On the night of February 27, 1933, the German Parliament Building, known as the Reichstag, was set ablaze and gutted.  This was a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, and is widely believed to have been planned and executed by the newly formed Nazi government itself, to turn public opinion against its opponents and to assume emergency powers.

Hitler’s government stated that Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, was the culprit, and the Reichstag fire was attributed to communist agitators.  He was tried by a Nazi court, sentenced to death and guillotined in 1934.

Hitler and the Nazis used the Reichstag burning to justify the rounding up and imprisonment of communists and other dissidents against the Nazi government.

Does anyone notice the similarity to the January 6th attack on our Capitol Building?  The Democrat leadership instantly accused President Trump of inciting the “riot”, although there is little evidence that was true.  He actually told the massive crowd which had assembled for the “Stop the Steal” rally to peacefully assemble before the Capitol Building.  There, to petition the members of the House and Senate, who were about to vote to confirm the election results, to reject the disputed votes from states where there were significant election irregularities.  The right to do so is guaranteed citizens by the First Amendment to our Constitution. Continue reading The Burning of the Reichstag →

When I was growing up in Colorado in the 1950s, our favorite Chinese restaurant was called “The Cathay Post” and was located in American Legion Post #185.  Sadly, that post no longer exists, but I will never forget it.

The founding members of that American Legion Post were members of the 442 Regimental Combat Team, the “Go For Broke” Regiment, which was formed in 1942, and is the most decorated Unit in the History of the United States Military, with 21 Medals of Honor and over 14,122 other medals.  Think about that.

There is one other factor worthy of note.  The 442nd consisted almost entirely of Nisei.  Who are they, you might ask?

Nisei is a word of Japanese origin which means a person born in the United States or Canada, whose parents were born in Japan.  In other words, a first generation American. Some were of course second or even possibly third generation Americans, but they all had one thing in common.  They were part of a racial group which was rounded up and imprisoned, with most of their belongings confiscated, in a manner never before or since accomplished or even attempted in this country.

Although a few Japanese-Americans were used as interpreters in the Pacific campaign, It was feared that they were potentially disloyal, and could not be trusted, even for that duty, against the Empire of Japan.  So, they fought in Europe, primarily in Italy, the South of France, and Germany.  They fought ferociously, with a tenacity unrivaled by any other unit in our armed forces before or since. 

They did this while many of their families were interned in what were described as “Internment Camps”, but were, by any reasonable standard, Concentration Camps, which were surrounded by barbed wire and observation posts, staffed by armed guards. 

The hastily constructed barracks provided little or no privacy for family units, with blankets or sheets hung as improvised walls.   The buildings were cold and drafty in winter and hot and dusty in summer.   Many, particularly the very young, old, or sickly wasted away and died in the camps.   The internments started on February 19, 1942, when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, and finally ended In March of 1946, more than 6 months after cessation of hostilities with Japan.

Veterans of the 442nd came back to find their homes and businesses gone, taken over by others, with no compensation for their loss.  Finally, in 1988, payments of $20,000 were made to Japanese-Americans who were alive during the period of internment.  Although larger amounts were eventually paid out, those didn’t come close to reimbursing the financial, let alone the emotional loss these citizens suffered at the hands of our government.  Who qualified for this exclusion and internment?  Colonel Karl Bendetsen, the architect behind the program, went so far as saying anyone with “one drop of Japanese blood” qualified for internment. Continue reading The Forgotten 442nd →

For the last several days, I have pondered over something that just doesn’t make sense to me.  When the riots and looting that followed the death of George Floyd occurred, there was a certain amount of shock and revulsion expressed by both sides of the political aisle. 

However, that quickly morphed into a condemnation of law enforcement, and calls from the Democratic Party not to just punish the officers involved in Floyd’s death, if in fact it was proved in a court of law that they had done something wrong, but to abolish, by defunding, our local law enforcement agencies.

As cities burned, businesses were looted and destroyed, and lives were lost, the groups which organized the demonstrations, namely Antifa and Black Lives Matter, were not held accountable for the damage that occurred.  The national media described the riots as being “mostly peaceful protests”, when obviously they were not.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Americans attended Trump rallies all over the country. They in fact were completely peaceful, and the attendees even cleaned up after themselves when the event was over.  Those people were derided as being some kind of cult members, of low IQ and somehow under the spell of a potential dictator.

When the events surrounding the November 3rd election began to unfold, Trump and his supporters were rightfully outraged by the obvious subterfuge being committed in key battleground states.  The left, and even a series of “Never Trumpers” on the right continued to state that there weren’t mass voting  irregularities, and they were right.  What was missing in that argument was the fact that there didn’t need to be systemic voter fraud to change the results in a close election which would be determined by the Electoral College tally.

A carefully planned strategy employed in the general election was again used in the Georgia runoff elections, which would determine control of the United States Senate.  The Democrats thus cheated their way to total victory.  They will, after January 20th, control The House, Senate, and Executive branches of our government.  Because the Supreme Court has refused to intervene, they effectively control the Judicial Branch as well.   All this is not lost on the over 74 million Americans who voted to keep Trump in office.  So, hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters turned up at the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6th to protest the certification of the Electoral College results. 

The vast majority of them were indeed peaceful.  Unfortunately, a few hundred were not. Possibly infiltrated by members of Antifa, a relatively small group stormed the Capitol Building and entered some congressional offices and the House and Senate Chambers, which were fortunately unoccupied at the time.  That was unacceptable and illegal.  No one disputes that.  However, the Democrats and media are trying to claim that all of the protestors are seditionists, traitors and terrorists. Continue reading The American Bastille? →

On Friday, January 10, 1862, Abraham Lincoln entered the office of Union Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs. Lincoln had just heard that General McClellan, the head of all Union forces at the time, had come down with typhoid fever and would be sidelined for at least six weeks.  Confederate forces were rumored to be moving to attack Washington, DC and the Secretary of the Treasury Chase had informed him that the treasury was depleted, with no way to raise more money to continue the war to restore the union.  Meigs said Lincoln placed his head in his hands and said:

“General, what shall I do?  The people are impatient:  Chase has no money and he tells me he can raise no more;  the General of the Army has typhoid fever.  The bottom is out of the tub.  What shall I do?”

Well, we know what he did.  He drew himself out of his deep depression and continued to lead his country to ultimate victory and restoration of the Union.  That effort cost him his health, and eventually his life, at the hands of an assassin.

Conservative Americans today feel the same frustration and despair.  To all but the most naive individuals, it is plain beyond doubt that the 2020 election was tainted to the point of being a farce.  The Presidency was stolen, not won, by the Biden-Harris campaign.  Now, following the same illegal methods and procedures used in the November 3rd election, Georgia has apparently elected two of the most radical United States Senators ever to serve in that body.  It is a simple case of what Albert Einstein described as the classic definition of insanity, doing the same thing in the same way and expecting a different result.  Continue reading The Bottom Is Out… →