Today’s Recommended Reading
I recommend this 2016 essay by our generation’s G.K. Chesterton, our own beloved Tom Simon:
It begins with a discussion of a rhythm and blues song, moves onto the horror of plastic knives at picnics, and dives into the deeper waters of discussing the goodness of mosquitoes, the Human Extinction Movement, and other matters of import.
Here is one paragraph from the second half, to whet your curiosity to read more:
A rather saintly German pastor, who had suffered terrible things at the hands of the Nazis, was once brought before Hitler himself. When asked what the Führer looked like, he said, ‘Like any man; that is, like Christ.’ He was capable of seeing the image of God even in his most dangerous enemy. He would not have said to Hitler, ‘You’re no good’; he would have been more likely to say, ‘You have a great capacity for good; why don’t you use it?’ It probably would not have averted the war or the Holocaust, because Hitler was convinced that these things actually were good; but it would at any rate have left the door open for a miracle.
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Years later, another visitor came away with a hauntingly human image of Hitler. Siegfried Knappe, a young Wehrmacht officer (he was twenty-eight when the war ended) who was briefly the youngest divisional commander in German history, was in Berlin during the final agony of 1945. His superiors sent him to Hitler’s bunker to deliver some bad news, fearing (with justification) that he would do drastic things to them if they delivered it personally.
By all means, read the whole thing.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
