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The Asian Event — Mao

Richard Barnes

This post reviews the second of two events which help demonstrate the very real, deleterious impacts of Darwinian, Marxist, and Nietzschean philosophies in our education, entertainment, media, civil government, and other public and private spaces. The first event, the European, related to Tito. 

The second event, the Asian, relates to Mao.

It is difficult for us today to understand or sympathize, let alone vicariously experience the shock, disappointment, and demoralization of the Second World War generation upon learning that China had fallen to Communist tyranny.

I was born a few years after the fall of China to the Communists and a few years after that I would hear phrases such as “we lost China”, “we betrayed China”, and “we betrayed our ally.” Later in life, when I did my own reading and research, I saw that such sentiments were very widespread across America, but not so in the institutions of Washington D. C., despite a significant minority of congressmen and senators who attempted to get to the bottom of whatever had happened.

Similar to the intrigues which eventually succeeded in betraying Mihailovich and installing Tito in Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union had placed critical listening posts in both Japan and China, as well as in Washington D.C. Remember that the Soviets were our “ally”, and security was lax if not nonexistent with regards to Communists in critical intelligence and policy centers. Recall how “Wild Bill” Donovan knowingly and recklessly contracted Communists because they will “fight Nazis”. We are still bleeding from the damage that pragmatic yet foolish policy did to our country.

Who were these listening posts? Men such as Lauchlin Currie, administrative assistant to FDR; Professor Owen Lattimore, assigned by FDR to China as “advisor” to Chiang Kai-shek, the writer, Agnes Smedley, a tireless promoter of the Communists in Yenan, China, who was a favorite of Gen. Joseph Stillwell, who never failed in undermining, undercutting, and loudly insulting Chiang Kai-shek, our ally in the efforts against Japan.

Stillwell was not named in the Venona files; he was a useful idiot. The rest were nefariously immortalized therein, along with others who played their own sinister roles: John Service, a U. S. State Department “reporter” whose “dispatches” were nothing less than rivers of venom against the anti-Communist Nationalists and swooning encomiums on behalf of the Communists; Sol Adler and Harry Dexter White, of the United States Treasury who successfully withheld critical assistance to the Nationalists which assistance had been authorized by law.

(Are we surprised at the unequal application of law that we are seeing today, over seven decades later? This contempt for law and for its just application has a long pedigree in world history and is not new in our own experience, sad to say.)

Two more mentions are important for this narrative: Chen Han-seng, a Comintern agent who, in 1949, after his work was done, decamped, along with many others, to Peking (now Bejing) where he was installed as an official of the Communist regime there; and Richard Sorge, a German-born Communist operative based in Tokyo known to history as perhaps the most successful Red agent of all time. Although his is not a household name, his impact has affected us all.

Sorge’s objective was simple: make certain that Japan does not go to war with her traditional enemy, Russia, now the Soviet Union. In order to protect Stalin, all efforts were focused on instigating war with the United States.

Internally, in Japan, Sorge’s highly connected Japanese assistants forcefully lobbied the Imperial Cabinet to strike, not north at Russia, but to the south against British, Dutch, or American Pacific interests. The pretext was oil, sorely needed by the Empire.

Eugene Lyons in The Red Decade, wrote, “While the invasion of China was under way, Moscow did not relax its efforts to obtain a nonaggression pact with Japan. But no stone was left unturned in the effort to force a Japanese-American conflict … The Soviet hope — quite justifiable from the angle of Russia’s own Realpolitik — was to get Japan and the United States at each other’s throats….”

Sorge also had his contacts in the United States, where discussions were taking place about the advisability of seeking a truce with Tokyo, who was winding down its four-year war with China, and so avert a direct clash between Japan and the United States, who were ostensibly championing the anti-Communist Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek. 

Sorge’s friends jumped into action, with Currie strongly advising FDR that such a modus vivendi with Japan would do “irreparable damage to the good will we have built up in China.” Others also argued and lobbied forcefully against any approach between Japan and the United States.

To get a sense of the absolute lack of integrity in these people, in their total immersion in Marxist ends-justify-any-means depravity, consider that one of their repeated and strongest arguments was that any peace with Japan would be a betrayal of “our noble ally, Chiang Kai-shek”. That such a betrayal would be “destructive of the Chinese belief in America”. 

So, we had two large, Red choirs singing the same tune stereophonically: one in Japan, the other in the United States, and both playing and singing a work composed and conducted by Moscow. 

They succeeded in both countries: there would be no peace between Japan and the United States; no attack by Japan on Russia; and no peace in the Pacific.

One could argue that Pearl Harbor would have happened anyway. Maybe. However, the more important observation is that the outcome was fully in keeping with Moscow’s intentions. The historical record, including the Venona archives, make this abundantly clear.

And as it became obvious that Germany and Japan would be defeated, the Communists began their volte face operation to discredit Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists while promoting the Reds, led by Mao Tse Tung (Mao Zedong). 

The script was almost exactly the same as that employed on behalf of Stalin and Tito, only here it was edited for Stalin and Mao. 

The Nationalists, who had been depicted as heroic and tireless in their war against the Japanese invaders, were now, mirabile dictu, incompetent, corrupt, cowardly, and, for good measure, actually did not do any fighting. All the fighting was really done by Mao’s Communists. To say that this was an exact inversion of the truth, is to write with extravagant understatement. This unrelenting Niagara of official disinformation coupled with overt contempt and outright sabotage of stated United States policy of assistance to the Nationalists, succeeded. The Nationalists were indeed defeated and Chiang Kai-shek exiled himself and his people to Taipei (Taiwan). 

The reader who would like to know more about this appalling chapter of our history would do well to read Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. Suffice it to say that Mao’s toll of up to 80 million dead are likely underestimates. 

One of the culprits in this distressing saga was Philip Jaffe, an American Communist whose influence in the China tale is without measure. Jaffe was an editor as well as publisher and writer of his own magazine, China Today and later, Amerasia. He was caught red-handed (no pun intended) receiving purloined documents from the State Department from John Service. These documents were confidential information from the Nationalists to the United States. The case was eventually swept under the proverbial rug but the record is available for interested parties to peruse.

Perhaps Jaffe’s own words shine a light into the mindset of so many Americans working to undermine their own country and countrymen while promoting an ideology responsible for the murders and tortures of so many millions and the attempt to enslave the rest:

“It was through Chi Chao-ting, a cousin of mine by marriage, that I accepted the Communist version of Marxism as a guide to the contemporary world … For a period of more than fifteen years, Chi Chao-ting and I were intimate personal friends and close personal associates … He would ultimately become the economic adviser to H. H. Kung, the Kuomintang (Nationalist) finance minister, while simultaneously working clandestinely as an underground operative for Mao…. Upon his death in 1963 in Peking he would be given a hero’s funeral.”

The many Americans, many of whom were Ivy League educated, were not motivated by money to act against their country and their neighbors. Recognition and fame were not the guiding star which spurred them in their unflagging promotion of Communism here and abroad. 

No. Like Philip Jaffe, Communism was the lens through which they gave meaning to the world and to their lives.

As for the millions dead, as New York Times reporter, Walter Duranty, coldly and pitilessly put it: “To make a good omelet, you must crack a few eggs.” For him, that was justification for his outright lies in denying the Stalin famines in the 1930s. Lies which earned him the Pulitzer Prize, which to this day has not been revoked.

And to this day, the “China hands” were never brought to justice.

At least in this world.

Philip Jaffe (1895-1980) at left, in Yenan (Communist-held) China. Owen Lattimore (1900-1989), second from left; Zhu De (1886-1976), second from right, from a wealthy family he adopted Communism; Agnes Jaffe (1898-2003)

Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975)

Mao Zedong (1893-1976)

Lauchlin Currie (1902-1993)

Harry Dexter White (1892-1948)

Sol Adler (1909-1994) and Mao

Gen. Joseph Stillwell (1883-1946)

The European Event — Tito

Richard Barnes

In Seeds Planted, I noted the profound, injurious, generational influence Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Frederick Nietzsche have had on Western civilization over the last one hundred and fifty years or so. In other posts, such as Universities: 1960s, I’ve cited the very real, practical impact of such philosophies on professors, students, corporate, and government elites in the 20th and 21st centuries.

To further illustrate this very real, deleterious impact, a brief review of two major events of the Cold War would help.

This post will look at the European event, the next will consider the Asian.

As a kid, I was assured by the Weekly Reader that Marshal Tito was a heroic maverick within Eastern European Communism. That he was a thorn in Stalin’s and, later, Khrushchev’s sides. If you check the ever-so-reliable Wikipedia, you’ll read, “During World War II, he was the leader of the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe.”

With what is now known, and has been known since the mid 1990s when the Venona decrypts (secret messages between Moscow and its American agents) plus Soviet archives were made available, it is inconceivable, but all-too-familiar, that Wikipedia would print such drivel. It is also revealing that the reality behind Tito and his rise to power is still unknown to the vast majority of Americans.

It is most important to keep in mind that the Venona messages were known to United States intelligence back in the 50s. Yes, the “Red Scare” decade, so called. But these were kept undisclosed to Congressional investigators who were in turn castigated — by those hiding the evidence — for “looking for Communists under every bed”. 

Not only that, but what the messages revealed was also known to major Communist agents, such as Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, who, at great risk to their lives, informed the FBI and others in the executive branch (the White House) in both Democrat (Roosevelt, Truman) and Republican (Eisenhower) administrations, each of which stonewalled and did so successfully. The Uniparty is not a new thing.

This knowledge was known and certainly was obtainable by “hard-nosed reporters” like Edward Murrow and Drew Pearson, who instead obfuscated, diverted, and reported calumniously against men and women who attempted to sound the alarm.

George Clooney, who came along decades later, is certainly without excuse. He knew that Annie Moss was indeed a Communist agent. However, his movie focused on Murrow-hagiography and McCarthy-condemnation. In a press interview, Clooney admitted that he knew she had been a Communist but that the issue Murrow supposedly harped on was her right to face her accuser. This is poppycock. She had been afforded that right, something the movie clearly obfuscated. But, of course, if the movie had made it clear that she was a Communist, there would have been no movie.

Most of us will recall that Hitler and Stalin, supposed “enemies to the death”, had agreed to a pact in 1939. This had all the usual suspects clamoring for “peace” and non-intervention except for Japan. There, we were to pull all the stops to help our gallant ally, Chiang Kai-shek. We will look at that part of the sphere, and the dizzying volte-face from Chiang to Mao, in the next post.

While the Pact was still in force, Hitler invaded Yugoslavia in early 1941. Resistance to Hitler was a group named the Chetniks, headed by General Draja Mihailovich.

Mihailovich and the Chetniks fought valiantly and successfully until the Hitler-Stalin Pact was abrogated in the late summer of 1941. Then, mirabile-dictu, another “resistance” group arose, called the Partisans. Unlike the Chetniks, who were both anti-Nazi and anti-Communist, the Partisans were Communist. Their leader was Josep Broz, a Stalin protégé whom we know as Tito.

By the end of 1941, after Pearl Harbor, the United States had entered the war as a Soviet ally and in 1942 the pro-Tito blitz in the power corridors of Washington had begun. From whence this push for Tito?

Venona fingers two agents, Duncan C. Lee in Washington and Cedric Belfrage in New York City. Lee was the top assistant of the head of American intelligence, “Wild Bill” Donovan, and Belfrage was the top assistant of Donovan’s counterpart, William Stephenson, who ran British intelligence in North America.

The two men actively recruited Communists and trained them in guerrilla warfare and techniques.

As a side note, Donovan was one of the more colorful figures in modern American history. However, his cold pragmatism whereby he had no concern with Communist agents just so long as they “fought Hitler”, misled him and, more importantly, harmed his country beyond calculation.

The trained guerrilla units were assembled in Cairo where yet another Soviet British agent, James Klugmann, recruiter of the Cambridge Five — Blunt, Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Cairncross — operated most successfully.

Klugmann was Tito’s biggest promoter, submitting countless reports praising Tito and denigrating Mihailovich. He attributed military action by Mihailovich to Tito, he showed briefing maps that falsely reflected vast Partisan control over much of Yugoslavia, and he suppressed news of Nazi statements where Mihailovich (not Tito) was named as the enemy of the Reich.

He even lied about Mihailovich’s actions against the Italians by calling them “meetings” and “evidence of collaboration” between the Chetniks and Mussolini.

Incredible — because it was incredible indeed — were his reports describing the Partisans as paragons of virtue and as progressives and lovers of democracy and respecters of rights, ad nauseum.

A less well-known American, Linn Farish of the OSS, the predecessor agency to the CIA, also added his poisonous two cents. He flew into Yugoslavia to work with the Partisans and the British and after a mere 6 weeks there, he submitted a report that mirrored those by Klugmann, praising Tito and condemning Mihailovich and the Chetniks as traitors and Nazi collaborators; a complete inversion of the reality.

Farish had not spent a single minute with Mihailovich; clearly his “report” was hearsay from Klugmann and the Communist Partisans. He even went so far as to say the Partisans reflect the founding of the United States, whose patriots are forerunners of men such as Tito.

His “report”, by some bureaucratic miracle, was placed in the hands of FDR shortly before the Tehran conference with Churchill and Stalin. It became the first item on the agenda and Roosevelt handed it to Stalin, who must have striven mightily to suppress a chortle.

Within weeks, Mihailovich, the anti-Nazi and anti-Communist, was abandoned by England and the United States, and all resources — American, British, and Soviet — were channelled to the Communist Tito who hunted Mihailovich down and had him executed after a show trial.

Venona confirms:

Farish was a KGB contact with the code name “Attila”

Duncan C. Lee supplied the Soviets with top classified information, including the D-Day invasion and operations in China and Japan. He also divulged British and American diplomatic negotiating strategy, something Stalin no doubt very much appreciated

Cedric Belfrage reported to Soviet intelligence on private discussions between Winston Churchill and William Stephenson, head of North American British intelligence. He turned over British intelligence for the entire western hemisphere during World War II and shortly thereafter.

James Klugmann was a devout Communist whose fanaticism did not raise Churchill’s, or any American’s, eyebrows, and whose “reports” were taken at face value. 

The above, and many more confirmed by Venona and the Soviet Archives, in addition to United States government files, were responsible for the loss of American, British, and allies’ lives whose activities were divulged to the Soviets, the Chinese Communists, the North Korean Communists, and others. 

For the most part, these men and their coteries came from privileged backgrounds and enjoyed the very best education offered by the West, including American Ivy League colleges, Cambridge, and others. We will be looking at that “Western education” in future posts.

None were ever brought to justice.

The next post will look at the same playbook followed on the other side of the globe.

Draja Mihailovich (1893-1946)

Josip Broz “Tito” (1892-1980) and Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

James Klugmann (1912-1977)

William “Wild Bill” Donovan (1883-1959)

Duncan C. Lee (1913-1988)

Cedric Belfrage (1904-1990)

Breakdowns In The Fringe

Richard Barnes

[My intent is to return to the series of posts begun before my mother’s death wherein I discuss our neglect of the Historic Faith and the concomitant breakdown in our society. The post below was first published four (4) years ago, on October 11, 2019, and serves as a good re-introduction to the aforementioned series, which we will now continue.]

If you don’t denounce breakdowns in the fringe, you’ll soon see them lionized in the center.

In El Pao in 1958, we children did not know that, back in the States a horrible drama was unfolding, which, as I saw decades later, confirmed a comment I had heard. Something about breakdowns in the fringes of society, if left unaddressed, would take center stage.

This was an era when, for the most part, certain subjects were not discussed in the presence of children. I recall sitting in the El Pao bar with WWII veterans and never hearing a single curse or blasphemy. So much was the care to not offend children, that when Hollywood profanity was unleashed in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s my shock at the language suddenly present in films was genuine and guileless.

So it does not surprise me that I only heard about the Starkweather murder spree decades later, when movies and at least one rock song were based thereon or alluded thereto.

We children did hear conversations about movies like East of Eden and Rebel Without A Cause. Films which, according to the general tenor of the discussions, reflected disaffected, conflicted, alienated, and mutinous youth. You might call them Jean-Paul Sartre’s offspring. Furthermore, when families were portrayed, the depiction was not flattering.

I remember seeing Rebel Without A Cause during a movie night in the camp. Several things struck me: the father walking around wearing a girly apron; the absence or diminishment of God; an utter incomprehension as to what exactly was bothering the James Dean character; and revulsion at the Dean character’s drinking the family milk directly from the bottle and placing it back in the refrigerator. As usual, I assumed these themes were too profound for children; hence my distaste was probably unwarranted. However, I wasn’t alone in the confusion, as I heard adults talking about it and also expressing less than full admiration.

The series of aforementioned events took place in Nebraska. The protagonists were a nineteen-year-old young man  who dressed, combed his reddish hair, and acted like the Rebel’s James Dean; and a thirteen-year-old girl who dressed and acted as much as possible as her Dean-like boyfriend, except her hair was dark brown. 

These two could be Exhibit A for those Americans who “knew”, in a guts-knowledge sort of way, that the theatre, of all other arts, had perhaps the greatest influence or effect on behavior. But most did not know the men across the Atlantic who worked obsessively to use the stage and the theatre precisely to influence the society in which they were reared. Men such as Bertolt Brecht and, of even more influence in America, Kenneth Tynan, and a few others, who were transparent in their purpose: to promote hedonism and permissiveness, including the unrestrained use of coarse, blasphemous, profane language on the stage and in public: some, because they believed there was a link between the utter denial of self-denial and their socialistic political agenda; others, because they simply were compelled to tear down whatever Christian pillars remained in what they considered to be a stifling, boring, bourgeois society.

So we should not be surprised that Brecht fervently worked to use art “not as a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” He also said, “Don’t expect the theatre to satisfy the habits of its audience, but to change them.” 

Kenneth Tynan’s oeuvre can probably best be summed up with his, “I hope I never have to believe in God, it would be an awful confession of failure.” Well, he succeeded wildly in coarsening our culture. It is sad to think that, despite his ugly outlook, he did admire C.S. Lewis, who had been his tutor at Oxford. After having read Lewis’s The Hideous Strength, he said, “How thrilling he makes goodness seem — how tangible and radiant!”. It is unfortunate that he did not follow through with this admiration.

I will readily concede that by the time of these men’s work, there was already a demand, however inchoate, in western audiences for the excreta they would put out. But their impact is undeniable, nevertheless.

Of course, it is much easier to tear down than to build up. And the two Nebraska murderers certainly destroyed: a masterful vindication of Brecht, who died a mere 3 years before the events related here, and Tynan, whose influence was greatest in the America of the late 1950’s through the 1960’s. Not to mention the existentialist tenor pervading society, especially youth.

The girl’s parents (mother and stepfather) were opposed to her relationship with the young man and acted to stop it. In addition, the youth’s parents were also opposed, a position which enraged him to the point of physically attacking his father, an event resulting in his expulsion from home.

One night, the angry youth stopped by a gas station in the town where they lived. He pulled a shotgun on the attendant, a young man of twenty-one, married and soon to have been a father. Before long he lay dead, his head blown beyond recognition.

The youth then went to his girlfriend’s house where they killed the girl’s mother, step-father, and two-year-old sister with rifle butt, kitchen knife, and bullets. They stuffed the mother’s body down the outhouse toilet opening; crammed the baby sister’s body in the box that had been used as a garbage can and placed it in the outhouse; dragged the step-father’s body to the chicken coup and left it there.

They then cleaned up the blood in the house and drank pop and ate chips that evening. For almost a week, they remained there, buying food and milk on credit from the milkman, as her family’s corpses rotted nearby. When folks would come by to visit or inquire, they were scooted away by the girl who would tell all that everybody was very sick with a highly contagious flu, an excuse which soon began to wear thin.

They realized they’d have to skip town and decided to go to an old friend of the young man’s family: a seventy-two-year old farmer who often let the boy and his siblings play and hunt on his farm some twenty miles from town.

The murderous couple’s intention was to steal the farmer’s car. And kill him.

After shooting him in the head, wounding his dog as it ran away, and dragging his body to an out building, they spent the night in his house eating and drinking pop.

The next day they drove off but got stuck in mud and had to abandon the car and walk, with the old man’s 22 rifle and handgun. They were befriended by a teenage couple, childhood sweethearts, who offered them a ride. The killers asked them to drive back to the dead man’s farm; this they did, in innocent ignorance.

The seventeen-year-old young man was shot six times in the head; his sixteen-year-old sweetheart was shot once in the head and stabbed repeatedly in the abdomen and pubic area.

Their bodies were hauled to the storm cellar and abandoned there. The killers took their car and drove off, back to town.

There they invaded an industrialist’s home which the youth had often seen during his days as a garbage collector. They repeatedly stabbed the wife in the neck and chest, while finding a moment to break the family poodle’s neck to keep it from barking.

When the man of the house arrived, he was met with the barrel of a gun, but he quickly deflected and began a fight to the death with the killer, who excelled in only one class in school: gym. The fight dragged on but finally the youth got the upper hand and shot the forty-seven-year-old man dead.

The killer couple remembered the maid they had locked up in a bedroom closet. The maid, who was hard of hearing, meekly allowed the degenerate teens to tie her to the bed where she was repeatedly stabbed. They then drove off in the family Packard.

This time they drove west, towards Wyoming. They had car trouble. Seeing a car parked alongside a road, they thought it’d be a good one to steal. Its owner, a middle-aged shoe salesman was sleeping and the youth woke him, only to shoot him nine times in the head. That was to be their last murder victim, Mr. Merle Collison, husband and father. The murderer pushed the body to the passenger’s side and tried to drive off, only to have trouble releasing the emergency brake.

A young geologist saw them and, thinking they were having car trouble, walked up to the driver’s window only to have a gun pointed at him as his eyes glanced at the corpse in the front passenger’s side. He figured he had to fight and so did.

That was a good decision, for while they struggled, a Wyoming deputy sheriff drove by and, seeing the commotion, stopped. The youth jumped back in the Packard, while his girlfriend ran to the sheriff, quickly transforming herself into a damsel in distress.

After a short pursuit, both were in custody and returned to Nebraska where they were tried and found guilty of murder. He, playing the deceased James Dean to the end, was electrocuted in 1959; she made parole in the 1970’s.

Later in life, I apprehended how prescient had been that conversation I had heard, that the breakdowns in the fringes of society were not being explained, let alone denounced.

As severe deterioration was increasingly evidenced here and there (for instance, the Clutter murders took place in Kansas a mere year later), some (many?) parents were closed mouthed about it, believing that “the experts” – teachers, bureaucrats, psychiatrists, clergymen — were better able to deal with it. However, some clergymen, either directed their fury to wine and beer and other irrelevancies (alcohol played no part in this ghastly series of crimes), while others continued slouching their congregations away from the historic faith towards a sort of progressive twentieth century new beginning, cheerfully oblivious that, thus far, more people had been killed in that degenerate century than in any other, while still others preached what was termed an evangelical gospel message, but one that had little relevance to what was happening right before their very eyes.

In an age whose elite was feverishly busy destroying and mocking its Christian foundations, all under the guise of creating a truly “civilized society”, the church should have been dedicating the time and sweat to intellectually and spiritually denounce such intellectual termites.

So it is no surprise that, when it came to parenting, millions of parents of “The Greatest Generation” turned from the Bible to Dr. Spock’s humanistic advice in Baby and Childcare. The results have not been pretty as generations have been trained to look to themselves for solutions as opposed to seeking the Mind of God, our Creator and Redeemer.

To take two noteworthy examples, while parents and churches hearkened to humanism’s siren songs, Marx’s 19th century 

Manifesto and Connolly’s 20th century “programme” were being promoted in the theatre and university and legislatures throughout the twentieth century and bore spectacular fruit: abolition of the death penalty; equalization of wealth; rehabilitation of criminals; free medicine; food subsidies; decriminalization of homosexuality; easing, if not outright elimination of divorce laws, thereby weakening marriage; children’s rights; elimination of all  discrimination; and so forth. Question any of the above today and you will be denounced as a troglodyte. Or worse.

As for teachers, they were coming awfully close to intellectually justifying or at least “understanding” these acts – acts which even children (before twentieth-century-indoctrination took hold) could plainly see were wholly, horrendously unjustifiable by any civilized measure.

As for politicians and bureaucrats, they sought for angles and positioning: the political Freudians, in their myriad manifestations, urged more therapy and, therefore, more dollars to state-funded psychiatrists and psychologists, most of whom represented another, alien, philosophy as opposed to an empirical discipline; the political Quakerians, in their multifarious, contradictory incarnations, urged more jails, as if evil could be transformed into goodness by some inner light emanating from a cell in Sing Sing.

A mere twenty years later and beyond, Hollywood was making, not one, but up to four or more movies, in effect, romanticizing these murderers who were absolutely devoid of any sense of pity or compassion. A major rock star wrote a song about them. And a major publisher was backing a project where the murderous lassie would be able to tell “her side” of the story (she claims innocence, of course).

If you don’t denounce breakdowns in the fringe, you’ll soon see them lionized in the center.

In that era, the paradoxical 1950’s, precious few men forcefully and learnedly tied such actions, whether murder or otherwise, to their antecedent: a loss of the Faith. Lonely preachers valiantly made that case. But they were few.

Typical reactions to such acts were ineffectual because both the action and the reaction proceeded from the same source: an antithetical faith whose genesis occurred way back in Eden, where man determined to decide for himself what was good and what was evil.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980)

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Caril Ann Fugate and Charles Starkweather, convicted murderers.

Robert Jensen (17) and Carol King (16), the sweethearts murdered by the killer couple. This was the murder which was tried and for which the James Dean wannabe was executed. Their high school junior class was reduced overnight from 8 to 6. Both were greatly loved and greatly missed. And, decades later, their town was aghast to learn that the murderers held a fascination for some people, including Hollywood.

Robert Colvert (21), murdered gas station attendant. His only daughter, Barb, was born five months later. She still weeps when talking about him, given her recollections of interactions with her mother.

Mr. and Mrs. Ward. He was the industrialist who fought to the death. Still remembered as a generous couple.

Lilyan Fencl, the Ward’s maid. She was remembered as shy, gentle, quiet, and hard working.

Velda Bartlett: Caril Ann’s mother. One of the first murder victims.

Betty Jean Bartlett, the 2-year old step sister of the murderess. They killed her with the butt of a gun.

Murderer statement shortly before his execution in 1959. A self-pitying, alienated sentiment, worthy of Jean-Paul Sartre, who is very much with us still.

Mami

Richard Barnes

I was blessed with a happy childhood. Part of what enabled that blessing was having a mother and father who did not allow a complaining spirit in the home and who were astute enough to remind us of our blessings and daily provision, not least of which was food on our table every day.

I tended towards a bit of “shyness” but my parents did not allow me to shrink away from social events or gatherings; on the contrary, they pushed me into them, which sort of “forced” me to swim or sink. And I am grateful, because to this day gregariousness is not my strong suit; nevertheless, I remember my parents’ and now “force” myself, instead of relying on mother or father to do so.

Ada Barnes, née Rodriguez, was born September 30, 1930, in Upata, Estado Bolívar, in the interior regions of Venezuela. Her home was typical of the era and the region: a rustic, colonial type structure, meaning a front door and heavy wood casement window facing the dirt street. Beyond the door was a small rectangular receiving room. Farther on, an entryway led into an open hallway which led to the kitchen, and beyond it, a larger garden area with fruit trees, chickens, turtles, and pigs.

My mother’s earliest memory was of the men who would be hired to come and slaughter a pig for food. It was a very loud affair and she would run as far away as she could within the house, find a corner, and stop her ears. That memory stayed with her to the end.

She had formal schooling through the third or sixth grade (I heard both versions and was never able to confirm either), however, her grammar was impeccable and her handwriting, beautiful. After a secretarial course, she was hired by the Bethlehem Steel and worked in San Félix until she met and married my father who also worked at Bethlehem, known to all as he who “nos pagaba todas las semanas (he paid us every week)”, as an elderly friend recently wrote to me. But he was better known outside the company as a wonderful baseball player and manager who skippered his rag tag team into Double A championships. Mom was his biggest fan.

They moved to El Pao and our family grew to four children: two girls, Brenda and Elaine, and two boys, Ronny, the youngest of the four, and me, the firstborn.

In that time and era, our parents’ friends were also our friends. So, I remember with great fondness, Mr. and Mrs. Berán and Ninoska, and their patriarch, Mr. Axmacher, and matriarch, Mrs. Panchita. Also, the Belafonti’s and Jackson’s, Carmen Luisa, who was also my godmother (Madrina), Mario Pérez and his wife, Oladys, Paco, who ran the camp gasoline station, and also Sr. Medina, Dad’s mechanic, and Mercedes, his wife, and Mr. John Tuohy and his wife, Clara, and Mr. Giliberti and his wife, Lucila, and Charles Abaffy with whom my father had a hilarious, continual repartee, Mr. and Mrs. Ivanosky from Russia. Those are the names that come up immediately, and more and more also are making their way from my memory banks, but I must stop. The point is that all these folks were adults who, later in my life, were also my friends and advisors. My parents’ friends were my friends. Practically all are gone now. But my gratitude remains.

In 1978, I had planned a 3-week vacation to Venezuela. My plans were detailed and efficient — I had packed lots of experiences into that period of time. Or so I thought.

Then I shared my plans with my mother, who immediately thrust a list — a multi-page list — of names with telephone numbers into my hand. She insisted that I visit each and every one of the people on her list. 

“How can I fit these visits into my plans?!” I asked, with a bit of exasperation. 

“You must”, was the simple reply.

And I did. I visited every single family or person — with only ONE exception, and that was because the husband was ill and the wife was indisposed, or so they told me over the phone. Later, as I dutifully reported my obedience to her, when I came to the one couple whom I had failed to visit, my mother smiled, “Well, at least you called them. They cannot say they were ignored. And I am not surprised at their refusal. Life has many people like that, but you must not be like them.” 

So, she figured they’d tell me to hit the road and still she included them in her list! That’s my mother.

I must say, of all the trips or vacations in my life, including spots in exotic places of the earth, that 1978 trip, jam-packed with visits to friends and family, was among the most memorable because it was focused on people — men, women, and children who meant very much to my parents and to me.

Not too many young men can boast unapologetically that their mother planned their exotic vacation. I am proud to say that my mother planned mine on that occasion, and it turned out to be among the most memorable of all. And it was a lesson that has remained with me to this day: what endures are the personal relationships — friends, family, dear ones — more so than the spectacular sights or experiences. Life is short, too short. But we were created to live forever. In the Lord, friendships, family, brethren will live on. And we will see them again.

My mother widowed on October 9, 1982. She had no interest in remarrying and remained a widow until her own entrance into glory on September 6, 2023, 24 days shy of her 93rd birthday.

The last weeks of her life as she steadily weakened, the last thing to go was her mind. She remembered me immediately each time she saw me or upon hearing my voice. But not only me: it was the same with her other three children, and her grandchildren, and even her great-grandchildren. She was alert, even when appearing to be asleep. At times she’d exclaim, “Me duele el cuerpo“, or “¿Qué me pasa?“, or at the end of a prayer or the reading of Scripture, with great effort, she’d say, “Amén” or she’d be able to utter, “Dios te bendiga“. 

Such utterances became more difficult and infrequent.

Shortly before her passing, we received a visit from Carmen Herminia, one of our childhood friends whom we had not seen for over four decades. It is difficult for me to describe that joyful occasion, other than to say that it was impactful to my mother, who by that time could not speak. She had tears of joy as Carmen Herminia played voice mail messages from several ladies from the church in El Pao and as she heard them express their gratitude to my mother and to my father for their years of service there and their impact on their lives and their consistent reflection of love and devotion to the Triune God and the Christian faith. We sang hymns and prayed and Mami was content.

In addition to her husband, Charles, her parents, Julio Rodriguez and Eleana Pérez also preceded her in death. She is survived by her children, Richard M. Barnes (Lillian), Brenda E. Barnes, Elaine M. Childs (Christopher), and Ronald M. Barnes (Heather); 21 grandchildren; 15 great-grandchildren; many nieces, nephews, and extended family.

She is the last of the fathers, mothers, aunts, and uncles with whom we grew up. My sadness is deep, but so is my gratitude. She died midst her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. 

Thank you, Mom.

This is not Upata; however, structure on the far left offers an idea; my mother’s birthplace front facade was a single door and casement window in a space slightly wider than what is seen above just left of the utility pole.

This gives a clearer idea; however the above is far “nicer” and beautified for contemporary consumption.

From left: Aunt Sarah, Uncle Wichy, Father, Mother, Miami, Florida, circa 1956. Mom was the last surviving member of that generation in our family.

Mother and Father, September 25, 1957

A day where most but not all her children and grandchildren visited. She talked and smiled much.

Mom received children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The photo does not reflect her gestures and smiles, but they were there. She was content.

To Be Continued….

Richard Barnes

The blog has gone a bit dormant because I am focused on my mother, who is fast approaching death. 

Happily, she has received many visitors, mostly family in the dozens — children, grandchildren, great grandchildren — which is a great joy to her and to us. She has also received heartwarming messages from old friends in Venezuela.

My sister, Elaine, and her husband, Christopher, have allowed tens of folks — and many children! — to come in and out of their home as they and we continue to care for Mom.

It is not a large home so space, time, and a bit of quiet to sit and “cogitate” for a decent blog post are practically nil, not to mention that my focus is elsewhere at the moment. I must indeed get some work done and I do that in coffee shops nearby before rushing back to the house.

By God’s grace, I will return to the series of posts on the destruction of our roots, the willful dumbing down of generations of Americans, and the old pathways we need to rediscover if we are to avoid oblivion.

For now, I’ll merely acknowledge — because it is so much “in your face” — the almost frantic push for “diversity” or “inclusion”, which is anything but true diversity or inclusion as it so obviously excludes and disparages our heritage in all walks of life: education, commerce, entertainment, professions (including the medical!), and much more.

When one seeks an education, one has to exclude in order to successfully acquire an understanding, however general, of what makes our life in the West worthwhile. What we learn must have a certain unity and design. This was generally the case up to about the time of “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture’s got to go!” Even so, however, the foundations were already being destroyed such that by the time of Jesse Jackson’s demands, only a push was necessary to make it happen.

And what has happened? Education has become a “grab bag” of lesser lights and a perverse denigration of very real if not heroic figures important to our heritage. If educators were honest, they would readily admit that what they are pushing is not “diversity” but rather, another heritage, be it African art, Aztec wonders, or Communist propaganda. That admission would at least have the refreshing quality of candor.

That forthrightness will not become evident with the current motley crew, however. At least not yet. 

Because their true intent is not diversity or inclusion. Their intent is the destruction of our heritage, which is undeniably Western and Christian.

And to fight back, it is necessary to know that heritage, at least in general.