ve done wrong?" I wanted to know.

She motioned to her chest and padded it lightly saying "I feel it here. It makes me feel bad."

I was moved by her honest display and said, "Remember the time you told me you had done your homework, but you didn’t? That night you came to my room after I already put you to bed and confessed that you lied to me. Now, what made you decide to get up and come tell me that you lied about your homework?"

She posed herself and with a clear conscience answered, "I couldn’t sleep and I really felt bad that I lied to you. I got up and wanted to tell you and it made me feel better."

"Right, you felt convicted by your decision to lie and recognized that it was wrong. So, these laws must already be known in people to know the difference between right and wrong. Do you think that lots of laws are good or just a few?" I asked her.

She didn’t have to think about answering that one. Quickly she warned, "I don’t think a lot of laws are very good. How can anyone remember all of them? It can get very confusing. But if you only have a few and I already know them, then that is a lot easier to remember."

I quickly wanted to lead her to the next step and said, "Now, you told me you felt better after you confessed that you lied to me, right? And then I told you that it would be your responsibility to tell your teacher. You had to find out if you could make up your homework. You had to handle this situation yourself. I also remember that you took care of this matter alone, and came home quite proudly telling me how well it all turned out. You were actually very pleased with yourself and accepted the results. Actually, you seemed quite happy."

I continued and said, "Do you see how staying within the boundaries of a few laws can keep everyone free? You saw that by your own free will how you chose a right way to correct your offense. Some nations have over 400 pages of laws in their constitutions, which you already said could be very confusing. And a lot of new laws that were added kind of take away the natural sense of conviction that you felt when you lied, because some people want to influence the behavior of others through force. They don’t realize the harm they really cause to each other. And what do a lot of these confusing laws then accomplish?" I asked her.

She had to think about it for a while and then said, "It takes away our freedom of free will."

"That’s correct, because it removes the accountability that all of us must know when we crossed a law. Just like you had to be brave and courageous to fess up to your mistake, so everyone else has to be given that opportunity to see his wrong ways, because one really doesn’t get rewarded with a lot of happiness if one continues to do wrong. People do get punished when they lie, steal and murder." I had to pause here for a second. I made a mental note that too many people actually get away with that on the behalf of those who brought legal claim that people’s lack of good upbringing excuses them from justice. Not only that, many people honestly believe their government stands above these laws. Their sense of entitlement creates such a heavy burden for a nation whose government is expected to please everyone equally. It is an impossible task even for a private individual to uphold. I personally don’t engage in building life-line relationships with dishonest people.

I caught my train of thought again and continued, "The Constitution represents — or is supposed to protect — the supreme laws of the land and just outlines under what kind government these basic laws are to be protected. See, no government can really create or destroy these laws. It can only protect it. So very smart and wise people came together and agreed upon a framework on how to establish a government that is to protect it through checks and balances that keeps it from getting into everyone’s private business."

My daughter was chewing on her last chicken strip as we came to the end of our conversation. I, too, thought of all the positive rights that have cluttered up the law books in past 60 years. They have not really benefited the nation. All I could see was a greater rift between man and woman and more confusion. Relationships in themselves have become complicated, since people no longer trust each other, prefer to blame others rather than look at their own actions. In the end people are wrapped in cobwebs. Everyone is searching for a way out through their government who creates the cobweb in the first place by their own votes. And then they wonder why the big, bad spider is coming for its prey.

I still had my daughter’s attention but left it at that. I decided that she should be left with the idea that regardless how abused this document has become; its original intention was to erect it on a fundamental truth that brought prosperity to a new nation. Children should first know what works well and what is right, rather than be introduced to all the wrongs of life. She is beginning to see reality as she grows into her own life. I certainly won’t push it on her.

"You’re a pretty smart girl," I told her. "I think we should talk about that again next week when you go over it in school."

"Yeah, now can we go to the bookstore and look for a poetry book?" she smiled.

Later that night I looked up the US Constitution online. Again I was kind of overcome with the way history has turned course that molded its government into such a complicated centralized institution in which people find their identity and personal protection. And then I looked at the first paragraph that starts with "We the People of the United States" and it showed again that it is people themselves who neglect it. They have become immune to what children sense naturally when convicted of wrongs — remorse of their action, accountability for their deeds, and responsibility to handle life to the best of their abilities, and, most of all, a trust in God’s provision to protect life. The process teaches how to trust in justice and how to receive mercy. Every family has their own private set of rules, but none can escape the overall obligation to respect a moral law that serves the tranquility of the general welfare of family and community. It’s the cornerstone of a free society.

I turned off my computer and looked at my daughter, who slept on my bed. I kissed her cheeks and hugged her softly. I thought how privileged we both have been tonight by learning from each other. For now, we still had the freedom of privacy to discuss its very topic.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

People passed on the need for these relationships from one generation to another. It’s as if these bonds were a part of our material inheritance. The way people remember this truth is captured in stories of our ancestors. Every family, city and nation has a story to tell on how history started for them. It speaks of people who arrived at places and began building a new life by trusting in these relationships. I am often reminded of this way of life when I recall the few years that I lived with my grandparents in a small Bavarian village in Germany. It was a simple life where reality was reflected in how people associated with each other in their daily living.

I trusted these relationships, because there was neither crime nor poverty where I lived, and I felt protected. I remember one particular day when heavy rain pounded against the windows of the old school house. A severe thunderstorm had moved into the valley and settled over our village. Barely awake from my afternoon nap, I sat in my chair at a small table and stared out the window.  Fräulein Bertel, our elderly Kindergarten teacher, desperately tried to divert our attention from the storm by reading a story out of her big black bible.

As is typical for a 5-year-old child, I was scared. I kept looking through the tall arched windows, watching as the weather raged outside. We referred to these rains as Wolkenbruch — literarily meaning the breaking of a cloud. I often overheard grown-ups discuss the troubles these storms could bring for our town. The heavy rains cause the creek to swell with water and spill over its banks. This would flood the barns and cellars of nearby farms.

I could hear men shouting in the street, which made me wonder if there were problems. The volunteer fire department was right next to the old school house. The garage stored the pumps to put out the fires and the equipment to pump water out of flooded cellars. I have often watched these men when they performed their drill in case of a fire. They used the water from the creek and performed their exercises with a great sense of urgency. They knew their town depended on their readiness.

The creek contained a small mechanical dam to maintain an adequate water level in case of a fire. Farmer Kunner, an old bachelor whose humble farm was adjacent to the creek, was in charge of the mechanical levee. He often got drenched in his nightshirt and galoshes when a storm came through during the night to raise the levee. He was a jolly fellow with a pleasant sense of humor who often stopped by my grandparents’ tavern for a beer to tell his stories. I always remember him as the man with the ox cart and keeper of the dam.

Mostly the men handled emergencies that happened during the middle of the night. It could be anything from a flood or a small fire to the birthing of a calf. Men were following up with their chain of command who to contact by knocking on the door of every house if there was a flood. I would wake up sometimes, because I could hear their shouting. The storms scared me, but knowing that these men were there to handle whatever needed to be done gave me a sense of safety. Farmer Kunner’s stories contained at least that much information and not quite without a sense of pride. They were able to handle their problems on their own.

Men had a purpose to protect their homes and families, since it was expected of them to be responsible. No person took advantage of someone else when a crisis came upon a town. Rather than plunder and rape, men actually went to work and organized. In the 1960′s most cities and towns were still under self-administration. The fire department was made up of every available man in town; volunteers who were able to do the work. Those who could not volunteer because of their jobs were asked to pay an annual minor fee. The elders were exempt from fees.

Bad weather conditions can also threaten the process of the harvest. Timing is everything in agriculture. People pulled together to bring in the harvest if bad weather was on the horizon. If a neighbor had a better threshing machine, he would offer to thresh a neighbor’s field to speed up the chore. The favor was always returned as labor to one another.

The community also owned the surrounding forest. Each landowner had a rightful ownership to the lumber depending on how much he originally purchased. My grandfather also had part ownership that my great-grandfather probably purchased years ago. Even there the men would help each other out so each owner can receive their purchased share of the wood. People depended on each other for cutting down the trees and preparing the lumber. The division of labor was based on the tools and skills that each owner was able to invest in the project. Nowadays owners can pay others to do the job for them. During my grandfather’s days, it was labor in exchange for labor.

As I watched the water run down the windows from where I sat, I wondered how I would get home in this weather. The voice of the teacher drifted further and further into the background. I was too busy counting the seconds between the lightening and the thunder to see how close the storm was. According to my calculations, it was not as close as I thought, but it was still raining heavily. The storm engulfed every bit of light making the outside appear like nighttime. I just wanted to be home.

Suddenly there was a knock on the backdoor. Tante Bertel, as she was affectionately known, barely gave her verbal permission to enter, the old wooden door slowly opened with the familiar squeak. Every kid turned toward the door wondering who could possibly be visiting us now. A tall figure appeared from behind the door cloaked in a black raincoat. The face was not visible from behind his hoot. The water that dripped off his coat began to collect little puddles on the floor. Who is this man?

Tante Bertel seemed to have recognized him by the looks of her face. As she approached this mysterious man he removed his hoot. I knew this face. I recognized it instantly. It was my paternal grandfather. What was he doing here, I wondered. He doesn’t even live in this town. He looked over to where I sat, and motioned for me to come over. I got up from my chair and ran into my grandfather’s arms.

With his familiar deep voice he told me that he was working nearby. When it started storming he decided to visit with us kids. Since we lived close to my school, he wanted to put me under the protection of his big raincoat. As he whisked me up in his arms he threw his big raincoat over me. I put my arms around his neck, pressing my face against his chest and closed my eyes. He held me securely in his arms as he headed out the backdoor, passed the church and down the stairs into the street bringing me home.

These are the rare moments that make storms and fears disappear. I felt protected under the covering of my grandfather’s coat. No bureaucracy will ever be able to establish, maintain, and protect a functional community. It is only in relationships between people where the covenant is continued to bring prosperity and freedom to man.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

As is fairly typical when natural disasters strike, Global Warming worshippers have come out of the woodworks like critters ready to kneel down at the Altar of Mother Earth. In the meantime, their prophets continue to predict the warming of ocean temperatures that, they say, is creating more destructive storms that are becoming costlier and deadlier with each hit. One group of scientists claims Global Warming to be the cause, melting the polar ice and killing ocean life. Their warnings and accusations are directed toward nations, mainly the US, whose energy consumption and waste are the reason for warmer temperatures. Supporters of this theory are demanding preservation take place by the implementation of strict environmental laws.

Increasing support is also for those scientists who will argue that warming is cyclic and minor temperature shifts have been observed over several periods in time. The recent shifting of ocean currents can influence the path of a storm creating greater chances of a hurricane hitting land. It is also understood that environmental laws imposed by a global bureaucracy would limit the production of many nations by removing the freedom to have self-sufficiency. Proof that bureaucracy creates only a decline of environment is evident in the abuse of those nations that have no right to own. Countries that show these traits were the former Soviet Union, Africa and many other Third World countries ruled my military dictators. It is still very visible that private citizens and private businesses take care of their property voluntarily.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trittin, High Priest of the German Environmental Ministry, spouted his Global Warming beliefs by making an insensitive statement immediately after the hurricane struck the Crescent City. He was quoted in the Frankfurter Rundschau as saying that "Greenhouse gases have to be radically reduced worldwide. The US has, up until this point, had its eyes closed to this emergency." His statement implies that the recent tragedy was a direct result of the US’s reluctance to support efforts in reducing practices that are purported to bring on the climate changes.

Spiegel Online published several articles under their English site regarding his statement and reactions. One article commented on the lack of voluntary aid offered by Germany’s charitable organizations. The assumption was that aid was not needed, since the US can generally handle their disasters on their own. Mr. Trittin’s comments have outraged many American readers, causing emotions to run high. Many e-mails commented on Europe’s own bloody past and America’s financial aid in helping to rebuild post-war Germany. Germans were also given an opportunity to respond, in which several readers actually apologized for Mr. Trittin’s comment. Yet, the overall division shows the different mentality that each nation has over the issue of Global Warming.

Other than a note of condolences to President Bush for the victims of Katrina, Chancellor Schröder’s government remained silent about the catastrophe for days. As the situation in New Orleans worsened, his government has since offered assistance to the relief efforts of the Gulf region. Even private financial initiatives remain very low compared to the tsunami event that happened last December.

Although German newspapers were addressing the structural damage and the city’s longtime vulnerability to storms because of her below sea-level location, several questions were raised concerning the damage the city has caused to the Mississippi Delta and the natural marshlands. However, none mentioned the possibility of the government wasting its resources on projects and aid that are not geared toward empowering the self-sufficiency of people or providing for the local needs of a community. It is doubtful that the early French settlers were worried about environmental damage when they erected the city in 1718.

Mr. Trittin, who stands behind his statement that climate changes are influenced by man’s disregard for the environment, is only mirroring the great partition that is settling between the two ideologies. Politicians can be the mouthpieces of those prophets who preach the destruction of mankind as a consequence of his own destruction of the natural environment in which he abides. Those who do not favor Global Warming laws understand the implementation of these imposed regulations would bring a different catastrophe to humanity, namely severe poverty. He would no longer be able to use earth’s resources as a productive way to employ himself.

This depression creates a thunderous fear and frustration in people, who want their environment to be controllable by benevolent lawmakers. The result of trusting federal policy makers can be seen in the horrific images of New Orleans, where local and federal officials neglected to make adequate provisions for such a natural disaster a priority for their city. Her vulnerability had been well known for years, yet federal money was used for other projects. The disaster that befell this historical city and the delayed response of planning and rescue lies more with the shortsightedness of public officials and people’s trust in the system than with a powerful storm.

Tropical depressions become tropical storms when pressure systems create 37 to 73 mph winds, with severe thunderstorms, over a body of water. At that time a name is assigned to the storm system. The storm takes on greater strength and organizes itself into a circular motion, shaping itself into a hurricane if winds can sustain up to 74 mph. The storm forms a distinct rotation around its center that contains heavy rainfall with destructive winds that can reach the magnitudes of Katrina. This is how nature produces hurricanes.

Man-made hurricanes take on a similar picture. It is no surprise that the welfare countries and states that favor Global Warming theories have depressions of their own to battle. Germany is already mired in deep financial difficulties in paying out benefits to their declining population while the "hot air" of unenlightened politicians gets added to the storm system. Germany’s red/green coalition, with its socialist platform, is preparing itself to be booted out of office during the upcoming September election. Germans want change. Much is expected of the next administration in terms of change taking place. However, how much brainwashing can be removed from a populace and its elected politicians so that the next administration is able to undo the nanny mentality that has been set into motion since the 19th Century?

The developing storm on the horizon of both continents is only exacerbated by the incessant political winds of Global Warming. It feeds the masses with unproven theories and frightening rhetoric that will have a tremendous impact on their social and economic future, if adapted. Already the increasing tolerance for any form of perversity is hurling people on both sides of the continent into a whirlpool of immoral sludge. People are blinded, unable to see the downpour of perverted laws create hardship on a larger scale. They foolishly prefer dictated rules and federal regulations that bring on a cyclic rotation of socio-economic decline for their families and communities. Such a willing abdication of freedom and responsibility in order to be safe and provided for breaks down the basic function of community. It manifests itself in the milieu of most inner cities where unemployment and poverty roam the streets. The backlash for a people who hand all power to provide for their well-being to government also becomes evident in the public complacency towards property in the cities and states that rely on government assistance for their infrastructure and safety.

The US is now facing one of the largest and most costly crises in the recent history of the nation. Many questions will surface about how to deal with the refugees of a city that, in all likelihood, will remain under water for months to come. This catastrophe opens up the possibility of a much-needed dialogue, which in turn creates an opportunity to redistribute responsibility to communities and people for the upkeep and administration of their homes and cities.

Natural disasters will always be a part of life on this earth; disasters for which man can judiciously prepare by applying his technological knowledge and wisdom. The financial responsibility for how and when to shore up the vulnerable areas of towns and cities relies, in large measure, on the willingness of private citizens, combined with the insistence of local administration, to reclaim their right to keep the tax dollars they have generated for the use of their communities. Global Warming laws and government dominance can never accomplish what people are capable of doing when given the choice to invest in their own back yard. Those who see it as a worthy venture are willing to protect, improve and keep clean that which they hold dear.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

Charity can have many different forms. It can be an act that provides help to a fellow human being by giving time, food or material means for their needs. In our daily lives, this act is often spontaneous, unexpected, not planned and more than not a very private matter. It requires that we respond to a higher call in submitting to an urging that pays attention to the message that comes from deep within our heart. St. Augustine refers to this love or charity as the beauty of the soul.

It’s an act that responds to present tense needs as we encounter them in our lives for which our action can have a significant impact on others and on ourselves. It creates ripples in the sea of life that make our living experiences worthwhile and sweet. Sometimes there is no immediate gratification for both the giver and receiver, since love does not boast. It seeks to change the heart of men not by deeds alone, but also believing in principals that are not visible to the eye. It’s a process that establishes trust and cloaks us in the mantle of truth.

Hollywood and music stars have discovered that charity is big publicity and can draw lots of attention to their work and causes. Bob Geldof, successful musician and 1985 Live Aid organizer, is getting ready to kick off his second planned series of Live 8 concerts on July 2. Eight events are scheduled simultaneously around the world with big names in the music business such as U2, Coldplay, Elton John, REM and Green Day. His goal is to bring world attention to African poverty by canceling the poor nations’ debt. Organizers’ hopes are to have G8 countries increase financial aid (trade justice) for the world’s poorest people.

Even Bono of U2 was quoted in an AP report as having exclaimed that the focus over the past 20 years since Live Aid has changed. "It’s the journey from charity to justice," he said. These are big words that have the all too familiar ring of good intentions. The overall belief held by many people with good intentions for poorer countries is the idea of injustice being caused by wealthier nations during colonial times. However, evidence shows that most poverty in Africa and other poorer countries is created by Marxist ideology and oppressive actions of reigning governments. Among the African nations that currently suffer from poverty are countries like Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Sudan.

Zimbabwe, a country with cotton and maize production and natural resources of coal has suffered greatly under President Robert Mugabe. He recently declared all farmlands to be nationalized, removing private property from its citizens for growing their crop. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced out of their home and the land bulldozed leaving behind a wasteland of starvation. Urban areas are no longer allowed to grow their own food forcing the prevention of illegal trade of desperate people. This recent tragedy reminds us of history that took place during Stalin’s reign in 1928—29, a period known as the collectivization. Nearly five million Soviet citizens were starved intentionally in the process in which the state forcefully removed the private ownership of the farmland.

This country has been on a steady decline since Mugabe came to power in 1980. The country’s unemployment rate was estimated at 70% in 2002 and is much higher today. The average life expectancy for both sexes reached an average age of 36 years in 2005; a large decline over the past 25 years in which AIDS has a significant impact. Over half of Zimbabwe’s population was in need of emergency food aid by 2005. Inflation was at 160% in 2004 and almost a fourth of its population has emigrated abroad to escape the harshness of life. Clearly, the plight of this country was brought on by the tyrannical reign of a Marxist psychopath.

Professor of Economics and a syndicated columnist, Mr. Walter E. Williams, quotes in one of his articles that his colleague, Mr. John Blundell, Director of the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs, reports that Mugabe even had his cronies remove the labels from humanitarian shipments of food from the US and Europe. The labels were replaced with Mugabe’s, making himself appear as the caring dictator.

Ethiopia is another country that suffered in the hands of a military coup which deposed Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974. A one-party hard-line Marxist-Leninist style was established after the coup, though the government was overtaken by the Ethiopian Revolutionary Democratic Front in 1991. The country continues to battle border wars that have virtually destroyed the Ethiopian economy. Its food production suffered due to recent droughts and bad cultivating practices; however, most of the land is owned by the government and leased to farmers. This in itself prevents enthusiasm in investing into a business when property cannot be owned. Half of the population is living under the poverty line. Although the country greatly depends on weather conditions to grow their crops, plenty of food supply can be established for drier seasons if surrounding nations would begin trading with each other rather than continue as their tribal foes.

Granted, Africa lacks many important factors that we take for granted in the West. As Professor Williams points out, it lacks the rule of law, private property rights, and independent judiciary and limited government. The visible evidence is in the poverty of the population and its continual warring of dictators, rebels and tyrants.

Africa is one of the richest continents with most of its treasures still unearthed. It holds natural resources of iron ore, copper, coal, uranium, tin, phosphate, diamonds and gold. It can produce cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa and fruit with plenty of livestock. The possibilities are unlimited. Only, little can be done when resources are controlled by oppressive governments with no intentions to promote the well-being of their people by allowing them to accumulate wealth through private ownership.

It must also be noted that countries such as India and China are working themselves out of their misery by adapting free market concepts that produce and export bringing much needed money to their once impoverished population. Countries with even less natural resources than Africa, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, were able to flourish through trade bringing prosperity to their nations.

Geldof, whose first Live Aid concerts were sparked by Ethiopia’s famine 20 years ago in which 20 million people lost their lives, is certain that his new awareness to the issue can solve the problem. Ethiopia still greatly depends on food aid and no long-term solutions have come about to end the misery in this country. None of the foreign aid supplied has helped solve Africa’s problem to this day.

Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs also has the answer to extreme poverty. In order to end poverty Mr. Sachs only needs rich countries to transfer $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years primarily to Africa. This will only require the committed contribution of .7% of every G8 nations’ GDP. A remarkable number when considering that Canada is the only country out of these eight nations that is without debt. Not only do these G8 nations have a low GDP growth production, they struggle and get drained enough from their own welfare system where little money is left to invest even into their own economy. With rising unemployment and bigger government control, they are faced with their own internal financial disasters.

Should the G8 nations accept the plea to aid Africa during their early July meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, citizens in all countries must pay additional taxes to offset the extra cost. Several EU countries already investigated where the extra taxes can be applied so their population can be forced into being "charitable" to the poor. One suggestion involves the implementation of a tax on air travel. Simply raising the financial aid for poorer nations and canceling their debt is suddenly solving a problem that generally starts in the actions of men. Sadly, it is the belief system of these men that is the beginning of their country’s demise. Showering them with generous contributions will not help their people or their country if their ideology and general understanding of civilization does not change.

Geldof has good intentions in raising awareness of poverty, but his focus is on the wrong issue. Re-distributing wealth to keep the balance is as unnatural as trying to stop the Sahara desert wind from blowing sand into sand dunes. It is not possible. His energy would be better served if he can bring awareness of the danger of big government, controlling trade (he supports fair trade) and the danger of socialism; a more democratic offspring of communism. These are all contributing factors to poverty and starvation.

All evidence in history shows what happens when governments take over every aspect of a person’s life. This includes decision-making as well as government propaganda in what to think and to belief. It results into warfare and hunger. The two World Wars and the fall of the former Soviet Union are only recent examples. Africa and its people have to become aware of their own misguided philosophies and beliefs in order to improve. Private financial aid is only a drop in the bucket compared to what a change of the heart and mind can do. It is only the adoption of a belief system that is based on principals of truth that can turn a nation and country around for the better; and a judicial system that honors it. The revitalization of Africa depends greatly on being permitted to adopt these principals that will give them the foundation to own, produce, and trade in order to diminish its struggle.

Geldof, Jeffrey Sachs and rulers of the G8 nations who want to buy into this "charitable" act of eliminating poverty belong into the ancient ship of fools; also known by the Latin word as "carrus navalis." The ancient Babylonians pulled a decorated ship on wheels to the god Marduk, a fertility god. The ritual was also known in Egypt and Greece to worship the goddess Isis. The practice survived and made it into the Carnival season in Europe, mainly Germany. The fools inside the carnival ship are to represent the vices of men by wearing donkey ears or hats similar to a rooster’s crest with small bells. A 1494 picture depicts the ship of fools floating down the Rhine River without oars and rudders.

The image is a perfect analogy of people with conceited ideas who truly believe they can save the world and forgive its own sins. The arrogance with which the issue is approached would make the ancient gods very happy. The faithful followers of Marduk pulled the ship with strings; a labor that confirmed that man was ruled under the burden of the gods that brought no freedom. The vices of men have always existed but played out under different scenarios throughout our long history. The false gods have learned to use them for their advantage. Each vice has strings attached to our actions that make us more dependent on the keeper of our lives — government, a self-created burden that becomes more powerful and wasteful the bigger it gets. Man continually entangles himself with the false security that big government seems to bring without recognizing how he constricts himself from moving forward. Geldof’s call to nations to aid the poor only supports the growth of bigger government. Professor Sachs is right behind him.

The irony of this charitable act of Live8 is the fact that the West is "forgiving" their debtors out of guilt for making money in the first place. This gesture pretends to be purely altruistic unless one takes a closer look at the results.  Where does this aid money come from? The states supporting it will only turn around and extort the promised money from its own citizens with additional taxes to purportedly absolve themselves from guilt.

It is the ancient whip of taxation that will cough up the money for the project. The recipient of this evil act of charity will probably use the "gift" and waste it on furthering their own unscrupulous intend to control the African people; squeezing every bit of wealth out of their own starving population. The cycle that is started will not end unless the enablers with good intention and the dependents had enough of each other.

Charity has always been and will always remain a private and individual act that cannot be legislated by governments. It has to be an individual choice based on free will and brings liberation to the oppressed that will not keep them down. Geldof and Company are only setting themselves up to bring more hardship and misery to Africa, because government money with no strings attached will not free them from their oppressive rulers. They will just endlessly drift on water without any direction or real goals for solutions in the ship of fools.

Sabine
Barnhart [send her mail] moved
to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the
past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

Sabine
Barnhart Archives

The
villages are in fairly close proximity to each other. In some areas the towns
may only be two to four kilometers apart. The land between is filled with hills,
forests and creeks. Most communities have no general store or grocery stores to
speak of. People have to travel to larger towns to conduct their business or do
any shopping.

Owning
a car has made this task more convenient and simple. However, only 35 years ago
it was a more difficult to make it to a larger town. Walking, horse-driven carriages,
bicycles or small motorcycles were the primary means of transportation that people
had. Many people had to catch a ride with the few car owners that existed in these
small towns.

Salesmen
and businesses found a market in these remote areas by bringing needed goods to
the local communities. Even banks found ways to bring their business to these
areas by converting a bus into a bank, and keeping regular scheduled stops at
the local market squares so farmers were able to make any financial transactions.

Several
of these salesmen would stop by my grandparent’s tavern for refreshment and some
rest; and, of course, to conduct some business. As a girl, one particular salesperson
really impressed me. This person was a middle-aged lady who would make her weekly
routes on her Moped, which is rather like an annoyingly loud motorized bicycle.
We gave her the nickname of "Übersee’ra." The nickname was derived
from the type of suitcase she used for carrying her many goods. The suitcase was
the kind used for oversea trips, very practical for her purposes, which she strapped
on the back of her Moped.

I
didn’t even know she had a real name. As kids we believed everything; and I literally
thought her name was the "Overseas Lady." Her appearance was similar
to today’s bag lady. Although she wasn’t the fashionable business suit type of
saleswoman, her weathered clothes did not keep her from maintaining a regular
customer base. Her suitcase was crammed full with trousers, aprons, sweaters,
skirts, socks, underwear and even fabric.

Years
later I found out that she took the train each day from a nearby city then rode
her bicycle, and later her small Moped, which she stored near the train station.
She made her routes to her customers during most weather conditions. Her destination
was our village and several nearby communities.

When
she stopped in for her cup of coffee, her large suitcase became a treasure chest
set as the centerpiece on the table. It felt almost like Christmas. My mother
started digging through the suitcase to see if she could find suitable items for
us. Just the idea of getting a sweater or a skirt that came out of the suitcase
was an amazing feeling. I guess I thought the items came from some exotic far
away place, and somehow they landed in her giant suitcase. Or maybe I just wanted
to believe that, because why else would a strange and unusual woman carry such
a big suitcase filled with clothes to sell.

Herr
Kuhn was another salesman that found his way into our remote village. He used
to sell different types of soap, shoe polish, detergent, and grease for wooden
wagon wheels. His merchandise was loaded into two whicker baskets that he tied
on his bicycle, one at the front and the other to the back. Herr Kuhn was also
disabled. He had a wooden leg, which I presume was from an old war wound. This
did not deter him from getting on his bicycle and making his routes to earn a
living. He occasionally stopped in my grandparent’s tavern for a beer, some conversation
and a small business transaction. Reflecting back on Herr Kuhn’s disability, I
wonder if he would even be allowed to work under those circumstances in today’s
strictly regulated work environment. I think most of his transportation methods
would violate several safety regulations.

My
dad told me that he once bought a very nice suit from Herr Full, who sold suits
and jackets. He came around every four to six weeks and drove a respectable Mercedes.
People actually came to the tavern to see the selection of fine suits that he
carefully stored under plastic covers, which were hung on a clothes rod in the
back of his car. I remember him visiting with my grandmother, sipping on a glass
of wine and bringing news from the big city. An interesting aspect to traveling
salesmen was the exchange of information that seemed to occur during each visit.
Word of mouth still carries a lot of authority and can actually bring a story
to life far better than today’s media can.

Actually,
our area really lacked nothing, at least through the eyes of a child. We even
had the pleasure of being visited by a traveling shoe-salesman who drove through
the countryside in a VW bus. He came through town during the different seasons
and before the holidays. He sold everything from warm house-shoes to the best
kind of Sunday shoes, work shoes, casuals and sandals. My grandparents’ tavern
seems to have been the favorite stop for these folks to rest and drink some beer,
wine, or coffee. Our shoe salesman really liked his beer.

The
biggest needs in rural communities are farm and household tools made of wood.
A merchant, Herr Bayer, from Kulmbach used to drive through the area selling wooden
rakes and handles, hay and manure forks, and axes. He also sold sieves, and other
wood-carved items to the farmers that are used daily in their line of work. His
goods were in great demand.

I
knew little about these people’s personal lives. They were salesmen who made daily
trips through our rural parts of the country to earn a living. As unusual as their
ways of transportation and dress code may have been, they found ways around it
to bring their wares to the people and supply them with their needs. Their reoccurring
appearance made them a reliable source of supplying the community with goods that
would have been more difficult to come by during those years.

If
I applied today’s labor and safety regulations to yesterday’s salesmen, I don’t
think the "Overseas Lady" would have been allowed to tie her oversized
suitcase to her Moped; nor would Herr Kuhn with his wooden leg have been able
to ride around with two large baskets strapped on his bike. Herr Fuller would
have gotten fined for selling his suits in an establishment that sells alcohol,
and Herr Bayer probably would have been charged for selling dangerous weapons
to the community without a permit.

The
most remarkable salesman of my childhood is still the "Overseas Lady"
who traveled the roads with her huge trunk strapped to the back of her noisy Moped.
She chose a way to create her own business that probably gave her quite a bit
of freedom. Life during the 50′s and 60′s was less regulated then it is today.
People like her and the rest of her colleagues had the liberty to provide for
themselves by traveling in the strangest circumstances to sell their goods. They
were salesmen of the third kind; an alienated idea that finds less and less acceptance
with our lawmakers in the all too regulated world of trade.

June
22, 2005

Sabine
Barnhart [send her mail] moved
to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the
past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

Sabine
Barnhart Archives

Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) Chairman, Franz Müntefering, has recently compared foreign investors with locusts that take advantages of German companies. Mr. Müntefering charges Germany’s private equity firms and foreign investors with buying businesses with privately funded capital which are later sold for a high profit. This started a big debate about capitalism and its evils using the image of the locust as its symbol. The practice is ruining employees and their living standards, he said.

A black list of 12 "locust companies" was leaked to the press which Mr. Müntefering blackballed as having the worst capitalist traits. The list included Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Deutsche Bank announced in February that it would lay off 2,000 employees although its books showed a considerable profit last year.

The recent hedge fund controversy at the Frankfurt stock exchange last week created more mistrust in the German population of which 75% agree with Mr. Müntefering’s statement. This was evident by a May 1 demonstration where 530,000 people marched under the banner of DGB (German Labor Union) crying out for "dignity" and not being a "cost factor" as if this can be determined by companies alone.

Although greed is a quality supposedly unknown to exist in the life of a socialist who only looks out for the common good of all, it was the current Schröder administration which passed a law early in 2004 allowing the funds to operate in Germany. However, the SPD Chairman would like to blame capitalism for its current stock market debacle that involved TCI and Atticus Capital.

It was the German government who sold its banknote printers to a private equity firm called Apax Partners in November 2000. The company is now included on the black list compiled by the socialist government as one of the 12 that "ruins" the country.

The attack on capitalism has left the President of the Federal Association of the German Employers’ Association (BDA), Dieter Hundt, disappointed and furious. In an interview with the German broadcast station ZDF he said: "…instead of us working on our current [economic] problems, we are talking about locusts plagues and the beast of prey of capitalism, of its anti-social behavior and suchlike…."

He feels that foreign investors will be scared off by the harsh critique of Mr. Müntefering, jeopardizing opportunities of growth that can be achieved through new capital investments. Businesses that can create employment are continually punished by their own government for making money; one reason why the current administration has not been able to deliver the promised 40% reduction of social contribution that companies are to pay to the state.

Remaining competitive on the world market requires spontaneity and innovative ideas of creating new products and service that can keep up with the rise of new technology. It requires capital and flexibility which the pressure of socialism restricts. It is only natural that German companies want to remain competitive on the open market. And still, the administration’s Green coalition party is calling for another tax hike on those companies that want to move out of Germany going east where capital is easier to come by.

Although the SPD/Green administration’s approach to lower the corporate tax from 25% to 19% in order to stimulate the economy is reasonable, it will have to find new ways of getting back what it loses out of. One of those examples is in the health industry. Insurance companies are sternly asked to lower their premiums, which are heavily regulated by the state. The Health Minister, Ulla Schmidt, wants to force pharmacies into bypassing co-payments by the insured, claiming that pharmacies are making too much money. The insured is again being charged for medication after they already paid their insurance premiums. Doctors are told how to run their practice, how and when to administer medication and when to go on vacation. The entire health care systems is manipulated and regulated by the state, squeezing out much of an incentive for profitable ventures.

Socialism wants to regulate itself with a multitude of oppressive laws to create social justice and equal distribution to the point of exhaustion. It will take the people down a path that keeps them entitled and destroys the free market by making it impotent. Years of propaganda and policies become reflected in the attitudes of private citizens and their relation to their government. The state gets offended when pharmacists can guarantee their income through co-payments, but finds it appropriate to add air tax to travelers to support undeveloped countries like Africa. Laborers and employees demand regulated wages, protection and benefits, but become disturbed when the state wants to cut benefits to have more money available to create jobs.

The centralized German government has an expenditure of approximately 50% of its GDP showing an economy whose GDP growth over the past four years was roughly an even 1% per year. In an economy with a modern technological edge the growth should be at last 3%. A Soziale Markwirtschaft (social market) just isn’t making progress as a freer market economy model such as China, Poland, and Ireland have experienced in recent years. The growth of these countries in 2004 for China’s was 9.5% and Poland 5.4%. Other heavily socialized Nations in Europe such as France were 2.1 % and Netherlands 1.2%.

Even some German economists teaching at universities who support the social ideology of big government would rather increase taxes than considering the reduction or elimination of its burdensome welfare system. Giving up the artificial control of the market through strict regulation and its plan to save the world by generous state contributions of taxpayer’s money is like asking a child to give up a toy.

Mr. Müntefering may have another motive for starting the big criticism on capitalism. The upcoming election on May 22, 2005 in the heavily industrialized state of Nordrhein-Westfalen shows a considerable decline of the SPD party, who dominated the state for years. Traditionally very red (socialists) in its political inclination, recent polls show that the opposition party, which is a more conservative — but still rather socialist, CDU has a 7% lead. It always has been a power struggle of who will control the state, which currently has one million people unemployed. Since the beginning of the SPD/Green coalition in 1995 the state had a debt of 45 billion Euros on its books. Since then it has risen to 110 billion Euros.

Maybe blaming the failure of raising productivity on capitalism can convince the struggling Nordrhein-Westafalen populace with an average debt of 7,710 Euros per citizen that socialism could not possibly be the furnace that burns the cash. Attempts to attract the settlement of new industry have not proven to be successful because labor regulations are not exactly a building block for new enterprises in a de facto Marxist environment.

Government has no ability of making money but can only take from others to provide services and benefits for its citizens. Spending other people’s money is always easier when it is not earned. In order for the German government to sustain its power and service, it must tax it off businesses, the wage earners, and consumers and fines. It can regulate how much trash to dump per household, enforce recycling and force children to attend public schools all along being unaware how their muddling destroys their culture.

If one really wants to compare locusts to an economic system, it is more likely that the state is the one who comes in and devours the crop of those who sow and labor. And then it is the state that gives it to the "kind-hearted" socialist who will distribute the "bootie" as he sees fit. The doses of every portion are now equal and fair and can be fed to a classless society who paid into the service to be delivered without any preferences and discrimination.

The one who is left out of the process is the one who is not allowed to keep the fruits of his labor; the townsman of his community who has less and less control on how his money gets spent. He watches it disappear into the ever-hungry apparatus of government in which citizens not only sacrifice their money but also their own soul for salvation.

Unfortunately many Europeans don’t know what real capitalism actually means. It operates best when government is small and stays out of people’s business and their ventures. It requires that people be allowed to own their own property and work and invest for a living. Also known as Free Market, it demands that people are mature in recognizing that the world consists of ups and downs, of success and failures, and that one is able to take risks when people are allowed to operate in a system that’s based on trust and respect of each other’s boundaries. It functions on integrity and certain virtues that if broken have a natural negative consequence.

A Free Market system permits choices and creativity, and has no room for envy and childish remarks of unfairness. There is room for expansion and one is prepared to make adjustments when the demand of the market changes. One takes care of himself first and their family and any overflow is often voluntarily re-invested. People are also willing to tithe more and give to charity; which is different than being taxed for the purpose of helping Third World countries as a new EU proposal is suggesting.

Germany has experienced an era after WWII where their economic boom was jump-started by foreign capital investment. It was the era of Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard who made Germany into an economic miracle, because they believed in the market. Erhard abolished price control as soon as a new currency was established. Although his decision was believed to be disastrous at first, his brave move removed the black market, stopped inflation, and shortages ceased to be a problem, creating one of the strongest economies Germany has ever seen during the 60′s and not seen since.

The world is not perfect, and there will always be people who will try to get away with corruption when greed becomes addictive. However, most corporate corruptions have been brought to light in recent years by honest employees and whistle blowers. German people have the smarts and the good sense to see when corruption is happening in their own government. They can find the courage to get out of their politically correct mode in which years of past guilt has been imposed on them by the media. People can put an end to the control that socialism has imposed on them for the past 40 years.

Germans and their small communities can regain their rights for self-governing under the law again if they would not sell out their liberty over security through a consolidated government. They have the ability and skills and a rich culture to live within this freedom of a market that can be a way of life, if they accept to be accountable and responsible for their own actions. This is what real freedom requires — a mature mind of an adult. Capitalism — Free Market — could actually be the answer to their financial and economic crisis. The German parliament has already voted part of this freedom away when it approved the new EU constitution earlier this month. Most citizens are unaware that the constitution removes even further rights.

The words "Das ist Verboten" comes from a time where black lists and nonsense laws have supported a regime that was founded on the soil of socialism. The weak Weimar Republic was a field of socialists and communists that have elected a crazy man to be their leader. Germans want to prevent this from repeating at all cost; but the price they are paying is a loss of their liberty. They rather support a political system that at its gut core does not look any different in its mechanics from Socialists of the National variety. It only looks a bit "kinder" and "gentler." Social Democrats cannot pride themselves in achieving success over the past 40 years — they halted the process that was started during the 60′s.

The rhetoric of the enemy of capitalism needs to be more scrupulously examined so people can see their contradictions. Their promises may sound generous — almost kind and utopian — but their results leave a country looking like a herd of locusts just ransacked their crop. The sweet promises of a socialist who will take care of every child, mother and the elders may sound enticing to the immature ears of a child. Only, what good is that if daddy can’t work? He is forced to stand in the unemployment line collecting his benefits that his contributions to his labor union negotiated for him, because most of his money went to the common good.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

My paternal grandfather was such a man. A former railroad supervisor during WWII, he ended up in Dunkirk, France, when the Allies attacked, and I remember him telling us stories of how he made it back home that I can vividly remember now. He was orphaned when he was still a baby and was raised by his older sister. He never knew a real mother and father, but yet managed to make the best out of his life from what he knew. He married my grandmother and worked hard to make a living. Not perfect by any means, he was a man who was very proud of his two sons and his grandchildren.

He and Oma moved in with my family when we moved into our new house in 1970. The village was similar to any other small-town Bavarian village, which made it easier for me moving away from my other grandparents’ village. It had a mayor, a volunteer fire department, a village counsel, a church counsel, a private soccer club and a band club. The private clubs hosted endless fests during the spring and summer months to support their activities. It even had two taverns known as Gasthaus in German, but in the Franconian dialect we called it "Wirtschaft" (which in English also translates to economics) or "Wirtshaus" (house of the host).

A Wirthschaft is the place where the young men met the old men of the village to drink their beer and listened to the old men’s stories of the past. The minimum drinking age is 16, and the boys spent time with their elders when they drank. Women hardly attended these establishments, at least not during the week.

It was strictly a male environment where my Opa gathered with the men of the town after church on Sundays or he met his retired railroad buddies on Wednesday afternoon for a game of cards. Sometimes I stopped in to say hello to my grandfather and he gave me my Sunday allowance of 1 Mark which I would spend on some ice cream and candy.

It was my grandfather who encouraged my brother and me to join the music club, and even paid for our instruments. Wednesday nights was our band practice which we held at in the upstairs dance hall of the tavern. During break I came downstairs for a game of Kicker or to buy me some candy.

The tavern had an old wooden floor with several tables, benches and chairs. There was no TV, only a jukebox which the kids used for playing their music. It seemed like a clashing of worlds at times, especially when Neil Diamond’s "Sweet Caroline" came off the jukebox while the old farmers sat there with their beer steins in a smoke-filled room talking in their local dialect.

One day one of the older boys got on this kick to tease me. What he liked teasing me about was — well, my not so developed girlyness. I was tall and skinny unlike some of the other girls my age. He had been doing this for quite some time now to the point where other boys started in on his teasing. I had to listen to it every day on the school bus, during recess, and every time I ran into his big mouth. It came to a point where I didn’t even want to go to school any more. I came home and just bawled in my room. I told my mother about the boy who continually harassed me for something I had no control over.

Apparently, my mother must have shared this information with my grandfather, since my father worked out of town all week. Opa knew everyone in the village. And, Opa was very much a supporter of his grandchildren. We were his pride and joy. Opa also had a very loud voice, probably because the noisy work at the railroad. I guess he decided to take matters into his own hands one day.

One night during music practice, the "mean" boy showed up again doing what he has done so well for a while. My brother tried to take up for me, but the boy was much bigger and older. What Mr. "Hotshot" didn’t expect was that my grandfather was in the tavern that night. Opa was waiting for just the right moment to catch him doing his dirty deed. My grandfather got up from his chair and with a loud voice approached the bully to stop talking to me that way.

He grabbed him by the ear and pulled him out back to the outhouses. There he received an intense lecture from my grandfather with all the do’s and don’ts on how to treat a girl. I think he pretty much told him to keep his insults to himself and if he ever heard anymore on the subject, he would repeat this conversation.

That was the end of my suffering; well, suffering from the point of view of an 11-year-old girl. Opa handled the matter in the male world, while my mother, who also thought the situation had gotten out of hand, went to talk to the boy’s mother. The problem was resolved, because my guess is he also received a stern lecture from his parents. I am sure my grandfather talked to his father, who also visited the tavern.

Honor has been restored. A bully stopped acting like one, because the elders intervened and did not tolerate his behavior. There was no need to pass a law nor was there a need to call the police. People in communities can resolve their problems if elders respond to behavior that is destructive and indecent. It may require twisting the ear of a bully occasionally. My previous offender is now happily married with two daughters of his own. My Opa’s lecture would definitely surface in his mind should anyone try to behave that way toward his daughters.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

Societies will pressure its elected representatives into legitimizing lifestyles that often have a reverse affect on the productivity of its nation. People feel then entitled to receive its cake which the politicians have baked, but yet continue to bemoan the system when there is no delivery and continue to bemoan its taste and keep sending it back to the kitchen for another try upon try.

Their short-term vision cannot see future failures of their philosophy. Governments, who are placed on their throne by the will of the people, will enforce these irrational policies on its citizens. Government policies in cooperation with the majority voices of its society create more poverty and hubris with their legislations if one takes a closer look at statistics. The data is a visible outcry of an alarming crisis in their economic and social arena of their countries.

Germany is currently finding itself in such a crisis. With a birth rate of 8.45 per 1000 people in 2004 (down from 9.35 in 2000), its 82.5 million population is aging quickly. Along with its higher death rate than birth rate, Germany finds itself at a net population drop of 143,000 people in 2004. Even if Germany intends to fill the gap with an influx of immigration from the East through its attractive welfare system, it cannot keep up with the reality that people are not reproducing at a rate that would keep their social security system from breaking apart.

Although attempts are made to import highly skilled workers, Germany is currently finding itself in an immigration mess which places Germany’s Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, under pressure due to his lax visa regulations allowing thousands of immigrants from Ukraine to enter the country in 2000 through 2003. His political opposition is claiming an increase in illegal workers and rise in criminal activity.

Unemployment, which in February 2005 stood at 10.4%, presents an additional obstacle for those people who wish to start a family. Job stimulation is restricted by government’s interference of placing too many demands and high taxes on its businesses. Social welfare has to be supported as well as the motivation to increase population. And yet, the businesses and industries that could provide employment for its people is being punished and restricted by labor laws and labor unions, forcing businesses to move to countries in the East where taxes are lower.

Capital that is essential for economic growth, is diverted to support policies that in the long run will drain it further and suffocate any chance for a substantially growing economy, thus endangering the incentives for production and damaging the chances of those stuck on the bottom rung of the economic latter. The uncertainty of this shaky policy instills a fear in every second German of losing his job with an increase of mental depression in its population.

The German government has spent already over 150 Million Euros on family issues trying to raise the birth rate. Since 1964 the birth rate fell from 1.4 Million to 700,000 each year showing a consistent 40-year pattern that the government has not been able to break with policies. Its incentive to financially reward average income parents with two children by adding approximately 2000 Euros each year to their paycheck is not enough to instill the desire to marry and have children.

Another consistent pattern appears in a study done in 1998 showing that approximately a fourth of all children born in EU countries are born out of wedlock which in 1980 was only at 10% of all births. Countries that show the highest numbers of out of wedlock births are Italy at 8.3%, with Sweden (3.6%) showing the lowest desire to marry. Even Germany shows this increasing trend each year where almost every fourth child is now born outside the union of marriage.

Renate Schmidt, Bundesfamilienministerin (Federal Minister of Family Affairs), also finds this trend very alarming. A recent study by Unicef concluded that 40% of all German children in single parent households live in poverty. Unicef defines poverty as living in a household with less than half of the average income. Her Social Party Democrats (SPD) intends to solve the problem through stronger financial funding by increasing the monthly child support to 140 Euros for single parent households.

Every tenth child in Germany is now classified as living in poverty by government standards and has become the burden of its society. It is willingly removing the responsibility of those individuals who have engaged in behaviors that are freely being endorsed by society at large. Its consequence falls on the wallet of the state that rewards the behavior of its citizen through financial aids — money paid by the tax payers. Pity is not a policy that can change behavior when its vicious cycle burdens the productivity of its society.

The left-wing voices of society in most Western nations are now urging the Church to lower its standards by embracing behavior that is contradictory to a healthy society. The recent appointment of the new Pope, Benedict XVI, has received this opposition in its native Germany because of his orthodox stance on church dogma. However, evaluating the statistics above, one can see the loud voices of irrational thoughts do not conclude a healthy outcome for their society.

A healthy society consists of man and woman and their children within the sanctity of marriage by providing a nurturing family environment that raises productive and healthy children. It is in this union where genuine care is being extended. Children see that they were wanted for the sake of love and not for the sake of being an integral part of the social security program to support a retired populace. Their existence becomes a personal and loving choice and not a financial one, since government only desires its offspring for additional taxing.

It is in the union of marriage where children learn to love and receive the foundation of moral teachings. Endorsing any other behavior outside this context of truth will result in consequences that have become a social disaster that only furthers a continued decline of living standards. Frau Renate Schmidt should see that family consists of values, and that values can only be instilled by parents and by adhering to moral codes that cannot be rewarded when transgressed. The transgression of a law demands a retribution, which courts of law are to determine. The Church can teach its spiritual rehabilitation that no secular policies can mend.

Contradictions will cease when truth is accepted as reality. This is when the scales will fall from people’s eyes and they will recognize that they have been blinded. Germany knows the basic principals of that reality, because its small communities were once founded on moral behavior. Commitment for improving Germany’s situation does not start from the top down, but starts from within and a change of thinking in its people. The new Pope may have his hands full by re-introducing this concept to his parishioners. Government cannot replace what God and family can offer. If Germans can shed the false sense of security of their government and its socialistic policies, it can rejuvenate itself again into a thriving culture and healthier society that is still strongly present in its traditions. All it needs is freedom from its irrational policies so people will want to marry and have children that can be provided for by the fruits of their own labor.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

I am not a shoe fanatic but I do confess to owning more than three pairs of shoes. The most recent pair I bought reminds me of shoes my mother wore in 1966. Pointy toes and three-inch heels were the fashion back then. I have chosen that style to be my evening shoes for more formal attire.

As a 5-year-old girl I would pull out my mother’s shoes while my parents were still sleeping early on Sunday morning. Dressed up in silk scarves and seashell necklaces, I pranced around my room in my mother’s high-heeled shoes. Unfortunately, with my feet being too small to fit my mother’s shoes properly, I tripped and broke the heel. My mother wasn’t too happy about the broken shoes and the repair bill.

Now I am on a pink shoe kick. Spring is the time for sunshine and flowers. Pink is a popular color this season and goes well with flowery skirts and summer dresses. Pink is, after all, a girly color and represents the softer side of red. Pink also denotes romance and charm, and is a more playful and tender color then its primary relative of red, which resembles passion. Other shades for pink are fuchsia, blush, flesh, hot pink, coral, salmon and rose.

Girls seem to instinctively choose pink as their favorite color. I noticed that preference in my girls. Pink or light pastel colors seem to be a natural choice for their accessories and clothes. Pink purses, pink pens and pink hair bows can be found all over their room, and I don’t even suggest that color to them.

But to get back to my pink shoes… I am very happy that I have the option to wear those great summer sandals. Oh, I don’t mind the comfortable Birkenstock shoes or flat loafers. Those do well for casual activities, or when wearing slacks. They just don’t do too well in an outfit that speaks of feminine flair or for enhancing a pretty foot, especially while a woman is still young enough to enjoy that sort of shoe.

Dare I even mention that the shoe doesn’t have to be pink? That is just a personal preference. However, one particular style of shoe can come in several different colors and to match any summer outfit. Wearing an open toed shoe requires a decent pedicure. Playing around with a myriad of nail polish options is fun for girls of all ages. From a natural look to high-powered metallic colors, girls and women can be very creative when it comes to painting our nails.

When I was a child my mother would get me a pair of spring sandals to match my new spring outfit. My mother put a lot of thought into that, and they lasted through the entire season. I never had to wear masculine-looking shoes. She chose clothes and shoes that distinctly represented her children’s gender.

There are people who genuinely believe that there is no distinction between men and women’s feet. Their world consists of such shades of grey (which reminds me that grey and black go very well with pink), that in their view all gender differences get thrown out the window. It’s so very Marxist and reminds me of militaristic societies where gender differences disappear behind a uniform or title. Such a shame!

The black and shiny tuxedo shoes for men are really an asset next to pastel women’s sandals. They complement each other well. It would take the fun out of life if everybody wore the same boring genderless shoes. I wonder if Karl Marx realized that when he was busy trying to eliminate the idea that people possess different skills and talents, and that the different gender roles have a natural foundation.

Oh I admit that I don’t wear my girly-girl outfits every day. I certainly own a couple of pair of blue jeans, two pairs of flip-flops and multitudes of hair clips that I use for damage control when I am having a bad hair day. I also own a really old pair of tennis shoes that I keep for use when mowing the lawn, and an oversized sweater to wear when the weather is a bit too chilly for my liking.

Not every woman can wear a high-heeled shoe. I have several women in my circle of friends with leg and knee problems. This doesn’t prevent them from being feminine though. A pink sweater with a little jewelry can be a nice feminine touch when the shoes don’t work. Their wardrobe choices only underline what their personalities reveal — a sweet and tender heart with a strong and steadfast mind.

I learned from my parents that it was an abomination to go to town in sweat pants. My mother and father really were good role models when it came to grooming. When my mother had to go shopping in town she put on a skirt or nice slacks with a blouse and nice shoes. She’d fix her hair and put on a little lipstick. She always looked good, and still does. She still knows how to wear a shoe well.

The same goes for my dad. He is known for being a good dresser, with little assistance from my mother. He knows how to dress for any occasion and still gets great reviews from all their women friends. Although his hair has turned white now, and he claims 60% of it was due to my teenage years, my dad will always be my hero when it comes to stylish dressing.

Judging from the black and white pictures from his teenage years, he really was a very handsome young man. I’ve seen a picture from 1955 taken as he stood outside my mother’s front door. He looked sharp with his hair slicked back, wearing a suit that rivaled anything Frank Sinatra could have worn. And then there were his shoes! I have never seen dirty shoes on my dad’s feet. He must have learned how to properly shine his shoes during his Bundeswehr days.

I understand that fashions change with the times. And the older people get, the more we may appreciate the style of our parents. Only with age, we may adapt it with a little less resistance and with a lot more insight. By the time one decides to adapt a style of the past, a person has been through enough in life to wear the shoe with greater confidence.

This is where the fun comes in. Being on a quest for a shoe, a purse, a summer dress can really be a great adventure. We begin to recognize our own preferences. Learning how to make decisions along the way will eliminate the hurtful shoes. Then a person begins to value certain characteristics of the shoe that is a reflection of his or her own taste. The end result is having a great shoe that is a truthful expression of an individual’s personal style.

Anyway, I am still looking for my perfect pink shoes. But while I was on the hunt I came across a flowing knee-length skirt, a matching purse and some hot pink nail polish. Trying on shoes with my girlfriends has been great "girly" fun. I have been able to prance around in the store like I did as a child, many years ago on Sunday mornings. Only now I don’t break off the heels.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

Euthanasia, defined by Webster’s Dictionary as "the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy," made its grand entrance in the Netherlands in 1985. It is considered a legal "right" in the Netherlands for citizens 16 years old and older. This legalized "mercy killing" was further developed in the infamous "Groningen Protocol" which includes the killing of infants who doctors have determined to be beyond medical help, and children up to age 12 whose quality of life may be questionable because of physical handicaps.

As attractive as the solution may sound to some who do not wish to deal with the burden and expense of caring for a disabled loved one or newborn child, there are consequences to a practice that appears "merciful" to a public that’s sold on the idea that the more physically perfect a person is the greater his quality of life will be.

It wasn’t very long ago when Nazi Germany tried to eliminate people through an extermination program that targeted the weak, mentally disabled and infirm. This radical approach appealed to a Nazi hierarchy that eventually developed it into a state authorized program of genocide that determined to eliminate European Jewry. The only difference between this program of extermination and euthanasia is that death was not voluntarily chosen but enforced by a government set to "purify" the populace over which it had leadership. How quickly do the tides of a society change when its leadership devalues the sanctity of every life?

A Culture of Death has silently taken hold in a profession that was once sworn to uphold the classic Hippocratic Oath, which promises to heal and not harm, and to save lives rather than take them. The doctors who recommend euthanasia seem to have the mentality that death is the best alternative for the patient and his family. Since the patient’s quality of life is not acknowledged to be that of a healthy person, the emotional and financial burden to the family, exacerbated by rising health care costs, are thought to be too high a price to pay.

In 1943 a doctor actively broke his oath when he was assigned to a new position at the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland. Dr. Josef Mengele, a former research assistant with the Third Reich Institute for Hereditary, Biology and Racial Purity, came to Auschwitz heavily influenced by Professor Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer. Von Verschuer supported Hitler for being the first statesman to recognize the value of racial hygiene.

Racial purity became Dr. Mengele’s obsession, with frequently deadly consequences for those prisoners who became his "patients." The medical experimentation that was conducted on his patients included surgery without anesthetics, severe disfigurements of the body and injecting of fluids that caused severe infections and fevers.

His primary test subjects were children. He was a man who, with easy cold detachment, would handpick his patients as they were led from the train to be sent either to the barracks or gas chambers. He insisted that his pet subjects, often twins, received good care and were treated well because he needed them to be healthy so they could participate in what he considered to be his "research."

Dr. Josef Mengele was known for his good looks, charm, and tasteful style of dress. He possessed a seemingly caring and concerned manner with which he could "seduce" both his colleagues and victims. The way that he executed his acts of medical experimentation were brutal and cold-blooded, and despite his congenial manner he was unable to be emotionally effected by the suffering he inflicted on his patients.

His ability to be so severely detached from the monstrous cruelty he inflicted upon his patients came from viewing them as unworthy of kindness and less than human. The foundation for this attitude was set when as a young student Josef Mengele attended the lectures of Dr. Ernst Rudin, a man who was instrumental in setting the stage for the Holocaust.

Dr. Ernst Rudin, professor of psychiatry at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy in Munich, had the belief that some lives are not worth living and that doctors have a responsibility to eliminate those lives and remove them from the general population. The mentally handicapped became the Nazis first victims.

The Nazi doctors became self-appointed "Angels of Death" whose victims were categorized as non-human objects. As mere objects, their existence did not fit into the ideal of a perfect race whose purity depended on genetics. Imperfections that did not fit into the image of the "national ideal" were removed from public. The soul of a person was completely disregarded.

Although the heinous acts of these monsters created pain and suffering, it is obvious that the perpetrators did not feel any sort of compassion or empathy for their victims. Those who did see their victims as people had to get drunk before being able to commit these horrible acts of brutality. They were so filled with self-loathing that they had to sedate themselves with alcohol to silence what remained of their consciences.

The primary difference between the legalized act of "mercy killing" and the atrocities of the Nazi death camps is that one group is motivated by the desire to alleviate pain and suffering while the other group was intent on committing genocide. Each group considers their actions as justifiable for the good of their societies. Both groups do not respect life and make death the ultimate solution to a "problem."

Terminally ill patients who struggle with chronic pain can be made more comfortable by the care offered through a hospice program. The love and care of friends, family, and medical professionals involved in the life of the patient validates the value of that patient’s life. Good medical care can be provided in the patient’s home as well as at a hospital or some other sort of residential facility.

People with a deep religious faith appear to be able to cope with illness more gracefully and with more endurance than people who do not have a faith. They cherish life as sacred. Even during the hours of their greatest suffering, they can find a calming peace that gives them the courage to face death with dignity.

A study at the San Francisco Hospital conducted by Randolph C. Byrd, M.D. suggests that intercessory prayer can affect people who experience severe medical trauma. His article, published in the July 1988 issue of the Southern Medical Journal, describes a group of coronary care patients who were divided into two test groups. The test group that was prayed for exhibited fewer problems during their recovery.

Prayer is a resource that enables patients and their families to accept their situation with strength and peace. The effect of prayer is like a fiber that holds the human spirit in a place of continued renewal and comfort. It creates an inner ability to set aside self-pity and accept whatever the outcome of the situation may prove to be.

When did our society come to the conclusion that self-pity is a healthy, beneficial thing? Have we been deceived into believing that self-pity is a good motive for ending life? Has every bit of wisdom that has been passed down from the ages been forgotten to the point where hope and faith no longer have any impact on the level of respect we have for life? Is our society so full of idealized notions of what life really is all about and misplaced guilt over perceived flaws that any imperfection reminds us of our own mortality and shortcomings to such an extent that it has to be removed from sight?

Families and parents who cared for mentally handicapped children are often the most loving and caring people. People who care for the helpless and mentally handicapped do not have an easy life by far. But the benefits to their spirits far outweigh the costs. It’s the physically healthy person who can receive a spiritual boost by taking care of those who are less fortunate when such acts are motivated by compassion. Self-pity on the part of the infirm can feed guilt in the healthy, but true mercy is not manipulated by guilt. True mercy is fueled by love and a strong sense of the preciousness of all life.

Properly motivated caretakers exhibit so much resourcefulness in their actions, and a love so deep that they vigorously accept their task, that it is very life-giving for everyone involved. The doctor who wants to end the life of a severely deformed infant, or patient who suffers from chronic pain, is playing God. Legalizing medical murder is the government’s way of setting limits on the value of human life and putting the authority to make such judgments, on a case-by-case basis, in the hands of the medical community in partnership with a fickle society. The lessons that every life can teach by embracing value to all human life become extinguished within the blink of an eye.

Regretfully, the physically healthy are those who need a strong dose of spiritual revival. They are the people who often glorify their own image to the point where imperfections are scorned with pity. And yet, the deformed, sick and dying won’t go away. Their existence is a part of life. Imperfections and suffering in others can spur another human being to search for a remedy. Motivated by compassion, a person will seek new ways to bring healing to those who suffer.

History is now staring us straight in the face, challenging us to see if we recognize the mistakes of the past. Medical advances have achieved so much to bring longer life to mankind and decrease the successful spread of illness. However, evil will use every means possible to destroy life, even if it is through an act that seems to appear merciful.

Dr. Josef Mengele thought his "research" was for the greater good of his nation. His patients suffered the brunt of this misguided obsession. Choosing life, however, requires that we know what it is like to be alive and not emotionally detached. We recognize cruelty when we see it. Seductive talk and perfectly starched white coats do not create good bedside manners. Those who have a passion for life can influence society to value all human life, even when that human life does not resemble our ideal image.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

The attack took place at approximately 9:30 PM that night, with 236 planes over Würzburg while another 280 were heading for Nürnberg. According to the official statistics between 360,000 to 380,000 incendiary bombs were dropped in three waves, with 180 to 220 high-explosives bombs weighing 500 kg each, and an unknown quantity of Petrol Gelée cans thrown off the planes.

The city was a burning inferno by midnight, ablaze with a heat index of 1000 to 2000 degrees Celsius. The intensity of the heat and fire destroyed what bombs couldn’t. People were forced out of their cellars, flocking to the Main River as a place of refuge.

The official death count was totaled at about 5000 people. Of that over 3700 were women and children. Approximately 82 percent of living space was destroyed during the attack, 35 churches and almost all public buildings and cultural memorials. The city was transformed to rubble and ashes

Last summer I spent a few days in Würzburg while visiting a friend of mine, a fellow Texan. The city is situated on the Main River and surrounded by vineyards along its shores. On my first day there, we went downtown to visit the beautiful baroque garden of the Residence Palace. It was a hot summer day with the populace going about their business as usual. There were no signs of what happened 60 years ago.

Just as we made it to the garden entrance, a wedding party took pictures right in front of the old crown-bishop’s residence. A brass band was there, cheering on the newlyweds in their traditional Lederhosen and feathered hats. It all seemed so German.

I sat down on the Franconia-Fountain. Nestled right at the front of this majestic baroque building, it features the statues of Mathias Grünewald (Painter, ca. 1470—1528), Walther von der Vogelweide (Poet, 1170—1230), and Tilman Riemenschneider (Painter and Sculptor, 1460—1531). Three famous artists, whose names are connected to Würzburg through birth, death or through the effect of their work, surround the fountain in thoughtful poses. Their legendary works of art are still part of the city’s culture.

We walked through the cathedral and crossed the Alte Mainbrücke (the old Main bridge) with the statues of the Franconian Apostles. The Irish Bishop Kilian and his disciples Kolonat and Totnan evangelized the area after Rome fell. They died a martyr’s death in 689 AD; yet their work carried on in bringing Christianity to the Franken.

We decided to stop at a small café and sit outside under a big and shady umbrella. The city is still very pretty, but nothing like its previous splendor. It’s quite apparent which buildings were erected after the war. Since only six homes remained intact after the bombing, there was really nothing for the residents of Würzburg to go home to after the attack. They had to build anew.

People walked up and down the cobblestone streets that are only reserved for pedestrians and bike riders. Shops and bakeries were busy with their customers. Two old ladies idly chatted with each other as they passed our table. Tourists were heading for the cathedral for a picture and a tour. The scars from the past didn’t seem to exist as life continued in the streets of Würzburg.

At one time the city was a landmark of the Renaissance and Baroque period. The buildings constructed after the war look like square boxes made out of concrete — a standard post-war look seen in most cities that were bombed. Built in haste to accommodate new living space for the survivors, not much thought had been put into these structures. Most churches and historic buildings have been reconstructed and restored to their former beauty. But what about all those people who survived the war? It takes more than stone and paint to reconstruct their wounds.

On our way home we stopped at the war memorial museum. It’s a small room which explains some of the events that took place on March 16th. The heat and confines of the room, combined with all of the images and facts displayed on its walls and the small replica of the devastated city, were almost overwhelming.

Würzburg had seen a lot in its 1300 years of existence. There were revolts and peasant wars, witch burnings and squabbles between one prince and another. But I don’t think it had ever seen anything like what happened in 1945.

The loss of lives in WWII was gruesome. Over 60 million people died; 6 million Jews murdered in concentration camps, another 20 million deaths in Russia, over 4.5 million Poles, a million French, and unnumbered people of other nationalities lost their lives in Europe’s battle to conquer and to eliminate their enemy. Yet there are still disagreements over the exact number of deaths. Does another 5000 or 10,000 make a difference any more?

The citizens of Würzburg thought the worst was behind them. Dresden and Schweinfurt, with their machine factories, were already bombed. Rumors surfaced that the residents of Würzburg would be spared because it was said that Winston Churchill had studied in their city. None of these wishful thoughts prevented the attack. Air Marshall Sir Arthur Travers Harris believed, as did Winston Churchill, that German cities with a population of over 100,000 needed to be bombed in order to break the stamina of the German populace.

So the night sky rained fire and death on the city of Würzburg. Although the governor of the US military forces, Murray D. van Wagoner, suggested rebuilding the city at another location, the men and women of Würzburg wanted to rebuild their city in its original place. His intention of making the city a museum featuring its ruins as "the destruction of war" ended on May 1, 1945 when the mayor of Würzburg, Gustav Pinkenburg, called out to the citizens: "Würzburg is not dead, Würzburg must live, Würzburg must be erected again!"

Women called Trümmerfrauen (women of ruins) started to clean up their cities. The intense physical labor of cleaning up and rebuilding kept people too busy to think about too much beyond their immediate situation. Over two and a half million cubic meters of rubble were loaded onto boats that floated down the Main River to clean the broken pieces of the ruined city. However, once the excitement of rebuilding settled down, a new reality settled in.

Even as many cities in Germany commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII this year, the government and people still struggle with how to respond to their nation’s own past. Ever fearful of its past reputation and wanting to shed the stigma of its recent history, the path of political correct politics has led to a new internal economic and financial struggle with its highly developed welfare state.

As much as Germany has rebuilt and pulled herself out of the ashes, there is still a cloud of guilt and shame lurking in the consciousness of the population. Nobody has yet to come forth and absolve Germany of her sins of WWII, least of all the Germans people themselves.

In AD 680 a foreign bishop traveled from Ireland to Würzburg and converted her leaders to an ancient faith that re-introduced moral codes and civil conduct. Their message spread and took root in the land and the lives of people who nurtured a flourishing culture of learning the arts of science, poetry, art and music. The three artist on the fountain attest to that. Germany possessed a muse and a deep faith. It gave them Goethe and Schiller who were lovers of liberty.

Until Germans decide within themselves to reconnect with their own roots, which they have slowly discarded since the mid 19th Century by embracing socialism as their new religion, a real change cannot occur with new momentum. It is not government, nor is it legal strategies, that can bring Germany out of her self-imposed paralysis. It’s a trust in her people and the individual responsibility that everyone carries that has the capacity to dislodge the mistaken belief that people need the power of the state for their livelihood.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

In some ways it is an opportunity to talk about us. Weather often seems to resemble man’s personality. The rainy and stormy part can represent our sad and darker side while the sunshine and cool breezes express our happy and carefree side.

Discussing the weather seems to be quite popular, right next to politics only a lot more pleasant. Weather and climate are not influenced by man’s actions as much as culture and society are. There is still a distinct boundary between nature’s way of life and the way man chooses to live his life.

Man has not been involved in controlling the extreme climate changes that have taken up residence on our planet over the ages. With the existence of man as we know him today, his weather has also been mostly steady which allows man to live in an environment that is habitable and tolerable.

The weather does not discriminate on whom it will pour rain and cause floods, but simply bases its outcome on laws of physics that are influenced by temperatures, movements of bodies of water and pressure systems.

The weather is still a harmless casual topic of discussion between friends and strangers that does not evoke any sort of hostility. One simply seems to respect the fact that nature takes its own course when it decides to rain and when it decides to be sunny.

It is known that the weather affects us psychologically, which is possibly another reason why we like to talk about it. People who live in colder climates seem to have a different personality than people in warmer climates. Longer darkness and cloudy skies affect us with mood swings and melancholy. A lot of sunshine, on the other hand, lifts our spirits up and motivates us to be outside.

Understandably the weather cannot be adjusted to individual needs, which means that if somebody is too hot or too cold he has to find ways to keep himself comfortable. In most instances man has learned to add or remove clothing according to his environment and create comfortable clothing to accommodate this need.

People in cooler climates have found ways to occupy their long dark periods with a few more beers at night and by entertaining himself listening to music and poetry, reading books, or creating art. For some it’s watching TV endlessly. Electricity and proper lighting have helped bring brightness to darkness.

Technology has added the conveniences of heating and cooling units to keep individual homes at their personal comfort levels. Man learned to adjust to his level of comfort by means of individual choices that he can apply in his own home and property.

He even learned to irrigate the land in drier climates to control crop production, which makes him less reliant on the weather. The Sumer civilization in Southern Mesopotamia had learned this skill over 5000 years ago, creating a thriving civilization that relied on the flow of the Euphrates.

In addition, man has engineered dams and canals to control lakes and rivers to make use of its energy by building water reservoirs and transportation routes that have greatly benefited him. Trade and commerce flourished in these areas, where man’s creativity was used to let nature serve him. How he manages and operates these vital life lines has always been left to his own good will and common sense.

But what would happen if one person suddenly set himself up to control the weather by adjusting it to his own personal standard? The idea sounds fundamentally wrong since the entire human race would then be under the tyranny of one person’s subjective preference. His interference would disrupt the entire course of the natural cycle causing drought and floods in one area by choosing sunlight and warm temperatures over another. Part of the population would not be very happy with this manipulation.

As long as the weather remains outside man’s control, people can accept the consequences as natural. He knows it is outside his domain and a fact of life. If anything, floods and disasters can inspire man to build sturdier structures, invent new technology with greater efficiency or even come up with new warning systems. He can also apply his human compassion to those who suffered through a weather related catastrophe.

Manipulating the weather by restricting man’s creativity through legitimate force would limit the choices man has to use his free will. His actions would no longer be based on using his own common sense, but fear. The ones in control would not be able to equally bring happiness and pleasure to other parts of the globe, since his action has become discriminatory. People would get a sense of entitlement if what they perceive to be their fair share of the weather were not complied to. The natural balance, which the weather creates to stabilize the climate, would then fall under man’s darker nature: entitlement. There is enough of that already.

Any expectations to regulate the weather by suffocating man’s drive to use the earth as his source of energy, is suicidal. Regulating it through laws upon a global community may be like water drops on a hot stone. It’s a foolish idea. So far no Western nation has managed to eliminate problems in this world created by man. He only made it worse by placing more laws on matters thinking he could stabilize them with disastrous wars and poverty to follow. The sheer energy and resources wasted on putting the legal fist on problems that often can be resolved if left to natural laws — like the weather.

The amount of capital placed in this scheme to control the climate would be better served by investing them in business and technology that would actually provide work for the people. Man’s resources would then be invested in his own prosperity. People who live free and own their property are known not to rape their land.

This is evident in those countries where property was for the common use of its population and not owned by private citizens but by the state. Nobody cared enough to sweep up neither their own dirt nor maintain the proper upkeep. These nations had greater pollution and environmental declines than in those countries whose populace owned their own property.

The choice is up to the person in how he wants to deal with the non-cooperative weather. Whining about it won’t change anything. The fact that man has never been in control over any of these matters has actually driven him into using his inventive thought processes to come up with better ways to live and provide protection from the weather.

People in Texas, California and Florida learned how to deal with tornados, heavy rains and hurricanes. Every year we hear of disasters, loss of life, and catastrophes throughout the globe caused by the weather. The recent tsunami catastrophe in Asia and Florida’s hurricane season were some of the highlights of last year’s catastrophes.

We hear of these things more often simply because news travels a lot faster around the globe than 1000 years ago, distorting one’s perception that nature is just on a rampage when really is just doing what it has always been doing. Population has exploded over the past 100 years, so when a natural catastrophe does hit a highly populated area it seems harsh and cruel.

Those who happen to experience the drama of severe weather often receive a renewed sense of humility about the frailty of life, the power of the human spirit, and God’s grace to overcome a catastrophe. They rebuild their community and homes. The smart ones will apply better ideas for stability and may start building their houses on rocks rather than in flood zones.

Weather is not discriminatory and does not make victims or victors willfully. There is no fairness or equality in its performance. People know that and respect it because the weather can bless or curse the ground on which we live. Yet, not once has man been able to influence it through sheer will power.

We can only make predictions and assumptions on how the weather may develop based on observations of a few factors: temperature, pressure, wind, and clouds. Combining these can give man a general picture on what he is to expect and where the weather is heading, since the natural laws are reliable in how they operate. Predictions can be made for a two to five day outlook, but even then changes will occur. No weather report contains 100% accuracy.

Radar control and new instruments have enabled predictions to become very precise, thus helping to save many lives. The News Media, however, has made a habit of making the weather big news. They create more excitement and panic than necessary. One wonders if the weather has just been discovered since the invention of the radar. Warnings and alerts will save lives; creating panic and hysteria do not.

Man made it through storms for thousands of years. By applying some common sense, along with knowing a few facts, one just knows not to go out during a lightening storm in Texas. And, as discussed earlier, sometimes there are no comforting words as to why certain catastrophes happen in one place and not in another.

For those whose goal is to find a way to regulate the weather, and thus our climate, the following words speak for themselves:

"Can you move back the movements of the stars? Are you able to restrain the Pleiades or Orion? Can you ensure the proper sequence of the season or guide the constellation of the Bear with her cubs across the heavens? Do you know the laws of the universe and how God rules the earth? Can you shout to the clouds and make it rain? Can you make lightening appear and cause it to strike as you direct it?" (Job 38:31—33)

Job understood the majesty of the universe and respected its sovereignty. It will never be man’s place to set himself up as emperor over nature. He was appointed to let the earth serve him and to be a good steward of creation. The weather should not ever become a political issue. It is about the only civil thing left to talk about in our current climate. It still is, for the most part, the least offensive topic to discuss amongst civilized people.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

My most memorable snapshots are of the post-WWII generation of German women in Germany. These are women whose lives have inspired my own. Their lives speak of a kind of character and endurance that is rarely found in modern woman. Western Europe and Russia can identify with a post-war woman’s hardship and sorrow; they have seen her. Her name "woman" was still praised on the lips of men and her story, if absorbed by modern woman, could regain her honorable position in society.

My profoundest image is that of my German grandmother dozing in her chair, next to the oven in the large kitchen. Her hands, worn out from years of hard work in the fields, rested in her lap. She wore an ordinary apron, thick socks and her house shoes. On Sundays she wore no head scarf. Her silver hair was brushed softly to the back out of her face. Unlike most women her age, she kept it short. They wore their gray hair pulled into a bun at the back of the head.

I often found her asleep in her chair when I snuck in for a drink of water. The large kitchen was empty and quiet. Only the fire crackling in the stove, and the ticking of the old clock on the wall, broke the quiet. The two small windows allowed for sunlight, but not enough to brighten up the large kitchen. Here she was, doing what old people do, snoozing near her kitchen stove on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes I saw her looking through the windows out into the street. She was quiet; never said much. Just looking and resting.

At other times she could be so lively. When guests arrived in the tavern for a game of cards, she could sit in playing Schafskopf like farmer Schmitt next door. She was never shy in voicing her opinions. She would cook her Sunday’s lunch while the men sat at the table after church, idly discussing politics and the economy. Standing near her kitchen stove she possessed a quiet confidence, interjecting her own comments into the conversation. Oma’s personality was humorous and trustworthy, with a charm all of her own. Witty and quick with words, she could also be stern and gentle with her eight grandchildren. These qualities made her a good business woman and a loving grandma.

I grew up around several widows; war widows who lived in our village. They wore black clothes for mourning, and some never gave it up. They fully immersed in their role of the widow, mourning the husbands they lost during the war. Those were the women who sat in the back of the church alone with their head scarves drawn as far as possible around their faces, praying the rosary and never missing mass during the week.

They came together to make marmalade at my grandmother’s house once. Like a finely tuned instrument, they worked together making some sweet smelling mixture from berries that grow on wild hedges. It wasn’t a very easy task. The seeds had to be separated from the fruit by pressing them through a sieve. Their busyness kind of electrified the room with a sense of urgency. They chatted about village life while stirring the bubbly mixture in the pot on the stove, and filled up the jars with marmalade.

Aunt Mary, my grandfather’s sister-in-law, also became a widow early in life. Although her husband returned from WWII with a head wound, he died the year I was born. She never remarried. She stayed busy with her vineyard and farm work. She ran a seasonal tavern during the winter and summer months. An amazing business woman, she lived well into her mid 90′s.

Aunt Mary never complained. I loved visiting her on my vacations. She reminded me of my grandmother and I loved her determination and the zest she had for life. I once asked her why she would not want to move to America, where her only daughter had relocated after marrying a young GI in 1959. Life would be a lot easier, I remarked. Her simple answer was that one cannot uproot an old tree and replant it to another terrain. She was content with where she was and who she was. I admired that attitude in her. Her character revealed her hidden passion for independence through our conversations. It was not a display of defiance, but rather a testimony of making the best of her situation. She was determined to live in her own house for as long as she could (and did), taking care of herself.

In Aunt Mary’s latter years my mother came to visit her almost every weekend, to check on her. She would take Aunt Mary to town for her shopping, or to tend to business. Women like her were not a rarity in her generation. She didn’t want to be a burden on anyone else, but was smart enough to ask for help if she couldn’t provide for her own needs. Her eyesight wasn’t the best, and her cooking and cleaning wasn’t like it used to be. However, she maintained the schedule of her household. It was something she needed. It gave her strength and purpose to get out of bed every day. As single mother I quickly learned that receiving care and support from family members surpasses any assistance from an institution. The protective fold of a family is immeasurable.  

She had two friends who came and visited her almost every day. The three widows sat in her kitchen chatting about the weather and comparing the aches in their legs. These women came by when I, by then an American resident, was visiting my family back in Germany. My mother set the table for coffee, and Aunt Mary was persuaded to leave her stove and sit down. Three old women wearing their head scarves and aprons, with their worn hands resting in their laps, were sitting across from me on the bench. They eagerly inquired about my life in America, like little girls wanting to know about a journey taken to a mysterious foreign land. For some reason they still referred to me as the "baker’s youngster." To them I was my grandfather’s eldest grandchild. They were passing on their generation’s memory to my mother and me. The social need to gather together and provide support for each other during their widowed years had bonded them into a long friendship. They talked of times long gone that brought up many cherished memories of my grandparents.

Women of both grandmother’s and Aunt Mary’s generation were blunt. They told it like it was without any sort of inhibitions. They lived through too much to cover up any political incorrectness. They’ve seen the horrors and miseries of life. They have seen new life being born in front of their eyes and taken away just as quickly. My paternal grandfather came from a family of eleven children and five of them died very young. At the age these women were, they also knew that life’s too short to waste it on "swollen" words that make life sound too artificially perfect. Their words described reality; and it made them approachable; so much so that I wanted to kiss them on the cheek when I left. Never did I realize that age and truth had such sweetness until I got older. These women lived through hard times. Naturally they wanted to witness their experiences to a willing ear. It’s a real loss if one’s life cannot be witnessed. It’s the only legacy we pass on to the next generation. My mother and I were the recipients of their classic tales without any pretenses. Their words carried authority; a sound reflection of life that carried no bitterness.

In some ways they were better off than the city dwellers during the war. They had livestock and crops, however small, to support them during the lean war years. After the war many remained widows and some remarried. Others passed on the farm to their children. These were the women hunched over in the fields, hoeing and pulling weeds during the spring. It was that generation of women in the cities who stood on the piles of rubble, hauling the pieces off, rock by rock, to clean up their towns from the destruction of a war. There was not much time to complain about any personal injustice. They only wanted their husbands back and to provide a decent living condition for their families. They were not too tired to cut grass and haul it back in baskets strapped on their backs for their animals, or to spend a few hours in the forest gathering firewood. There was no excuse to be tired and overburdened.

Women — they carried their buckets to the well every day to get fresh water, they baked, cleaned, cooked, raised their children and kept up with their household on top of that. Performing what we now would call "multi-tasking," they worked their way out of the misery that decades of war brought them. They knew how to stretch the money and make the most of what they had. They were the backbone of the community that kept life going when their men were gone off to war or came back disabled and burned out from years on the battlefield.

Women of that generation were great bike riders. My best friend told me a story how she rode her bike up the hill in her German town, all decked out in her spiffy bike pants, sunglasses, sweating and working herself up the hill on her brand new 10-speed bike. Suddenly, quite surprisingly, an old lady zooms past her on a Pee-Wee Herman bike, dressed in a skirt and orthopedic shoes. Speechless at first being overtaken, my friend watched as grandma made her way up the hill with her shopping basket still nicely tucked into the back of her bike and my friend fell further and further behind. Having a car wasn’t always an option, due to the costs, but the lack of automotive transportation didn’t keep them at home. No health club fees for women on bikes.

These women were not perfect by today’s standard. Years of hard work left its mark on their bodies and faces. Very little of their appearance seems to resemble the modern and elegant beauties of the 21st Century. Haute Couture would have been wasted on them. It wasn’t their style. Their everyday dress was modest and plain. Wearing their traditional dress and hat seemed to fit their faces and their faded youth shimmered through their brief smiles. Most of the women wore no makeup. Their faces, tanned and wind blown from being outside, did not require the extra enhancement.

And yet, there were women who became tired and worn out under the heavy burden of responsibility. These women had given up; allowing the burden of heavy chores to crush them. The duties of today’s woman have improved tremendously by means of new technologies. Women have electric stoves, microwaves, refrigerators and more conveniences than our ancestors could ever dream about. These are the great aids of modern living that have freed us from the extra weight.

A woman, who cannot receive her emotional support from her husband because he is away at war, can become bruised of spirit. She had to find other ways to fill that void. For many it was their Church life and socializing. But there were women who faltered under the added pressure. The way some women chose to respond to their plight was with enmity. Although her world around her was burned down to ashes, the manner in which a woman chose to act in the hour of her adversity has not changed over the years. Submitting to Love takes great strength in the midst of our weakest moments. A woman can fall prey to her own vices if she rejects her own natural tendency to heal through it. Women are still being praised for their submission to this Love under difficult circumstances in biblical narratives. The Book of Ruth is a tribute to these women. Women who have chosen to blame and pass on their burden to others have drifted through life mercilessly blaming the world for their troubles. Their words carry misery and bitterness.

I will never really know what went through the minds of these women. I can only make my own assumption based on my own experiences. It was very apparent that their belief system came from their faith. People during that time lived in a more religious environment than in a secular one, as it is today. Their inner values were quite visible in how they lived their outer value. It was God, husband, children and their home and their land. It was into those things which they poured their energy. In their environment, their small community was still governed for the most part by the men of the town.

Men had the authority and made decisions that affected their town; brought improvements and handled their crisis during floods and fires. There was no police present to monitor every move. Crimes were hardly heard of, and respecting one’s personal boundary and property was part of the fiber that knitted together that small society. People were responsible and held each other accountable for their actions. It was a much more intimate, user-friendly environment that created a trust in the system under which they lived. A woman knew she could rely on her neighbor for help. She knew her husband can provide for her through his work, which was available in abundance after the war. Women were loyal to their husbands and their men before centralization shifted the authority to a secular state.

It was in this setting of the 60′s and early 70′s in which I remember these women and their generation. It was Germany’s economic miracle years. They had the incentive and good sense to work themselves out of their failures and losses. History shows that people who live on the edge between despair and hope can be innovative and energetic because they draw upon their own natural gifts, applying themselves to the best of their abilities. For the most part people looked for ways of improving their lives within themselves and drew upon their inner resources to invent, create, build, sell and trade. This productivity made Germany an economic world power that raised the standard of living for its society. It brought new conveniences and recreation to a tired and worn out people.

Not only did it give them material wealth that their children could inherit; it also gave them a reward for their accomplishment: a sense of well-being and contentment. Those who attained it no longer hungered after someone else’s land, husband and wife. The reward was gracefully earned. These people did not spend beyond their own limits, and were careful not to get indebted but willing enough to risk a business expansion. Post-war women, married and widowed, could draw from this nourishing environment, because it was founded on ancient Christian roots that once stabilized and turned a pagan people into a thriving community. It is to these roots that the village in which I lived returned to after the war.

The legacy of the post-war woman, whose story is captured in the Bible and pre-modern time of Western Civilization, is a testimony to her endurance and stability. They have witnessed for centuries that she is capable of rebuilding her family and community side by side with her husband and making man her ally. Her role as a helper was not yet redefined by the secular interference of society. The modern woman has gradually chosen to transgress against her own nature by removing herself from that role. Her cries are not tears of sorrow, but of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Her lamenting is not grieving the dead and stillborn, but the burden of raising her illegitimate children alone or rejecting them from her womb. Her impatience is not her eagerness to await her husband’s return from imprisonment; but to keep him imprisoned through her legal battles. She chases after favors from her adulterous relationship with her false husband, an instiutionalized state

Modern woman’s quest to manipulate her society with her crippled perception about her "hardship" has influenced most Western nations. It is seen in the legalization of her false image as a minority and victim. The feminist spirit impregnates her land with selfishness, complacency, apathy and dependency leading men into bondage. Her world consists of worshiping the idol of her own image. She seeks absolution from her sins through secular counseling, bringing her to a false sense of contentment and security.

The emancipated woman has lost her ability to empathize, to sense the sorrows of her own people that she partially created by rejecting her own role. Thoughtlessly, she drifts into the vices that make her dependent on objects and useless causes bringing her only temporary feelings of happiness. The man who once cherished her is never good enough to take his rightful place by her side. She holds him responsible for her unhappy state and boycotts her marriage vows. She emasculates his very essence by enslaving him to be her master. Modern woman has turned into Potifar’s wife, imprisoning an innocent man before he could prove his innocence.

She births heartless children who find no comfort at her cold breast. Her milk is a bitter poison. I am from that generation of women who had bought into the lie that a woman can be like a man. Many women of my generation are divorced women, who found themselves more confused after their failed marriages. Their shattered lives looking like a war zone, these women can’t figure out where their issues stem from and repeat their follies all over again; continually blaming men for their failures. I heard their stories many times when I counseled them through their pains in my ministry to the divorced. It became obvious that the legal status of woman has gone beyond good intentions and is rather destroying the very thing she seeks.

The images and message of a post-war woman of the past can teach modern woman that she too can come out of her war zone, if she makes man her ally. Today’s woman is given more assistance to complete her tasks than in any other time in history. She no longer has to deal with the high loss of infant deaths or diseases. She has the ability to learn and build upon her knowledge so that she can start new ventures for herself and her family. Most of these inventions came from man, her partner. Recreational time has increased for her, and yet she cannot find peace with herself. Rather than continually distancing herself from her man by making herself the victim, she can close it through a reasonable approach by knowing her role. She has the natural abilities to be a nurturer, mother, and lover. The woman who shows loyalty and support to her man will be the more satisfied woman. She possesses an aura of sweetness that does not diminish her capacity to think and reason.

Women and widows of my grandparents’ generation were still married to their real husband in a physical and spiritual sense. For the most part of their lives they were able to trust that they would be provided for by their spouse through sickness and in health. In their faith they were married to their spiritual Husband who sustained them through their widowed and single years. The way their rural life was organized, it caught their sorrows and plights in a nurturing network in which they could draw on their own resources. They excelled through their trials and hardship and had enough left over to pass on an inheritance to their children. Their examples and lives should not be discarded and forgotten. German women and women everywhere can see that it was the spirit of the post-war woman that gave purpose to their men to rebuild.

The legacy of women in war torn countries are readily observed by their behavior. Women who bedded the institutionalized society committed adultery, because they took that role away from their men and husbands. A woman who relied on society for her emotional well-being committed a spiritual adultery. Their offspring will most likely reject the role of the real Father, both in a physical and spiritual sense. Women are, and always will be, the keeper of the hearth watching over the fire to keep it burning. Her warmth and gentleness will keep her man in the folds of her family, if she submits to the loyalty of her Husband.

It is in her relationship with her man that the heart and mind of both genders meet and unite as one flesh. Women who reject the role of her man will find her environment declining into a merciless wasteland of poverty and immorality. It’s up to woman to choose how she wants to act in her current circumstances, so that she can regain her honorable status again. And that will be the day when man will praise her with his lips again and call her "blessed."

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

I stood under the sprinklers for a few seconds, just to soak in the moisture so I could endure the time I was outside. The mist of the water felt cooling and I began to clear away my daughters’ doll stroller and wagon. I had no intentions of tripping over them in the morning.

It was almost a comfort to be standing under the dark Texas sky away from the merciless sun that beat down from morning until sundown. Yard work and fiddling around with small tasks outside was a good distraction for the moment. When the water sprinklers stopped I sat back down on my uncomfortable wooden bench.

My children were peacefully asleep inside. None of them had any idea how their lives had changed. How were they going to handle this? Ten hours earlier I found out that my married life was over. Since that moment, I felt like death swallowed me alive. I was ready to escape the confines of my house and find refuge in my yard so I could see the sky. It has always been a comforting thing to do.

Gazing at the stars took my mind off my bleak future for a while. There is a lot of imagination to be had when looking up rather than down. I looked for the brightest star in the night sky, something I’ve done for many years. A person can even see color if he looks at them long enough. I found one right next to the moon. And it was a full moon too. Sigh… At least the moon’s light is only a reflection, so it is a lot softer than the full blaze of the summer sun. Its light reminds me of candle light. Soft and steady, it brings gentleness into the darkness. I needed a dose of that kind of light at the moment.

The night has different sounds, too. Here in Texas we have chirping crickets and locusts. It’s a symphony with the nightingale singing along and the mosquito making its buzzing interruption. It’s a different world sitting out under the stars. There is something comforting about the night; something that brings us to a place of rest. We always know that the morning will come; no matter what.

There are still times when I am afraid of the night. There are shadows and creepy noises. Then there are those moments where we are seized with such a purpose that we fear nothing. I remember as a 6-year-old in Bavaria, I wanted to see Kristkindl at night during the Christmas season. When I woke in the night my room was very dark. Normally I would feel afraid, but not that night. I felt my way to the closet to put on my shoes. I opened the door to our patio and stood outside in my nightgown under a starry night and waited. It was freezing cold but I intensely looked up just to see if I could catch a glimpse of Kristkindl. I really wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I just knew it must be a young Angel-girl with wings flying through the sky to bring the Christmas gifts to all the little children. I probably would have stayed out there all night if I hadn’t started getting very cold. Shivering and a little disappointed I made my way back to bed. One thing I remember was seeing many bright stars.

As a 9-year-old in Germany, one of my best friends was a boy named Peter. He and I had great talks together looking into the heavens at night. He was my fourth-grade teacher’s oldest son, and played the trumpet in our band. He was about three years older than me. I played the clarinet and that’s how we became friends. After band practice, which we held upstairs in the old corner guesthouse, we took the long way home through the village and up to the hill where I lived. During the fall and winter months, it was already dark outside by the time practice was over. Halfway up the hill to my home we would stop at Frau Jahna’s garden wall, sit down and look up. I remember there was always a chill in the air, but we were not at all fazed by it. He was the one who told me that the light we see twinkling in the night sky could be from a star that is already extinguished, and the light that comes from earth and travels to a star may be the light of Roman times, depending from what time the light was from.

Ah, it was all so fascinating. Once I jokingly tried to convince him that there really was a face in the moon by pointing the facial features out to him, but I couldn’t convince him. And so we headed home, bidding each other good-bye and going our separate ways once we reached my house. Each time we walked home we continued to wonder about what was happening up there in the sky. Those were my first experiences with someone else where we explored thoughts together and still remained in wonderment of never quite knowing. It kept my interest open to hear more.

The night can reveal more good things. As teenagers, my brother had a room next to mine down in the basement. We were the oldest and had our own rooms. One night he came to my room while I had Uriah Heep playing on the record player. It was already very late and I was kind of daydreaming on my bed. The only light in the room was from a single burning candle. He sat down on my bed and we started talking about music. Of course our conversation also included our current crushes and school. Everything was discussed in depth. A few awkward moments were smoothed out with a fleeing smile.

That night we dropped our masks. I no longer saw my "dorky" brother but saw a caring and witty person sitting in front of me. We listened to each other and took note of what was said. We didn’t have to pretend anymore. It took the weight off our shoulders that helped us through our lives and strengthened our relationship. That night we became inseparable. We still call each other almost every week to talk and laugh. We can accept each other unconditionally, because we freely give back to each other without manipulation. That night he was there for me, talking to me for several hours on the phone. He wouldn’t hang up until he knew I was going to be all right.

Back under the Texas sky, a breeze rustled through the big oak tree. Ah, it felt good. There are no words to describe the deliverance from agony when a gust of wind whisks through the stifling air. I sat in silence gazing up into the heavens again. Is my fate determined by the stars, or is the place I find myself to be an Advent that will usher in a new life? Has there ever been complete darkness on earth? There’s has always been a flicker of light somewhere within our darkest moments that we want to grasp and hold on to. And sometimes it’s the only thing we have left — a flicker. And I found myself to be at that place.

Something died that night. It was only the rhythmic pounding of my heartbeat within my chest that kept me alive. It let me know that there’s still life in there. Its beat was a muffled but desperate pounding in my ears. Wasn’t there a life that gives light to everyone? "The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it" (John 1:5). Wasn’t there a story that said "…don’t be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy for everyone…" (Luke 2:10)?

My children came to my mind. They relied on my sanity. They needed a mother whose head is together, but I also knew it would take time. I thought of Mary who heard the stories the shepherds told to everyone — The Good News — and how she quietly treasured these things in her heart and thought about them often (Luke 2:19). Can I find my strength there? Is that where I can find something to hold onto, and so our lives can move forward? Didn’t my mother and grandmother light the four candles on the Advent wreath every Sunday before Christmas exactly for that reason?

Stories actually take on a meaning when we realize we are in the story. Before that they can just be words; pointless words quoted out of a book. But when the stories in the book become real in the lives of people, we’re in the Word. And on that humid night in Texas, I found my hold in the Word. It was an early Christmas present that wasn’t wrapped in a box with a pretty bow. It looked more like broken parts lying before me as I sat in my yard under the tree. These were tender parts in swaddling clothes that will grow, be cuddled and are scented like the smell of a newborn babe. There’s sweetness in life, too, even when it’s dark and broken. Does not the sweet smell of the honeysuckle linger during the night? Does not the seed sprout once it fell to the ground? It’s that kind of life which conquers the bitterest death. It’s the kind of life that flickers in the dark night of the soul.

The drumbeat I heard in my ears settled down to a calmer rhythm. The fear of the night was conquered with a purpose. I could not see any angels in the heavens, or a star guiding the way. There were no shepherds announcing the news of the Savior being born. But I heard the call, like trumpets sounding in my heart. I got up from my bench and headed for the back door. I took one last look at the stars and there I determined that I would follow the Shepherd’s call. I opened the door and entered a new life.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

Since the time before Christmas is Advent season, which is a fasting time, the dogma of the church did not allow bread to be baked with butter. Only oil, water, and flour were to be used. This made for a tasteless cake. The electors of Dresden, Ernst and Albrecht von Sachsen were not too fond of the taste either, and made a written request to Pope Nikolaus V in 1450 to ease the fasting laws and to allow the use of butter. It was not until 1491 that Pope Innocence VIII reduced the law to allow some fattening taste in the Christstollen.

German cities are busy with Kristkindl Markets during the Christmas season. One of the oldest markets, called the Striezelmarkt, is also located in Dresden. Its name derived from this famous Christmas cake.

In 1434 Friedrich II gave permission for a free meat market to be held once a week and on Christmas Eve. The market became so successful that privileges were extended to sell other goods. This included baked goods, pottery, goods of the goldsmith and glass blowers, as well as fine linens and lace. Wood carved items, such as toys, are an all time favorite with children and adults. Part of the Christmas décor in Germany is still the famous wooden ornaments of angels and nutcrackers and of St. Nicklaus.

As the market flourished, traders were permitted to rent carts to offer their goods. In 1624 the market became so successful that neighboring businesses and tradesmen felt its competition and requested that the city council intervene by restricting the market. However, the city council denied the request. The result of this wise decision led to expanding the wares to be sold so that they included crafts and goods throughout Saxony.

It is noted in the city archives that in 1560 the council members were invited by the mayor of the city of Dresden for a Stollenessen. Until the 17th Century every council member received a Christstollen during the Christmas season from the city as an act of generosity.

Dresdner master bakers had to pay a tributary to the chief head of the Wettiner. Traditionally, on the day after Christmas eight master and fellow bakers took the king a Christstollen that weighed 36 pounds and was one and a half meters long. The tradition continued until the monarchy ended in 1918.

Most Christmas markets in Germany are still very much a time of eating and drinking, with many craftsmen and traders offering their goods with lots of sweets. The place is filled with the smells of spices that come from the Far East.

One of the most desired drinks at the markets is hot Gluehwein (mulled wine) made out of red wine, cinnamon sticks, cloves and oranges. Its spicy aroma and alcoholic content will warm up any visitor when walking through the markets in freezing temperatures.

Also quite interesting is the Lebkuchen, which resembles a small round spice cake. Since it was seen as a fasting cake, it could not be made with yeast. Hirschhornsalz (hartshorn) was used to raise the dough and was mixed with oriental spices such as cinnamon, cloves, anis and honey for flavoring.

It made its first appearance in Franconian monasteries, and by 1296 was also noted in the city of Ulm. Starting in the 14th Century, this little spiced cake became quite famous in Nürnberg. The cakes can be covered with almonds, chocolate or sugar frostings, and taste very delicious with a steaming cup of coffee. Although considered a fasting cake for the Advent season, it was served with strong beer centuries ago.

The wintry weather will not keep visitors and carolers away. Christmas markets would not be complete without music and song. Sounds of "Oh Du Frhliche" and "Ihr Kinderlei Kommet" are some of the older Christmas melodies I remember from childhood. It is a magical time for children with all the lights and music and games.

Strikingly, the popularity of cakes and markets during the Christmas Season became famous in strong trading cities, such as Nürnberg, Hamburg and Dresden. Ingredients that are needed to make these traditional Christmas goods all come from foreign lands and require the import and distribution of these spices. To this day, Christstollen and Lebkuchen are two of the dominant bakery goods that sweeten the Christmas season. Our famous Kirstkindl markets last to this day and are a reminder how long lasting a good idea can be.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

I stood under the sprinklers for a few seconds, just to soak in the moisture so I could endure the time I was outside. The mist of the water was very cooling and I began to clear away my daughters’ doll stroller and wagon. I would hate having to trip over them in the morning trying to get to my car on the way to work.

It was almost a comfort to be standing under the dark Texas sky away from the merciless sun that beat down from morning until sundown. It’s a good time to do some work in the yard for a while. When the water sprinklers stopped I sat back down on my uncomfortable wooden bench.

My children were peacefully asleep inside. None of them had any idea how their lives had changed. How were they going to handle this? About ten hours before I found out that my married life was over. Since that moment, I felt like death swallowed me alive. I was ready to escape the confines of my house and find refuge in my yard so I could see the sky. It has always been a comforting thing to do.

Gazing at the stars took my mind off my situation for a while. There is a lot of imagination to be had when looking up rather than down. As usual, I looked for the brightest star in the night sky. A person can even see color if he looks at them long enough. I found one right next to the moon. And it was a full moon too. Sigh… At least the moon’s light is only a reflection, so it is a lot softer than the full blaze of the summer sun. Its light reminds me of a candle light. Soft and steady, it brings a gentleness into the darkness. I needed a dose of that kind of light at the moment.

The night has different sounds, too. Here in Texas we have chirping crickets. It’s a real concert at night with the nightingale singing along with the crickets, and the mosquito making its buzzing interruption. It’s a different world sitting out under the stars. There is something comforting about the night; something that brings us to a place of rest. We always know that the morning will come; no matter what.

There are still times when I am afraid of the night. There are shadows and creepy noises. Then there are those moments where we are seized with such a purpose that we fear nothing. I remember as a 6-year-old, I wanted to see Kristkindl at night during the Christmas season. When I woke in the night my room was very dark. Normally I would feel afraid, but not that night. I felt my way to the closet to put on my shoes. I opened the door to our patio and stood outside in my nightgown under a starry night and waited. It was freezing cold but I intensely looked up just to see if I could catch a glimpse of Kristkindl.

I really wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I just knew it must be a young Angel-girl with wings flying through the sky to bring the Christmas gifts to all the little children. I probably would have stayed out there all night if I hadn’t started getting very cold. Shivering and a little disappointed I made my way back to bed. One thing I do remember is I saw a lot of stars and it was very pretty.

As a 9-year-old in Germany, one of my best friends was a boy named Peter. He and I had great talks together looking into the heavens at night. He was my fourth grade teacher’s oldest son, and played the trumpet in the band. He was about three years older than me. I played the clarinet in band and that’s how we became friends. After band practice, which we held in the old corner guesthouse on the upper floor, we took the long way home through the village and up to the hill where I lived.

During the fall and winter months, it was already dark outside by the time practice was over. Halfway up the hill to my home we would stop at Frau Jahna’s garden wall, sit down and look up. I remember there was always a chill in the air, but we were not at all fazed by it. He was the one who told me that the light we see twinkling in the night sky could be from a star that is already extinguished, and the light that comes from earth and travels to a star may be the light of Roman times, depending from what time the light was from.

Ah, it was all so fascinating. Once I jokingly tried to convince him that there really was a face in the moon by pointing the facial features out to him, but I couldn’t convince him. And so we headed home, bidding each other goodbye and going our separate ways once we reached my house. Each time we walked home we continued to wonder about what was happening up there in the sky. Those were my first experiences with someone else where we explored thoughts together and still remained in wonderment of never quite knowing. It kept my interest open to hear more.

The night can reveal more good things. As teenagers, my brother had a room next door to mine down in the basement. We were the oldest and had our own rooms. One night he came to my room while I had Uriah Heep playing on the record player. It was already very late and I was being a carefree teenager. The only light in the room was from a single burning candle. He sat down on my bed and we started talking about music. Then our conversation turned to the typical worries of teenagers. We talked about our current crushes and school.

Somewhere along the way, we seemed to actually have discovered each other as two individuals. I didn’t just see my brother but also saw him as a human being with his own struggles and cares in life. That night we became inseparable. To this day we can still share our deepest secrets with one another. We can accept each other without conditions. Being listened to, and recognized that we were heard, is a good gift to give to one another. We didn’t have to pretend anymore. It was a weight off our shoulders.

Back under the Texas sky, a breeze rustled through the big Oak tree. Ah, it felt good. I sat in silence gazing up into the heavens again. Is my fate determined by the stars, or is the place I find myself to be an Advent that will usher in a new life? Has there ever been complete darkness on earth? There’s has always been a flicker of light somewhere within our darkest moments that we want to grasp and hold on to. And sometimes it’s the only thing we have left — a flicker.

I did not really know it then. It was the rhythmic pounding of my heart within my chest that kept me alive. It let me know that there’s still life in there. Its pounding was a muffled but desperate beat in my ears. Wasn’t there a life that gives light to everyone? "The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it" (John 1:5). Wasn’t there a story that said "…don’t be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy for everyone…" (Luke 2:10)?

I thought of my children. I knew they needed and relied on me. They needed a mother whose head is together, but I also knew it would take time. I thought of Mary who heard the stories the shepherds told to everyone — The Good News — and how she quietly treasured these things in her heart and thought about them often (Luke 2:19). Can I find my strength there? Is that where I can find something to hold onto, and so our lives can move forward? Didn’t my mother and grandmother light the four candles on the Advent wreath every Sunday before Christmas exactly for that reason?

Stories actually take on a meaning when we realize we are in a story. Before that they can just be words; pointless words. Quoted words out of a book. But when the stories in the book become real in the lives of people, we’re in the Word. And on that humid night in Texas, I found my hold in the Word. It was an early Christmas present that wasn’t wrapped in a box with a pretty bow. It looked more like shambles, with pieces lying before me as I sat in my yard under the tree. Someone cared enough to value those pieces, to turn them into a new life again. There’s sweetness in life, too, even when it’s dark. Does not the sweet smell of the honeysuckle linger during the night? It’s that kind of life which conquers the bitterest death. It’s the kind of life that flickers in the dark night of the soul.

The drumbeat of my heart settled down to a calmer rhythm. I could not see any angels in the heavens, or a star guiding the way. There were no shepherds announcing the news of the Savior being born. But I heard the call, like trumpets sounding in my heart. I got up from my bench and headed for the back door. I took one last look at the stars and there I determined that I would follow the Shepherd’s call. I opened the door and entered my new life.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

Often the intruder is the first to hatch and will immediately throw the eggs of the host family over the nest, or it will throw the smaller chicks out the nest if the other eggs have hatched. In most cases, the host parents do not detect the deception and continue feeding this much larger chick as their own offspring. Due to its size the Kuckuck chick requires a lot of food so, since all the natural offspring were eliminated, the parents give all the food to their little imposter. Once grown and out of the nest, the Kuckuck continues to be fed by the parents until July or August when he heads back to his winter quarters in Eastern Africa by his lonesome self.

The other birds in the forest are not at all fazed by this bird’s immoral actions. They continue to breed, feed, and fly and sing until one year the Kuckuck may end up in their nest. There is neither protest nor a revolution taking place in the forest to oust this villainous bird. The birds don’t know any different, and continue to live by their instinctive ways as they always have. To the uninformed, it may even appear that this bird is being fed by its real parents — until when grown it looks quite different from the birds that parented it. Nothing unusual seems to be happening to a casual observer. The other birds do not report to the Mama bird that she’s feeding a giant Kuckuck. None of the birds have a moral inclination to seek justice. Since there is no such moral proclivity, it eliminates the need for justice or the desire to take up arms and fight it out in battle. They accept their fate and the cycle continues.

When I first learned about the Kuckuck bird in elementary school I was outraged. Even as you read this, several thoughts may have crossed your mind. This bird violates several laws that would not be tolerated in our human society. Our inner moral code immediately wants to judge the behavior of this bird by our human standards. There is encroachment of property, deception, theft, and murder all taking place within the context of this bird’s breeding habits.

But our moral code cannot be applied in the animal kingdom. If it could, there would be quite an uproar and the collapse of their kingdom. Nature has birds designed differently. They live by instinct, and so do not feel guilt or see injustice when the moral laws are broken as we experience them in our world. Since not a single bird has a moral inclination to seek justice, there is no objection by anyone. Their balance is kept in a biological context.

In our human world, we operate on morals and intelligence in order to function as a civil society and not by biological balance. Without it, there would be continued chaos until man annihilated himself. The basic moral laws we know are captured in the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament. These morals are not just written in stone but also in the hearts of every human being. We are born with the innate sense of knowing right from wrong. The way we experience that we have broken a moral law is by feeling guilt and shame. If we accept our transgression as caused by our own doing, we feel remorse and seek atonement from our transgression from the person we offended by asking for forgiveness, accepting responsibility for the consequences and pay reparation, if needed.

I use my Christian principals to deal with the past offenses that may still linger as a result of my offense. The first three commandments pretty much set the stage for an inner relationship with our Creator that will lead to following the other seven. A human being cannot live with guilt and shame and be productive if a law was violated. There has to be a tender approach to our inner life that acknowledges our tendencies for imperfection. That inner relationships can change the dynamics in which we pursue following a moral law. The motive for obedience is one of love and not demand. Following that path can bring health, prosperity and long life to an individual who chooses to follow it of their own free will. We recognize by application that by consistently following a moral law we live in a more real existence that not only benefits our lives but others’ as well. The response to following a moral law is voluntary.

If another transgresses against us by breaking a law, a judgment is made based upon their offending actions. The offender falls under the law and so gets punished according to the crime he has committed. This ensures that a free society can continue. However, the offender cannot be coerced into feeling guilt or remorse over his crime. There is nothing someone else can do to bring the person who breaks a moral law into feeling guilt or shame, or seeing that his offense caused harm to others. Often the offender can twist and spin the evidence in such a way that he truly believes himself to be innocent. His punishment, or removal from his community, cannot force him into seeing his own transgressions. Not until his own defenses fall apart can he see that he was deceived all along. A functional society can only punish or imprison the criminal who violates the law. His moral rehabilitation now stands between him and his God alone, and that falls outside the capabilities of what human courts can mandate. Following a moral code still greatly relies on the voluntary submission by the offender. Only then can his own life take off in a productive manner.

Society has made great strides in changing itself over the past thousands of years. The adoption of a moral law has stopped the biological balance that applies to animals. We stopped robbing and murdering one another and actually built communities that saw longer periods of peace. We began to trade with one another and began to invent things that made our lives easier. Being able to own a plot of land stopped our nomadic habits, and we invested into building relationships with neighbors by sharing one another’s goods and ideas through trade. Yet somehow we seem to have reverted back to barbaric behavior during several epochs in history. And currently our modern society again seems to be sliding back into ways that resemble that of our ancestors.

So why are our current societies on such a decline of moral observations? Why is there such a battle between the immoral and moral values of people? Do we view morals differently based on political association? Can morals just completely disappear from our human memory and no longer be applied in our daily lives? What causes the decline from transforming our animal nature to our true human nature?

This kind of takes me back to our Kuckuck bird. He lives in an environment that is void of morals. It is a breeding ground for the immoral to become strong, eliminating anyone standing in their way. But does this kind of behavior of the Kuckuck bird not resemble in some way the decline of the civilization in which we currently live? We seem to have reverted back to a biological existence where the biggest and strongest and most deceitful outnumbers those who live by a moral code. Society’s standards seem to have adapted to a different kind of moral. All efforts by the ones who wish to be guided by a moral compass are often viewed as weak and outdated in their worldviews.

Unlike our birds in the forests who cannot even accuse each other of immoral behaviors, since they do not possess a conscious mind, a man can. He can see when immoral deeds are done. Using the example of the Kuckuck bird, we can quickly discern that he is real monster if judged by human standards. There is an emotional and a spiritual conviction that gets activated when a moral law is being violated. Since that is the case, why is it so difficult to see that our own neck of the woods is slowly turning into an animal kingdom void of moral laws?

If the singing bird had a sense of awareness of himself, he would most likely recognize that the egg in his nest is not his own. He could quickly act upon that and remove the intruder’s egg from his nest. Other birds in the area could even make him aware that an intruder was observed in his nest, affirming that an offense had been committed. The requirement here is that each bird must be able to observe their own morals in order to recognize a deception, theft or murder. He must adhere to morals so he can be aware of transgressions by himself or others. This consistency protects life and assures the continuance of it. It is his right to defend it. It also gives a moral observer a natural defense in calling a bluff or a hoax when he sees one. Awareness is the best defense. Sleepers, on the other hand, have none. They not only can deceive themselves but others.

When I told the breeding habit of the Kuckuck bird to my girls, their response was similar to what I had as a child. They were outraged. I asked them what it is that they find offensive. Immediately my younger daughter responded that the Kuckuck bird should learn how to build his own nest and raise his own chicks and not steal the nest of another and murder their chicks. My older daughter recognized abandonment of the young. She said that the Kuckuck bird abandons his children and leaves the responsibility of raising them to another bird. She even brought up what she has heard on the evening news, the fact that many mothers or fathers abandon their children in real life— sometimes even murdering them. Again, my children applied their human moral code to the behavior of these birds and saw the injustice being done. They saw in our feathered friends examples of what happens every day in our world.

It seems that the Kuckuck bird’s actions are rewarded by being allowed to continue his mischievous and murderous ways in his natural environment. Nothing happens in the world of the birds that punishes the wrong behavior. In his world it means survival and since his world is not governed by morals, his behavior is permissible. If immoral behavior in our human world is allowed, or on the rise, then it also must mean that it is being rewarded rather than punished. Since our world is governed by morals, immorality is not permissible and therefore to allow it creates a lie, since our society was created and founded on moral principles.

Somewhere along the line, an authority that is intended to see that these morals are observed is not doing its duty to ensure that morality prevails so that society continues to function freely in its due course. Who is this authority? Is it the church or is it the government? Children learn behaviors from their parents. Are parents no longer acting on these morals and consequently teaching our children the reverse of right and wrong? Our entire civilization seems to move backwards going against our inner moral code. It can be quite confusing indeed, and creates a false reality, since it does not reflect the image and code that was given to us since birth. The picture we view on the outside becomes distorted and often what is seen no longer makes sense to the ones who follow morals.

Who is responsible for not enforcing that the Ten Commandments are observed? Unlike in the animal kingdom, in the world of people we have our own consciences to uphold these laws. Courts and governments are only there to make sure that these are honored, respected and, when transgressed, transgressors are punished accordingly. Otherwise there would be disorder among every community and country. Some countries do not even follow these laws as evidenced by their economic hardship, slavery mentality, and constant wars and feuds. That environment is a breeding ground for "monsters" to rule the masses. These countries are void of moral conduct, because "monsters" are tolerated by the people at large and encouraged by their leadership. Any attempt to follow the eternal moral code is oppressed and persecuted through force.

Sometimes various philosophies in economics and politics create the same sort of breeding ground for disaster. The idea of the philosophy often involves creating its own separate sets of laws that deviate from the true moral law. Its ideas may be to intervene with the bird family by assisting the Kuckuck bird in building a nest for him, checking every nest in the forest for his eggs so they can be collected, and placed in this artificially created nest. Since the bird has never been taught to take care of its young, the new set of laws will provide a fake breeder to hatch the eggs of the chicks. Additionally, because the Kuckuck never learned to feed its young, a dispenser is placed on the nest to provide 24-hour feeding. What this creates is bureaucracy, because each step requires money and time and documentation from others to provide this service for a kooky bird. It’s an artificial environment that rewards incompetence rather than right behavior that is grounded in morals. It also creates hostility in those birds that work hard and follow their inner morals but see the immoral bird being rewarded for doing nothing. The weak will discard living by those moral standards, because the reward is obviously with those who break the law rather than obey it.

From an uninformed point of view the singing bird’s family is saved from harm while the offender is being dealt with in a "parental" way until he learns how to be responsible. The question is: how is he to learn? Bureaucracy and an equal share of the whole will not ensure that the bird starts becoming aware of his evil ways. He can only wake up if his wings are clipped by removing his freedom to behave the way he does and not by performing this obligation for him. Only then can he figure out that he has other options and choices in how to live and raise a family. He may even discover his moral compass. It becomes hypocritical, however, if the clipping is done by an immoral authority. One accused of immorality who is to be tried or punished by a judge, who is himself immoral and who operates in a corrupt system, cannot make a moral judgment to correct an offense. No justice is being served. The result is lawlessness.

The moral of my Kuckuck bird story contains an important observation. Only in an environment where immoral actions are encouraged by the ones who guard over the laws will immorality breed among the people. A government or organization which does not hold its own actions to the same moral standards that it places on its own people will be the cause of the moral decline of society. But a government which serves under the law and upholds it will also see a rise in voluntary behavior that is in accordance with those ancient moral codes.

All the birds can live in the forest, sharing the same space without having to take over someone else’s property, or deceiving others and stealing and murdering the other species. They all would have morals to live by if they applied our human moral code. Hopefully humanity will not stand for living by the instinctive codes of the animal world much longer, and we’ll revert back to the standards which were set long ago and written on our hearts.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.

When asked by Americans if Germans celebrate Thanksgiving too, I’ll answer back that yes, we do. It is very much a religious holiday. After the harvest is complete, and the last fruits and vegetables have been gathered, we celebrate Erntedankfest (harvest festival of thanks) in church by displaying the crop to give thanks and receive blessings. This happens on the first Sunday in October. This sort of custom is very old and has been done since man learned to cultivate the land to feed himself. Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Greeks all had a festival of the harvest to give thanks to the gods for their bountiful harvest.

Besides the general similarities of giving thanks for the crop, the American holiday tradition goes deeper than that. It is celebrated in the homes of families by sharing a meal. Most Americans use this holiday to find thankfulness in their lives. The fact that many people still contemplate finding "gratitude" and "thankfulness" in their lives speaks of a spirit that lives on through this tradition in America; something that surpasses religious and political affiliations. Thankfulness can be found across borders and ideologies. It penetrates into our human nature and can triumphantly transform sorrow into joy; loss into gain. Thankfulness is very hope-inspiring and a natural endorphin releaser that heals.

So many terrible testimonies can be given by many Americans on how the world has changed for them since 2001, and how those changes have affected their lives. The past three years have shocked a nation and put its people through great grief. Sadly, many remain stuck in an anger that has alienated people and brought them into such a state of hate and vengefulness that a country has become polarized in a way that has never been seen before. Hate and anger cloud one’s vision. One is unable to have good and sound judgment. Those mindsets ruin the fertile ground and prepare the way for an enemy to slither its way into the most private corners of our being. Proof of that is seen in the actions taken by those who have not grieved properly.

Grieving persons experience so many different cycles in their pain and loss that when stuck in anger and depression it is often difficult to see the blessings and find gratitude in one’s life. One way of diverting the grief is to find blame and fault in others for one’s loss. Some people may even start bargaining with God "If I do this and that, then please make it all go away." But we cannot make a detour into the past and change it, nor bypass the present to enter the ideal future. The present tense is still the most difficult tense to live through when everything else seems bleak and sinister because it requires facing reality without wanting to lose hope, especially when hope just hangs by a thin thread.

Practicing gratitude and thankfulness every day puts things back in perspective and can detach the griever from his pain. He can start seeing beyond his own suffering. For it to really work, a person who is grieving has to take that first step. It is quite surprising where thankfulness can be found. It’s not in anything that’s the "biggest" or the "best." Often it is in the smallest and most overlooked aspects of life. Great power often begins in the smallest of things, like a mustard seed, and once allowed to grow can yield the largest production.

On a cloudy and cold fall day in November, Americans flock back home again to visit their families. Many Americans will share with their families what they are thankful for during their Thanksgiving meal before the turkey gets cut, and plates are loaded with stuffing, corn, cranberry sauce and grandma’s special sweet potato casserole. They watch football games, eat pumpkin pie, retell the same old stories, and add a few new details to those familiar tales. There’s warmth in the homes where people have healed from their grief, and there will still be a stifled and uncomfortable feeling with those who remain stuck in blaming and scape-goating others for their plight, suffering and grief.

A new perspective can give all of us a break, clear a foggy vision and remove falseness from our minds, and reinforce the values we treasure. It’s cleansing. Americans always have had that choice. Although the short-term outlook may seem hopeless and disappointing for some, that never means it has to stay that way. Living in the present gives everyone a choice to pursue better results in one’s own life. It anchors us in hope.

And so I offer a few things I am personally grateful for.

I am very thankful for being given a life by the One who created me. It shows that it has a value. My lesson has been to learn to continually treasure it and not to slander it carelessly. Those who don’t value it will attract nothing of value.

I am thankful that I was created out of love, and born a woman. As a woman I have been part of creating life and giving birth to life. I have learned that as woman I am not man. I do not think or feel from a masculine perspective. Being feminine is not a curse but a gift.

I am thankful that I have learned to love the unborn without seeing. I have felt how one are two, and two were one.

I am thankful that every moment is not finality but an endless continuum of choices. Even if I stomp my foot at times, because the world is not revolving according to my "vision," there is always a greater Vision in the universe that moves according to its own plan with grander ideas and higher thoughts than my human mind can comprehend. How boring would life be if it conformed to every whim of mine? I’m thankful for differences of mind; through these differences I discover my own thoughts.

I am thankful for candy-breath kisses and Crayon stains; smudgy chocolate hands and trusting little green eyes. Innocent love can move even the hardest hearts of adults to quicken with life again. Thanks to the young at heart, they keep the world alive to believe in goodness.

I am thankful for all the difficult and rough moments in my life. They taught me to discard wrong beliefs. Unanswered prayers are really acts of kindness, because its wisdom holds better dividends. Patience is accompanied with trials; without it there would be no discovered values. Great miracles are found in the smallest acts of generosity and kindness, even when no instant reward can be seen. Long-term goals prosper better than short-term results. The lower moments in life can teach that.

I am thankful for owning what I know. Most of what I have learned I had to earn. It may have started with a controversial question or a stubborn attitude that ran into nonproductive ventures. A humbler ego that enters partnership with one’s soul can gain more ground than a prideful one. We need constant reminders that we are not the star in the universe, but only a body orbiting the sun. Nobody can steal the property of what one gained in heart and mind. But an un-harnessed ego can quickly gamble the property away. Be careful of what feeds the ego.

And I am thankful for my family and friends; the ones who are still in my life today. We’ve been through the good and the bad together. I am thankful even for all of those who have come and gone. All of them contributed to where I am today. They are not my source of happiness alone. They are individuals with their own characteristics and traits, with flaws and human faults as visible in my eyes as mine are in theirs. We are not perfect beings and offend one another whether we intend to or not. And yet we have the capacity to show mercy and forgiveness, and the ability to continue on loving even if it does not visibly show it at the moment. It’s still a choice, which can only be made in the present tense. No other tense is more powerful and as short-lived. With the blink of an eye we are at the verge of past and future. Find thankfulness in being able to blink that eye.

I am thankful that I accept my mortality. That puts my life in the right perspective. Children can see the world in black and white and believe they are invulnerable. Adults on the other hand have experienced painful arrows that hit their vulnerable spots. Be thankful for those vulnerable moments. They bring man back down to earth again and accept the fact he’s no god. That alone tells me that I have no right to control someone else’s life. Those who think differently really believe they are a god. They never felt their own vulnerability. Their heart has no nerve and is covered in a crust of cement.

American Thanksgiving represents everything that stands for goodness in America. It’s a tradition that is uniquely American in that it celebrates survival and freedom that came through mutual acts of kindness and generosity. A reciprocal exchange based on choices that were blessed by showing gratitude for providing a basic need. Food. Sharing a meal with one another is still one of the most intimate and vulnerable experiences. The guest expresses gratitude and the host is pleased that he can please his guest. Finding gratitude, thankfulness and blessings in one’s own life is still the most challenging, because we can’t visibly see the Host. We can see the blessings however, if we really look. Practicing gratitude gives strength to the weak, and removes power from the "wicked." Wickedness thrives on blame, fear, anger and hate. Thankfulness and gratitude in the midst of trouble would most likely surprise those to whom such attitudes are foreign.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Sabine Barnhart [send her mail] moved to the US in 1980 and lives in Fort Worth, TX with her three children. For the past 15 years she has been working for an international service company.