Thursday, February 27, 2025

Part I

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New Political Leadership in Germany: Conservative Reset and Electoral Shift in Germany

The conservatives won the recent election. It took place Sunday in Germany, a party identified as the leading party of the center-right, that would be the Christian Democratic Union, gained a plurality of seats in the Bundestag, in the German parliament. And thus the leader of that party, Friedrich Merz is going to be Germany’s new chancellor.

Germany, by the way, has a parliamentary system. The legislative branch, the parliament is known as the Bundestag. There is also a federal president as head of state. And so the German chancellor is the head of the government, but not the head of state. But in terms of politics, the German chancellor is all that matters.

The big story here is a political shift, a shift away from the center-left to the center-right. Olaf Scholz, who had been Germany’s chancellor, he got the job after the retirement of Angela Merkel who had been chancellor for longer than anyone else in German history. It was Olaf Scholz who basically conceded to reality knowing that his party would lose. But the big question is whether his party, the Social Democrats that had been in power for some time, have come in second or third. The party came in third. It is still expected to join with the party that gained the most here, the Christian Democratic Union, headed by Friedrich Merz who will be chancellor. And so that skips over the party that came in number two, and that is Alternative for Germany, it is known as AfD, and that party is often described in the Western media as a far-right party.

So the Christian Democratic Union, that’s the party that came out way ahead in first place in this election, is described as center-right. The social Democrats, a party that has been more inclined towards socialism is identified as the center-left. And then Alternative for Germany is described as the far-right.

Now, is there a far-left? Yes, indeed there is a far-left even as identified by Western media, and that party is pretty much far on the ideological left. But at least there are those who recognize there is a far-left as well as a far-right. All kinds of worldview issues arise here. But before we turn to looking at AfD and some of the issues of controversy making headlines on both sides of the Atlantic, let’s consider the situation in Germany.

In this case, we are helped by the fact that the New York Times just yesterday ran an article with the headline “Threads of the Iron Curtain Cling to the Vote in Old East Germany.” This is a reminder of how much culture matters and how much history matters.

So when we talk about Germany today, we’re talking about the modern nation. But remember, Germany hasn’t been a nation as long as you might think. As you look at Germany, say, in the beginning of the 19th century, it was not one nation. It was an assemblage of several German states, several German principalities. Prussia was always the biggest, the richest and the most powerful. And eventually, Prussia entered into a union, and that meant that eventually the modern nation of Germany emerged and almost immediately the balance of power in Europe was changed.

The balance in power in the European continent, particularly in Western Europe, has always depended upon the relationship between Germany and France. And the relationship between Germany and France was at least a major part of what occurred in the 20th century in the shape of two devastating world wars. And so Britain has played the role of intervening on behalf of France, not once, but twice in the 20th century, eventually also with allies in both cases, eventually including the United States of America. A reminder to us that what happens in Europe doesn’t stay in Europe.

But the German elections are really interesting because they represent a political shift, a political shift to the right. Now, just put that in the context of the fact that various things have been reshaping the political map on both sides of the Atlantic. Most importantly, the election of Donald Trump to his second term as president in November of 2024. Now you’re looking at this situation in Germany. Is it the same? No, it’s different. 

Number one, we are looking at a parliamentary form of government. And that means that you’re not looking at someone running for the chancellor’s position as if you have someone running for president of the United States. Instead, you have legislative elections. And the party that has the majority or can form a majority, that party leader becomes the chancellor. Much like in the British system, the party leader of the winning party becomes prime minister.

The shift in the election that took place on Sunday is from what is described as the center-left, a more liberal party leadership, to the center-right, a more conservative party leadership. But the big headlines are actually about the far-right and increasingly the far-left. Because you have coalition governments in a parliamentary system, it’s very different than what we have here in the United States where we have presidential elections.

But history emerges in another way. The history of Germany was altered profoundly by the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s into the early 1990s. The reunification of Germany was something that many people sought to avoid. Even as you had the fall of the Soviet Union and you had leaders such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher extremely pleased with the fall of the Soviet Union, Prime Minister Thatcher was not all in favor of a reunified Germany. And you can understand the history behind that. The 20th century had been the great threat to Britain by a unified Germany. She did not want to move in that direction. She was eventually persuaded.

But it’s also very interesting to see how the reunification of Germany between West Germany, which had been a western democratic nation, and East Germany, which had been a Marxist government under the Communist Party’s control, and frankly under the control of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany was something recognized as a political miracle of sorts at the end of the 20th century, even as the fall of the Soviet Union precipitated the same.

But the reunification of Germany has made Germany, once again, one nation, sort of. Not completely. The electoral patterns in Sunday’s election demonstrated the fact that much of the energy in a more conservative direction wasn’t in the former West Germany, but in the former East Germany. That’s why the New York Times ran this headline, Threads of the Iron Curtain Cling to the Vote in Old East Germany.

What’s the issue there? Well, the issue there is similar as a pattern in some American regions as well. You had areas that perceived themselves to have suffered economically in the great economic transformations of the last several decades. East Germany was far behind West Germany in economic development. That is because it was under the totalitarian rule and control of the Soviet Union. It was committed to communism, it was committed to Marxism, which in case you haven’t read the memo, doesn’t work.

But another Christian realization is that the past is so powerful that we don’t get over it as quickly as we would like to think. Germany is reunified, but it isn’t equal. You see the legacy in terms of the communist rule in East Germany in the fact that East Germany per capita income, social mobility, social advancement, it still lags behind the former west of Germany.

Now, here’s the interesting thing. As you look at political change in Germany in Sunday’s election, it was the former East Germany that moved most clearly in a more conservative direction. And that registers a very deep discontent with the unified government in Bonn. And in particular, with the social Democrats who had been in control.

Now, it’s interesting, I think a lot of American Christians will hear the name of the party that won the largest number of seats, the Christian Democratic Union, and wonder, “Well, do those three words actually go together? Are they all three meaningful?” Union in this case basically just means party. That leaves us with the other two words, Christian and democrat. Is it committed to democratic government? Well, it is in terms of what we understand is a modern democratic form of government. Doesn’t mean an absolute democracy. It means a constitutional democratic system of government.

What about the word Christian? That’s the interesting part. This should be a reminder to us that in the ruins of the Third Reich, what emerged as a very powerful political union was a union of parties that were self-consciously Christian. Now, that’s not to say they were all made up a born-again Christians. It is to say they were absolutely convinced in the aftermath of the horrors of the second World War that it was Christian truth and Christian morality which must be asserted at the very heart of the nation. Now in a secularized age, the Christian Democrats in Germany are not nearly so confessionally Christian as they once were, but it is a reminder of the fact that in the urgency of the aftermath of Germany’s devastation in two world wars, the nation understood, and this was West Germany, understood the necessity of a Christian foundation of government. In a far more secularized age, it’s not so much Christian in the reality of the present as it was in the tradition of the past. Another reminder to us nonetheless.

But Alternative for Germany, described as the far-right, having doubled the vote it obtained in the last national election in Germany, what does that mean? Furthermore, this is now of course at intersection with American politics. US Vice President J.D Vance speaking at the Munich Summit there, just a matter of days ago in Germany, castigated Germany’s current government for limiting the free speech of conservatives and in particular of Alternative for Germany. And he spoke of the suppression of conservative voices challenging the German government to stop canceling the voices and suppressing the messages. You also had Elon Musk so close to the White House offering very supportive messages for Alternative for Germany.

So when you have the American press talking about a European party and describing it as far-right, what do they mean by that? Well, here’s where we need to develop something of a defense mechanism against the use of language. We need to know that when we see language like that, we had better look further beneath the surface to understand what’s going on. When you describe something as far-right, well, when it comes to the left, that is like saying, “Wrong. Far wrong. Double wrong.” We understand that’s exactly the game the press is playing.

But here’s where Christians do need to understand a distinction. American Christians need to pay particular attention to this. There is a distinction between conservative and the right, the language of the left and the right, meaning liberal and conservative in trajectories. This goes back to the French Revolution and the seeding of the assembly. You had conservatives on the right. You had liberals, radicals on the left, thus the language of left and right that continues in American political discussion.

Conservative means those who are committed to conserve certain truths, certain patterns, certain structures. This is a very essence of conservative. The right means mostly that you reject the left. It is a battle between left and right. So conservatives are on the right, but we need to be honest and say there are some on the right who don’t really function as conservatives.

The big question is, does that describe the Alternative for Germany? Well, here’s the very interesting thing. Even as we talked about the lasting legacy of the division of Germany into East and West, it’s also very interesting to see when you have a party described as far-right, described as the Alternative for Germany, you need to take a closer look.

Alice Weidel is the leader of the party. And well, as many people have pointed out, she is herself representative of some of the contradictions right now on the German right. Here’s my favorite sentence about her. It really kind of stands out. Here’s what she said in an article in the New York Times, Ms. Weidel said this, “I am not queer, but I am married to a woman I have known for 20 years.”

Now, I don’t know exactly what to do with that sentence. To me, if you’ve been married to a woman for 20 years or 20 minutes, you’re queer. But it does appear to be her way of saying, “I’m not identifying as LGBTQ.” It might be by inference that she wants the legal benefits of marriage in terms of sharing a home with this other woman. It’s just very strange.

And so let’s just say you can’t be very conservative in a genuine sense, if you have to start a sentence by saying, “I’m not queer, but I’m married to a woman I’ve known for 20 years.” You’re not conserving marriage, you’re not conserving family, you’re not conserving the structures of creation if that’s where you have to describe yourself.

On the other hand, it is really clear that what you have in many in the West and many in Germany describing this party as the far-right, they’re basically dismissing a lot of authentic conservatism as well. Because when you say center-left and center-right, that means that you’re describing kind of a consensus between left and right and the middle. This pretty much describes the American picture with the Republicans and the Democrats in, say, 1960, but it doesn’t work this way anymore.

The difference is that in a place like Germany, you have the breakup. because of their parliamentary system, into various minor parties. In the United States often referred to as third parties, even though they might be third, fourth, fifth, or whatever. The point is, we have a two party system precisely because we elect a president by the electoral college. So long as we elect a president by the mechanism of the electoral college, we’re almost assuredly going to have a two party system. That means the big dynamic is inside those two parties.

For example, during the period of the 1970s, the big story was the movement within the Democratic Party to the left. Similarly, the big story on the conservative side was the movement of the Republican Party, the movement in the Republican Party, from the middle to the right, a far more conservative party. Just consider the Republican nominees, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. You’ll see the change.

But in the case of the Alternative for Germany, the question is, does far-right apply? That doesn’t mean it should be censored. It doesn’t mean it should be made illegal, but is it far-right? How exactly does that descriptor fit? I think I want to bring in at this point Douglas Murray, he’s a British figure. He is a very influential conservative in Great Britain. He’s one of the conservatives that is seen through so much of the leftist of the liberal mess of the last several decades.

In a major interview, about a half a page in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, he scoffed at the put down of far-right, “Far-right,” he said, “is one of those labels around whose use we could do with having some hygiene.” You got to love the British calling for hygiene with words. He went on to say, “I’ve only ever been called far-right by Islamists and far-leftists who want to try to stigmatize me like I’m a totally unreasonable headbanger.” Got to love the British. He said, “It is a smear designed to shut down debate.” So that’s absolutely true. It’s one of the reasons why I want to point out when someone says far-right, you want to say further right than whom? What does this represent? It often means an effort to try to just dismiss an argument or dismiss a party.

But we need to note that even as Douglas Murray said that it’s often misused, he came back and said, “When it comes to Alternative for Germany, we need to send the message that it just might be complicit in some far-right elements, including allowing voices that would serve, for instance, as apologists from the Nazi regime.” In Germany, that’s no small thing. In moral terms, that’s no small thing. And so the encouragement here is for Alternative for Germany to make very clear that it is not going to tolerate the voices of that nihilistic right, but is rather going to represent a conservative force in German politics.

Worldview’s all over the place here. It’s a reminder to us that politics becomes a litmus test. It becomes a diagnostic test to tell us what people really believe. It tells us about people’s frustrations and anxieties, the economic strains, for example, in the former East Germany. It also tells us about how people want to define the politics. And you’ll notice this, the professional politicians want things to stay in a consensual middle that always represents a long-term victory for the left. And so that’s one of the reasons why the disruption these days in politics is coming primarily from the right, a story still to be unfolded in Germany.

Part II

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Target Faces More Consumer Backlash: Now, the Left is Infuriated at Target’s Backing Away from DEI Initiatives

But next, let’s come back to the United States. The Trump administration has been cracking down on DEI efforts, that is diversity, equity, inclusion efforts, that have become so much a part of the left’s activism in American institutions, corporations, academic campuses, and all the rest. Sometimes it’s very helpful to get a little distance and see what people elsewhere are observing.

And so in this case, I want to turn to the Financial Times published in London. Here’s a headline, “Backlash Greets Target After Diversity Retreat.” So okay, let’s just remind ourselves of something before we turn to this article. In recent years, we have often discussed Target precisely because of these DEI initiatives. You may recall just a matter of a very short time ago when Target was making headlines because it was pushing so much LGBTQ pride material, completely offensive material, to the front displays of its stores. It was declaring its absolute solidarity with DEI initiatives. It was putting its name on just about everything obnoxiously DEI. But now it has shifted gears. Let’s ask the question “why?,” because this is actually something The Financial Times points to. It says we have to understand at a deeper level why is it happening.

Now, I’m going to get back to The Financial Times because it points to something else of importance, but right now I just want to say, why would Target switch gears here? Was it because of consumer pressure? A little bit. No doubt. Target tried to say, “No, we’re not hurt by this. We’re so committed to DEI. We will lose customers in order to do what’s right.” Well, a company that defies its customer base for long is what you know as a former company. So no doubt that had something to do with it.

But I think there are two other things. Number one, it’s very easy to say you’re going to follow these kinds of programs with all their ethnic and racial and identity, preferences and all the rest. You can say that. It’s very hard to actually make it happen and make your company work. The point here is that when you buy into identity politics and you structure your company by identity politics, you’re not going to be able to stay in business for long.

There are a couple of other things. It’s not just the frustration of the companies that adopted this DEI policy. It’s not just the opposition from without, coming especially right now in a very concentrated way from the Trump administration. President Trump and his administration have done just about everything by executive order they could do to expunge and reverse these DEI programs where federal dollars go. It’s a little harder to get to private employers. Nonetheless, when you look at companies, they have a relationship with the federal government. Eventually, the Trump administration is forcing the issue even at the level of the company like Target.

Shareholder action is also something that has been taking place, something else conservatives have had to learn to do. Conservatives often don’t show up at shareholder meetings, even though in terms of a lot of investment. The fact is that conservative Christians in many cases have the right to show up at a shareholder meeting, a demand to change in company policies. Even if the company doesn’t immediately change its policies, you have set down a marker.

But even as I say it’s one thing for these companies to say they buy into DEI, it’s another thing when they lose customers and also find it very difficult to employ, there’s something else going on here, and that is that there are many on theLeft who are done with DEI. Very, very interesting. There are people on the far-Left and in some of the groups identified with identity politics who say, “Look, a lot of these companies were only giving lip service to this anyway. They were buying us off,” say people on the Left, “by talking about their commitment to these DEI policies.”  But in the end, what they want is an economic, cultural moral revolution. Target wasn’t buying into a revolution. It just won a good progressive leftist corporate identity markers.

Anyway, the story in The Financial Times says that now you have people who are rebelling against Target for making this announcement. About two years ago, Target was faced with a boycott from conservative Christians. Now it is facing boycotts from groups identified with identity politics who say they’re just done with Target.

What’s the lesson here? You know what? If you’re the president or if you’re the corporate board of a big corporation, especially when dealing in consumer products, you better be careful about trying to tout your ideological identity. Because it turns out, that’s not what people want from Target. What they want from Target is stuff that doesn’t fall apart, sold at a reasonable price. That’s it. No one’s going to Target for a moral code. Or if you are, God help you.

We’ll continue to follow this issue. I think the most dangerous thing is that DEI doesn’t go away, but it’s simply rebranded. That you keep the basic structure, the basic cultural Marxism that’s put in place there, you just rename it as something else. We’ll watch that.

Part III

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Clint Hill and the Moral Verdict of History: The Death of Famed Secret Service Agent Reminds of the Importance of Getting History Right

Meanwhile, in conclusion, I want to shift to another news story that reminds us of the moral burden of history. Obituary, in this case, in the New York Times this week, Clint Hill, agent who sprang to the Kennedy’s aid in Dallas dies at age 93. You see those horrifying pictures. They’re from Dallas, November 1963, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and you see a brave Secret Service agent leaping on the back of the vehicle towards the president and the first lady. Eventually, he pushed the first lady off the deck of the car, which was then getting ready to speed towards a hospital. He used physical force to press her back into the seat. He was actually a part of her detail, even as he had been on the personal detail before of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Clint Hill believed that it was effectively a demotion to be moved from the presidential detail to the First Lady detail, but in God’s providence in the view of history, as others would say, he was in that place at that time precisely to spring into action. His great agony, which led to a nervous breakdown, and an eventual retirement as second-in-command to the Secret Service, was that he had not protected the president of the United, that he had been unable to protect The president of the United States. In images and in films seared into the nation’s long memory, you see the Secret Service agent leap into action, but by the time he got to the president, it was too late. By the time he got to the president, the president was effectively dead, and Governor John Connolly of Texas had also been shot. But he did save the life of the First Lady, something she remembered long, long after the events and throughout her lifetime.

Clint Hill was an interesting person. Of course, he was the center of the work of the Warren Commission and other historical investigations into the nature of the Kennedy assassination. It was the burden of history that drove him in so many ways.

On a program years ago, I made a statement about looking at controversies over something like the Kennedy assassination, the assassination of the president of the United States, and I pointed to how many conspiracy theories surround it. And I just made the point, which is very important from a Christian worldview perspective, that when we look at a question like that, we should apply the very same investigative tools and the very same intellectual categories, the very same moral judgments to the assassination of a president as it would to any other crime. That’s a discipline Christians need to follow. When we’re looking at a category, we need to apply the same standards to everything that fits in that category.

I made the statement and didn’t think much about it after that, but just a few days later, I received an email from Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent whose obituary was just published in the New York Times. I did not expect that reach out. And he just reached out to me and said, “Thank you for making that argument about the rules of evidence and the way an historical event should be investigated.” Sometimes, oddly, we find ourselves brushing against history.

November the 22nd, 1963 is now more than 60 years in our rearview mirror, but for Christians, it reminds us that history presents the demand. Not only that we get the story, but that we can continually rethink these issues, making certain that we understand the great lessons of history aright. It’s a long-term discipline to which we are called, and we’re called to it together.