Posted by In 1973, I worked as a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Botanical Museum. My host, Professor Richard Evans Schultes, occasionally invited me to dine with him in the teachers’ dining room, where on one occasion I sat next to Professor Kenneth Galbraith’s table and a cross-table conversation developed between Schultes, a conservative, and Galbraith, a liberal. What I got to hear from Galbraith was pure neo-Marxist ideology and should have been a warning for me and a harbinger of things to come.
In 1979, I had given up on my academic career as I saw German academia drift more and more to the left. The authority of the professor was systematically undermined. Academic institutions were increasingly run by Marxist juntas. Students demanded that they should rate their own work. Political correctness was on the march. I could see that as a staunch conservative I would be the odd man out. I looked for other opportunities and found them. In 1983, I was hired by the German firearms manufacturing company Heckler & Koch to run their US subsidiary in Virginia as its President/CEO and moved to Mantua, a Jewish neighborhood in Fairfax, VA.
Several days into my new job one of my department managers asked me for a meeting. He made it short: “If you continue to wear bow ties I will quit.” he said. I was baffled. I had been wearing bow ties all my life. “What is wrong with a bow tie?” I asked. He explained to me that the bow tie is an accoutrement worn only or mainly by liberal professors or lefty intellectuals. As the CEO of a firearms company in the USA I should not send out the wrong social signals. Instead, I should wear a tie if I must or better leave my (plaid) shirt open, wear a broad belt, and a Western-style belt buckle with and “NRA” logo on it to show my support for private gun ownership and the Second Amendment.
As a student in Cologne I had attended lectures read by an American Professor Newman (fort his first name) about the US Constitution. I heard his words, but I did not understand. When I arrived in the USA, I still did not have a clear understanding of the uniqueness of the American Constitution and of the Bill of Rights.
My employees soon changed that. They brought me the Declaration of Independence, the text of the Constitution, of the Bill of Rights and of all of the other constitutional amendments. They brought the Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, to my attention and gave me books about the Militia, the 2nd Amendment, and the original intent of the founding fathers of the American Republic. Gradually, I began to understand what made the American Constitution and Republic so unique.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are truly two parts of the same document. The Second Amendment says:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
The “militia” at the time was “We the People”. The States should be “free”. Reading the Federalist, one gets the distinct impression that the founding fathers wanted the States to remain free from a power-hungry central government. The entire Bill of Rights was written as an additional protection against the potential tyranny of the central government. Like the Constitution overall, it protects the citizens against their own government. That the founding fathers deemed such protection necessary, shows their deep distrust in government and in the ability of humans to govern responsibly. And “shall not be infringed” is the strongest prohibitive legal lingo. On the background of this distrust we must read the following passage of the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Wow! Now that is taking freedom seriously. Our rights as citizens come from God (or nature if you want to keep God out of the picture), not from a “social contract” or from the government. Government cannot rightfully take what it has not given. Government may revoke your driver license, which is a privilege, not a God-given right, but it is not allowed to revoke your rights of self-defense, free speech, or religious freedom. The Constitution even grants the People the right to rebel, to revolt, to abolish their system of government if the governing no longer protect these basic God-given rights. This makes the American Constitution entirely unique. I know of no other constitution that grants its citizens the right of insurrection.
As I began to acquire some deeper understanding of the basic principles of the American Republic, I fell in love with them. In 1989, my wife and I decided to apply for US citizenship. I had entered the country as a delegated manager of a foreign company with an E-2 Visa. Consultants advised me that we should first apply for a Green Card, which implies the intent to later acquire citizenship and that we should hire an immigration attorney. The consultants were specific about the immigration attorney. “You should contract with a female attorney, preferably a person of color.” We did not understand why, but it did not take us long to find out that it was sound advice.
We did not have to wait long for our fist appointment at the INS in Washington DC. We were seated in front of a young black lady who introduced herself as our case officer. After browsing through some papers, she looked me straight in the face and asked: “You come from an affluent country. Why do you want to become a US citizen?” – I was baffled. The unspoken implication in her questions was ‘people from affluent European countries should not or should not want to become US citizens.’ I was not prepared for such a resentful question and answered truthfully “Because I like living here.” The black lady straightened her body. “Well, then let me educate you about the purpose and the objectives of US Immigration Law. It is to provide a safe haven for the underprivileged and disenfranchised of the Third World.”
The Hindu Indian attorney must have sensed my consternation and anticipated a confrontational response from me. She started pinching me in my left thigh, but the devil made me do it. Probably looking rather pissed – which I was – I said: “Don’t you have enough people in this country who can’t carry their own weight? Do you really want more people who come here with no education, no money and no skills and who are a burden on the American taxpayer from day one?” The attorney started pinching harder. I continued “Would it not be a good idea to let some people in from time to time who are productive and can make an immediate positive contribution to the economy and society?”
The Case Officer did not say any further word. She looked furious, fumbled with the paperwork in front of her, and then declared the meeting closed without explanation or further ado.
“Did you have to do this?” Asked the immigration attorney on the way out. “If this does not kill your immigration case, it will at least delay it. You will see.” And we did see. No response. Delayed responses. Forms needed to be completed several times. Fingerprinting had to be done three times. You get the drift. I won’t bore you with all the details. In the third year of our application we moved to North Carolina and were now dealing with another Case Officer, who was more cooperative. Still, it took us over five years until we finally got US citizenships. The award ceremony was held in Charlotte. “Yo, and what do the stars and stripes of the American Flag mean?” I told the officer. “Sing the anthem.” I did. The verse with the free and the brave, you know. “And the greatest thing you are now going to be able to do is to vote.” Said the officer leading the ceremonies.
From here on everything went downhill. During the Clinton and Busch years Democrats still thought and acted with the system provided by the Constitution. Then came the new generation of young academics and managers who had listened to Saul Alinsky (one of them was Hillary) and who had been indoctrinated to see America as an evil power that must be destroyed. Everything suddenly became Marxist and was preached with an enthusiasm that made me wonder if these people even knew about the repeated failures of all efforts to implement Marx’ ideology in the real word. Equality (+ Equity) and social justice became the new top values with the new generations. Freedom and capitalist free market society. What started with liberating women from male domination turned into its contrary. For the radicals, women must eradicate all femininity in their persons to truly count as women and men must eradicate their (toxic) masculinity. Since Roe-Wade, 61,628,584 babies have been aborted (killed) in the USA and American women fight for their right to do this while women in Afghanistan have their eyes gauged out for studying at a university. Marxist BML and Fascist Antifa hordes are beating people in the streets and in restaurants, burning down buildings and destroying inner cities. Our voter protection laws no longer protect white voters – only black voter. Our government engages in criminal activities and the deep staters spent four years with one made-up story after the other to get rid of a duly elected president. Presidents rule by fiat, election fraud is rampant, and we are our laws are increasingly made by nincompoops like Ms. Ocasio Cortez or Ms. Maxine Waters. We are destroying our civil liberties and our economy because of a flu virus that is mainly a fabricated “pandemic” and generals are mor concerned about gender equality in the Armed Forces than about defeating our enemies. And our enemies are laughing their hearts out. In short: America has lost its moral course, ineptitude rules, and corruption in this country has become so widespread that we the People have lost all hope in the capability of the system to correct itself.
Perhaps Ben Franklin was right when he said:
“We need a revolution every 200 years, because all governments become stale and corrupt after 200 years.”
The United States of America was founded on July 4, 1776. Which means the next revolution is 45 years overdue.