Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Vote Wisely
My friends, I know that our lifes are being tested in all aspects of Politics. I also understand why most of us are upset with what lies ahead with the uncerntity of America's future" our future ", all I ask is that on November third, vote wisely. The GOP, now is endorsing the TEA candidates. If you and I want to be ruled by their extremist views such as privitizing Social Security, doing away with Unemployment Compensation, doing away with Medicare then I suggest you follow and vote for this extremist group. As a Democrat, I still believe in democracy and the power and will of the American people. The GOP, has said no to every bill presented before them for the betterment of Main Street,USA. They have promised to repeat the failures of the Bush Era that got us into the hole we are slowly digging ourselves out of. All I ask you to do is vote for what is right and not vote out of fraustration. Obama, has done more for this country then most of us give him credit for, and this was done with the resistance of the Right, who voted NO on every bill that would help all Americans across the board. The GOP, is owned by FOX Network, who has instilled so much fear in many minds. I myself do not want to be represented by the extremist. I would like to see both the Senate and Congress work together for who counts "we" the American populus. I don't want to see Washington divided by the special interest. As americans we are a "Whole", and should not accept to be represented by a Bi-partisan Washington. We are all Americans, and most politicians to date are working for their own political survival and not what is best for the American people. So please read, listen, wiegh your options, ask yourself. DO THE RIGHT THING "VOTE WISELY", or be ruled by inferiors.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
What Science Will Never Discover About Your Mind
Appalling evils and troubles are increasing around the world. Suffering continues to grow worse. Can humanity survive? Where can we go for the answers? Theologians, moralists, psychologists and educators have been unable to find the hidden key to the human mind. Scientific knowledge expands daily, but it has not, and will never, discover the missing dimension of the mind. You will learn what they cannot! Modern science is continually bringing new knowledge to civilization. Each important scientific discovery—each new piece of knowledge—is received worldwide with excitement and acclaim.
Reflect on all that science has given to mankind at large. It has put men on the moon and created weapons of mass destruction. It has broken down the genetic codes of DNA and cloned numerous different creatures. It has learned much about the staggering size and nature of the universe—outer space—and discovered incredible things about the tiny sub-atomic particles in different kinds of atoms—inner space. It has made numerous medical breakthroughs and accomplished amazing feats of engineering.
The scope and potential of science seems limitless. Most believe that, given time, scientific discoveries will solve most or all of mankind’s problems. Yet science is limited in a vitally important way that involves you. There is a discovery it will never—and can never—make about the nature of the human mind!
Your mind contains a dimension that cannot be understood or discovered by any process or experiment known to science. This world’s religions have missed it. Their theologians neither teach nor comprehend it. They have completely overlooked this critical component—this single vital key—that unlocks the enormous difference between men and animals. Only by understanding this revealed key can you learn your purpose for being!
The Amazing Human Mind
Look at all of the amazing works of nature—both on earth and throughout the heavens. The kaleidoscope of God’s handiwork that can be seen by the human eye is staggering.
Consider the planets, stars and galaxies. Each is its own marvel. Then reflect on all of the species of plants found on earth. There are millions, diverse in color, shape, size and beauty. The brilliance of their various designs and purposes is incredible! Now think of the many millions of different kinds of animals and insects. They are as marvelous and fascinating as the world of plants, with their diversity of purpose, appearance and behavior.
But none of these creations rival the complexity and nearly unlimited capability of your mind. And as fascinating, marvelous, beautiful and amazing as are all the things described above, none is more amazing than the human mind. It is the absolute pinnacle of all living organisms. Nothing else in God’s creation even comes close. What else can plan, think or create to even a fraction of the same degree?
Just think about how many things the human mind can design and produce: Houses, telephones, trains, automobiles, planes, rockets, computers, fax machines and other sophisticated devices that are practically limitless in complexity and usefulness. The only thing it cannot design and build is itself!
Who Made Your Mind?
When the psalmist said, “…for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psa. 139:14), this is most true of your brain—the human mind!
The Creator of your mind sent with it a detailed Instruction Manual containing vital information, explaining the nature, design and purpose of this greatest of all creations. He identifies the hidden key—the missing dimension!—to the right and proper use of the mind, opening the way to peace, happiness, abundance and universal prosperity.
But this Instruction Manual is almost universally ignored, misrepresented, misunderstood and rejected. I speak of God’s Word—the Holy Bible! As a result, the problems, troubles and evils of civilization mount with no solution in sight and conditions only growing worse.
Stop and think! Apply basic logic.
Would God create His marvel of engineering—your mind—and send it without an Instruction Book explaining how to use it? Of course not!
Yet this most amazing of all books remains a mystery to so many—with few even professing to understand it. Most spend their entire lives worried about what people think and say. Few concern themselves with what God thinks or says. Be honest and examine yourself. Do you derive your opinions from people? Or do you regularly search and accept the plain Word of God as the guide for your life?
The following scripture explains why even the most brilliant minds are completely unable to learn certain understanding, unless it is revealed to them. Notice: “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hid these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes” (Matt. 11:25). The greatest thinkers of this world cannot fathom the things God has revealed in His Word! They are literally hidden from them.
We must be willing to examine God’s Word for what He reveals about your mind. It will open your thinking to incredible new understanding about why you were born—and of your awesome future and potential. However, we must start at the beginning.
A Non-Physical Component?
Many suppose that the composition of the human mind is entirely physical. Is this true? Others believe that each person possesses an immortal soul. Is this true? What does the Bible say? Does it endorse either of these ideas? Or does God’s Word teach something completely different—something completely overlooked by all religions, and unable to be discovered by all methods of science?
First, we must consider the difference between human minds and animal brains. There are facts that science tells us about the comparative qualities of both. All understand that in some way animal brains are entirely different from human minds. But in what way? How are they different?
For instance, certain creatures, such as chimpanzees and dolphins, have brains that are relatively similar in size and weight to that of humans. Some larger animals, like whales and elephants, have larger brains than man. Yet they are far less intelligent, far less creative and incapable of understanding any kind of complex thought.
Science has never been able to explain—to adequately account for—the vast difference between the human brain and the brains of animals. While man has a brain that may be only slightly more complex than animals of relatively similar brain size, the difference in capability is vast. There is simply no comparison.
Animals function almost entirely on instinct. They do what they do automatically, and from birth. For instance, almost immediately after birth, a calf knows exactly what to do—how to stand up and take steps, and where to find milk. Human babies require far longer to even stand up with support, and have to be taught how to do virtually everything.
Having minds, human beings have been given hands so that they can create. Merely having brains, animals function on instinct and possess paws, claws and hooves. This leaves them incapable of building something complex like a television—let alone a jet airplane or a space-traveling rocket—even if a mind were directing them. Animals are also not capable of acquiring knowledge beyond a very rudimentary ability to react to certain stimuli.
Humans are capable of acquiring knowledge, drawing conclusions, gathering and assessing facts, making decisions—and of building character. This is the single, greatest, overarching difference between men and animals.
Animals are greatly limited because God has merely programmed into them, through instinct, everything that they need to function effectively within their environment.
On the other hand, people do not instinctively know everything necessary to function successfully in life. They must continually acquire more knowledge throughout their lives to address new challenges and demands made upon them.
This is made possible by an unseen, unrecognized component of the mind. Without this invisible, non-physical element, mankind would be just another dumb beast!
A Spirit in Man
Let’s now establish a basic Bible teaching. The patriarch Job wrote, “But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty gives them understanding” (32:8). This is a plain statement. Through Job, God revealed that men possess a kind of spirit, called the “spirit in man.” Fully understanding this spirit requires an examination of the other scriptures that describe it.
But before looking into the truth of this matter—before searching to see what the Bible says about this human spirit—we must understand and accept what the Bible does not say.
To do this, we must examine the most popular fallacy taught and believed by countless millions about this subject.
Not an Immortal Soul
Many read verses like the one in Job and conclude that it is speaking about immortal souls. But is it? Is the phrase “spirit in man” synonymous with an “immortal soul” composed of spirit?
Most people do not understand the relationship between physical men and souls. They assume that human beings are born with immortal souls. The popular belief is that, upon death, the souls of sinners go to hell forever and those of the just go to heaven forever, since all souls are supposedly immortal. Is this what the Bible teaches?
Romans 6:23 states that “the wages of sin is death,” not life in hell. So, does the Bible somehow also teach that people have immortal souls? It does talk about “souls,” but in what context?
The Bible does teach that there is a connection between men and souls. Genesis 2:7 states, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
This verse does not say that men have souls, but that they are souls. Adam became a soul—he was not given one. Then, almost immediately, God warned him, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you [not just your body] shall surely die” (vs. 16-17). When placed together, these three verses reveal that men are souls and that souls can die!
The prophet Ezekiel confirms the book of Genesis. Twice he was inspired to write, “The soul that sins, it shall die” (18:4, 20). Death is the absence of life. It is the discontinuance—the cessation—of life. Death is not life in another place. It is not leaving “this life” for “another life”—the “next life.”
Finally, on the subject of whether the soul can die, notice this in Matthew 10:28: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him [God] which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
The Bible says that souls can be destroyed! According to this verse, they can be destroyed as much as bodies can. We all recognize that bodies eventually die and that, afterwards, they naturally decompose and are completely “destroyed” due to the process of natural corruption. This verse explains that God does the destroying of souls in hell! Bodies can die in many ways. But souls are destroyed in hell by God.
Let’s consider the soul from another angle. We must be certain.
Are the Dead Conscious?
Human minds are differentiated from animal brains by intelligent thought. (We will later learn how this is possible.) Presumably, if the dead are not dead, but are really still alive, then they must be capable of intelligent thought. They must at least be conscious of their surroundings. Let’s consider a series of scriptures.
First, notice Psalm 146:3-4: “Put not your trust…in the son of man…His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” When people die, their thoughts end immediately—“in that very day.” This verse is not compatible with the idea that the souls of the dead are consciously suffering in a place of torment—or that souls are conscious in heaven. For instance, if the wicked are suffering in hell, they do not have knowledge that they are. They are unaware of what is happening to them. We could ask: What kind of suffering is that?
Some willingly ignore the meaning of scripture and allege that only mortal thoughts “perish.” Of course, this is ridiculous. The Bible says no such thing! The next verse is more direct: “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing…” (Ecc. 9:5). To the honest reader, there is no mistaking the plain meaning here!
This is because, as Solomon stated, “For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even one thing befalls them: as the one dies, so dies the other; yes, they have all one breath; so that a man has no preeminence above a beast…All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again” (Ecc. 3:19-20).
Now consider Psalm 115:17: “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.” Death involves “silence.” This does not square with any of the popular concepts of millions of the souls of the dead wailing and screaming in agony. This would hardly be a picture of silence! And, if the souls of some of the dead go to heaven, we could ask, why are they not praising God?
Psalm 6:5 adds that the souls of the dead do not experience conscious memory: “For in death there is no remembrance of You: in the grave who shall give You thanks?” Could anyone seriously suggest that souls in heaven could experience human memories but not be aware of God—not “REMEMBER HIM”?
The Human Spirit
You are now prepared to discover what almost no one understands. While man is composed of flesh, he has a non-physical component, the spirit in man, which can only be known of by what God has revealed in His Holy Word.
Understand that man is made of physical matter—he is flesh. God is Spirit (John 4:24). God had to have a way for Himself (Spirit) to be able to work with and communicate with man (flesh). Later, we will understand more regarding the vital spirit connection between God and humans, and how it works.
Notice this passage: “The burden of the word of the Lord for Israel, says the Lord, which stretches forth the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him” (Zech. 12:1). It is God who creates, designs and “forms” the spirit of man in each human being. The following verse explains that all people possess this spirit: “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation” (Num. 27:16). The One who creates all the spirits in men calls Himself the God of these spirits.
All physical creatures eventually die. This applies to men and animals. Consider: “For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even one thing befalls them: as the one dies, so dies the other; yes, they have all one breath; so that a man has no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward, and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth?” (Ecc. 3:19-21).
Solomon is not saying that there is a spirit in beasts, but rather asks rhetorically, “Who knows…the spirit of the beast that goes downward…?” Many verses reveal that there is a spirit in man, but men are ignorant of this truth and of whether animals also have some kind of “soul” or spirit. This verse shows that it cannot be talking about mere breath, plainly something different.
Astounding Knowledge
Now notice this astonishing verse. Paul wrote, “For what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knows no man, but the Spirit of God” (I Cor. 2:11).
Do not try to “interpret” this scripture. Simply let it interpret itself. Accept it for what it says. This passage identifies two different kinds of spirit—the “Spirit of God” and the “spirit of man.” They are not the same. Each provides a different function in acquiring knowledge, and this verse identifies how.
Human knowledge (“the things of a man”) is acquired because God has given men a human spirit—the spirit in man. Paul’s inspired statement also makes clear that spiritual knowledge (“the things of God”) can only be acquired by the presence of the Spirit of God. Even this very knowledge—that these two spirits exist and how they work—is in itself truly amazing! Think of it this way. Virtually no one has the knowledge about how either physical or spiritual knowledge is acquired!
Remember Job’s plain statement, “But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty gives them understanding” (32:8). Job said exactly what Paul said. He identified this spirit, while distinguishing spiritual understanding (or knowledge) as something that comes from God—“the Almighty”—through His “inspiration.” This happens through the indwelling of the Spirit of God in converted minds.
Animals do not have the spirit in man. Animal brains are different from human minds. Humans are given this spirit from conception, allowing them, through use of the five senses, to acquire and retain knowledge. Without this unseen spirit element, mankind would just be another dumb beast. But he has been given the power to acquire, retain and use knowledge for all kinds of purposes.
All human beings were created by God to receive two entirely different spirits. One comes at conception, and the other comes by completely different means—repentance and baptism. Without the Spirit of God, people are incomplete. Their existence remains limited to what they can acquire on their own without God’s help. Vast amounts of spiritual knowledge remain beyond reach. Though the human ability to acquire physical knowledge is beyond that of brute beasts, they cannot attain to any of this other marvelous understanding.
Let’s learn more about how the Spirit of God works with the human spirit in converted minds. Proverbs 20:27 offers important insight: “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly.” Think of this verse in the following way: God can work within a physical brain—communicating with and inspiring it—by means of, or through use of, the non-physical component of the spirit in man.
God Communicates Through the Human Spirit
Consider one example of how God can work through the human spirit. It illustrates an important principle. The setting involves King Cyrus of Persia. God wanted him to return to Jerusalem and build a second temple to replace Solomon’s, which had been destroyed: “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing” (Ezra 1:1).
God communicated with Cyrus through (by “stirring up”) his spirit. He does the same today. Now examine the following scripture. It adds a new dimension to the verses we have read about the spirit in man and how it works.
God’s Spirit Works With the Human Spirit
In the converted mind, both the Spirit of God and the spirit in man are present. They work together, with one another: “The Spirit itself bears witness WITH our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Rom. 8:16).
This is truly fascinating understanding. The converted person is different from animals in two distinct ways.
Recognize that science could never learn what you have just read!
Now consider an additional point. From the very moment you are converted, purchased by the blood of Christ, God owns you: “For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (I Cor. 6:20). God has literal ownership of your spirit—and it is His to work with.
It is critical to understand the character-building process at work in the converted mind and how it involves the human spirit. Notice: “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules his spirit than he that takes a city” (Prov. 16:32).
Self-control—temperance—is listed as a fruit of the Spirit of God in Galatians 5:23. Take time to read it. When placed together, these verses show that only through the Spirit of God working with the spirit in man is temperance built!
God Preserves the Spirit in Man
At the end of the converted person’s life, God returns the human spirit to Himself. In it, He has preserved a complete, detailed record of all that pertained to the life of that individual. This is the plain statement of scripture. Notice: “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Thes. 5:23).
The spirit, soul and body represent all that was the person. The personality, experiences, accumulated knowledge and character of each human being is reflected in the human spirit—the spirit in man.
This is why the spirit in man returns to God at death: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Ecc. 12:7). At death, the human spirit returns to God, who formed and placed it in the mind. Recall Ecclesiastes 3:21: “Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward, and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth?” Now you know what few others know—that the spirit in man does return to God.
The deacon Stephen understood. As he was being stoned to death for preaching a powerful sermon that antagonized his listeners, the Bible records, “And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep” (Acts 7:59-60). That is right! Stephen died (“fell asleep”) knowing that God would receive his spirit and it would reunite with him, we will learn, at the resurrection.
Now we are ready for one final scripture before continuing. It is the capstone that explains the “preservation” of all human spirits and exactly where God keeps them. Understand this: “But you are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect” (Heb. 12:22-23). This is an incredible passage. The “God of all spirits” (of all “just men made perfect”) keeps them with Him, until the resurrection.
It is in heaven—the heavenly Jerusalem—where the spirits of all God’s saints from the last 6,000 years are held—are preserved intact—awaiting the “coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Thes. 5:23).
Satan’s Spirit of Disobedience
Before continuing, we need to at least mention one other kind of spirit. Paul wrote to the Ephesian Church about the power of the devil and his influence upon the world: “Wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience” (2:2).
Besides the Spirit of God and the spirit in man, it should be noted as such that the devil is a spirit. He is part of the angelic realm of spirits, consisting of faithful angels and demons (fallen angels).
Notice that verse 2 states Satan’s “spirit…works in the children of disobedience.” The devil is a spirit and he has power, through his spirit, to influence humanity toward disobedience! His spirit sends moods, feelings and attitudes of hostility into people’s minds, bringing disobedience. The devil has enormous power of influence, allowing him to send thoughts of deceit, anger, pride, hate, greed, envy and more, directly into people’s thinking! (Read our free booklet Did God Create Human Nature? to learn much more about how and why Revelation 12:9 states that the devil deceives the whole world.)
Satan, as this world’s god (II Cor. 4:4), has seduced the masses of supposed Christianity into rejecting God’s supreme purpose, involving obedience to Him—so that they can follow the permissive false christ, so popularly worshipped and believed today, to a false salvation.
From the Beginning
We must look at the bigger picture. Now that we understand more of the human spirit, we must briefly examine God’s overall purpose. We must look at what He is doing with mankind.
The apostle John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1) and then continued, “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If there is One who was God, but who was also with God, it is obvious that two Beings—two Persons—are being described.
Verse 14 continues, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” The only God-Being who ever became flesh in order to dwell among men is Jesus Christ. Remember, it says that the Word “was made flesh.” Christ was not flesh until He came to earth to become the Savior of mankind.
Genesis 1:1 states, “In the beginning God…” Moses recorded the first five books of the Old Testament in the Hebrew language. The word translated “God” is Elohim. This word is uniplural and refers to words like team, group, family or church. God is one family—One God—composed of two Beings. This is why Christ could be God and with God at the same time.
Later in Genesis 1, God said, “Let us [more than one] make man in our image, after our likeness” (vs. 26). There was clearly more than one Person involved in man’s creation. Verse 25 adds that each animal was made after “his kind.”
John 4:24 states that “God is a Spirit,” meaning that He is made up of—composed of—Spirit. Men are composed of flesh. Because God is a Spirit, His Spirit must work with another spirit within His human creation.
Men are not part of the animal kind. They do not carry the likeness of any “beast of the earth” (Gen. 1:25). Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. They are part of the God kind. God did not form beasts to be in His likeness. So says your Bible!
Recall, Genesis 2:7 states, “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Man is made out of physical matter—flesh. While he is not composed of what God is—spirit—he is formed in the “image and likeness” of God.
Human beings are able to acquire knowledge. Animals do not have this capability. Recall that God has programmed into animals, through instinct, everything that they need to function effectively within their environment. There is no “spirit of animals” giving them mind power.
Humans receive the spirit in man from conception. It allows them, through use of the five senses, to acquire and retain knowledge.
Once again, however, people do not instinctively know all that they must know in order to operate successfully throughout their lives. They must acquire ever more knowledge as they grow older and as more demands are made upon them. Animals have no such need.
All available knowledge falls into two categories: (1) The physical knowledge of how to work with matter and physical things, and (2) the spiritual knowledge necessary for people to develop personal relationships with both God and their fellow man. All knowledge is either physical or spiritual.
Physical knowledge is acquired through the five senses—sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. People understand that they must acquire a certain amount of useful knowledge, and keep adding to it throughout their lives. The spirit in man makes this possible.
But it is critical to recognize that the human spirit is not the man—it is in the man. There is a big difference! This spirit does not have mind power of and by itself. Neither does the brain. The brain hears through the ears and sees through the eyes. The human spirit does not do these things of and by itself. The brain does the thinking—with the spirit giving it the power of intellect. Remember, the spirit is in the man, giving the five physical senses the ability to work with the brain for analysis and discernment of meaning and comprehension. The spirit empowers the mind to process information received through the five senses.
All knowledge is learned. Tiny babies are born with none—their minds are like blank sheets of paper waiting to be written on. In the process of growing up, they must learn to do everything. To function as adults requires much physical knowledge. Of course, adults recognize that no one can succeed in life without a certain amount of knowledge.
But herein lies a great problem. The physical knowledge that man has acquired has been insufficient for him to be able to solve the many awful problems afflicting all the nations of the world. For instance, he is utterly incapable of learning how to be happy or to bring abundance and peace to earth. And no one has discovered how to rid the world of war, poverty or disease.
Why? Humanity is missing a key component!
The Missing Dimension
After God created Adam and Eve, He presented them with an all-important choice—a critical decision to take one of two paths. Notice: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:7-9).
Genesis 3:1-8 contains the account of Adam and Eve’s fateful decision. They listened to the serpent and chose the wrong tree! This carried grave implications beyond what most could dream because, by not choosing the tree of life, Adam and Eve cut themselves off from the Spirit of God. They were left incomplete, incapable of receiving, understanding or forming spiritual thoughts. They severed themselves from the vitally important missing dimension to spiritual understanding of God’s purpose, the path to character-building and right solutions to humanity’s problems!
Here is what happened next: “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (vs. 22-24).
God denied them access to His presence and to His Spirit. While this was never His intention, it was the result of Adam and Eve’s choice.
God intended from the beginning to give Adam and Eve His Spirit. It would have joined with the spirit in man to form a newly-begotten spirit life in each of them—and in all mankind to follow.
God still intends that all human beings ultimately receive the missing dimension of His Holy Spirit. He wants it to eventually enter all minds.
Let’s learn what role this second spirit plays, and how it works with the spirit in man. Notice what Paul wrote: “The Spirit [the Holy Spirit] itself bears witness with our spirit [spirit in man], that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:16-17).
We see two spirits described here. God’s Spirit works “with” the human spirit to bring human beings to salvation as “joint-heirs with Christ.” It is this Spirit Adam was offered and would have received had he eaten of the Tree of Life!
In I Corinthians 2, we read of the spirit of man and the Spirit of God. Paul went on there to add, “But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (vs. 14). This is an enormously important verse. It is not possible for human beings to understand spiritual knowledge—spiritual understanding. Such things can only seem “foolish” to a mind that cannot “spiritually discern.” No matter how intelligent or talented a person may be, without the Spirit of God, they are shut off from all spiritual understanding.
Even attempting to tell people that they do not have this spiritual component is a useless exercise, unless God is opening their minds (John 6:44, 65). Otherwise, it will seem foolish to them because even this information is “spiritually discerned.” The more intelligent the person, the more foolish it will probably seem to him to be told his mind is incomplete—that he is “not all there.”
We have seen that if Adam had eaten of the Tree of Life, he would have received God’s Spirit. He would have learned the way of love—the “give” way instead of the way of “get” practiced by this world. The Bible says that “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10), and that “love…is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy [Spirit]” (Rom. 5:5).
Romans 8:6 states, “For to be carnally [physically] minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” If Adam had received the Spirit of God, he would have had life inherent within him. He would have been an “inheritor” with Christ as much as any true Christian today. He would have also known the way to peace, happiness, abundance and prosperity.
Adam was given more than a brain—he received a mind, containing the human spirit. He had the power to choose—to decide for himself his own fate. He was not forced to follow, or be automatically led toward, any prescribed path. He had not been programmed or limited to instinctive thinking, as were dumb beasts. When Adam rejected the Tree of Life, he rejected the opportunity to receive the Spirit of God. This would have opened his mind to the Plan of God—to why he had been created. We saw that his decision caused him and his wife, Eve, to be cast from the Garden. But, their joint decision carried grave implications for all human beings who came from them—who could not then have access to the Tree of Life.
With this decision, Adam cut off himself and all mankind from access to God. He rejected the opportunity for eternal life—to “live forever” (Gen. 3:22).
Grasp what this means! Human beings are not finished—they are incomplete! All knowledge that enters their minds is strictly limited to the physical and material. For his sin of rejecting God and the Tree of Life, Adam was rejected by God and cast from the Garden, and humanity was cast out with him!
This is absolutely remarkable understanding—unknown to all but a scattered few on earth today. And it has not been understood until our time!
God’s Purpose
God’s purpose has never altered. He desires to offer eternal life to all who qualify for it. Now, almost everyone knows of the following verse: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
But there is a purpose that God is working out in those He has called. He is fashioning, molding, and building within them holy, righteous character—His very character. Notice: “But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and we all are the work of your hand” (Isa. 64:8).
That’s right. God is actively working in the hearts and minds of those few who have His Holy Spirit within them (Acts 2:38). Human beings are not born with the character of God. And God cannot instantly infuse them with it by divine fiat. Character must be developed. The true Christian grows in grace, knowledge and understanding (II Pet. 3:18). He endures a lifetime of overcoming because he is in training for a supreme purpose. (Read our article “You Can Overcome and Prevent Sin” to further understand this process.)
Paul understood how God works in Christians. He also recognized that salvation (Rom. 6:23), and even faith to receive it, are free gifts. They cannot be earned. But this does not mean God is not clearly working (and requires good works) in human beings, as He reproduces Himself. Consider: “For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8-10).
Most will not allow God to work with them. They fight His purpose! They think they know better than the God who made them—and will not be told what to do and will not be clay in His hands. Isaiah also wrote, “Woe unto him that strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to Him that fashions it, What make You? or Your work, He has no hands?” (Isa. 45:9).
Some will permanently reject God, refusing to obey Him. They will trust in their human minds and reject the missing dimension of God’s Spirit, which would have led them to eternal life. They will choose to remain incomplete—unfinished in purpose and character.
The next verses describe their end. Malachi 4:3 states, “And you shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, says the Lord of hosts.” The wicked will be destroyed forever. Matthew 10:28 shows that the wicked will be gone, without remembrance. Also notice Obadiah 16: “For as you have drunk upon My holy mountain, so shall all the heathen drink continually, yes, they shall drink, and they shall swallow down, and they shall be as though they had not been.” (Our free booklet The Truth About Hell explains the wicked’s fate in detail.)
In Christ’s Image
Paul wrote of those in whom God is working, “For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). As explained, God is expanding His Family, adding more children. Christ was first and all others must conform to His image—to His character and likeness.
God is making more “brethren” in a Family where all will have the same character and spirit composition.
Recall that, in the Garden, God and Christ made man in their “image and likeness.” This explains why the New Testament talks of being “conformed to the image of His Son.” The Old and New Testament scriptures match—they fit together in revealing God’s purpose.
God has never worked in animals. They are lacking in moral and spiritual faculty. They are made for the enjoyment and service of both mankind and the environment. But they cannot acquire new knowledge and they have never been offered eternal life. They are not part of God’s Plan of character-building and of reproducing Himself. God has never worked in or through animals toward any spiritual purpose. He is at work in begotten, Spirit-led human beings.
Human reproduction represents the very same pattern that God Himself uses. The human family is a type of the family that God is building.
John said, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” and “That which is born of the flesh IS flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit IS spirit” (John 3:3, 6). Recall that God’s Spirit works with our spirit, making us sons of God (Rom. 8:16-17).
Marriage between men and women pictures the great Marriage of Christ to His bride, which will occur at His Return (Rev. 19:7-9).
Each human being carries staggering potential, with capability far beyond brute beasts, and exceeding even the potential of God’s holy angels. Notice: “Being made so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said He at any time, You are My Son, this day have I begotten You? And again, I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son?” (Heb. 1:4-5).
Changed at Resurrection
All matter is physical. You are made of matter—you are physical, of the dust of the ground. There is nothing permanent about your flesh. Without food, water and air, for even a short time, you will die. Likewise, no person can gain eternal life apart from the Holy Spirit present and working within him. Without this Spirit helping to change one, to give eternal life, none has hope! Without contact with God, His Spirit and His purpose, allowing for spiritual comprehension, all those of Satan’s world will live out their physical lives and die, with nothing to follow. But God is working with a few now!
Earlier, we quoted Job. He understood that God’s Spirit worked with his spirit to grant him understanding. He was well aware of God’s Plan and purpose at work in his life. He asked, “If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. You shall call, and I will answer You: You will have a desire to the work of Your hands” (14:14-15). Job knew that the resurrection awaited him—when he would be “changed.” In the meantime, he had to “wait” in the grave until God called him.
Job possessed the Spirit of God and understood when and how God would resurrect and change him. He recognized that it would be the very Spirit of God in humans that would make this change possible. Earlier in Romans 8, Paul had written, “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you” (vs. 11).
Paul also wrote to the Corinthians about the coming change at the resurrection, when all will awaken from sleep with a new spirit body: “And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (I Cor. 15:49-53).
This speaks of a mystery Paul had to explain. It is certainly a mystery to the world that there is coming this change to spirit composition at the resurrection of the dead when Christ returns. Most suppose that they have an immortal soul that goes to heaven upon death. Yet, few seem to ask or care about how one could go from “mortal” to “immortal” (vs. 53-54), at the resurrection, if he already has an immortal soul! Do you see the foolish logic of men cut off from God’s marvelous Plan, and from the understanding of plain scriptures in the Bible?
Ask yourself: How can people be resurrected if they are already alive in heaven as immortal souls? Only the dead, like Christ when He was in the tomb, need to be resurrected. That is the purpose of a resurrection. Do not be fooled by those who say, “The resurrection only applies to the body, since the soul remained alive after death”! You have seen this fallacy disproved. Man does not have an immortal soul—he has a spirit empowering his brain to the status of human mind. Without the Spirit of God, men are completely unable to understand the most important knowledge.
David understood that he would “awake” (Psa. 17:15). Stephen understood that at death he “fell asleep.” Job understood that he would be “changed” (Job 14:14). Paul understood that Christians will be “changed”—that they will awaken from “sleep”—at the time of the resurrection (I Cor. 15:51). At this time, all deceased servants of God will literally awaken from death!
God’s character will have already been perfected in those He “quickens” at the resurrection. At this time, they will no longer be able to sin: “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (I John 3:9).
His Reward With Him
At His Return, Christ will bring the individual rewards of all those sons and daughters through whom He and the Father have worked. They will have qualified for great glory: “For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works” (Matt. 16:27). Your works in this life have a direct bearing on your reward in the next life. (Our booklet What Is Your Reward in the Next Life? explains how.)
That reward involves rulership. The initial phase of that rulership will last 1,000 years. Rulers sit on thrones: “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. this is the first resurrection” (Rev. 20:4-5).
But God’s Plan will not end with just those included in the First Resurrection. God intends to give all human beings an opportunity to receive His Spirit, build His character—to be finished and come to completion!
John described the continuation of God’s Plan to the time when all mankind will receive an opportunity for salvation. It is called the “Great White Throne Judgment” and is described this way: “And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:11-15).
But those of God’s Church—the one Church that Christ promised to build (Matt. 16:18)—are being taught and led now in all the truths and ways of God. This “little flock” is now feeding and preparing those who will rule with Christ. Paul wrote the Ephesians describing the responsibility of Christ’s true ministers: “…for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (4:12-13). (This Church is carefully explained and identified in our booklet Where Is God’s Church?)
Reuniting with the Human Spirit
The spirit in man neither changes nor resurrects the person. This comes from God’s Spirit first working in the mind. At the resurrection, the spirit in man will unite with the Holy Spirit. We will be exactly the same, except made of spirit and therefore will no longer have human nature or the pulls of the flesh.
Think of the spirit in man in this way: It is like a cassette tape of everything we have ever learned or done—and it is the very mold of the mind for our coming spirit body, containing the memory, character and experiences of each human being. In a sense, like any cassette, it can be “played back.” Yet, it cannot have or give life, or function by itself, because it must be connected to a physical brain—or a spirit mind at the resurrection.
Like one working with a computer, the spirit in man works with the brain to form the amazing human mind!
Science will never discover this knowledge. No one understands it. But now you do!
What You Have Discovered
In his booklet What Science Can’t Discover About the HUMAN MIND, Herbert W. Armstrong concluded with:
“Notice what happens at death.
“‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’ After death, whether buried in the earth, cremated, or what, the physical body returns to the earth. But the spirit that was in the man, now having recorded everything—the body’s form and shape, the facial identity, the memory and the character—returns to God.
“It will be preserved UNCHANGED.
“Such saints as Abraham, Moses, David and Daniel died thousands of years ago. Stop and think about THAT! God had to provide some way to preserve the form, shape, appearance, mind and character of saints for thousands of years. They were composed of corruptible flesh and blood. All that was them (man is composed wholly of matter) long since decomposed. Yet in the resurrection, it will seem to them as the next fraction of a second since loss of consciousness at death.
“In the interim of death, they knew absolutely nothing. Says God’s Word, ‘For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing’ (Ecc. 9:5).
“The spirit which returns to God is the human spirit that was in them throughout life. It was not an ‘immortal soul,’ for the soul was mortal and corruptible.
“Those who died with God’s Holy Spirit will be in the first resurrection (Rev. 20:4-5). They will come forth immortal, in a glorious body of Spirit composition, their faces aglow as the sun.
“All others who have not been called to eternal salvation by God during their human lifetimes will be resurrected after the thousand-year reign of the Kingdom of God under Christ, in the Great White Throne Judgment (Rev. 20:11-12). They will be resurrected mortal, once again in a flesh and blood physical body, just as before. In this great judgment they will be ‘called’—their eyes opened to God’s truth. Then, finally, there will be a last resurrection (Rev. 20:13-15) of those who had been called by God in their mortal human life, but had rejected or turned from the truth. They, with those who reject it in the Great White Throne Judgment, will be in the lake of fire (II Pet. 3:10-11), which is the second death. They then shall be ashes under the soles of the feet of the immortals in God’s Kingdom (Mal. 4:3), and will be as though they had never been (Obadiah 16).
“Then, ahead of the millions of immortal redeemed, shall lie the tremendous awesome human potential—when God the Creator shall have put the entire universe under our jurisdiction (Heb. 2:7-8).”
Reflect on all that science has given to mankind at large. It has put men on the moon and created weapons of mass destruction. It has broken down the genetic codes of DNA and cloned numerous different creatures. It has learned much about the staggering size and nature of the universe—outer space—and discovered incredible things about the tiny sub-atomic particles in different kinds of atoms—inner space. It has made numerous medical breakthroughs and accomplished amazing feats of engineering.
The scope and potential of science seems limitless. Most believe that, given time, scientific discoveries will solve most or all of mankind’s problems. Yet science is limited in a vitally important way that involves you. There is a discovery it will never—and can never—make about the nature of the human mind!
Your mind contains a dimension that cannot be understood or discovered by any process or experiment known to science. This world’s religions have missed it. Their theologians neither teach nor comprehend it. They have completely overlooked this critical component—this single vital key—that unlocks the enormous difference between men and animals. Only by understanding this revealed key can you learn your purpose for being!
The Amazing Human Mind
Look at all of the amazing works of nature—both on earth and throughout the heavens. The kaleidoscope of God’s handiwork that can be seen by the human eye is staggering.
Consider the planets, stars and galaxies. Each is its own marvel. Then reflect on all of the species of plants found on earth. There are millions, diverse in color, shape, size and beauty. The brilliance of their various designs and purposes is incredible! Now think of the many millions of different kinds of animals and insects. They are as marvelous and fascinating as the world of plants, with their diversity of purpose, appearance and behavior.
But none of these creations rival the complexity and nearly unlimited capability of your mind. And as fascinating, marvelous, beautiful and amazing as are all the things described above, none is more amazing than the human mind. It is the absolute pinnacle of all living organisms. Nothing else in God’s creation even comes close. What else can plan, think or create to even a fraction of the same degree?
Just think about how many things the human mind can design and produce: Houses, telephones, trains, automobiles, planes, rockets, computers, fax machines and other sophisticated devices that are practically limitless in complexity and usefulness. The only thing it cannot design and build is itself!
Who Made Your Mind?
When the psalmist said, “…for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psa. 139:14), this is most true of your brain—the human mind!
The Creator of your mind sent with it a detailed Instruction Manual containing vital information, explaining the nature, design and purpose of this greatest of all creations. He identifies the hidden key—the missing dimension!—to the right and proper use of the mind, opening the way to peace, happiness, abundance and universal prosperity.
But this Instruction Manual is almost universally ignored, misrepresented, misunderstood and rejected. I speak of God’s Word—the Holy Bible! As a result, the problems, troubles and evils of civilization mount with no solution in sight and conditions only growing worse.
Stop and think! Apply basic logic.
Would God create His marvel of engineering—your mind—and send it without an Instruction Book explaining how to use it? Of course not!
Yet this most amazing of all books remains a mystery to so many—with few even professing to understand it. Most spend their entire lives worried about what people think and say. Few concern themselves with what God thinks or says. Be honest and examine yourself. Do you derive your opinions from people? Or do you regularly search and accept the plain Word of God as the guide for your life?
The following scripture explains why even the most brilliant minds are completely unable to learn certain understanding, unless it is revealed to them. Notice: “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hid these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes” (Matt. 11:25). The greatest thinkers of this world cannot fathom the things God has revealed in His Word! They are literally hidden from them.
We must be willing to examine God’s Word for what He reveals about your mind. It will open your thinking to incredible new understanding about why you were born—and of your awesome future and potential. However, we must start at the beginning.
A Non-Physical Component?
Many suppose that the composition of the human mind is entirely physical. Is this true? Others believe that each person possesses an immortal soul. Is this true? What does the Bible say? Does it endorse either of these ideas? Or does God’s Word teach something completely different—something completely overlooked by all religions, and unable to be discovered by all methods of science?
First, we must consider the difference between human minds and animal brains. There are facts that science tells us about the comparative qualities of both. All understand that in some way animal brains are entirely different from human minds. But in what way? How are they different?
For instance, certain creatures, such as chimpanzees and dolphins, have brains that are relatively similar in size and weight to that of humans. Some larger animals, like whales and elephants, have larger brains than man. Yet they are far less intelligent, far less creative and incapable of understanding any kind of complex thought.
Science has never been able to explain—to adequately account for—the vast difference between the human brain and the brains of animals. While man has a brain that may be only slightly more complex than animals of relatively similar brain size, the difference in capability is vast. There is simply no comparison.
Animals function almost entirely on instinct. They do what they do automatically, and from birth. For instance, almost immediately after birth, a calf knows exactly what to do—how to stand up and take steps, and where to find milk. Human babies require far longer to even stand up with support, and have to be taught how to do virtually everything.
Having minds, human beings have been given hands so that they can create. Merely having brains, animals function on instinct and possess paws, claws and hooves. This leaves them incapable of building something complex like a television—let alone a jet airplane or a space-traveling rocket—even if a mind were directing them. Animals are also not capable of acquiring knowledge beyond a very rudimentary ability to react to certain stimuli.
Humans are capable of acquiring knowledge, drawing conclusions, gathering and assessing facts, making decisions—and of building character. This is the single, greatest, overarching difference between men and animals.
Animals are greatly limited because God has merely programmed into them, through instinct, everything that they need to function effectively within their environment.
On the other hand, people do not instinctively know everything necessary to function successfully in life. They must continually acquire more knowledge throughout their lives to address new challenges and demands made upon them.
This is made possible by an unseen, unrecognized component of the mind. Without this invisible, non-physical element, mankind would be just another dumb beast!
A Spirit in Man
Let’s now establish a basic Bible teaching. The patriarch Job wrote, “But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty gives them understanding” (32:8). This is a plain statement. Through Job, God revealed that men possess a kind of spirit, called the “spirit in man.” Fully understanding this spirit requires an examination of the other scriptures that describe it.
But before looking into the truth of this matter—before searching to see what the Bible says about this human spirit—we must understand and accept what the Bible does not say.
To do this, we must examine the most popular fallacy taught and believed by countless millions about this subject.
Not an Immortal Soul
Many read verses like the one in Job and conclude that it is speaking about immortal souls. But is it? Is the phrase “spirit in man” synonymous with an “immortal soul” composed of spirit?
Most people do not understand the relationship between physical men and souls. They assume that human beings are born with immortal souls. The popular belief is that, upon death, the souls of sinners go to hell forever and those of the just go to heaven forever, since all souls are supposedly immortal. Is this what the Bible teaches?
Romans 6:23 states that “the wages of sin is death,” not life in hell. So, does the Bible somehow also teach that people have immortal souls? It does talk about “souls,” but in what context?
The Bible does teach that there is a connection between men and souls. Genesis 2:7 states, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
This verse does not say that men have souls, but that they are souls. Adam became a soul—he was not given one. Then, almost immediately, God warned him, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you [not just your body] shall surely die” (vs. 16-17). When placed together, these three verses reveal that men are souls and that souls can die!
The prophet Ezekiel confirms the book of Genesis. Twice he was inspired to write, “The soul that sins, it shall die” (18:4, 20). Death is the absence of life. It is the discontinuance—the cessation—of life. Death is not life in another place. It is not leaving “this life” for “another life”—the “next life.”
Finally, on the subject of whether the soul can die, notice this in Matthew 10:28: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him [God] which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
The Bible says that souls can be destroyed! According to this verse, they can be destroyed as much as bodies can. We all recognize that bodies eventually die and that, afterwards, they naturally decompose and are completely “destroyed” due to the process of natural corruption. This verse explains that God does the destroying of souls in hell! Bodies can die in many ways. But souls are destroyed in hell by God.
Let’s consider the soul from another angle. We must be certain.
Are the Dead Conscious?
Human minds are differentiated from animal brains by intelligent thought. (We will later learn how this is possible.) Presumably, if the dead are not dead, but are really still alive, then they must be capable of intelligent thought. They must at least be conscious of their surroundings. Let’s consider a series of scriptures.
First, notice Psalm 146:3-4: “Put not your trust…in the son of man…His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” When people die, their thoughts end immediately—“in that very day.” This verse is not compatible with the idea that the souls of the dead are consciously suffering in a place of torment—or that souls are conscious in heaven. For instance, if the wicked are suffering in hell, they do not have knowledge that they are. They are unaware of what is happening to them. We could ask: What kind of suffering is that?
Some willingly ignore the meaning of scripture and allege that only mortal thoughts “perish.” Of course, this is ridiculous. The Bible says no such thing! The next verse is more direct: “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing…” (Ecc. 9:5). To the honest reader, there is no mistaking the plain meaning here!
This is because, as Solomon stated, “For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even one thing befalls them: as the one dies, so dies the other; yes, they have all one breath; so that a man has no preeminence above a beast…All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again” (Ecc. 3:19-20).
Now consider Psalm 115:17: “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.” Death involves “silence.” This does not square with any of the popular concepts of millions of the souls of the dead wailing and screaming in agony. This would hardly be a picture of silence! And, if the souls of some of the dead go to heaven, we could ask, why are they not praising God?
Psalm 6:5 adds that the souls of the dead do not experience conscious memory: “For in death there is no remembrance of You: in the grave who shall give You thanks?” Could anyone seriously suggest that souls in heaven could experience human memories but not be aware of God—not “REMEMBER HIM”?
The Human Spirit
You are now prepared to discover what almost no one understands. While man is composed of flesh, he has a non-physical component, the spirit in man, which can only be known of by what God has revealed in His Holy Word.
Understand that man is made of physical matter—he is flesh. God is Spirit (John 4:24). God had to have a way for Himself (Spirit) to be able to work with and communicate with man (flesh). Later, we will understand more regarding the vital spirit connection between God and humans, and how it works.
Notice this passage: “The burden of the word of the Lord for Israel, says the Lord, which stretches forth the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him” (Zech. 12:1). It is God who creates, designs and “forms” the spirit of man in each human being. The following verse explains that all people possess this spirit: “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation” (Num. 27:16). The One who creates all the spirits in men calls Himself the God of these spirits.
All physical creatures eventually die. This applies to men and animals. Consider: “For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even one thing befalls them: as the one dies, so dies the other; yes, they have all one breath; so that a man has no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward, and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth?” (Ecc. 3:19-21).
Solomon is not saying that there is a spirit in beasts, but rather asks rhetorically, “Who knows…the spirit of the beast that goes downward…?” Many verses reveal that there is a spirit in man, but men are ignorant of this truth and of whether animals also have some kind of “soul” or spirit. This verse shows that it cannot be talking about mere breath, plainly something different.
Astounding Knowledge
Now notice this astonishing verse. Paul wrote, “For what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knows no man, but the Spirit of God” (I Cor. 2:11).
Do not try to “interpret” this scripture. Simply let it interpret itself. Accept it for what it says. This passage identifies two different kinds of spirit—the “Spirit of God” and the “spirit of man.” They are not the same. Each provides a different function in acquiring knowledge, and this verse identifies how.
Human knowledge (“the things of a man”) is acquired because God has given men a human spirit—the spirit in man. Paul’s inspired statement also makes clear that spiritual knowledge (“the things of God”) can only be acquired by the presence of the Spirit of God. Even this very knowledge—that these two spirits exist and how they work—is in itself truly amazing! Think of it this way. Virtually no one has the knowledge about how either physical or spiritual knowledge is acquired!
Remember Job’s plain statement, “But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty gives them understanding” (32:8). Job said exactly what Paul said. He identified this spirit, while distinguishing spiritual understanding (or knowledge) as something that comes from God—“the Almighty”—through His “inspiration.” This happens through the indwelling of the Spirit of God in converted minds.
Animals do not have the spirit in man. Animal brains are different from human minds. Humans are given this spirit from conception, allowing them, through use of the five senses, to acquire and retain knowledge. Without this unseen spirit element, mankind would just be another dumb beast. But he has been given the power to acquire, retain and use knowledge for all kinds of purposes.
All human beings were created by God to receive two entirely different spirits. One comes at conception, and the other comes by completely different means—repentance and baptism. Without the Spirit of God, people are incomplete. Their existence remains limited to what they can acquire on their own without God’s help. Vast amounts of spiritual knowledge remain beyond reach. Though the human ability to acquire physical knowledge is beyond that of brute beasts, they cannot attain to any of this other marvelous understanding.
Let’s learn more about how the Spirit of God works with the human spirit in converted minds. Proverbs 20:27 offers important insight: “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly.” Think of this verse in the following way: God can work within a physical brain—communicating with and inspiring it—by means of, or through use of, the non-physical component of the spirit in man.
God Communicates Through the Human Spirit
Consider one example of how God can work through the human spirit. It illustrates an important principle. The setting involves King Cyrus of Persia. God wanted him to return to Jerusalem and build a second temple to replace Solomon’s, which had been destroyed: “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing” (Ezra 1:1).
God communicated with Cyrus through (by “stirring up”) his spirit. He does the same today. Now examine the following scripture. It adds a new dimension to the verses we have read about the spirit in man and how it works.
God’s Spirit Works With the Human Spirit
In the converted mind, both the Spirit of God and the spirit in man are present. They work together, with one another: “The Spirit itself bears witness WITH our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Rom. 8:16).
This is truly fascinating understanding. The converted person is different from animals in two distinct ways.
Recognize that science could never learn what you have just read!
Now consider an additional point. From the very moment you are converted, purchased by the blood of Christ, God owns you: “For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (I Cor. 6:20). God has literal ownership of your spirit—and it is His to work with.
It is critical to understand the character-building process at work in the converted mind and how it involves the human spirit. Notice: “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules his spirit than he that takes a city” (Prov. 16:32).
Self-control—temperance—is listed as a fruit of the Spirit of God in Galatians 5:23. Take time to read it. When placed together, these verses show that only through the Spirit of God working with the spirit in man is temperance built!
God Preserves the Spirit in Man
At the end of the converted person’s life, God returns the human spirit to Himself. In it, He has preserved a complete, detailed record of all that pertained to the life of that individual. This is the plain statement of scripture. Notice: “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Thes. 5:23).
The spirit, soul and body represent all that was the person. The personality, experiences, accumulated knowledge and character of each human being is reflected in the human spirit—the spirit in man.
This is why the spirit in man returns to God at death: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Ecc. 12:7). At death, the human spirit returns to God, who formed and placed it in the mind. Recall Ecclesiastes 3:21: “Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward, and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth?” Now you know what few others know—that the spirit in man does return to God.
The deacon Stephen understood. As he was being stoned to death for preaching a powerful sermon that antagonized his listeners, the Bible records, “And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep” (Acts 7:59-60). That is right! Stephen died (“fell asleep”) knowing that God would receive his spirit and it would reunite with him, we will learn, at the resurrection.
Now we are ready for one final scripture before continuing. It is the capstone that explains the “preservation” of all human spirits and exactly where God keeps them. Understand this: “But you are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect” (Heb. 12:22-23). This is an incredible passage. The “God of all spirits” (of all “just men made perfect”) keeps them with Him, until the resurrection.
It is in heaven—the heavenly Jerusalem—where the spirits of all God’s saints from the last 6,000 years are held—are preserved intact—awaiting the “coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Thes. 5:23).
Satan’s Spirit of Disobedience
Before continuing, we need to at least mention one other kind of spirit. Paul wrote to the Ephesian Church about the power of the devil and his influence upon the world: “Wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience” (2:2).
Besides the Spirit of God and the spirit in man, it should be noted as such that the devil is a spirit. He is part of the angelic realm of spirits, consisting of faithful angels and demons (fallen angels).
Notice that verse 2 states Satan’s “spirit…works in the children of disobedience.” The devil is a spirit and he has power, through his spirit, to influence humanity toward disobedience! His spirit sends moods, feelings and attitudes of hostility into people’s minds, bringing disobedience. The devil has enormous power of influence, allowing him to send thoughts of deceit, anger, pride, hate, greed, envy and more, directly into people’s thinking! (Read our free booklet Did God Create Human Nature? to learn much more about how and why Revelation 12:9 states that the devil deceives the whole world.)
Satan, as this world’s god (II Cor. 4:4), has seduced the masses of supposed Christianity into rejecting God’s supreme purpose, involving obedience to Him—so that they can follow the permissive false christ, so popularly worshipped and believed today, to a false salvation.
From the Beginning
We must look at the bigger picture. Now that we understand more of the human spirit, we must briefly examine God’s overall purpose. We must look at what He is doing with mankind.
The apostle John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1) and then continued, “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If there is One who was God, but who was also with God, it is obvious that two Beings—two Persons—are being described.
Verse 14 continues, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” The only God-Being who ever became flesh in order to dwell among men is Jesus Christ. Remember, it says that the Word “was made flesh.” Christ was not flesh until He came to earth to become the Savior of mankind.
Genesis 1:1 states, “In the beginning God…” Moses recorded the first five books of the Old Testament in the Hebrew language. The word translated “God” is Elohim. This word is uniplural and refers to words like team, group, family or church. God is one family—One God—composed of two Beings. This is why Christ could be God and with God at the same time.
Later in Genesis 1, God said, “Let us [more than one] make man in our image, after our likeness” (vs. 26). There was clearly more than one Person involved in man’s creation. Verse 25 adds that each animal was made after “his kind.”
John 4:24 states that “God is a Spirit,” meaning that He is made up of—composed of—Spirit. Men are composed of flesh. Because God is a Spirit, His Spirit must work with another spirit within His human creation.
Men are not part of the animal kind. They do not carry the likeness of any “beast of the earth” (Gen. 1:25). Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. They are part of the God kind. God did not form beasts to be in His likeness. So says your Bible!
Recall, Genesis 2:7 states, “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Man is made out of physical matter—flesh. While he is not composed of what God is—spirit—he is formed in the “image and likeness” of God.
Human beings are able to acquire knowledge. Animals do not have this capability. Recall that God has programmed into animals, through instinct, everything that they need to function effectively within their environment. There is no “spirit of animals” giving them mind power.
Humans receive the spirit in man from conception. It allows them, through use of the five senses, to acquire and retain knowledge.
Once again, however, people do not instinctively know all that they must know in order to operate successfully throughout their lives. They must acquire ever more knowledge as they grow older and as more demands are made upon them. Animals have no such need.
All available knowledge falls into two categories: (1) The physical knowledge of how to work with matter and physical things, and (2) the spiritual knowledge necessary for people to develop personal relationships with both God and their fellow man. All knowledge is either physical or spiritual.
Physical knowledge is acquired through the five senses—sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. People understand that they must acquire a certain amount of useful knowledge, and keep adding to it throughout their lives. The spirit in man makes this possible.
But it is critical to recognize that the human spirit is not the man—it is in the man. There is a big difference! This spirit does not have mind power of and by itself. Neither does the brain. The brain hears through the ears and sees through the eyes. The human spirit does not do these things of and by itself. The brain does the thinking—with the spirit giving it the power of intellect. Remember, the spirit is in the man, giving the five physical senses the ability to work with the brain for analysis and discernment of meaning and comprehension. The spirit empowers the mind to process information received through the five senses.
All knowledge is learned. Tiny babies are born with none—their minds are like blank sheets of paper waiting to be written on. In the process of growing up, they must learn to do everything. To function as adults requires much physical knowledge. Of course, adults recognize that no one can succeed in life without a certain amount of knowledge.
But herein lies a great problem. The physical knowledge that man has acquired has been insufficient for him to be able to solve the many awful problems afflicting all the nations of the world. For instance, he is utterly incapable of learning how to be happy or to bring abundance and peace to earth. And no one has discovered how to rid the world of war, poverty or disease.
Why? Humanity is missing a key component!
The Missing Dimension
After God created Adam and Eve, He presented them with an all-important choice—a critical decision to take one of two paths. Notice: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:7-9).
Genesis 3:1-8 contains the account of Adam and Eve’s fateful decision. They listened to the serpent and chose the wrong tree! This carried grave implications beyond what most could dream because, by not choosing the tree of life, Adam and Eve cut themselves off from the Spirit of God. They were left incomplete, incapable of receiving, understanding or forming spiritual thoughts. They severed themselves from the vitally important missing dimension to spiritual understanding of God’s purpose, the path to character-building and right solutions to humanity’s problems!
Here is what happened next: “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (vs. 22-24).
God denied them access to His presence and to His Spirit. While this was never His intention, it was the result of Adam and Eve’s choice.
God intended from the beginning to give Adam and Eve His Spirit. It would have joined with the spirit in man to form a newly-begotten spirit life in each of them—and in all mankind to follow.
God still intends that all human beings ultimately receive the missing dimension of His Holy Spirit. He wants it to eventually enter all minds.
Let’s learn what role this second spirit plays, and how it works with the spirit in man. Notice what Paul wrote: “The Spirit [the Holy Spirit] itself bears witness with our spirit [spirit in man], that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:16-17).
We see two spirits described here. God’s Spirit works “with” the human spirit to bring human beings to salvation as “joint-heirs with Christ.” It is this Spirit Adam was offered and would have received had he eaten of the Tree of Life!
In I Corinthians 2, we read of the spirit of man and the Spirit of God. Paul went on there to add, “But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (vs. 14). This is an enormously important verse. It is not possible for human beings to understand spiritual knowledge—spiritual understanding. Such things can only seem “foolish” to a mind that cannot “spiritually discern.” No matter how intelligent or talented a person may be, without the Spirit of God, they are shut off from all spiritual understanding.
Even attempting to tell people that they do not have this spiritual component is a useless exercise, unless God is opening their minds (John 6:44, 65). Otherwise, it will seem foolish to them because even this information is “spiritually discerned.” The more intelligent the person, the more foolish it will probably seem to him to be told his mind is incomplete—that he is “not all there.”
We have seen that if Adam had eaten of the Tree of Life, he would have received God’s Spirit. He would have learned the way of love—the “give” way instead of the way of “get” practiced by this world. The Bible says that “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10), and that “love…is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy [Spirit]” (Rom. 5:5).
Romans 8:6 states, “For to be carnally [physically] minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” If Adam had received the Spirit of God, he would have had life inherent within him. He would have been an “inheritor” with Christ as much as any true Christian today. He would have also known the way to peace, happiness, abundance and prosperity.
Adam was given more than a brain—he received a mind, containing the human spirit. He had the power to choose—to decide for himself his own fate. He was not forced to follow, or be automatically led toward, any prescribed path. He had not been programmed or limited to instinctive thinking, as were dumb beasts. When Adam rejected the Tree of Life, he rejected the opportunity to receive the Spirit of God. This would have opened his mind to the Plan of God—to why he had been created. We saw that his decision caused him and his wife, Eve, to be cast from the Garden. But, their joint decision carried grave implications for all human beings who came from them—who could not then have access to the Tree of Life.
With this decision, Adam cut off himself and all mankind from access to God. He rejected the opportunity for eternal life—to “live forever” (Gen. 3:22).
Grasp what this means! Human beings are not finished—they are incomplete! All knowledge that enters their minds is strictly limited to the physical and material. For his sin of rejecting God and the Tree of Life, Adam was rejected by God and cast from the Garden, and humanity was cast out with him!
This is absolutely remarkable understanding—unknown to all but a scattered few on earth today. And it has not been understood until our time!
God’s Purpose
God’s purpose has never altered. He desires to offer eternal life to all who qualify for it. Now, almost everyone knows of the following verse: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
But there is a purpose that God is working out in those He has called. He is fashioning, molding, and building within them holy, righteous character—His very character. Notice: “But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and we all are the work of your hand” (Isa. 64:8).
That’s right. God is actively working in the hearts and minds of those few who have His Holy Spirit within them (Acts 2:38). Human beings are not born with the character of God. And God cannot instantly infuse them with it by divine fiat. Character must be developed. The true Christian grows in grace, knowledge and understanding (II Pet. 3:18). He endures a lifetime of overcoming because he is in training for a supreme purpose. (Read our article “You Can Overcome and Prevent Sin” to further understand this process.)
Paul understood how God works in Christians. He also recognized that salvation (Rom. 6:23), and even faith to receive it, are free gifts. They cannot be earned. But this does not mean God is not clearly working (and requires good works) in human beings, as He reproduces Himself. Consider: “For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8-10).
Most will not allow God to work with them. They fight His purpose! They think they know better than the God who made them—and will not be told what to do and will not be clay in His hands. Isaiah also wrote, “Woe unto him that strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to Him that fashions it, What make You? or Your work, He has no hands?” (Isa. 45:9).
Some will permanently reject God, refusing to obey Him. They will trust in their human minds and reject the missing dimension of God’s Spirit, which would have led them to eternal life. They will choose to remain incomplete—unfinished in purpose and character.
The next verses describe their end. Malachi 4:3 states, “And you shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, says the Lord of hosts.” The wicked will be destroyed forever. Matthew 10:28 shows that the wicked will be gone, without remembrance. Also notice Obadiah 16: “For as you have drunk upon My holy mountain, so shall all the heathen drink continually, yes, they shall drink, and they shall swallow down, and they shall be as though they had not been.” (Our free booklet The Truth About Hell explains the wicked’s fate in detail.)
In Christ’s Image
Paul wrote of those in whom God is working, “For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). As explained, God is expanding His Family, adding more children. Christ was first and all others must conform to His image—to His character and likeness.
God is making more “brethren” in a Family where all will have the same character and spirit composition.
Recall that, in the Garden, God and Christ made man in their “image and likeness.” This explains why the New Testament talks of being “conformed to the image of His Son.” The Old and New Testament scriptures match—they fit together in revealing God’s purpose.
God has never worked in animals. They are lacking in moral and spiritual faculty. They are made for the enjoyment and service of both mankind and the environment. But they cannot acquire new knowledge and they have never been offered eternal life. They are not part of God’s Plan of character-building and of reproducing Himself. God has never worked in or through animals toward any spiritual purpose. He is at work in begotten, Spirit-led human beings.
Human reproduction represents the very same pattern that God Himself uses. The human family is a type of the family that God is building.
John said, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” and “That which is born of the flesh IS flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit IS spirit” (John 3:3, 6). Recall that God’s Spirit works with our spirit, making us sons of God (Rom. 8:16-17).
Marriage between men and women pictures the great Marriage of Christ to His bride, which will occur at His Return (Rev. 19:7-9).
Each human being carries staggering potential, with capability far beyond brute beasts, and exceeding even the potential of God’s holy angels. Notice: “Being made so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said He at any time, You are My Son, this day have I begotten You? And again, I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son?” (Heb. 1:4-5).
Changed at Resurrection
All matter is physical. You are made of matter—you are physical, of the dust of the ground. There is nothing permanent about your flesh. Without food, water and air, for even a short time, you will die. Likewise, no person can gain eternal life apart from the Holy Spirit present and working within him. Without this Spirit helping to change one, to give eternal life, none has hope! Without contact with God, His Spirit and His purpose, allowing for spiritual comprehension, all those of Satan’s world will live out their physical lives and die, with nothing to follow. But God is working with a few now!
Earlier, we quoted Job. He understood that God’s Spirit worked with his spirit to grant him understanding. He was well aware of God’s Plan and purpose at work in his life. He asked, “If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. You shall call, and I will answer You: You will have a desire to the work of Your hands” (14:14-15). Job knew that the resurrection awaited him—when he would be “changed.” In the meantime, he had to “wait” in the grave until God called him.
Job possessed the Spirit of God and understood when and how God would resurrect and change him. He recognized that it would be the very Spirit of God in humans that would make this change possible. Earlier in Romans 8, Paul had written, “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you” (vs. 11).
Paul also wrote to the Corinthians about the coming change at the resurrection, when all will awaken from sleep with a new spirit body: “And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (I Cor. 15:49-53).
This speaks of a mystery Paul had to explain. It is certainly a mystery to the world that there is coming this change to spirit composition at the resurrection of the dead when Christ returns. Most suppose that they have an immortal soul that goes to heaven upon death. Yet, few seem to ask or care about how one could go from “mortal” to “immortal” (vs. 53-54), at the resurrection, if he already has an immortal soul! Do you see the foolish logic of men cut off from God’s marvelous Plan, and from the understanding of plain scriptures in the Bible?
Ask yourself: How can people be resurrected if they are already alive in heaven as immortal souls? Only the dead, like Christ when He was in the tomb, need to be resurrected. That is the purpose of a resurrection. Do not be fooled by those who say, “The resurrection only applies to the body, since the soul remained alive after death”! You have seen this fallacy disproved. Man does not have an immortal soul—he has a spirit empowering his brain to the status of human mind. Without the Spirit of God, men are completely unable to understand the most important knowledge.
David understood that he would “awake” (Psa. 17:15). Stephen understood that at death he “fell asleep.” Job understood that he would be “changed” (Job 14:14). Paul understood that Christians will be “changed”—that they will awaken from “sleep”—at the time of the resurrection (I Cor. 15:51). At this time, all deceased servants of God will literally awaken from death!
God’s character will have already been perfected in those He “quickens” at the resurrection. At this time, they will no longer be able to sin: “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (I John 3:9).
His Reward With Him
At His Return, Christ will bring the individual rewards of all those sons and daughters through whom He and the Father have worked. They will have qualified for great glory: “For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works” (Matt. 16:27). Your works in this life have a direct bearing on your reward in the next life. (Our booklet What Is Your Reward in the Next Life? explains how.)
That reward involves rulership. The initial phase of that rulership will last 1,000 years. Rulers sit on thrones: “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. this is the first resurrection” (Rev. 20:4-5).
But God’s Plan will not end with just those included in the First Resurrection. God intends to give all human beings an opportunity to receive His Spirit, build His character—to be finished and come to completion!
John described the continuation of God’s Plan to the time when all mankind will receive an opportunity for salvation. It is called the “Great White Throne Judgment” and is described this way: “And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:11-15).
But those of God’s Church—the one Church that Christ promised to build (Matt. 16:18)—are being taught and led now in all the truths and ways of God. This “little flock” is now feeding and preparing those who will rule with Christ. Paul wrote the Ephesians describing the responsibility of Christ’s true ministers: “…for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (4:12-13). (This Church is carefully explained and identified in our booklet Where Is God’s Church?)
Reuniting with the Human Spirit
The spirit in man neither changes nor resurrects the person. This comes from God’s Spirit first working in the mind. At the resurrection, the spirit in man will unite with the Holy Spirit. We will be exactly the same, except made of spirit and therefore will no longer have human nature or the pulls of the flesh.
Think of the spirit in man in this way: It is like a cassette tape of everything we have ever learned or done—and it is the very mold of the mind for our coming spirit body, containing the memory, character and experiences of each human being. In a sense, like any cassette, it can be “played back.” Yet, it cannot have or give life, or function by itself, because it must be connected to a physical brain—or a spirit mind at the resurrection.
Like one working with a computer, the spirit in man works with the brain to form the amazing human mind!
Science will never discover this knowledge. No one understands it. But now you do!
What You Have Discovered
In his booklet What Science Can’t Discover About the HUMAN MIND, Herbert W. Armstrong concluded with:
“Notice what happens at death.
“‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’ After death, whether buried in the earth, cremated, or what, the physical body returns to the earth. But the spirit that was in the man, now having recorded everything—the body’s form and shape, the facial identity, the memory and the character—returns to God.
“It will be preserved UNCHANGED.
“Such saints as Abraham, Moses, David and Daniel died thousands of years ago. Stop and think about THAT! God had to provide some way to preserve the form, shape, appearance, mind and character of saints for thousands of years. They were composed of corruptible flesh and blood. All that was them (man is composed wholly of matter) long since decomposed. Yet in the resurrection, it will seem to them as the next fraction of a second since loss of consciousness at death.
“In the interim of death, they knew absolutely nothing. Says God’s Word, ‘For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing’ (Ecc. 9:5).
“The spirit which returns to God is the human spirit that was in them throughout life. It was not an ‘immortal soul,’ for the soul was mortal and corruptible.
“Those who died with God’s Holy Spirit will be in the first resurrection (Rev. 20:4-5). They will come forth immortal, in a glorious body of Spirit composition, their faces aglow as the sun.
“All others who have not been called to eternal salvation by God during their human lifetimes will be resurrected after the thousand-year reign of the Kingdom of God under Christ, in the Great White Throne Judgment (Rev. 20:11-12). They will be resurrected mortal, once again in a flesh and blood physical body, just as before. In this great judgment they will be ‘called’—their eyes opened to God’s truth. Then, finally, there will be a last resurrection (Rev. 20:13-15) of those who had been called by God in their mortal human life, but had rejected or turned from the truth. They, with those who reject it in the Great White Throne Judgment, will be in the lake of fire (II Pet. 3:10-11), which is the second death. They then shall be ashes under the soles of the feet of the immortals in God’s Kingdom (Mal. 4:3), and will be as though they had never been (Obadiah 16).
“Then, ahead of the millions of immortal redeemed, shall lie the tremendous awesome human potential—when God the Creator shall have put the entire universe under our jurisdiction (Heb. 2:7-8).”
Saturday, August 21, 2010
So we think, Muslims are all Terrorist. The American Terrorist is 100 times more dangerous
This is good educational material, and at least to me opens my mind to understanding the fear in these peoples' minds. Why they falsely believe this is the land of the "WHITE", when in all actuality, it was {is} the land of the Brown " Native American" I know it is pretty long, but really worth the time to read........Fred
Nazi's In America
Some Hateful Ideas
And Their Legacy in the Conservative Right
Sometimes it only takes a little time for even the most hateful ideas to catch on. With enough power and money‹especially money--the most heinous ideas can become "acceptable" and appear "respectable" to some. Such are the ideas of white male racial superiority and the implied right to power over all others. This includes the additional implied right to "phase out" of existence others who are held to be inferior. These ideas and their underlying rationale were the basis of Hitler's National Socialism. Though Allied Forces put an end to Hitler and his Third Reich over fifty years ago, ideas of Nazism are still very much alive. They are still wreaking pain, suffering, and death on those whom the Powerful decide are unfit to live.
Historically, National Socialism-termed ŒNazism'(1) --was Hitler's Conservative political creed of racial and cultural "purity." It was also a genocidal program of hatred directed specifically against Jews. Hitler's nazism was based on the twin myths of racial and cultural "purity" of so called Aryans (the Whites) and the "diseased and dirty" race and culture of so called non Aryans (the non-Whites), particularly the Jews. National Socialism became the foundational creed of a genocidal eugenics political program to cleanse" the world of the "dirty" Jews and their "diseased" cultural influence. Hitler envisioned his Third Reich as the beginning of a New World Order that would put Ayran Whites back in their "natural" place of Superiority and Power over all others. It was also intended to rid the world of those whom he claimed had usurped Aryans of their "rightful" Power and Superior Position in the first place. Aryans had to be put back in to their natural place of superiority over others, Hitler held, because a powerful and deceitful Jewish cabal had over many years conspired through devious financial and cultural manipulation, to misplace them.
In Hitler's view, the only real solution to the so-called "Jewish problem" was a Final Solution to rid the world of them, a world that had to be cleansed" of Jews and their influence. At the end of WWII, the world learned of the efficient machinery of death built and operated by Hitler's SS to do just that. Throughout Europe, millions of Jews and entire populations of other diseased and dirty" so-called "non-Aryans" were shipped in train cars to multiple concentration camps and murdered.
A Dramatic Shift to the Conservative Right in America
Since the end of WWII, but especially over the last 35 years or so, the political landscape in the U.S. --as well as other parts of the world--has shifted dramatically to the Conservative Right. That shift has largely one unnoticed by those not old enough or not historically sensitive enough to place the Conservative Right political ideology and agenda in historical perspective. Many do not realize that the inherently racist, homophobic, and bisogynist ideology now passed off by some Conservative Right politicians such as George W. Bush as acceptable and even respectable, was part of the reason the U.S. entered WW II. Millions of American soldiers died fighting against that hateful ideology that many on the Conservative Right in varying degrees-- are now trumpeting as a kind of "final solution" to socioeconomic and other problems they claim have been created by the U.S. Government and by the "Liberals" of the 1960's.
Certainly, American G.I.s returning from the ravages left by Hitler's third Reich at the end of WWII probably could not have conceived the possibility =hat the United States might one day have its own Nazi Party. But in the 1950's, while the world was still coming to terms with the Holocaust and fighting bold War Communism, George Lincoln Rockwell, born March 9, 1918 in Bloomington, Illinois, was engendering the idea of the American Nazi Party (ANP).
From the late 1950's until his death in 1967, Rockwell became the deminal force of post-World War II National Socialism (Nazism) in America and the originator of the "Holocaust Denial" movement. That movement, institutionalized in various neo-Nazi organizations such as the so-called "Committee on the Open Debate on the Holocaust" (CODOH) is so rampant today across the United States that many college-age and younger unquestioningly accept its fundamental =hesis, that the Holocaust is a Jewish lie.
William H. Schmaltz's Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party is an excellent, well-researched book on Rockwell's American Nazi Party (ANP) and its legacy to Conservatives in the United States. He has documented the historic development of this Conservative Right organization and its leader, who would otherwise be (and was, by some) dismissed as a "half-penny" Hitler. Through numerous interviews with many of the original ANP Stormtroopers" of Rockwell's Party, and much research from the FBI and other original sources, Schmaltz traced the persistence of Rockwell and his supporters to establish the ANP over many financial, political, and legal obstacles, from 1958 through 1967.
Most importantly, Schmaltz provides us with an invaluable overview of =he American Nazi Party's evolution to its present forms, the Christian identity movement, Aryan Nations, and the Order. Certain of Rockwell's original Stormtroopers, such as William Peirce, head of the neo-Nazi National alliance, have carried forward the Nazi creed and agenda of Rockwell's ANP. The last part of the book, the Epilogue, provides a very useful summary of that evolution and development, as well as an outline of the similarities and differences between the Conservatives of Rockwell's time and present-day Conservatives of the 1980's and 1990's.
Following a largely historical approach to Rockwell's formation of the American Nazi Party, Schmaltz provides a much needed insight into how it =as possible for Rockwell to be as successful as he was among a very politically Conservative population during the 1950's and early 1960's in the U.S. All other things being equal, one might expect such a population, still recovering from the scars of WWII and the battles against Hitler, to entirely reject then, and still do not reject it today in the year 2010. Indeed, under various guises paraded today before the Public by factions of the Conservative Right, too many are welcoming the basic ideas of Nazism with open arms.
Schmaltz's main contribution is his focus upon Rockwell's belief that Conservatives are really National Socialists. Though we would today reject Rockwell's claim about all Conservatives, we should take a serious look as for whether or not his claim is true about factions of the Conservative right. Rightly or wrongly, In a national presidential election year where one of the front runners is a very popular candidate of the Conservative Right, we will focus upon that theme as well in this Commentary and Review. We want to examine the extent to which Rockwell's belief may be true.
Conservatives as National Socialists (Nazis)
Rockwell's legacy to the world especially to the Conservative right in America--has been far-reaching. He believed that millions of people in the U.S. who considered themselves Conservatives, were either conscious National Socialists or were "only a synapse away from discovering that they were National Socialists and never knew it because they have never been allowed to know what National Socialism is". He believed that National Socialism is the very essence of what Conservatives really want, but are afraid to openly say so. In the upside-down, Looking Glass language of the Conservative Right, it simply wouldn't be "Politically Correct" to admit that one is a Nazi.
Rockwell adhered to two basic beliefs in his desire to see the triumph of Nazism throughout the U.S. and eventually throughout the world. One belief, as noted, was that every Conservative is at heart a National Socialist, a Nazi. He believed that if given sufficient understanding of what that doctrine is, every Conservative would recognize his or her own basic beliefs in that doctrine. However, he also believed that Nazism had been given such "bad press" by powerful Jewish leaders in Hollywood--with their anti-Nazi WWII films--that most Conservatives would not openly acknowledge that that is what they really are.
The second major belief Rockwell held was that merging Nazism with Christianity would not only ensure Nazism's survival, but its ultimate triumph in the United States. Thus, Rockwell set out a plan which he followed in =he last several years of his life, turning National Socialism into a =redefined version of the Christian religion, Christian Identity. It is important to stress that Rockwell and the followers of Christian Identity have redefined and rewritten fundamental doctrines of traditional Judeo-Christianity in order to achieve a following for Nazism. Their redefined doctrines bear little resemblance to those of traditional Christianity. One of the foundational beliefs of Christian Identity is that Jews are the "seeds of Satan," and conspired to eradicate "God's chosen people," the Aryans. Christian identity holds that one of the historically recent means Jews did this has been by perpetrating the lie of the Holocaust. Thus, in addition to merging Nazism with the contemporary Christian Identity movement in the U.S., Rockwell also originated the "Holocaust Denial" movement as well.
Some of the same religious and political arguments Rockwell used to advance the causes of National Socialism in the 1950's and 1960's until his death =n 1967, can be found articulated in various statements by spokesmen for Conservative Right groups in the United States today. These spokesmen range from the Reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to Pat Buchanan, to Ronald Reagan at Bitburg's SS Cemetery, and to the overtly neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator Reverend Matt Hale. The Conservative Right religious spokesmen along with politicians upon whom they have great influence--have repeatedly and consistently advanced social, political, and legal policies against non-white minorities, women, homosexuals, and the poor, that are consistent with Hitler's and Rockwell's Nazism. Hitler's National Socialism and Rockwell's American Nazi Party (ANP) both left a strong legacy of hate to the Conservative Right in the U.S. today..
What is a Nazi?
But the Reader may rightfully ask, "Just what is it about the =onservative Right that might make it Nazi?" Clearly, on the surface that seems to be a very strong claim for anyone to make. To answer the Reader's question, one must distill the essence of Nazism--from Hitler to Rockwell to David Duke and the Reverend Matt Hale. Once one gets clear on what that essence is, all one has to do is look for it anywhere one may find it.
The essence of Nazism comprises two fundamental beliefs: that some people are genetically and morally inferior forms of life; and that genetically and morally superior forms of life, to survive, must purify" their race by eliminating genetically and morally inferior groups. In essence, Nazism is not just racism; it is also genocide. Genocide, however, can take many forms. Under Hitler, the systematic efforts to exterminate entire so-called "inferior" peoples consisted of murder, both in the camps and out of them, starvation, and forced sterilizations, among other means. Additionally, there were systematic efforts put in place to simply "phase out" of existence more members of those so-called inferior groups by withholding food, shelter, and medication from them. "Inferior" people, including children, were often left simply to starve to death. "Under Nazi rule, 750,000 people across Europe, including 5000 children, were murdered [just] for being mentally or physically handicapped. Children were killed by injection, medical experimentation or simply starved. The Nazis called them "unworthy lives.
Moreover, these groups of so-called "unworthy lives" provided a plentiful supply of research specimens for Nazi physicians and scientists. These victims often died as a result of cruel and inhumane experiments performed upon them. More specifically, concentration camps provided the ultimate Final =olution devised to efficiently exterminate as many Jews, Gypsies, handicapped, homosexuals, and mentally deficient as possible.
Use of the 'Disease' Metaphor
To promote his genocidal agenda, the "Disease Metaphor" was deliberately used by Hitler and his Nazi Third Reich theorists to promote the perception of a necessity to "cleanse" the body of Germany by ridding it of "putrid morally degenerate human filth" that had invaded it. So-called inferior peoples such as Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, and the poor, were seen as mongrels, racial and moral degenerates, an "insidious disease" infecting the body of society in the same way that cancer if left unchecked spreads throughout the human body:
"There is a close analogy between a human body invaded by a cancer and a nation afflicted with sub-populations whose inborn defects cause them to become social liabilities. . .When these inferior elements are not effectively eliminated from a (healthy) population, then. . .they destroy the host body as well as themselves.
Under Hitler, the new [pseudo-] science of eugenics was used to systematically set up programs of research and development to exterminate =nd "phase out" of existence so-called genetically and morally"inferior" persons, particularly Jews. He saw Jews as unnatural, diseased, and corrupting in their influence on others. And just as some diseases are spread by infections, when healthy organisms are invaded by the disease, Hitler held that Jews were parasites that had "infected" the "healthy" organism of Germany--with its naturally healthy and superior form of Ayran life. That diseased influence =f the Jews, Hitler held, was destroying the German people. Thus, under Hitler, eugenics laws were first passed in Germany in 1933, quickly followed by similar laws throughout Western Europe and the United States.
Throughout the 1930's until the end of WWII, eugenics was popular in both Germany and the United States. It became synonymous with the scientific promotion of "race hygiene" to "purify" the white race of "low grade" and degenerate groups, the genetically inferior.. "Not surprisingly, the victims usually turned out to be the traditional victims of racism - Jews, Blacks, women, and the poor. Among such laws in the U.S., forced sterilization programs were designed to limit pregnancies among those persons held to be "feeble-minded" or having heritable diseases. The state of Virginia, for example, had a forced sterilization program that sought to sterilize all persons with hereditary defects, not just those who had been institutionalized, until the state was challenged before the Supreme Court by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Of course, most of those who were sterilized under Virginia law turned out to =e Black females.
Hitler's concept of the Third Reich was of a Pure Nation "cleansed" of impurities and diseased degenerates. The Third Reich was to be based on the hegemony of the German People whose pure blood would determine its culture and its community. He and his SS set up Lebensborn to ensure future generations of pure blooded Aryans who would build the Kultur of Germany. his concept of the German nation was not based on a concept of a common Constitution, with the free and open association of a richly diverse mosaic of citizens. It was to be a pure White Man's Nation whose values and culture were to be determined by purity of blood.
When the ravages of Hitler's eugenics extermination program became known at the end of WWII, there arose in the 1950's a concerted effort by many of its followers to divorce eugenics from racism.When it became known that hundreds of concentration camps were scattered across Europe, specifically designed to "cleanse" Germany and the world of "inferior" groups of people, the world reacted with revulsion. The science of eugenics --and the biological determinist ("Natural Law") beliefs upon which it is based--became unpopular.
However, the effort to divorce eugenics from racism primarily drove the explicitly racist motives of eugenics advocates underground, where they largely remain today. Knowledge of what Hitler and his SS had done, based in part in the so-called scientific principles of eugenics, however, did not end eugenics advocacy and belief in biological determinism among racists in the United States.
The Conservative Right Ideology Today: From Natural to Unnatural election Brought About by Civil Rights and 1960's Liberals.
Facets of the Conservative Right in the U.S. today hold that until the advent of Civil Rights laws in the 1960's, the rigors of Nature herself had largely ensured upward evolution of the species by natural selection of the strongest and (by implication) the best. Until the Civil Rights era, so-called "Natural Laws" determined who was best, brightest, and most deserving of life and the rewards of power. Those who were not the "best" simply died off from starvation, the diseases of poverty, or other forces of Nature. And, according to =hese Conservatives, until the 1960's--before anti-discrimination and affirmative action laws-- social policies and laws reflected the "natural" superiority of whites in positions of power. Until the 1960's, White Men were in virtually all significant positions of power in the United States. White Men held all the significant and high-paying jobs; White Men were the lawmakers, the decision-makers. It was White Men who commanded the U.S. Government and white Men who commanded the U.S. military.
But in the 1960s, these Conservative Right factions claim, with the passage of Federal Civil Rights legislation by a liberal Federal Government, along with modern science and (secular) humanism, a reverse, downward selection has been started among the human races.
That is, these factions of the Conservative Right claim, 1960's iberal political forces in the U. S. Government passed civil rights laws against discrimination based on race and ethnic origin that have started a downward evolution in the human species. Liberals and the U.S. Government have started an increased breeding of the weakest, most unnatural and morally degenerate human beings, non-whites, homosexuals and women. With affirmative action, these spokesmen claim, morally, culturally, and genetically inferior and degenerate persons are increasingly occupying positions of power throughout the U.S. this is unnatural selection, they claim, which is "contrary to God's Law," and contrary to "Natural Law." If humanity as a whole is left a victim to innatural ideas of human equality and racial integration, advocated by 1960's liberals, it will breed itself back down to the barbarian.
Of course, this ideology is at core Social Darwinism or biological determinism, the basis of eugenics. It is an expression of so-called "Natural Law" theory, of "White Male Might Makes Right," the core of National socialism as both Hitler and as Rockwell saw it, and is held in one form or another by virtually all factions identified as falling under the Conservative Right today in the U.S.some Far Right Conservatives not only accept this ideology, but want to expand Hitler's genocidal doctrine beyond any primary focus on Jews to include non-white women, the poor, homosexuals, and what some refer to as "mud people." "Mud people" include African Americans, Hispanics, and anyone else who isn't white.
Academic Racists and the American Nazi Party in the U.S.
As this article is being written, there is a very powerful anti-government, anti-Liberal, Conservative Right movement spreading in universities and colleges across the United States. This Conservative Right movement includes a very strong racist ideology of biological determinism, also known as "Social Darwinism" and "Natural Law" Theory. This is nothing less than a resurgence of eugenics-advocacy, propelled by factions of the Conservative Right, that intend a full-scale roll back of any Federal legislation designed to protect non-white minorities and women. These factions of the Conservative Right movement are allied with anti-Semitic, Christian Fundamentalist-Christian reconstruction and Christian Identity groups as well as neo-Nazi organizations.
These Conservative Right neo-Nazis and their followers have successfully garnered positions for themselves in public and private organizations and agencies. In some cases, they evidently do not allow State, Federal, and local laws to stand in the way of their racist, misogynist, and anti-government goals.The influence of members of these groups is so far reaching that they have been able within a relatively short period of time to influence the political makeup of various local, State and Federal agencies. They have also been able to effectively undo both Federal and State legislation against discrimination and to roll back laws protecting non-white minorities and women.
Increasingly, public policies, regulations of public and state supported institutions--especially public education--as well as some civil and criminal laws, are being radically changed by the Conservative Right so as to accommodate their "Natural Law," racist, religious, and misogynist views, as well as their anti-U.S. Government, anti-science, and anti-public institution views. It is out of this racist, homophobic, misogynist, and quasi-religious "Natural Law" theorizing that laws permitting discrimination against non-whites, homosexuality, and recent theories about the "naturalness" of rape and =assault against females, have arisen.
Increasingly as well, such Conservative Right groups call for nations to identify themselves in biological terms. It is this call, among other things, that the Conservative Right has in common with neo-Nazi groups. For example, one finds the following on the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator website http://www.creator.org]:
We have come to hold these [race] views by observing the Eternal laws of Nature, by studying History, and by using the Logic and Common Sense everyone is born with: the highest Law of Nature is the survival of one's own kind; history has shown us that the White Race is responsible for all that which we call progress on this earth; and that it is therefore logical and sensical to =lace supreme importance upon Race and to reject all ideas which fail to do so.
It is biological determinism that says immigration should be discouraged and genetically "superior stocks" should be encouraged to have large families. It is this view that holds that Federal Civil Rights laws, like anti-discrimination and affirmative action laws, effect "reverse evolution," giving inferior people unfair, parasitic advantages over "superior" white people. It is biological determinism that says that the Poor [mostly women, non-white minorities, and children] are poor largely because they are unintelligent, genetically unfit, and morally unworthy.. It is also biological determinism that says that =he policy of the United States toward developing countries with starving populations should be "Let them starve to death. It is Nature's way of =idding the world of dysgenic [genetically unfit] populations.
"Natural Law" theory, the legalistic expression of biological determinism, is a brutal denial of human possibilities. It effectively says that there are no possibilities beyond what biology gives to us. In the 1930's, the famed German universities and their intellectuals first capitulated to the Third Reich, providing a mantle of intellectual "respectability" to anti-Semitism, helping to usher in the Holocaust. Likewise, today these "Natural Law," eugenics =rguments have been advanced by academic racists and anti-Semites in some of the largest universities in the U.S. who are well known for their Conservative Right publications.
Although academic racism is nothing new, it has become so powerful in the U.S. over the last 35 years or so--particularly at major universities in southern states such as Texas---that forces supporting it are effectively rewriting laws of the land to reflect their views. In the name of "States' Rights" and "individual rights --historically the clarion cry of racists--they are effectively rolling back Federal Civil Rights legislation protecting nonwhite minorities and women in order to accommodate their racist, =iological determinist view of human kind.
And where they are unable to obtain legislation reflecting their racist views, they find ways of illegally putting those views into practice in any case. Groups of Conservative Right individuals formed at some State institutions of higher education, for example, contrive to drive minority and women faculty and students out of those institutions by illegal means. This is what some advocates of Social Darwinism, biological determinism, are doing at the University of Texas, under the cover of institutional authority.
Some outspoken proponents of the "Natural Law" view can be found in Texas. The Conservative Right has such a strangle hold on the State of Texas that it has become George W. Bush's and the Conservative Right's blueprint for the United States, should George W. become elected President of the U.S. these proponents can be found in prestigious positions as department heads, faculty, and administrators at the University of Texas. If the edicts of these Texas Conservative Right spokesmen are any measure --as reflected in recent anti-immigrant and anti-affirmative action sentiment found among =onservative Right tenured faculty especially at the University of Texas at Austin, =he United States is overdue for a national "cleansing."
These Conservative Right academic racists now claim that virtually all non-white peoples and cultures are morally corrupt and "diseased." non-white peoples and cultures, the Texas Conservative Right spokesmen claim, are not worthy of equal rights, protections, and opportunities under any State or Federal law in the United States. These Conservative Right academic racists want not only to completely abolish or roll back all Civil Rights legislation largely passed in the 1960's, they also want to roll back all social service supports that in any way help non-white minorities to remain alive. These conservative Right spokesmen want to effectively "phase out" of existence non-white peoples and cultures they hold are unworthy to live. They hold that too many non-white peoples and cultures are like "parasites" on the healthy body of the United States.
The Basic Principle of Hate
The basic principle of hate underlying Nazism is simple. Non-white minorities, the poor, homosexuals, and females are lower than the heterosexual White Man on the evolutionary chain of life. Invoking religious sanction, =hey claim that God has ordained that the heterosexual White Man, the highest, most morally perfect, and racially purest level of life on earth, should be vested with the most Power and Wealth. It is his sacred moral right to take and use everything else as he pleases. Whatever he does‹no matter what it is by its very nature in the service of God's Will. This is so because the heterosexual White Male is by his very nature God's Chosen. No matter what he does, it will be Good because it is God's Will. This is the "Natural Order" of all things; whatever does not fit this "Natural Order" is "Unnatural" and must we either banished, beaten, locked up, or destroyed. This basic principle, wrapped in religious garb, is nothing short of Social Darwinism and is an expression of Nazism as Hitler and Rockwell expressed it.
Social Consequences of the Principle of Hate
Of course, there are brutal logical corollaries to this already brutal pseudo-religious principle of "White Might Makes Right." One doesn't have to look very far to find them, especially when social policies and laws are based upon a brutal and brutalizing vision of the "Nature of Things." One has only to look back at Hitler's Third Reich in the 1930's and 1940's.
But one can also look at the goals of the Conservative Right Big Money interests in the year 2000. Conservative Right Big Money interests have a two-pronged brutal "final solution" to the problems of poverty, increasing illegitimate births, rising numbers of non-white immigrants, and the =ncessant cry for equality from women, Hispanics, and Blacks. That "solution" shy;under the rubric of various legislative "reforms"--is a coordinated assault on all federal and state civil rights laws and all public social service supports that in any way help the poor to remain alive, or help minorities gain equal rights and protections under the law. That assault also includes a heavy-fisted reassertion of patriarchal structures--clothed in Conservative Religious "Bible speak"--intended to shut women up and keep them in "their place."
The Conservative Right wants to reinstate traditional rigid divisions between public and private realms. In doing so, they will shift all social programs such as Welfare and Child Protective Services and public education to the private (religious) realm, ultimately with no public tax support. The poor will be left where they have almost always been left: with their poverty and hunger, their Church, and their children--and out of sight of the rich and well-to-do classes. They will also be left with a wrecked justice system that does not hear the poor and does not recognize civil and human rights. A revised "Kinder, Kirke, duche" is the sum total program for poor women devised by the Conservative right.
Threads of the "White Might Makes Right" ideology of the Nazi, sound in abundance in the Conservative Right in the United States, are starkly simple. When non-white minorities and their children go hungry and starve or die prematurely from diseases of poverty, well‹that's just the way it is. They should die because they are deficient as human beings, the ideology rants. the poor are deficient by Nature because most of them are not white and do not--cannot--have the superior values of white culture. Of those who are white, they are the progeny of mixed races and hence are mongrels. These lower forms of life deserve to die because they are racially and (hence) morally impure. is such, they are not worthy of God's rewards on this earth. Furthermore, we must not thwart God's Will by helping the poor to remain alive. Welfare programs must be either drastically cut back or, preferably, ended altogether. Either the poor, women and children survive on their own‹or they die.
To find more of the brutal corollaries to the Principle of Hate, one must look at what the Conservative Right does‹and listen a whole lot less to what they say. Ideas of White Male racial and moral superiority, with an implied right to use and diminish or "phase out" other groups or the programs upon which they depend to remain alive--are found throughout the political agenda of the Conservative Right.
As is evident, these ideas generally rest on spurious fundamentalist religious foundations. One does not have to look far to find such ideas in the ideological rants of politicians from George W. Bush to Pat Buchanan to Richard Butler, the leader of the Aryan Nations, and to Pontifex Maximus Reverend Watt Hale of the World Church of the Creator. They are also found in the defeacto racist, homophobic, and misogynist policies of State governments‹such as the State of Texas; and in policies of state colleges and =niversities‹such as the University of Texas. They are also found in decisions made in boardrooms of large corporations, such as Texaco; and those Big Money corporations that own and operate certain states such as the State of Texas.
By Any Other Name. . . Threads of the American Nazi Party in the Conservative Right
Hiding behind nice-sounding labels and linguistic equivocations, some of these ugly Nazi ideas‹with a few twists-- are rearing their heads wet again in the Conservative Right across the United States. To help these hateful ideas catch hold, the Conservative Right uses virtuous labels in political "bait and switch" tactics. In one hand, they offer the Public an idea labeled Good and Kind. When the Public reaches for that idea, it turns out sometimes =oo late for the Public to reject--to be something Ugly, Brutal, and cruel.
One such label is "Compassionate Conservatism." In one hand, the Public at large is handed an idea of racial and ethnic "inclusiveness" and help for "those who really need it." It is an idea that even gets championed by token African American and Hispanic marionettes who dance to the tune of Conservative Right Big Money.
In reality, "Compassionate Conservatism" is George W. and Big Money's Conservative Right ideological program of brutal and cruel war against the poor, children, women, and non-white minorities. It is not so well hidden under various rhetorical and linguistic masks intended to cover the harsh brutality of its effects on its targets. In reality, it is a program of hateful brutality intended to diminish the lives or "phase out" of existence whose most in need. It is a program intended to eliminate federal or state help to the poor and others most in need of food, health care, decent housing, clean air and water, and civil and criminal due process.. It is a program of brutality against the most defenseless in our society.
"Compassionate Conservatism," its progenitors say, is "Tough Love." But what these well-fed, well-kept and pseudo-intellectuals from Texas are calling "Tough Love" has left a large percentage of the poorest children in Texas hungry. Most of those children, of course, are African American and Hispanic. What they call "love" has left far too many Texas children with little or no medical care while also living =n severely impoverished conditions. What these ideologues call "love" leaves children not only without enough to eat, without sufficient healthcare, it also leaves them without even minimal protections for their welfare and safety under the law, and without adequate education. What these well-fed and well-kept theorists call "love" builds more prisons than schools every year to house juveniles, alongside those whose miserable lives have led either by design or by accident to the ravages of crime. What these sophisticates call "love" as a program of vicious cruelty that arrogantly engages in the official machinery of death. It engages that official machinery even for those not old enough to vote when they commit crimes for which they are imprisoned. It is a program that denies even the semblance of justice to the most poor, mentally deficient and diseased. Moreover, what these "compassionate conservatives" call "love" is a program that has the effect of forcing pregnancy on economically =isadvantaged pre-teen girls while it denies them sufficient legal and medical means to protect or care for themselves.
Though it may take us on a detour from Schmaltz's book, given its focus upon the Conservative factions in the U.S. and their relation to Nazism, the State of Texas warrants serious mention here. The State of Texas under the governorship of George W. Bush is effectively nothing less than a Blue Print for the nation, should George W. become President of the United States.. Thus, certain facts about Texas under the governorship of a Conservative Right Presidential contender bear repeating:
Some facts about Texas, the Conservative Right Blueprint for the U.S.
1. Texas executes more prisoners than any other jurisdiction in the Western World. Most of those executed are too poor to hire their own attorneys, or they are mentally retarded or mentally ill. In some cases, Texas has executed young prisoners who were 17 when they committed the crime that led to their imprisonment. In response to the Columbine shootings, one Texas legislator wanted to lower the death penalty in Texas to age 11. It was probably the image of a small child being strapped to a prison gurney as the state pumped poison into a little arm that led other legislators to stop that effort. But George W. publicly supports assembly =ine executions now taking place in Texas.
2. Amnesty International issued a report this year [1999] citing Texas' clemency process for "violat[ing] minimum safeguards for human rights.. Along with countries like China, Iraq and Iran, Texas ranks low in terms of according prisoners minimal human rights.
3. Texas ranks exactly 51st out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the quality of criminal defense provided for accused defendants too poor to hire their own attorneys. "In recent years the Texas Court of Criminal appeals has upheld death sentences in at least three cases in which the defense lawyers slept during trial, Yet George W. vetoed a bill that would have modestly improved the disgraceful quality of legal representation available to =oor defendants in Texas.
4. Both the civil and criminal parts of the Texas system of justice are an acknowledged public mockery of American justice. Texas justice is a system in which large corporations can be legally "forgiven" for causing the death of workers, while 9-year old little girls are essentially held responsible for their own gang-rapes.
5. Texas ranks 48th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of conditions best for bringing up children.Texas is 3 states away from being the absolute worst state in the United States for bringing up children. In spite of billions of dollars of a huge budget surplus, Texas can't seem to find the spare change to provide decent conditions for children to thrive. Of course, internationally, the entire United States doesn't rank very high in terms of its treatment of children. But Texas ranks near the bottom of the barrel of the bottom of the barrel on recognized measures of child welfare: rates of child abuse and neglect; immunizations under age 2; high school dropouts; child poverty; child deaths; infant mortality; mothers not receiving prenatal care in the first three months of pregnancy; juvenile arrests; teen births and divorce. Texas ranks at or near the bottom of the barrel in virtually every one of these categories.
6. In one year alone, 1998, the number of children who died of abuse and neglect in Texas increased by 71 percent. Deaths of children in Texas from abuse and neglect have increased every single year [until the year he openly ran for President of the U.S.] since George W. became governor. Apparently, the only time the State of Texas does anything about deplorable conditions is when those conditions publicly =mbarrass the Texas governor while running for President.
7. Texas is 2nd in the United States in the number of medically uninsured children (1.5 million uninsured). Yet George W. established eligibility to the federal/state Children's Health Insurance Program at 150% of the federal poverty level, dropping or leaving more poor children in Texas out of the insurance program.
8. Texas leads the nation in lost Medicaid coverage for children due to George W.'s welfare initiatives, which he calls a "model for the nation."
9. Texas has the largest volume of air pollution in the United States. Yet George W. supported a voluntary emissions program for grandfathered industrial plants that have been exempt from pollution control since the Texas Clean Air Act was passed in 1971. Those exempted industrial plants in Texas are among the worst industrial polluters in the entire United States.
10. Texas ranks 50th in per capita spending. It had a 241.7 billion surplus in 1997 and had a $6.7 billion surplus in 1999 under George W. Yet George W. did not use these surplus billions to fund underfunded programs, such as those to prevent the 71% increase in deaths of children from abuse and neglect. They were used primarily to benefit Big Money.
11. After the Littleton, Colorado massacre of high school students, the only gun-related bill passed by the Texas Legislature was a bill protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits filed by cities. George W. signed that bill into law.
12. Texas ranks among the top states in the nation in the rate of violence against women committed with guns. Women face greater danger in states like Texas which have fewer gun controls than in those states that have gun control legislation in place. Yet George W. refuses to sign gun control legislation, saying =hat no law can change people's hearts.
13. Texas ranks eighth from the bottom among the fifty states in the number of jobless citizens who get unemployment benefits. Only 22 percent of jobless Texans receive unemployment benefits, compared to a national average of 35 percent.
14. Texas ranks sixth from the bottom among states in the number of residents who earn family incomes below the federal poverty level.
15. Texas ranks 47th in the percentage of workers in unions.
16. Texas ranks 47th in the amount of welfare for a family of three, barely at subsistence level.
17. Texas ranks 47th in per-capita state funding for public health, while approximately 25% of its babies go without immunizations.
18. And Texas ranks 50th in poor working parents without health insurance and 50th (as noted above) in the percentage of children with no health insurance.
19. Finally, Texas ranks 48th in spending for parks and recreation.
In every single major category of quality of life and protections for the health and well-being of families, especially children and the =oor, Texas consistently ranks at or near the bottom of the barrel.
All along, this program of "Compassionate Conservatism" rewards those who already have big Money and Power with more of the same. It rewards Conservative Right Big Money interests who have Big Plans for those who have little or no resources of their own. In Texas, it especially rewards those who despoil the land around us, who poison the air we breathe and the water we drink.
Though Œcompassion' is a word that calls forth visions of care, concern, and charity, George W.'s "Compassionate Conservatism" is in reality a program of brutality, viciousness, and cruelty. It is based on the myth that the poor =nd non-white minorities as morally undeserving and degenerate, and on the genocidal, racist motive to diminish their existence or "phase" them cut of existence entirely by ending any public Federal or State support for =hem.
National Socialism and Christianity: The Religious Basis of Nazism
As stated, Rockwell's legacy to the Conservative Right in America included verging Nazism with forms of Christianity. Rockwell's plan was to make Nazism respectable and acceptable on a massive scale to the American people by turning it into a religion. Like politicians today, especially George W. Bush--with his appeal to "faith-based" programs to take over social services for the poor--Rockwell wanted to "manipulate America's intrinsic religious fury' [in order] to seize political power". Rockwell's plan was to eliminate all references to Nazism' while retaining the creed and agenda of Nazism--and to restructure the entire National Socialist movement into a form of Christianity
The Christian Identity Movement: Jews as the "Seed" of Satan
As Schmaltz recounts , Rockwell met in 1964 with Wesley Swift, the leader of the Christian Identity Church in the United States. Swift had popularized Christian identity theology--also known as Identity, Kingdom Identity, and Christian Israel-- during the 1940's and 1950's, teaching that God's law on earth had to be established through an apocalyptic battle between the forces of good and evil. Identity believers hold that only white Christian men are "true sovereign citizens. Only white men form the real, legitimate Government of the United States. All others are not legitimate citizens. Blacks and other people of color are the 'beasts of the field' or 'mud people' on the same spiritual level as soulless animals. They are not true citizens. .Identity portrays Jews as =he "spawn of Satan," the descendants of Eve and the serpent. They are also the "killers of Christ," who was not a Jew but an Aryan.
Rockwell's concern was to devise a plan to mold the American Nazi party into a religion to give Biblical authority to the racist genocidal policies of the American Nazi Party. Like other politicians, Rockwell knew how to sress up ugly, hateful ideas to make them look and sound like something they aren't. Like the Conservative Right today, he knew how to play political "bait and switch" games. To make his political agenda more palatable to the American Public, we undertook a "denazification" program to eliminate all references to the word "Nazi," while still retaining the original Nazi creed and agenda. He knew that "Nazism" was an objectionable term for most people, even those who may otherwise be attracted to the ideology behind it. He was killed, however, before entirely fulfilling his plans to turn National Socialism into the religious movement he envisioned. But his followers are attempting to carry out his vision. The meeting between Christian Identity leader Swift and Rockwell led to Rockwell appointing one of his Stormtroopers as the American Nazi Party's own Christian Identity minister.
Christian Identity is only one of an entire network of Conservative =ight groups who believe that whites are racially superior to everyone else.. many right-wing groups such as the Aryan Nations, Ku Klux Klan, and National Alliance, have been either directly or indirectly involved in terrorist and criminal activity, and some of their leaders are direct descendents of Rockwell's American Nazi Party.
The ideology of the Aryan Nations and the Order, as well as groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, and the National Alliance, flows from the same racist, anti-Semitic religious beliefs of "Christian Identity." Aryans who =cooperate with anti-government sentiments, holding that the Federal Government is an instrument of Satan, a creation of the Jews. In an attempt to live apart from "inferior people," some right-wing groups advocate creating a separate nation from the five states comprising the northwest region of the United =tates--Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.
Many of these groups have been involved in criminal, terrorist activities. In April 1997, three members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were arrested and found guilty in Texas for planning to blow up a natural gas storage facility as a diversionary tactic prior to robbing an armored carrier. Earlier, the FBI's "Rapid Lightning" investigation involved a series of criminal acts committed by individuals associated with a domestic terrorist organization known as the Phineas Priesthood. The subjects of the investigation were responsible for at least two bombing/bank robbery incidents in Spokane, Washington, in April and July 1996. Three subjects were arrested in October 1996, and a fourth in 1997. Since then, all four have been convicted of all eight felony counts for which they were charged and have received lengthy jail sentences.
Fifty Five Years After Hitler: The New World Order of the Conservative Right
Upon Rockwell's death, the American Nazi Party metamorphosed in the late 1960's and early 1970's into the National Socialist White People's party (NSWPP). It later became what is now known‹in 1999--as The Order. the Order, headed by one of Rockwell's foremost Stormtroopers, Matt Koehl, has been involved in numerous criminal violent acts of terrorism across the U.S. the following description can be found online at http://www.nswpp.org/.
The National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP)/ The Order
Matt Koehl
The Official Program of the NSWPP [NSWPP, Koehl, 1980] calls for an Aryan Republic. It calls for citizenship on the basis of Aryan blood, a racial community, a new educational system that instills racial values, a better =ace, and a rebirth of traditional Aryan spiritual values. NSWPP supports augenic measures and demands an end to racially impure blood within the gene pool of the racial community.
The loss of a biological community is a major concern for neo-Nazis and the Klan, according to Dobratz and Shanks-Meil .The New Order organization White Power, No. 104, states that white people have lost contact with their own biological community and thus feel themselves alienated and alone. As the cure for the problems associated with individual freedom, whites need to live their lives in harmony with the laws of nature and reject everything that is decadent and corrupt. Stoner, of the National States Rights Party, "accused the government of 'race-mixing' to remold minds like molding clay." The "race-mixing" not only creates alienation, but "destroys law and =rder and education" which will lead to the inevitable death of America.
Also according to Dobratz and Shanks-Meile [op.cit], a stable =family unit, a healthy environment, and a healthy farming community which provides social, racial, and environmental stability are major ingredients of the community for both the neo-Nazis and the Klansmen. Members "should have the freedom to associate in their own communities" without interference from other "cultures, nations and races of man In the "enlightened community...anything which interferes with the smooth and harmonious functioning of society must be ruthlessly suppressed"
The "Disease Metaphor" used so effectively by Hitler is evident in the following statement by Koehl.
"It is the goal of the New Order to attack the spiritual syphilis which is eating away at the soul of our Race in a bold and uncompromising manner, and to destroy the infection by massive doses of the proper antidote - the pure, undiluted medicine of the National Socialist world view as conceived by Adolf Hitler. . .There should be an America "without swarming Black filth in our streets and schools...and free of alien, Jewish influence".
To develop an Aryan culture, the New Order states that one must "flush down the drain the poisonous Jewish and Negroid degeneracy which today is passing for 'art' and 'music' and 'literature.'" There also needs to be white self-defense so people can live without fear and a white world solidarity based on alliance with racial kinsmen in Australia, Europe, and South Africa.
The National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP)
Harold Covington
Harold Covington currently heads the National Socialist White Peoples Party. Harold Armstead Covington, a.k.a. Winston Smith, was born September 14, 1953, in Burlington, N. C. He appeared on the far-right scene in the late 1970s, when he made the acquaintance of Frank Collin of the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA). Collin himself had been ousted from the Arlington, Va.-based National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) of the late George Lincoln Rockwell.
Covington at that time claimed to have been an acquaintance of Rockwell (though this information has never been confirmed by a third-party source for even denied by Covington's worst enemies) and claimed to be a representative of a North Carolina branch of the NSWPP. Together, Collin and Covington planned a re-staging of Rockwell's famous march through the largely Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill. However, once it came to be known that Collin was actually Jewish (born Frank Cohn), Collin withdrew his plan to march in Skokie, though he maintained that he was being "smeared" by political enemies.
He traveled instead to North Carolina, where his rabble-rousing with Covington and assorted elements of the far right including White Patriot party leader Glenn Miller. This led to a shoot-out in Greensboro, N.C., in Fall of 1978, leaving five Communist Party USA activists dead and Collin, Miller and Covington all under Federal investigation. The investigations into the Greensboro shootings continued through the early 1980s. In 1980, Covington replaced Collin as head of the NSPA.
Despite a continued show of force on his part, and even a relatively successful run for State Attorney General of North Carolina as a Republican in 1980 (he took 43% of the vote), Covington left the U.S. soon after and traveled to Ireland, South Africa and the United Kingdom. He then settled in United Kingdom for several years. Some elements of the far right claim that Covington had turned FBI informant in the Greensboro case (and there is some third-party evidence to suggest that this is true), thus evoking the wrath of former allies and fellow travelers.
The most prominent of Covington's new-found enemies was Ben Klassen, founder of the World Church of the Creator (COTC), who, with William Pierce of the National Alliance and Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance, tried to expose Covington as an informant and, like Collin, a Jew. The World Church of the Creator is now headed by the Reverend Matt Helm, who declares himself contifex Maximus (High Priest).
Before settling in the United Kingdom, Covington claims to have served as a mercenary for white separatists in the apartheid nations of Southern Africa. This claim has been widely disputed. Enemies that Covington made in the United Kingdom have also linked him to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and it is believed that Covington holds dual Irish and U.S. citizenship as a result of a marriage to an Irish woman. During his sojourn in the United Kingdom, Covington made several contacts within the fascist-leaning British National Party and openly fascist National Front. These contacts culminated in Covington's hole in forming Combat 18 . The "18" in the name refers to the letters of the alphabet corresponding to Adolf Hitler's initials. Combat 18 was an openly violent organization that took the United Kingdom race problem to the streets with violence resulting. However, it was also revealed at the time that Covington, was also keeping a North Carolina Post Office Box for Combat 18, giving further credence to the idea that he was an FBI or CIA informant.
In the early 1990's, Covington returned to the United States, and set up the NSWPP again in Raleigh, N.C., declaring himself the rightful heir of Rockwell. He briefly moved the organization to Seattle in 1994, apparently trying to capitalize on the "white bastion" idea of Aryan Nations, but returned to North Carolina within two years, settling in Chapel Hill, his base of operations today.
Covington launched the NSWPP Web site in 1996 and began posting anti-Semitic and racist diatribes in Usenet. He quickly found allies in the Holocaust denial community and offered his writing services openly to Ingrid Rimland of the Zundelsite. Although Klassen was by now dead, Pierce and his North Carolina lieutenant Will Williams and Tom Metzger launched an all-out attack on Covington on the Internet. Williams successfully sued Covington for libel in 1997 for statements made on the Internet. Also, Metzgerites in Florida set up NSWPP.COM as an "expose" of the true nature of Harold Covington. Still, despite his constant embattlement and laughingstock status, Covington remains.
The National Alliance and "The Turner Diaries"
William Pierce
One of the leaders of National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) in the =960's, William Pierce, now heads what is called the National Alliance at his "headquarters" in West Virginia. The following description of Pierce =nd his organization can be found at http://www.natall.org/.
Dr. William L. Pierce, head of the National Alliance, does not fit the stereotype of the redneck racist. He commands uncommon respect from nearly every corner of the extremist Conservative Right movement in America. Beneath the polished exterior that he presents is a dark character that is revealed only in his self-published fiction-- "Hunter"--a novel whose hero's hobby is shooting interracial couples, and the now infamous "The Turner Diaries"--an apocalyptic vision of the future. The Turner Diaries inspired the worst incidence of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, the Oklahoma City bombing.
The Turner Diaries also inspired the most successful terrorist underground to emerge since the Civil War, The Order, which robbed banks and armored wars, counterfeited money and committed murders across the country in the early to mid-1980's.
Pierce's doctorate was awarded in the discipline of physics by the University of Colorado at Boulder. Though he originally hailed from Atlanta, Pierce ended up in the Pacific Northwest, teaching physics at Oregon State University until 1965, when he left academia to work briefly as a Physicist in the private sector in New England.
It was during this period that he became involved in the ultra-conservative but not outwardly fascist or neo-Nazi John Birch Society, which has traditionally ousted members for openly anti-Semitic points of view, =including Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance, Richard Butler of Aryan Nations, and others.
In 1966, Pierce left physics for good and threw his lot with the America Nazi Party led by George Lincoln Rockwell. After Rockwell's death, the American Nazi Party had little life left in it, until it was resurrected by Harold Covington a few years ago. Pierce eventually formed his own splinter group, the National Youth Alliance (later The National Alliance). Over the course of the last 15 years, Pierce moved his organization from the Washington metropolitan area to Westboro, West Virginia. Like the Church of the Creator (COTC) and White Aryan Resistance, Pierce has abandoned Christianity as a religion tainted by its Jewish roots. Instead, Pierce promotes an anti-Semitic "Creativity" style religion similar to that preached by the COTC. Pierce had close ties with COTC founder Ben Klassen and owns several acres of property that he bought from Klassen in rural Georgia.
The National Alliance and Pierce are most successful as propaganda wills.. His press, the National Vanguard, publishes not only Pierce's hateful novels, but also tracts advocating forcible separation of the races, "proofs" that blacks are genetically inferior to whites and bizarre theories of Jewish control of American government, society and thought. He broadcasts a weekly radio program called "American Dissident Voices" which he makes available for all to hear on his Web site.
Shortly following the death of poet Allen Ginsberg, who was Jewish and gay, Pierce stated that he believed that persons who published material such as Ginsberg's should be shot. This speech was reproduced at a Web site, which is emblazoned with the motto "Free Speech."
Pierce also once wrote that "all the homosexuals, race-mixers and hard-case collaborators in the country who are too far gone to be re-educated can we rounded up, packed into 10,000 or so cattle cars, and eventually double-timed into an abandoned coal mine in a few days' time." This statement is, of course, similar to the actions of Hitler's Third Reich. Despite [or because =f??] Pierce's stark neo-Nazism, research shows that the National Alliance is a consistently growing organization.
The World Church of the Creator
Matt Hale
Another Conservative Right group that is a descendent of Rockwell's American Nazi Party is the so-called World Church of the Creator. As seen above, William Pierce rejected Christianity because it was "contaminated" with Judaism. Hence, he and other followers of American Nazism, specifically Matt Hale, established a new religion of "Creation." The following description of the religion of Creativity =an be found at http://www.creator.org
After =ix thousand years of recorded history, our people finally have a religion of, for, and by, them. CREATIVITY is that religion. It is established for the survival, Expansion, and Advancement of our White Race exclusively.. Indeed, we believe that what is good for the White Race is the highest virtue, and what is had for the White Race is the ultimate sin.
Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
David Duke
The =following description can be found at http://www.duke.org/. David Duke is owner of the David Duke Online Report.
David Duke is the best known and most politically active racist in the United States and has one of the longest resumes on the Far Right. Beginning as a Nazi sympathizer as a student at Louisiana State University, Duke eventually formed the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, of which he was national leader. His lieutenants included Don Black of Stormfront web page, Louis Beam, now of Aryan Nations, and Tom Metzger, =ow of White Aryan Resistance.
In the early 1980s, Duke left the KKK to form the National Association for the Advancement of White People, a group he called a "civil rights group" for whites. He also made a foray into electoral politics, running first for President on the 1988 Populist ticket backed Holocaust denier Willis Carto and managed by former American Nazi Party official Ralph Forbes (under George Lincoln Rockwell). His running mate for a short period of time was militia sympathizer Bo Gritz. After garnishing a tiny number of votes, Duke then =ut his emphasis on Louisiana politics, winning a seat in the Louisiana legislature.
In 1992, Duke shocked the country by forcing Louisiana into a runoff election for governor that he eventually lost. Recently, however, Duke ran abortively once again for president in 1996 and was very recently elected to head the =OP in St. Tammany, Louisiana, the largest white parish in the state.
Holocaust Denial and the "Respectability" of Racism
Committee on the Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH)
As pointed out by Schmaltz, though it was once espoused solely by the "lunatic fringe," the denial of the Holocaust has become an acceptable art of the public fare in both academic and public media outlets. The Committee on the Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), part of a national neo-Nazi (Aryan Nation/Christian Identity) movement in the United States, regularly runs advertisements in student newspapers on public and private university and college campuses. They openly seek to persuade young students that the holocaust was a lie, perpetrated by powerful Jewish conspirators seeking even more power.
CODOH was originated by Bradley Smith and Mark Weber, using marketing techniques that are directed at students. Of course, university and college students are not only experienced with the Internet but are also somewhat disposed to challenge authority. Recent ads, like the one appearing in the student newspaper, the Logos, at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, hooks readers with a promise of a $250,000 reward to whoever can arrange a 90-minute, prime-time nationally televised debate about the Holocaust between Smith and ADL.
According the AntiDefamation League, Smith readily admits he doesn't "really expect a TV debate to take place." This ad, like Smith's previous efforts, is a "bait and switch," a deceptive enticement spouting follow promises designed to encourage students to visit his "vast Internet archive of revisionist scholarship and comment."
Conclusion
In spite of the absence of the title "National Socialism" in the language of the Conservative Right in the United States, the original racist, misogynist, and genocidal creed of National Socialism and its objectives have been inherited by various Conservative Right groups sharing the same ideology of hate. The legacy of this creed can be traced from Hitler's third Reich eugenics theorists and practitioners to the American Nazi Party, the National Alliance, the Aryan Nations, The Order, and Christian identity--among others. It is also found in various guises in social policy and political pronouncements and proposed "solutions" of politicians and spokesmen for the Conservative Right, including powerful Conservative Right factions of the Republican Party.
In addition to spouting the Holocaust Denial theme, various Conservative Right groups associated one way or another with the Republican Party, rallying against Civil Rights legislation passed largely in the 1960's, have used what amounts to the creed of National Socialism on which to base their arguments and their movement.
In the year 2000, we are witnessing a dramatic increase in hate groups across the U.S. Many of them spout the most hateful invectives against Jews, "mud" people, "60's Liberals, the U.S. Government, and women. The Internet has proven to be one of their most effective means of their communication and growth, enlisting more and more disenfranchised or just simply disturbed people. their hate websites are filled with overt threats against leaders of liberal groups and other social causes. We have also witnessed an apparent willingness of some young people-- mostly young white males --to use assault weapons to kill others as well as themselves. Among the latter, police and investigators found a disturbing presence of neo-Nazi sentiments and admiration of Adolf Hitler.
Footnotes
*Labels such as 'Conservative' and 'Liberal' are notoriously vague. However, the term 'Conservative Right' is taken to refer to a spectrum of political groups generally associated with the Republican Party in the United States. It is also taken here to refer to the extreme and religious Right and Far Right Conservatism in the United States.
Fred G. Herrera
Nazi's In America
Some Hateful Ideas
And Their Legacy in the Conservative Right
Sometimes it only takes a little time for even the most hateful ideas to catch on. With enough power and money‹especially money--the most heinous ideas can become "acceptable" and appear "respectable" to some. Such are the ideas of white male racial superiority and the implied right to power over all others. This includes the additional implied right to "phase out" of existence others who are held to be inferior. These ideas and their underlying rationale were the basis of Hitler's National Socialism. Though Allied Forces put an end to Hitler and his Third Reich over fifty years ago, ideas of Nazism are still very much alive. They are still wreaking pain, suffering, and death on those whom the Powerful decide are unfit to live.
Historically, National Socialism-termed ŒNazism'(1) --was Hitler's Conservative political creed of racial and cultural "purity." It was also a genocidal program of hatred directed specifically against Jews. Hitler's nazism was based on the twin myths of racial and cultural "purity" of so called Aryans (the Whites) and the "diseased and dirty" race and culture of so called non Aryans (the non-Whites), particularly the Jews. National Socialism became the foundational creed of a genocidal eugenics political program to cleanse" the world of the "dirty" Jews and their "diseased" cultural influence. Hitler envisioned his Third Reich as the beginning of a New World Order that would put Ayran Whites back in their "natural" place of Superiority and Power over all others. It was also intended to rid the world of those whom he claimed had usurped Aryans of their "rightful" Power and Superior Position in the first place. Aryans had to be put back in to their natural place of superiority over others, Hitler held, because a powerful and deceitful Jewish cabal had over many years conspired through devious financial and cultural manipulation, to misplace them.
In Hitler's view, the only real solution to the so-called "Jewish problem" was a Final Solution to rid the world of them, a world that had to be cleansed" of Jews and their influence. At the end of WWII, the world learned of the efficient machinery of death built and operated by Hitler's SS to do just that. Throughout Europe, millions of Jews and entire populations of other diseased and dirty" so-called "non-Aryans" were shipped in train cars to multiple concentration camps and murdered.
A Dramatic Shift to the Conservative Right in America
Since the end of WWII, but especially over the last 35 years or so, the political landscape in the U.S. --as well as other parts of the world--has shifted dramatically to the Conservative Right. That shift has largely one unnoticed by those not old enough or not historically sensitive enough to place the Conservative Right political ideology and agenda in historical perspective. Many do not realize that the inherently racist, homophobic, and bisogynist ideology now passed off by some Conservative Right politicians such as George W. Bush as acceptable and even respectable, was part of the reason the U.S. entered WW II. Millions of American soldiers died fighting against that hateful ideology that many on the Conservative Right in varying degrees-- are now trumpeting as a kind of "final solution" to socioeconomic and other problems they claim have been created by the U.S. Government and by the "Liberals" of the 1960's.
Certainly, American G.I.s returning from the ravages left by Hitler's third Reich at the end of WWII probably could not have conceived the possibility =hat the United States might one day have its own Nazi Party. But in the 1950's, while the world was still coming to terms with the Holocaust and fighting bold War Communism, George Lincoln Rockwell, born March 9, 1918 in Bloomington, Illinois, was engendering the idea of the American Nazi Party (ANP).
From the late 1950's until his death in 1967, Rockwell became the deminal force of post-World War II National Socialism (Nazism) in America and the originator of the "Holocaust Denial" movement. That movement, institutionalized in various neo-Nazi organizations such as the so-called "Committee on the Open Debate on the Holocaust" (CODOH) is so rampant today across the United States that many college-age and younger unquestioningly accept its fundamental =hesis, that the Holocaust is a Jewish lie.
William H. Schmaltz's Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party is an excellent, well-researched book on Rockwell's American Nazi Party (ANP) and its legacy to Conservatives in the United States. He has documented the historic development of this Conservative Right organization and its leader, who would otherwise be (and was, by some) dismissed as a "half-penny" Hitler. Through numerous interviews with many of the original ANP Stormtroopers" of Rockwell's Party, and much research from the FBI and other original sources, Schmaltz traced the persistence of Rockwell and his supporters to establish the ANP over many financial, political, and legal obstacles, from 1958 through 1967.
Most importantly, Schmaltz provides us with an invaluable overview of =he American Nazi Party's evolution to its present forms, the Christian identity movement, Aryan Nations, and the Order. Certain of Rockwell's original Stormtroopers, such as William Peirce, head of the neo-Nazi National alliance, have carried forward the Nazi creed and agenda of Rockwell's ANP. The last part of the book, the Epilogue, provides a very useful summary of that evolution and development, as well as an outline of the similarities and differences between the Conservatives of Rockwell's time and present-day Conservatives of the 1980's and 1990's.
Following a largely historical approach to Rockwell's formation of the American Nazi Party, Schmaltz provides a much needed insight into how it =as possible for Rockwell to be as successful as he was among a very politically Conservative population during the 1950's and early 1960's in the U.S. All other things being equal, one might expect such a population, still recovering from the scars of WWII and the battles against Hitler, to entirely reject then, and still do not reject it today in the year 2010. Indeed, under various guises paraded today before the Public by factions of the Conservative Right, too many are welcoming the basic ideas of Nazism with open arms.
Schmaltz's main contribution is his focus upon Rockwell's belief that Conservatives are really National Socialists. Though we would today reject Rockwell's claim about all Conservatives, we should take a serious look as for whether or not his claim is true about factions of the Conservative right. Rightly or wrongly, In a national presidential election year where one of the front runners is a very popular candidate of the Conservative Right, we will focus upon that theme as well in this Commentary and Review. We want to examine the extent to which Rockwell's belief may be true.
Conservatives as National Socialists (Nazis)
Rockwell's legacy to the world especially to the Conservative right in America--has been far-reaching. He believed that millions of people in the U.S. who considered themselves Conservatives, were either conscious National Socialists or were "only a synapse away from discovering that they were National Socialists and never knew it because they have never been allowed to know what National Socialism is". He believed that National Socialism is the very essence of what Conservatives really want, but are afraid to openly say so. In the upside-down, Looking Glass language of the Conservative Right, it simply wouldn't be "Politically Correct" to admit that one is a Nazi.
Rockwell adhered to two basic beliefs in his desire to see the triumph of Nazism throughout the U.S. and eventually throughout the world. One belief, as noted, was that every Conservative is at heart a National Socialist, a Nazi. He believed that if given sufficient understanding of what that doctrine is, every Conservative would recognize his or her own basic beliefs in that doctrine. However, he also believed that Nazism had been given such "bad press" by powerful Jewish leaders in Hollywood--with their anti-Nazi WWII films--that most Conservatives would not openly acknowledge that that is what they really are.
The second major belief Rockwell held was that merging Nazism with Christianity would not only ensure Nazism's survival, but its ultimate triumph in the United States. Thus, Rockwell set out a plan which he followed in =he last several years of his life, turning National Socialism into a =redefined version of the Christian religion, Christian Identity. It is important to stress that Rockwell and the followers of Christian Identity have redefined and rewritten fundamental doctrines of traditional Judeo-Christianity in order to achieve a following for Nazism. Their redefined doctrines bear little resemblance to those of traditional Christianity. One of the foundational beliefs of Christian Identity is that Jews are the "seeds of Satan," and conspired to eradicate "God's chosen people," the Aryans. Christian identity holds that one of the historically recent means Jews did this has been by perpetrating the lie of the Holocaust. Thus, in addition to merging Nazism with the contemporary Christian Identity movement in the U.S., Rockwell also originated the "Holocaust Denial" movement as well.
Some of the same religious and political arguments Rockwell used to advance the causes of National Socialism in the 1950's and 1960's until his death =n 1967, can be found articulated in various statements by spokesmen for Conservative Right groups in the United States today. These spokesmen range from the Reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to Pat Buchanan, to Ronald Reagan at Bitburg's SS Cemetery, and to the overtly neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator Reverend Matt Hale. The Conservative Right religious spokesmen along with politicians upon whom they have great influence--have repeatedly and consistently advanced social, political, and legal policies against non-white minorities, women, homosexuals, and the poor, that are consistent with Hitler's and Rockwell's Nazism. Hitler's National Socialism and Rockwell's American Nazi Party (ANP) both left a strong legacy of hate to the Conservative Right in the U.S. today..
What is a Nazi?
But the Reader may rightfully ask, "Just what is it about the =onservative Right that might make it Nazi?" Clearly, on the surface that seems to be a very strong claim for anyone to make. To answer the Reader's question, one must distill the essence of Nazism--from Hitler to Rockwell to David Duke and the Reverend Matt Hale. Once one gets clear on what that essence is, all one has to do is look for it anywhere one may find it.
The essence of Nazism comprises two fundamental beliefs: that some people are genetically and morally inferior forms of life; and that genetically and morally superior forms of life, to survive, must purify" their race by eliminating genetically and morally inferior groups. In essence, Nazism is not just racism; it is also genocide. Genocide, however, can take many forms. Under Hitler, the systematic efforts to exterminate entire so-called "inferior" peoples consisted of murder, both in the camps and out of them, starvation, and forced sterilizations, among other means. Additionally, there were systematic efforts put in place to simply "phase out" of existence more members of those so-called inferior groups by withholding food, shelter, and medication from them. "Inferior" people, including children, were often left simply to starve to death. "Under Nazi rule, 750,000 people across Europe, including 5000 children, were murdered [just] for being mentally or physically handicapped. Children were killed by injection, medical experimentation or simply starved. The Nazis called them "unworthy lives.
Moreover, these groups of so-called "unworthy lives" provided a plentiful supply of research specimens for Nazi physicians and scientists. These victims often died as a result of cruel and inhumane experiments performed upon them. More specifically, concentration camps provided the ultimate Final =olution devised to efficiently exterminate as many Jews, Gypsies, handicapped, homosexuals, and mentally deficient as possible.
Use of the 'Disease' Metaphor
To promote his genocidal agenda, the "Disease Metaphor" was deliberately used by Hitler and his Nazi Third Reich theorists to promote the perception of a necessity to "cleanse" the body of Germany by ridding it of "putrid morally degenerate human filth" that had invaded it. So-called inferior peoples such as Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, and the poor, were seen as mongrels, racial and moral degenerates, an "insidious disease" infecting the body of society in the same way that cancer if left unchecked spreads throughout the human body:
"There is a close analogy between a human body invaded by a cancer and a nation afflicted with sub-populations whose inborn defects cause them to become social liabilities. . .When these inferior elements are not effectively eliminated from a (healthy) population, then. . .they destroy the host body as well as themselves.
Under Hitler, the new [pseudo-] science of eugenics was used to systematically set up programs of research and development to exterminate =nd "phase out" of existence so-called genetically and morally"inferior" persons, particularly Jews. He saw Jews as unnatural, diseased, and corrupting in their influence on others. And just as some diseases are spread by infections, when healthy organisms are invaded by the disease, Hitler held that Jews were parasites that had "infected" the "healthy" organism of Germany--with its naturally healthy and superior form of Ayran life. That diseased influence =f the Jews, Hitler held, was destroying the German people. Thus, under Hitler, eugenics laws were first passed in Germany in 1933, quickly followed by similar laws throughout Western Europe and the United States.
Throughout the 1930's until the end of WWII, eugenics was popular in both Germany and the United States. It became synonymous with the scientific promotion of "race hygiene" to "purify" the white race of "low grade" and degenerate groups, the genetically inferior.. "Not surprisingly, the victims usually turned out to be the traditional victims of racism - Jews, Blacks, women, and the poor. Among such laws in the U.S., forced sterilization programs were designed to limit pregnancies among those persons held to be "feeble-minded" or having heritable diseases. The state of Virginia, for example, had a forced sterilization program that sought to sterilize all persons with hereditary defects, not just those who had been institutionalized, until the state was challenged before the Supreme Court by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Of course, most of those who were sterilized under Virginia law turned out to =e Black females.
Hitler's concept of the Third Reich was of a Pure Nation "cleansed" of impurities and diseased degenerates. The Third Reich was to be based on the hegemony of the German People whose pure blood would determine its culture and its community. He and his SS set up Lebensborn to ensure future generations of pure blooded Aryans who would build the Kultur of Germany. his concept of the German nation was not based on a concept of a common Constitution, with the free and open association of a richly diverse mosaic of citizens. It was to be a pure White Man's Nation whose values and culture were to be determined by purity of blood.
When the ravages of Hitler's eugenics extermination program became known at the end of WWII, there arose in the 1950's a concerted effort by many of its followers to divorce eugenics from racism.When it became known that hundreds of concentration camps were scattered across Europe, specifically designed to "cleanse" Germany and the world of "inferior" groups of people, the world reacted with revulsion. The science of eugenics --and the biological determinist ("Natural Law") beliefs upon which it is based--became unpopular.
However, the effort to divorce eugenics from racism primarily drove the explicitly racist motives of eugenics advocates underground, where they largely remain today. Knowledge of what Hitler and his SS had done, based in part in the so-called scientific principles of eugenics, however, did not end eugenics advocacy and belief in biological determinism among racists in the United States.
The Conservative Right Ideology Today: From Natural to Unnatural election Brought About by Civil Rights and 1960's Liberals.
Facets of the Conservative Right in the U.S. today hold that until the advent of Civil Rights laws in the 1960's, the rigors of Nature herself had largely ensured upward evolution of the species by natural selection of the strongest and (by implication) the best. Until the Civil Rights era, so-called "Natural Laws" determined who was best, brightest, and most deserving of life and the rewards of power. Those who were not the "best" simply died off from starvation, the diseases of poverty, or other forces of Nature. And, according to =hese Conservatives, until the 1960's--before anti-discrimination and affirmative action laws-- social policies and laws reflected the "natural" superiority of whites in positions of power. Until the 1960's, White Men were in virtually all significant positions of power in the United States. White Men held all the significant and high-paying jobs; White Men were the lawmakers, the decision-makers. It was White Men who commanded the U.S. Government and white Men who commanded the U.S. military.
But in the 1960s, these Conservative Right factions claim, with the passage of Federal Civil Rights legislation by a liberal Federal Government, along with modern science and (secular) humanism, a reverse, downward selection has been started among the human races.
That is, these factions of the Conservative Right claim, 1960's iberal political forces in the U. S. Government passed civil rights laws against discrimination based on race and ethnic origin that have started a downward evolution in the human species. Liberals and the U.S. Government have started an increased breeding of the weakest, most unnatural and morally degenerate human beings, non-whites, homosexuals and women. With affirmative action, these spokesmen claim, morally, culturally, and genetically inferior and degenerate persons are increasingly occupying positions of power throughout the U.S. this is unnatural selection, they claim, which is "contrary to God's Law," and contrary to "Natural Law." If humanity as a whole is left a victim to innatural ideas of human equality and racial integration, advocated by 1960's liberals, it will breed itself back down to the barbarian.
Of course, this ideology is at core Social Darwinism or biological determinism, the basis of eugenics. It is an expression of so-called "Natural Law" theory, of "White Male Might Makes Right," the core of National socialism as both Hitler and as Rockwell saw it, and is held in one form or another by virtually all factions identified as falling under the Conservative Right today in the U.S.some Far Right Conservatives not only accept this ideology, but want to expand Hitler's genocidal doctrine beyond any primary focus on Jews to include non-white women, the poor, homosexuals, and what some refer to as "mud people." "Mud people" include African Americans, Hispanics, and anyone else who isn't white.
Academic Racists and the American Nazi Party in the U.S.
As this article is being written, there is a very powerful anti-government, anti-Liberal, Conservative Right movement spreading in universities and colleges across the United States. This Conservative Right movement includes a very strong racist ideology of biological determinism, also known as "Social Darwinism" and "Natural Law" Theory. This is nothing less than a resurgence of eugenics-advocacy, propelled by factions of the Conservative Right, that intend a full-scale roll back of any Federal legislation designed to protect non-white minorities and women. These factions of the Conservative Right movement are allied with anti-Semitic, Christian Fundamentalist-Christian reconstruction and Christian Identity groups as well as neo-Nazi organizations.
These Conservative Right neo-Nazis and their followers have successfully garnered positions for themselves in public and private organizations and agencies. In some cases, they evidently do not allow State, Federal, and local laws to stand in the way of their racist, misogynist, and anti-government goals.The influence of members of these groups is so far reaching that they have been able within a relatively short period of time to influence the political makeup of various local, State and Federal agencies. They have also been able to effectively undo both Federal and State legislation against discrimination and to roll back laws protecting non-white minorities and women.
Increasingly, public policies, regulations of public and state supported institutions--especially public education--as well as some civil and criminal laws, are being radically changed by the Conservative Right so as to accommodate their "Natural Law," racist, religious, and misogynist views, as well as their anti-U.S. Government, anti-science, and anti-public institution views. It is out of this racist, homophobic, misogynist, and quasi-religious "Natural Law" theorizing that laws permitting discrimination against non-whites, homosexuality, and recent theories about the "naturalness" of rape and =assault against females, have arisen.
Increasingly as well, such Conservative Right groups call for nations to identify themselves in biological terms. It is this call, among other things, that the Conservative Right has in common with neo-Nazi groups. For example, one finds the following on the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator website http://www.creator.org]:
We have come to hold these [race] views by observing the Eternal laws of Nature, by studying History, and by using the Logic and Common Sense everyone is born with: the highest Law of Nature is the survival of one's own kind; history has shown us that the White Race is responsible for all that which we call progress on this earth; and that it is therefore logical and sensical to =lace supreme importance upon Race and to reject all ideas which fail to do so.
It is biological determinism that says immigration should be discouraged and genetically "superior stocks" should be encouraged to have large families. It is this view that holds that Federal Civil Rights laws, like anti-discrimination and affirmative action laws, effect "reverse evolution," giving inferior people unfair, parasitic advantages over "superior" white people. It is biological determinism that says that the Poor [mostly women, non-white minorities, and children] are poor largely because they are unintelligent, genetically unfit, and morally unworthy.. It is also biological determinism that says that =he policy of the United States toward developing countries with starving populations should be "Let them starve to death. It is Nature's way of =idding the world of dysgenic [genetically unfit] populations.
"Natural Law" theory, the legalistic expression of biological determinism, is a brutal denial of human possibilities. It effectively says that there are no possibilities beyond what biology gives to us. In the 1930's, the famed German universities and their intellectuals first capitulated to the Third Reich, providing a mantle of intellectual "respectability" to anti-Semitism, helping to usher in the Holocaust. Likewise, today these "Natural Law," eugenics =rguments have been advanced by academic racists and anti-Semites in some of the largest universities in the U.S. who are well known for their Conservative Right publications.
Although academic racism is nothing new, it has become so powerful in the U.S. over the last 35 years or so--particularly at major universities in southern states such as Texas---that forces supporting it are effectively rewriting laws of the land to reflect their views. In the name of "States' Rights" and "individual rights --historically the clarion cry of racists--they are effectively rolling back Federal Civil Rights legislation protecting nonwhite minorities and women in order to accommodate their racist, =iological determinist view of human kind.
And where they are unable to obtain legislation reflecting their racist views, they find ways of illegally putting those views into practice in any case. Groups of Conservative Right individuals formed at some State institutions of higher education, for example, contrive to drive minority and women faculty and students out of those institutions by illegal means. This is what some advocates of Social Darwinism, biological determinism, are doing at the University of Texas, under the cover of institutional authority.
Some outspoken proponents of the "Natural Law" view can be found in Texas. The Conservative Right has such a strangle hold on the State of Texas that it has become George W. Bush's and the Conservative Right's blueprint for the United States, should George W. become elected President of the U.S. these proponents can be found in prestigious positions as department heads, faculty, and administrators at the University of Texas. If the edicts of these Texas Conservative Right spokesmen are any measure --as reflected in recent anti-immigrant and anti-affirmative action sentiment found among =onservative Right tenured faculty especially at the University of Texas at Austin, =he United States is overdue for a national "cleansing."
These Conservative Right academic racists now claim that virtually all non-white peoples and cultures are morally corrupt and "diseased." non-white peoples and cultures, the Texas Conservative Right spokesmen claim, are not worthy of equal rights, protections, and opportunities under any State or Federal law in the United States. These Conservative Right academic racists want not only to completely abolish or roll back all Civil Rights legislation largely passed in the 1960's, they also want to roll back all social service supports that in any way help non-white minorities to remain alive. These conservative Right spokesmen want to effectively "phase out" of existence non-white peoples and cultures they hold are unworthy to live. They hold that too many non-white peoples and cultures are like "parasites" on the healthy body of the United States.
The Basic Principle of Hate
The basic principle of hate underlying Nazism is simple. Non-white minorities, the poor, homosexuals, and females are lower than the heterosexual White Man on the evolutionary chain of life. Invoking religious sanction, =hey claim that God has ordained that the heterosexual White Man, the highest, most morally perfect, and racially purest level of life on earth, should be vested with the most Power and Wealth. It is his sacred moral right to take and use everything else as he pleases. Whatever he does‹no matter what it is by its very nature in the service of God's Will. This is so because the heterosexual White Male is by his very nature God's Chosen. No matter what he does, it will be Good because it is God's Will. This is the "Natural Order" of all things; whatever does not fit this "Natural Order" is "Unnatural" and must we either banished, beaten, locked up, or destroyed. This basic principle, wrapped in religious garb, is nothing short of Social Darwinism and is an expression of Nazism as Hitler and Rockwell expressed it.
Social Consequences of the Principle of Hate
Of course, there are brutal logical corollaries to this already brutal pseudo-religious principle of "White Might Makes Right." One doesn't have to look very far to find them, especially when social policies and laws are based upon a brutal and brutalizing vision of the "Nature of Things." One has only to look back at Hitler's Third Reich in the 1930's and 1940's.
But one can also look at the goals of the Conservative Right Big Money interests in the year 2000. Conservative Right Big Money interests have a two-pronged brutal "final solution" to the problems of poverty, increasing illegitimate births, rising numbers of non-white immigrants, and the =ncessant cry for equality from women, Hispanics, and Blacks. That "solution" shy;under the rubric of various legislative "reforms"--is a coordinated assault on all federal and state civil rights laws and all public social service supports that in any way help the poor to remain alive, or help minorities gain equal rights and protections under the law. That assault also includes a heavy-fisted reassertion of patriarchal structures--clothed in Conservative Religious "Bible speak"--intended to shut women up and keep them in "their place."
The Conservative Right wants to reinstate traditional rigid divisions between public and private realms. In doing so, they will shift all social programs such as Welfare and Child Protective Services and public education to the private (religious) realm, ultimately with no public tax support. The poor will be left where they have almost always been left: with their poverty and hunger, their Church, and their children--and out of sight of the rich and well-to-do classes. They will also be left with a wrecked justice system that does not hear the poor and does not recognize civil and human rights. A revised "Kinder, Kirke, duche" is the sum total program for poor women devised by the Conservative right.
Threads of the "White Might Makes Right" ideology of the Nazi, sound in abundance in the Conservative Right in the United States, are starkly simple. When non-white minorities and their children go hungry and starve or die prematurely from diseases of poverty, well‹that's just the way it is. They should die because they are deficient as human beings, the ideology rants. the poor are deficient by Nature because most of them are not white and do not--cannot--have the superior values of white culture. Of those who are white, they are the progeny of mixed races and hence are mongrels. These lower forms of life deserve to die because they are racially and (hence) morally impure. is such, they are not worthy of God's rewards on this earth. Furthermore, we must not thwart God's Will by helping the poor to remain alive. Welfare programs must be either drastically cut back or, preferably, ended altogether. Either the poor, women and children survive on their own‹or they die.
To find more of the brutal corollaries to the Principle of Hate, one must look at what the Conservative Right does‹and listen a whole lot less to what they say. Ideas of White Male racial and moral superiority, with an implied right to use and diminish or "phase out" other groups or the programs upon which they depend to remain alive--are found throughout the political agenda of the Conservative Right.
As is evident, these ideas generally rest on spurious fundamentalist religious foundations. One does not have to look far to find such ideas in the ideological rants of politicians from George W. Bush to Pat Buchanan to Richard Butler, the leader of the Aryan Nations, and to Pontifex Maximus Reverend Watt Hale of the World Church of the Creator. They are also found in the defeacto racist, homophobic, and misogynist policies of State governments‹such as the State of Texas; and in policies of state colleges and =niversities‹such as the University of Texas. They are also found in decisions made in boardrooms of large corporations, such as Texaco; and those Big Money corporations that own and operate certain states such as the State of Texas.
By Any Other Name. . . Threads of the American Nazi Party in the Conservative Right
Hiding behind nice-sounding labels and linguistic equivocations, some of these ugly Nazi ideas‹with a few twists-- are rearing their heads wet again in the Conservative Right across the United States. To help these hateful ideas catch hold, the Conservative Right uses virtuous labels in political "bait and switch" tactics. In one hand, they offer the Public an idea labeled Good and Kind. When the Public reaches for that idea, it turns out sometimes =oo late for the Public to reject--to be something Ugly, Brutal, and cruel.
One such label is "Compassionate Conservatism." In one hand, the Public at large is handed an idea of racial and ethnic "inclusiveness" and help for "those who really need it." It is an idea that even gets championed by token African American and Hispanic marionettes who dance to the tune of Conservative Right Big Money.
In reality, "Compassionate Conservatism" is George W. and Big Money's Conservative Right ideological program of brutal and cruel war against the poor, children, women, and non-white minorities. It is not so well hidden under various rhetorical and linguistic masks intended to cover the harsh brutality of its effects on its targets. In reality, it is a program of hateful brutality intended to diminish the lives or "phase out" of existence whose most in need. It is a program intended to eliminate federal or state help to the poor and others most in need of food, health care, decent housing, clean air and water, and civil and criminal due process.. It is a program of brutality against the most defenseless in our society.
"Compassionate Conservatism," its progenitors say, is "Tough Love." But what these well-fed, well-kept and pseudo-intellectuals from Texas are calling "Tough Love" has left a large percentage of the poorest children in Texas hungry. Most of those children, of course, are African American and Hispanic. What they call "love" has left far too many Texas children with little or no medical care while also living =n severely impoverished conditions. What these ideologues call "love" leaves children not only without enough to eat, without sufficient healthcare, it also leaves them without even minimal protections for their welfare and safety under the law, and without adequate education. What these well-fed and well-kept theorists call "love" builds more prisons than schools every year to house juveniles, alongside those whose miserable lives have led either by design or by accident to the ravages of crime. What these sophisticates call "love" as a program of vicious cruelty that arrogantly engages in the official machinery of death. It engages that official machinery even for those not old enough to vote when they commit crimes for which they are imprisoned. It is a program that denies even the semblance of justice to the most poor, mentally deficient and diseased. Moreover, what these "compassionate conservatives" call "love" is a program that has the effect of forcing pregnancy on economically =isadvantaged pre-teen girls while it denies them sufficient legal and medical means to protect or care for themselves.
Though it may take us on a detour from Schmaltz's book, given its focus upon the Conservative factions in the U.S. and their relation to Nazism, the State of Texas warrants serious mention here. The State of Texas under the governorship of George W. Bush is effectively nothing less than a Blue Print for the nation, should George W. become President of the United States.. Thus, certain facts about Texas under the governorship of a Conservative Right Presidential contender bear repeating:
Some facts about Texas, the Conservative Right Blueprint for the U.S.
1. Texas executes more prisoners than any other jurisdiction in the Western World. Most of those executed are too poor to hire their own attorneys, or they are mentally retarded or mentally ill. In some cases, Texas has executed young prisoners who were 17 when they committed the crime that led to their imprisonment. In response to the Columbine shootings, one Texas legislator wanted to lower the death penalty in Texas to age 11. It was probably the image of a small child being strapped to a prison gurney as the state pumped poison into a little arm that led other legislators to stop that effort. But George W. publicly supports assembly =ine executions now taking place in Texas.
2. Amnesty International issued a report this year [1999] citing Texas' clemency process for "violat[ing] minimum safeguards for human rights.. Along with countries like China, Iraq and Iran, Texas ranks low in terms of according prisoners minimal human rights.
3. Texas ranks exactly 51st out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the quality of criminal defense provided for accused defendants too poor to hire their own attorneys. "In recent years the Texas Court of Criminal appeals has upheld death sentences in at least three cases in which the defense lawyers slept during trial, Yet George W. vetoed a bill that would have modestly improved the disgraceful quality of legal representation available to =oor defendants in Texas.
4. Both the civil and criminal parts of the Texas system of justice are an acknowledged public mockery of American justice. Texas justice is a system in which large corporations can be legally "forgiven" for causing the death of workers, while 9-year old little girls are essentially held responsible for their own gang-rapes.
5. Texas ranks 48th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of conditions best for bringing up children.Texas is 3 states away from being the absolute worst state in the United States for bringing up children. In spite of billions of dollars of a huge budget surplus, Texas can't seem to find the spare change to provide decent conditions for children to thrive. Of course, internationally, the entire United States doesn't rank very high in terms of its treatment of children. But Texas ranks near the bottom of the barrel of the bottom of the barrel on recognized measures of child welfare: rates of child abuse and neglect; immunizations under age 2; high school dropouts; child poverty; child deaths; infant mortality; mothers not receiving prenatal care in the first three months of pregnancy; juvenile arrests; teen births and divorce. Texas ranks at or near the bottom of the barrel in virtually every one of these categories.
6. In one year alone, 1998, the number of children who died of abuse and neglect in Texas increased by 71 percent. Deaths of children in Texas from abuse and neglect have increased every single year [until the year he openly ran for President of the U.S.] since George W. became governor. Apparently, the only time the State of Texas does anything about deplorable conditions is when those conditions publicly =mbarrass the Texas governor while running for President.
7. Texas is 2nd in the United States in the number of medically uninsured children (1.5 million uninsured). Yet George W. established eligibility to the federal/state Children's Health Insurance Program at 150% of the federal poverty level, dropping or leaving more poor children in Texas out of the insurance program.
8. Texas leads the nation in lost Medicaid coverage for children due to George W.'s welfare initiatives, which he calls a "model for the nation."
9. Texas has the largest volume of air pollution in the United States. Yet George W. supported a voluntary emissions program for grandfathered industrial plants that have been exempt from pollution control since the Texas Clean Air Act was passed in 1971. Those exempted industrial plants in Texas are among the worst industrial polluters in the entire United States.
10. Texas ranks 50th in per capita spending. It had a 241.7 billion surplus in 1997 and had a $6.7 billion surplus in 1999 under George W. Yet George W. did not use these surplus billions to fund underfunded programs, such as those to prevent the 71% increase in deaths of children from abuse and neglect. They were used primarily to benefit Big Money.
11. After the Littleton, Colorado massacre of high school students, the only gun-related bill passed by the Texas Legislature was a bill protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits filed by cities. George W. signed that bill into law.
12. Texas ranks among the top states in the nation in the rate of violence against women committed with guns. Women face greater danger in states like Texas which have fewer gun controls than in those states that have gun control legislation in place. Yet George W. refuses to sign gun control legislation, saying =hat no law can change people's hearts.
13. Texas ranks eighth from the bottom among the fifty states in the number of jobless citizens who get unemployment benefits. Only 22 percent of jobless Texans receive unemployment benefits, compared to a national average of 35 percent.
14. Texas ranks sixth from the bottom among states in the number of residents who earn family incomes below the federal poverty level.
15. Texas ranks 47th in the percentage of workers in unions.
16. Texas ranks 47th in the amount of welfare for a family of three, barely at subsistence level.
17. Texas ranks 47th in per-capita state funding for public health, while approximately 25% of its babies go without immunizations.
18. And Texas ranks 50th in poor working parents without health insurance and 50th (as noted above) in the percentage of children with no health insurance.
19. Finally, Texas ranks 48th in spending for parks and recreation.
In every single major category of quality of life and protections for the health and well-being of families, especially children and the =oor, Texas consistently ranks at or near the bottom of the barrel.
All along, this program of "Compassionate Conservatism" rewards those who already have big Money and Power with more of the same. It rewards Conservative Right Big Money interests who have Big Plans for those who have little or no resources of their own. In Texas, it especially rewards those who despoil the land around us, who poison the air we breathe and the water we drink.
Though Œcompassion' is a word that calls forth visions of care, concern, and charity, George W.'s "Compassionate Conservatism" is in reality a program of brutality, viciousness, and cruelty. It is based on the myth that the poor =nd non-white minorities as morally undeserving and degenerate, and on the genocidal, racist motive to diminish their existence or "phase" them cut of existence entirely by ending any public Federal or State support for =hem.
National Socialism and Christianity: The Religious Basis of Nazism
As stated, Rockwell's legacy to the Conservative Right in America included verging Nazism with forms of Christianity. Rockwell's plan was to make Nazism respectable and acceptable on a massive scale to the American people by turning it into a religion. Like politicians today, especially George W. Bush--with his appeal to "faith-based" programs to take over social services for the poor--Rockwell wanted to "manipulate America's intrinsic religious fury' [in order] to seize political power". Rockwell's plan was to eliminate all references to Nazism' while retaining the creed and agenda of Nazism--and to restructure the entire National Socialist movement into a form of Christianity
The Christian Identity Movement: Jews as the "Seed" of Satan
As Schmaltz recounts , Rockwell met in 1964 with Wesley Swift, the leader of the Christian Identity Church in the United States. Swift had popularized Christian identity theology--also known as Identity, Kingdom Identity, and Christian Israel-- during the 1940's and 1950's, teaching that God's law on earth had to be established through an apocalyptic battle between the forces of good and evil. Identity believers hold that only white Christian men are "true sovereign citizens. Only white men form the real, legitimate Government of the United States. All others are not legitimate citizens. Blacks and other people of color are the 'beasts of the field' or 'mud people' on the same spiritual level as soulless animals. They are not true citizens. .Identity portrays Jews as =he "spawn of Satan," the descendants of Eve and the serpent. They are also the "killers of Christ," who was not a Jew but an Aryan.
Rockwell's concern was to devise a plan to mold the American Nazi party into a religion to give Biblical authority to the racist genocidal policies of the American Nazi Party. Like other politicians, Rockwell knew how to sress up ugly, hateful ideas to make them look and sound like something they aren't. Like the Conservative Right today, he knew how to play political "bait and switch" games. To make his political agenda more palatable to the American Public, we undertook a "denazification" program to eliminate all references to the word "Nazi," while still retaining the original Nazi creed and agenda. He knew that "Nazism" was an objectionable term for most people, even those who may otherwise be attracted to the ideology behind it. He was killed, however, before entirely fulfilling his plans to turn National Socialism into the religious movement he envisioned. But his followers are attempting to carry out his vision. The meeting between Christian Identity leader Swift and Rockwell led to Rockwell appointing one of his Stormtroopers as the American Nazi Party's own Christian Identity minister.
Christian Identity is only one of an entire network of Conservative =ight groups who believe that whites are racially superior to everyone else.. many right-wing groups such as the Aryan Nations, Ku Klux Klan, and National Alliance, have been either directly or indirectly involved in terrorist and criminal activity, and some of their leaders are direct descendents of Rockwell's American Nazi Party.
The ideology of the Aryan Nations and the Order, as well as groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, and the National Alliance, flows from the same racist, anti-Semitic religious beliefs of "Christian Identity." Aryans who =cooperate with anti-government sentiments, holding that the Federal Government is an instrument of Satan, a creation of the Jews. In an attempt to live apart from "inferior people," some right-wing groups advocate creating a separate nation from the five states comprising the northwest region of the United =tates--Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.
Many of these groups have been involved in criminal, terrorist activities. In April 1997, three members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were arrested and found guilty in Texas for planning to blow up a natural gas storage facility as a diversionary tactic prior to robbing an armored carrier. Earlier, the FBI's "Rapid Lightning" investigation involved a series of criminal acts committed by individuals associated with a domestic terrorist organization known as the Phineas Priesthood. The subjects of the investigation were responsible for at least two bombing/bank robbery incidents in Spokane, Washington, in April and July 1996. Three subjects were arrested in October 1996, and a fourth in 1997. Since then, all four have been convicted of all eight felony counts for which they were charged and have received lengthy jail sentences.
Fifty Five Years After Hitler: The New World Order of the Conservative Right
Upon Rockwell's death, the American Nazi Party metamorphosed in the late 1960's and early 1970's into the National Socialist White People's party (NSWPP). It later became what is now known‹in 1999--as The Order. the Order, headed by one of Rockwell's foremost Stormtroopers, Matt Koehl, has been involved in numerous criminal violent acts of terrorism across the U.S. the following description can be found online at http://www.nswpp.org/.
The National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP)/ The Order
Matt Koehl
The Official Program of the NSWPP [NSWPP, Koehl, 1980] calls for an Aryan Republic. It calls for citizenship on the basis of Aryan blood, a racial community, a new educational system that instills racial values, a better =ace, and a rebirth of traditional Aryan spiritual values. NSWPP supports augenic measures and demands an end to racially impure blood within the gene pool of the racial community.
The loss of a biological community is a major concern for neo-Nazis and the Klan, according to Dobratz and Shanks-Meil .The New Order organization White Power, No. 104, states that white people have lost contact with their own biological community and thus feel themselves alienated and alone. As the cure for the problems associated with individual freedom, whites need to live their lives in harmony with the laws of nature and reject everything that is decadent and corrupt. Stoner, of the National States Rights Party, "accused the government of 'race-mixing' to remold minds like molding clay." The "race-mixing" not only creates alienation, but "destroys law and =rder and education" which will lead to the inevitable death of America.
Also according to Dobratz and Shanks-Meile [op.cit], a stable =family unit, a healthy environment, and a healthy farming community which provides social, racial, and environmental stability are major ingredients of the community for both the neo-Nazis and the Klansmen. Members "should have the freedom to associate in their own communities" without interference from other "cultures, nations and races of man In the "enlightened community...anything which interferes with the smooth and harmonious functioning of society must be ruthlessly suppressed"
The "Disease Metaphor" used so effectively by Hitler is evident in the following statement by Koehl.
"It is the goal of the New Order to attack the spiritual syphilis which is eating away at the soul of our Race in a bold and uncompromising manner, and to destroy the infection by massive doses of the proper antidote - the pure, undiluted medicine of the National Socialist world view as conceived by Adolf Hitler. . .There should be an America "without swarming Black filth in our streets and schools...and free of alien, Jewish influence".
To develop an Aryan culture, the New Order states that one must "flush down the drain the poisonous Jewish and Negroid degeneracy which today is passing for 'art' and 'music' and 'literature.'" There also needs to be white self-defense so people can live without fear and a white world solidarity based on alliance with racial kinsmen in Australia, Europe, and South Africa.
The National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP)
Harold Covington
Harold Covington currently heads the National Socialist White Peoples Party. Harold Armstead Covington, a.k.a. Winston Smith, was born September 14, 1953, in Burlington, N. C. He appeared on the far-right scene in the late 1970s, when he made the acquaintance of Frank Collin of the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA). Collin himself had been ousted from the Arlington, Va.-based National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) of the late George Lincoln Rockwell.
Covington at that time claimed to have been an acquaintance of Rockwell (though this information has never been confirmed by a third-party source for even denied by Covington's worst enemies) and claimed to be a representative of a North Carolina branch of the NSWPP. Together, Collin and Covington planned a re-staging of Rockwell's famous march through the largely Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill. However, once it came to be known that Collin was actually Jewish (born Frank Cohn), Collin withdrew his plan to march in Skokie, though he maintained that he was being "smeared" by political enemies.
He traveled instead to North Carolina, where his rabble-rousing with Covington and assorted elements of the far right including White Patriot party leader Glenn Miller. This led to a shoot-out in Greensboro, N.C., in Fall of 1978, leaving five Communist Party USA activists dead and Collin, Miller and Covington all under Federal investigation. The investigations into the Greensboro shootings continued through the early 1980s. In 1980, Covington replaced Collin as head of the NSPA.
Despite a continued show of force on his part, and even a relatively successful run for State Attorney General of North Carolina as a Republican in 1980 (he took 43% of the vote), Covington left the U.S. soon after and traveled to Ireland, South Africa and the United Kingdom. He then settled in United Kingdom for several years. Some elements of the far right claim that Covington had turned FBI informant in the Greensboro case (and there is some third-party evidence to suggest that this is true), thus evoking the wrath of former allies and fellow travelers.
The most prominent of Covington's new-found enemies was Ben Klassen, founder of the World Church of the Creator (COTC), who, with William Pierce of the National Alliance and Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance, tried to expose Covington as an informant and, like Collin, a Jew. The World Church of the Creator is now headed by the Reverend Matt Helm, who declares himself contifex Maximus (High Priest).
Before settling in the United Kingdom, Covington claims to have served as a mercenary for white separatists in the apartheid nations of Southern Africa. This claim has been widely disputed. Enemies that Covington made in the United Kingdom have also linked him to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and it is believed that Covington holds dual Irish and U.S. citizenship as a result of a marriage to an Irish woman. During his sojourn in the United Kingdom, Covington made several contacts within the fascist-leaning British National Party and openly fascist National Front. These contacts culminated in Covington's hole in forming Combat 18 . The "18" in the name refers to the letters of the alphabet corresponding to Adolf Hitler's initials. Combat 18 was an openly violent organization that took the United Kingdom race problem to the streets with violence resulting. However, it was also revealed at the time that Covington, was also keeping a North Carolina Post Office Box for Combat 18, giving further credence to the idea that he was an FBI or CIA informant.
In the early 1990's, Covington returned to the United States, and set up the NSWPP again in Raleigh, N.C., declaring himself the rightful heir of Rockwell. He briefly moved the organization to Seattle in 1994, apparently trying to capitalize on the "white bastion" idea of Aryan Nations, but returned to North Carolina within two years, settling in Chapel Hill, his base of operations today.
Covington launched the NSWPP Web site in 1996 and began posting anti-Semitic and racist diatribes in Usenet. He quickly found allies in the Holocaust denial community and offered his writing services openly to Ingrid Rimland of the Zundelsite. Although Klassen was by now dead, Pierce and his North Carolina lieutenant Will Williams and Tom Metzger launched an all-out attack on Covington on the Internet. Williams successfully sued Covington for libel in 1997 for statements made on the Internet. Also, Metzgerites in Florida set up NSWPP.COM as an "expose" of the true nature of Harold Covington. Still, despite his constant embattlement and laughingstock status, Covington remains.
The National Alliance and "The Turner Diaries"
William Pierce
One of the leaders of National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) in the =960's, William Pierce, now heads what is called the National Alliance at his "headquarters" in West Virginia. The following description of Pierce =nd his organization can be found at http://www.natall.org/.
Dr. William L. Pierce, head of the National Alliance, does not fit the stereotype of the redneck racist. He commands uncommon respect from nearly every corner of the extremist Conservative Right movement in America. Beneath the polished exterior that he presents is a dark character that is revealed only in his self-published fiction-- "Hunter"--a novel whose hero's hobby is shooting interracial couples, and the now infamous "The Turner Diaries"--an apocalyptic vision of the future. The Turner Diaries inspired the worst incidence of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, the Oklahoma City bombing.
The Turner Diaries also inspired the most successful terrorist underground to emerge since the Civil War, The Order, which robbed banks and armored wars, counterfeited money and committed murders across the country in the early to mid-1980's.
Pierce's doctorate was awarded in the discipline of physics by the University of Colorado at Boulder. Though he originally hailed from Atlanta, Pierce ended up in the Pacific Northwest, teaching physics at Oregon State University until 1965, when he left academia to work briefly as a Physicist in the private sector in New England.
It was during this period that he became involved in the ultra-conservative but not outwardly fascist or neo-Nazi John Birch Society, which has traditionally ousted members for openly anti-Semitic points of view, =including Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance, Richard Butler of Aryan Nations, and others.
In 1966, Pierce left physics for good and threw his lot with the America Nazi Party led by George Lincoln Rockwell. After Rockwell's death, the American Nazi Party had little life left in it, until it was resurrected by Harold Covington a few years ago. Pierce eventually formed his own splinter group, the National Youth Alliance (later The National Alliance). Over the course of the last 15 years, Pierce moved his organization from the Washington metropolitan area to Westboro, West Virginia. Like the Church of the Creator (COTC) and White Aryan Resistance, Pierce has abandoned Christianity as a religion tainted by its Jewish roots. Instead, Pierce promotes an anti-Semitic "Creativity" style religion similar to that preached by the COTC. Pierce had close ties with COTC founder Ben Klassen and owns several acres of property that he bought from Klassen in rural Georgia.
The National Alliance and Pierce are most successful as propaganda wills.. His press, the National Vanguard, publishes not only Pierce's hateful novels, but also tracts advocating forcible separation of the races, "proofs" that blacks are genetically inferior to whites and bizarre theories of Jewish control of American government, society and thought. He broadcasts a weekly radio program called "American Dissident Voices" which he makes available for all to hear on his Web site.
Shortly following the death of poet Allen Ginsberg, who was Jewish and gay, Pierce stated that he believed that persons who published material such as Ginsberg's should be shot. This speech was reproduced at a Web site, which is emblazoned with the motto "Free Speech."
Pierce also once wrote that "all the homosexuals, race-mixers and hard-case collaborators in the country who are too far gone to be re-educated can we rounded up, packed into 10,000 or so cattle cars, and eventually double-timed into an abandoned coal mine in a few days' time." This statement is, of course, similar to the actions of Hitler's Third Reich. Despite [or because =f??] Pierce's stark neo-Nazism, research shows that the National Alliance is a consistently growing organization.
The World Church of the Creator
Matt Hale
Another Conservative Right group that is a descendent of Rockwell's American Nazi Party is the so-called World Church of the Creator. As seen above, William Pierce rejected Christianity because it was "contaminated" with Judaism. Hence, he and other followers of American Nazism, specifically Matt Hale, established a new religion of "Creation." The following description of the religion of Creativity =an be found at http://www.creator.org
After =ix thousand years of recorded history, our people finally have a religion of, for, and by, them. CREATIVITY is that religion. It is established for the survival, Expansion, and Advancement of our White Race exclusively.. Indeed, we believe that what is good for the White Race is the highest virtue, and what is had for the White Race is the ultimate sin.
Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
David Duke
The =following description can be found at http://www.duke.org/. David Duke is owner of the David Duke Online Report.
David Duke is the best known and most politically active racist in the United States and has one of the longest resumes on the Far Right. Beginning as a Nazi sympathizer as a student at Louisiana State University, Duke eventually formed the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, of which he was national leader. His lieutenants included Don Black of Stormfront web page, Louis Beam, now of Aryan Nations, and Tom Metzger, =ow of White Aryan Resistance.
In the early 1980s, Duke left the KKK to form the National Association for the Advancement of White People, a group he called a "civil rights group" for whites. He also made a foray into electoral politics, running first for President on the 1988 Populist ticket backed Holocaust denier Willis Carto and managed by former American Nazi Party official Ralph Forbes (under George Lincoln Rockwell). His running mate for a short period of time was militia sympathizer Bo Gritz. After garnishing a tiny number of votes, Duke then =ut his emphasis on Louisiana politics, winning a seat in the Louisiana legislature.
In 1992, Duke shocked the country by forcing Louisiana into a runoff election for governor that he eventually lost. Recently, however, Duke ran abortively once again for president in 1996 and was very recently elected to head the =OP in St. Tammany, Louisiana, the largest white parish in the state.
Holocaust Denial and the "Respectability" of Racism
Committee on the Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH)
As pointed out by Schmaltz, though it was once espoused solely by the "lunatic fringe," the denial of the Holocaust has become an acceptable art of the public fare in both academic and public media outlets. The Committee on the Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), part of a national neo-Nazi (Aryan Nation/Christian Identity) movement in the United States, regularly runs advertisements in student newspapers on public and private university and college campuses. They openly seek to persuade young students that the holocaust was a lie, perpetrated by powerful Jewish conspirators seeking even more power.
CODOH was originated by Bradley Smith and Mark Weber, using marketing techniques that are directed at students. Of course, university and college students are not only experienced with the Internet but are also somewhat disposed to challenge authority. Recent ads, like the one appearing in the student newspaper, the Logos, at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, hooks readers with a promise of a $250,000 reward to whoever can arrange a 90-minute, prime-time nationally televised debate about the Holocaust between Smith and ADL.
According the AntiDefamation League, Smith readily admits he doesn't "really expect a TV debate to take place." This ad, like Smith's previous efforts, is a "bait and switch," a deceptive enticement spouting follow promises designed to encourage students to visit his "vast Internet archive of revisionist scholarship and comment."
Conclusion
In spite of the absence of the title "National Socialism" in the language of the Conservative Right in the United States, the original racist, misogynist, and genocidal creed of National Socialism and its objectives have been inherited by various Conservative Right groups sharing the same ideology of hate. The legacy of this creed can be traced from Hitler's third Reich eugenics theorists and practitioners to the American Nazi Party, the National Alliance, the Aryan Nations, The Order, and Christian identity--among others. It is also found in various guises in social policy and political pronouncements and proposed "solutions" of politicians and spokesmen for the Conservative Right, including powerful Conservative Right factions of the Republican Party.
In addition to spouting the Holocaust Denial theme, various Conservative Right groups associated one way or another with the Republican Party, rallying against Civil Rights legislation passed largely in the 1960's, have used what amounts to the creed of National Socialism on which to base their arguments and their movement.
In the year 2000, we are witnessing a dramatic increase in hate groups across the U.S. Many of them spout the most hateful invectives against Jews, "mud" people, "60's Liberals, the U.S. Government, and women. The Internet has proven to be one of their most effective means of their communication and growth, enlisting more and more disenfranchised or just simply disturbed people. their hate websites are filled with overt threats against leaders of liberal groups and other social causes. We have also witnessed an apparent willingness of some young people-- mostly young white males --to use assault weapons to kill others as well as themselves. Among the latter, police and investigators found a disturbing presence of neo-Nazi sentiments and admiration of Adolf Hitler.
Footnotes
*Labels such as 'Conservative' and 'Liberal' are notoriously vague. However, the term 'Conservative Right' is taken to refer to a spectrum of political groups generally associated with the Republican Party in the United States. It is also taken here to refer to the extreme and religious Right and Far Right Conservatism in the United States.
Fred G. Herrera
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