Here are MacArthur's remarks, from Embracing Defeat pages 550-51:
Well, the German problem is a completely and entirely different one from the Japanese problem. The German people were a mature race.
If the Anglo-Saxon was say 45 years of age in his development, in the sciences, the arts, divinity, culture, the Germans were quite as mature. The Japanese, however, in spite of their antiquity measured by time, were in a very tuitionary condition. Measured by the standards of modern civilization, they would be like a boy of twelve as compared with our development of 45 years.
Like any tuitionary period, they were susceptible to following new models, new ideas. You can implant basic concepts there. They were still close enough to origin to be elastic and acceptable to new concepts.
The German was quite as mature as we were. Whatever the German did in dereliction of the standards of modern morality, the international standards, he did deliberately. He didn't do it because of a lack of knowledge of the world. He didn't do it because he stumbled into it to some extent as the Japanese did. He did it as a considered policy in which he believed in his own military might, in which he believed that its application would be a shortcut to the power and economic domination that he desired. ...
But the Japanese were entirely different. There is no similarity. One of the great mistakes that was made was to try to apply the same policies which were so successful in Japan to Germany, where they were not quite so successful, to say the least. They were working on a different level.
These remarks were from testimony to the US Senate on 5/5/1951, at the end of 3 days of hearings (the MacArthur testimony begun 5/3/1951; full text at https://www.jstor.org/stable/45307951 ). MacArthur actually meant them as a compliment; he believed that Japan could go on to be a valuable American military ally, while Germany would always be an enemy, and would certainly rearm and start a new world war if the US occupation ever eased up. (In fairness to MacArthur, he had the German rearmaments against Napoleon and between the wars as precedent; no one imagined at the time that the Germans would turn into peaceniks.)
These remarks touched a raw nerve in Japan; Asahi Shimbun had described the Japanese as MacArthur's children in an emotional farewell editorial on 4/12/51, but it's one thing to say that yourself, quite another to have someone else say it of you. There was even a joint advertisement by a group of Japanese manufacturers titled "We Are Not Twelve-Year-Olds!! -- Japanese Manufactures Admired by the World!"
Prior to these remarks, there had been plans to give MacArthur an honorary citizenship, and to build him a memorial in Tokyo; afterwards, those proposals were quietly shelved.
IceSalt
1yr ago
And, of course, Germans were civilized -- the home of Goethe and Beethoven -- and Christian, not primitive heathens or Godless communists, of which no better could be expected.
This 100%! After the war, Douglas MacArthur remarked to a reporter that Germany's crimes were worse than Japan's, because the same offense was much worse when it was committed by a man of mature years than by a child of twelve. The Japanese didn't like that much (discussed in John W. Dower's Embracing Defeat), but it was certainly a part of the Western Allies' thinking.
IceSalt
1yr ago
On the blockade, I took this to mean the blockade after World War I, in the period after the armistice and before the Peace of Versailles -- especially where he mentions this as one of the things that occurred before Hitler came to power.
@Unsaying, are you familiar with Alexander Mitscherlich? His book The Inability to Mourn theorizes that Hitler was a big-brother figure rather than a father-figure: someone who led his gang of boys, got them into trouble, egged them on to do some pretty extreme stuff... and bolted as soon as things got bad, whereupon the gang of boys dropped him like a hot potato. This, he thinks, is why the Germans were so eager to forget Hitler after the war, in contrast to how Napoleon and Bonny Prince Charlie were so long remembered.
Imagine how differently things would have gone if Hitler had surrendered in 1944, when the Western Allies were on the border and the Soviets in Poland, but Germany itself was still intact. Hitler would certainly have been hanged, and Germany would've surrendered unconditionally; but there's a world of difference between an unconditional surrender while the country is still intact, and one only made after the country has fought to the bitter end, exasperating its enemies in the process. A father will die for his children as well as live for them; if Hitler had seen himself as the father of the Germans, then... then he would've stopped after Munich, but if he'd had a change of heart late in the war, this would've been the thing to do.
I mentioned in my main post that Hitler scared the West; but I think he also demoralized us. I think he demoralizes everyone who reads about him, seeing all the less-evil things he could have done, but did not. "There but for the grace of God go I," mentioned elsewhere in this thread, is a very relevant thought, but I think another one is "I wouldn't have done that if I were in his shoes..."
You got me to register for TheMotte, after long-time lurking! I'll provide what I think on these matters, speaking as a Catholic.
First, the religious side of things:
I've always heard that if you're giving 10% of your pre-tax income, half to the Church and half to charities of your choosing, your charitable duty has been totally discharged. Less than that, I've been advised by priests, won't necessarily damn you either; 10% is a lot, especially in a world where we (or at least I) also lose about 30% of pre-tax income for taxes, which do include support for the poor. They generally recommend working your way up to 10%, and they realize that it's a tall order.
Giving more than that is a good deed but not a requirement. As a married father, you have a clear personal vocation and a duty to fulfill it; you have an active duty, the same duty that a priest or a monk has to the duties of his station in life, to do what can be done without sin (especially without mortal sin) to advance and defend your children, and to raise them virtuously.
Beauty is of course hardly evil either, and beautiful, well-made goods are often cheaper to own in the long run. Dressing neatly and cleanly is an act of respect for yourself and those around you; if it's a necessity for your job, it further rises to the level of a duty to be fulfilled.
Look for thrift and efficiency in all these areas, of course, but I think you know that already; you don't sound like the sort of person who casually squanders his money. You also don't strike me as the sort of person who would buy steak for his children while your neighbors dreamed of rice and beans; in a crisis of that intensity and immediacy, I think you would share with your neighbors once your family had enough.
Catholicism distinguishes between the deserving and the undeserving poor, although the liberal wing of the modern Church downplays or rejects that distinction. Review the Biblical quotations elsewhere in this thread, especially 1 Timothy. You should also read the Didache, which summarizes the teachings of Christ as those who knew Him personally understood them; you might not be surprised to learn that the Didache is well to the right of certain modern interpretations of the Bible. (It even contains a ban on abortion!) On the subject of almsgiving, the Didache says the following:
"'Give to everybody who begs from you, and ask for no return.' For the Father wants His own gifts to be universally shared. Happy is the man who gives as the commandment bids him, for he is guiltless. But alas for the man who receives! If he receives because he is in need, he will be guiltless. But if he is not in need he will have to stand trial why he received and for what purpose. He will be thrown into prison and have his action investigated; and 'he will not get out until he has paid back the last cent.' Indeed, there is a further saying that relates to this: 'Let your donation sweat in your hands until you know to whom to give it.'"
So I like to give to charities that are making progress over time, or that face very clear need about very clear, direct problems: pro-life women's shelters and aid to the Middle East, where the need is immense but the situation on the ground is slowly improving. I'd recommend looking into the Catholic Near East Welfare Association or the Knights of Columbus' Christian Refugee Relief -- or even into the secular United Palestinian Appeal, since if there's one people on Earth whose problems are not self-inflicted...
I give politically too, but generally as one-time donations in response to particularly urgent situations. Politics is full of grifters, incapable of changing the culture but very good at making things sound urgent, who will be answerable to God for the money they diverted from more useful things.
Giving to a local food bank is also traditional and important; this can sometimes be in-kind donations as well as cash, and it's not the worst place to volunteer.
As far as long-distance food aid for chronically poor countries goes, Edward Feser's discussion of St. Thomas Aquinas on patriotism -- https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-virtue-of-patriotism.html -- will answer a lot of your questions. You do have duties to people closer to you that don't apply to those further away; you don't have to deprive your own children to feed starving children in Africa. If you include such aid in your 10% to charity, you've done what you should.
I'd also recommend something like Heifer International rather than something like Food for the Poor, or indeed just giving to a crisis-relief agency. Fertilizer is cheap and abundant these days, thanks to fossil fuels and the indispensable Haber Process (Hitler treated Fritz Haber absolutely shamefully; read Five Germanies I Have Known by Fritz Stern, a family friend of Haber's); the main things Africa needs are education, political stability, and a little seed capital. Dambisa Moyo's book Dead Aid argues that current aid patterns are actively counterproductive.
Going back to Aquinas and countries, I think he would also say that you have a duty to your nation -- to your fellow Irishmen if you're Irish, your fellow Germans if you're German, and so on -- that you don't share with other nations. That duty would be smaller than your duty even to your country, and it would obviously not excuse concentration camps or any other mortal sin (or any sin at all, for that matter); but I don't think Aquinas would condemn a scholarship for Polish-Americans, endowed by a successful Polish-American businessman, as an evil thing.
You should also look up St. Clement of Alexandria's sermon, "Who is the rich man who shall be saved?" (https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/clement-richman.html) I was particularly struck by the question, "For what harm does one do, who, previous to faith, by applying his mind and by saving has collected a competency?" That is to say, if you work for a living and reach financial independence, you're not doing anything wrong. St. Clement is also fine with inheritance; what counts is where your heart is, and yours sounds like it's in the right place when it comes to your children.
If it bothers you that you're too much like Hitler, revisit the books of Judges and Samuel; there's nothing wrong with rebuilding a fallen nation with morally licit means. Now, admittedly, Hitler was using morally illicit means even before he annexed Czechoslovakia (Roehm purged in 1934, Blomberg-Fritsch affair in January 1938, Kristallnacht in early November 1938), but history has forgiven and forgotten similar offenses when the offender didn't go on to do worse. If Hitler had died after he signed the Munich Agreement but before he broke it, and whoever succeeded him hadn't started a war or slaughtered the Jews, he would be remembered as "Bismark with a moustache," or perhaps "Franco with spittle-flecked hysterical speeches," rather than having the reputation he does.
Second, the cultural side:
I was going to write a full post on my theory for Hitler being uniquely intensely repudiated, but it's already been 2 hours since I set fingers to keyboard. The long and short of it is that Hitler crushed invincible France like wet cardboard, and there was a period in 1941-42 when Britain genuinely thought that the Allied Powers were going to lose. Stalin and Saddam were evil, but they were never a serious threat to the West (while Napoleon was outright part of the West); Hitler was both evil and scary. The last figures to threaten the West (meaning the narrow Atlantic West of England and France) as seriously as he did were Queen Isabella and her great-great-grandson Philip II, who are also remembered in the English-speaking world as practically demonic figures.
I agree with the vast majority of this, including the recommendation for grassroots first; I don't want to say where, but I've moved to such a community myself. But a few points jumped out at me in the post; speaking from a Catholic perspective...
Abortion isn't just anti-natalist, it's taking a life that we have no right to take. Natalism or no natalism, capital punishment or no capital punishment, a Catholic must be pro-innocent-life.
There's also the presence or absence of a particular vocation: some (at least, again, in the Catholic understanding) are called to be celibate priests or religious; others to marry, and so become parents; some have no particular vocation, only the general vocation to holiness. The call to chastity is obligatory outside the married state, while there's certainly such a thing as marital chastity as well; I've found that prayers to the Holy Spirit help enormously. The birth of children or not is in God's hands, but the only requirement for sexual relations within marriage is no reproductive impediment.
But the culture of death is certainly a painfully real thing.
Jesus was also a frequent dinner guest of the Pharisees and Sadducees, that is to say the religious and cultural elite; they regarded Him as someone whose views were worth engaging with, if only to refute.
Of course, engaging in dialogue with cultural elites requires elite willingness to engage in that dialogue. The Pharisees and Sadducees cared enough about Jesus' ideas to argue with Him, even to try to trap Him with preposterous thought experiments ("now, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be?"); I don't see that will to dialogue, at least not with conservative Christians, in the elites today.
Shaking a place and its leaders to its core is a vague term, but I would think that such a shaking would come to the attention of the political and military authorities, and I think there's evidence in the Gospels, especially in St. John's Gospel, that Jesus did not come to Pilate's attention that way over the course of His ministry. When the Sanhedrin hands Jesus over to Pilate, they have to explain to him who He is; then Pilate's "interrogation of a rebel against the state" turns into "awkward but earnest theological discussion in his third language" and he breaks it off, declaring to the crowd that whatever kind of person Jesus is, He isn't the kind who needs to be crucified. (John 19:37-40) Pilate infamously loses his nerve after that, but "I find no guilt in him" isn't what one says of someone who one is already aware of and concerned about.
And it's not like Pilate had no experience with rebels. The Holy Land was a dangerous, restive place; the two "robbers" crucified with Jesus were Zealot rebels, and Wroe, following Josephus, mentions many other incidents when Pilate put down Jewish rebellions. So Pilate knew what a Jewish messianic rebel was like, and when he met Jesus, he concluded that He wasn't that kind of figure. Jesus shook the foundations of morality and personal conduct to their core, but He permitted changes to politics to come along at their own pace.
I see the point of this argument, but it's a tall order to avoid paying taxes. One can at least make charitable contributions to good causes, vote when one can, shop at good businesses, invest wisely (no iShares/Blackrock or other liberal investment firms) if one's in position to invest, and do what one can to fix the culture.
Eventually, a society ends up so far gone that one has an obligation to emigrate, or even to rebel if the other criteria for just war are met, but I think we still have a long ways to fall before then. Read Sarah Ruden's Paul Among the People (the preface is eye-rolling, but it gets better fast when she engages with the core subject), and remember that canonized saints, like St. Maurice and St. George, fought in the Roman legions nonetheless. They didn't endorse the evils of classical civilization -- the slave women forced to be prostitutes, the open pedophilia, the witches starving children to death to grind up their livers for love potions (we can only hope, with Ruden, that this one never actually happened) -- but they also didn't pull on a turban and defect to Parthia. "Far enough gone that the obligation to leave kicks in" is pretty far gone, although I think there were Christians who emigrated to the openly Christian kingdoms of Ethiopia and Armenia.
But one part of being far enough gone is that one can no longer preach the Gospel. I think there was an obligation to escape Tokugawa Japan; I think the Tokugawa Shogunate thought that too, given all the effort they put into keeping Christians from escaping. I don't rule out the possibility that this obligation might kick in in the United States at some point, but I think we're still a long way from that.
I apologize for writing such an enormous post on a small number of minor disagreements! But I hope you find these subjects interesting. I certainly agree that we need grassroots first, rather than elite dialogue, given that the elites aren't in a very talkative mood right now. I'd add that there are areas that already have a sort of Benedict Option going, and those are worth moving to; if you're Catholic, any parish with a Traditional Latin Mass is likely to host such a community. A less atomized world is a good thing in general, and I think it's a strong path forward for the Faith.
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