I promised in 2008 that I would do everything I could to preserve our American history.
We started with just simple things like George Washington's writings and his personal items and any of the founding documents we could get our hands on. David Barton and I partnered together on this project. We now have the largest private collection of founding documents in the world. We're third behind the National Archives and the Library of Congress.
We now have the largest private collection of founding documents in the world.
Most of the collection is on the side of a mountain, and if need be, it won't be found—not in our lifetimes. It may be a thousand years before it is found. But like the Dead Sea Scrolls, they will survive. As we were preparing for the "Blueprints of Liberty" experience in St. George, Utah, this is the first time I've pulled out so much of our collection from the vault. We're only pulling one percent of it, and I can't believe the stuff that I'm seeing.
A major part of our collection includes primary documents and artifacts from World War II. We own a government document signed by Hitler regarding the Nazi party. We have a prescription signed by Josef Mengele, the Nazi "angel of death," ordering gallons of luminol to be used to exterminate inmates in the newly built concentration camps. We own a painting from an Auschwitz inmate, who signed the painting with his number rather than his name. He never made it out of Auschwitz.
These are only several of the countless artifacts we have collected from this dark era of human history that brought out the best and worst of men—as darkness usually does. Going through these artifacts inevitably made me ask, "How did the German people go mad? How did you convince regular German people that killing millions of people was okay? What has to take place to transform "ordinary people," like you and me, into an evil empire?"
How did you convince regular German people that killing millions of people was okay?
After a lot of reflection and my recent studies into the years leading up to Nazi Germany, I believe there are three steps to transform an "ordinary people" into an evil empire. And we are on the same path.
Step one is to destroy. You have to destroy what it means to be a citizen of your country—what it means to be a German, what it means to be an American. Do you even know what it means to be an American anymore? Once you confuse a people enough, they don't really know their history; they don't really know what it means to be American. You have them fighting over the flag instead of principles. You have them fighting over politicians instead of the Bill of Rights. Soon, you've got them.
Step two requires that you dismantle everything—their institutions, political systems, family, the economy. This has to be carefully curated over at least a decade.
Step three necessitates the perversion and destruction of morals. You have to destroy churches and Judeo-Christian ethics. At its core, you have to destroy the distinction between good and evil. Soon, they will not be able to distinguish between the two. This is the final nail in the coffin.
Do you even know what it means to be an American anymore?
I've been reading a couple of books on Weimar Germany and the years leading up to the Third Reich. One of them is Eric Weitz' book, Weimar Germany: Promises and Tragedy. This is a well-respected book, and it's no wonder why. Weitz outlines the utter deconstruction of German society prior to the rise of the rise of the Nazi party.
The Weimar Republic was one of the most flourishing societies in the modern West. It was one of, if not the intellectual and cultural hub of Europe, rivaling both Paris and London. How did the people of Weimar Germany become Nazis in less than 20 years? Step one kicked in. Weimar Germany underwent its own secular and sexual revolution that eviscerated the people's understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, what it meant to be German—and even to be human.
Weimar Germany was decades ahead of America's sexual revolution. Berlin cabaret clubs were havens of sexual perversion to the degree that even the most "tolerant folk" today would blush. Transgender treatment as a medical practice began in the halls of Weimar hospitals, the first one conducted in 1930. The patient died after his doctor attempted to stuff a uterus in him.
Weimar Germany was decades ahead of America's sexual revolution.
Men attempted to become women. Women attempted to become men. The distinction between "right and wrong" was dissolved to make space for sexual freedom. The churches no longer preached the true Gospel but rather pontificated on the "social Gospel" that tickled everyone's ears but lacked any substance that nourishes a people's souls.
That was step two. Sound familiar?
When you eviscerate people's morals, their ethics, their understanding of right and wrong, it becomes more clear how "ordinary people" could become co-conspirators of the atrocities carried out under the Nazi regime. If you desensitize a person, a church, a nation to evil, it is only a matter of time before they remain silent and complacent when their regime commits the most heinous of crimes. Their souls have been numbed. That was step three—the nail in the coffin.
If you desensitize a person to evil, it is only a matter of time before they remain silent and complacent to even the most heinous crimes.
Are we on the same road as the Germans were during the Weimar Republic? Are we forgetting what it means to be Americans and the principles that unite us as a people? Are our foundational institutions under an unceasing attack, desensitizing us from the crucial distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, man and woman? Have we forgotten God?
If you answered "no" to any of these questions, you have not been paying attention. I pray that we have not already hit the final nail in our own coffins.
No matter what our future holds, the history that you and I have preserved—because you have been a crucial part of this effort—will endure. It will live on long after us to tell the story of what really happened to our nation. I pray that it will tell the story of us turning back to God, remembering what it means to be Americans, and choosing to pursue the good, even when evil is more expedient and convenient. I pray we don't descend into evil as so many of our predecessors have.
But no matter what happens, the truth will be told. That is why we preserve history. For the sake of truth and that we may be wise enough to learn from it. And there is still hope in our present moment. There is always hope.
No matter what happens, the truth will be told.
It is never too late to turn back to God. We can recommit ourselves to the principles that define what it means to be Americans. We can defend and strengthen the institutions that enable us to live out our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that secure equal justice for all, and ensure that we are all equal under the law, as God intended. We can re-dedicate ourselves to the cause of fighting for truth and goodness, no matter the cost.
It won't be easy. But it's necessary. Would you join me?
