Fascism's First Steps: Heywood Broun's Warning From the Past

by Nomad

The name Heywood Broun has largely been forgotten by most people today. That's a real pity too.

As a newspaper writer, he was a forerunner of the great journalists like Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite. Sadly it seems as though the era of the great reporters has come to an ignoble end and we’ll probably not see a new Broun or Murrow anytime soon.

So I wanted to take a moment to introduce you to Mr. Broun.

Born in Brooklyn in 1889, Heywood Campbell Broun was a child of fairly well-off circumstances, and with his father’s wealth from business, was privately educated at the Horace Mann School. In 1906, he entered Harvard University but never finished his studies there because, the story goes, he failed to pass an elementary French course.

As a columnist, Broun worked for a number of different papers, including the New York Tribune and the New York World. His career also took him abroad as a foreign war correspondent with General John J. Pershing in Paris during World War I.

He was certainly a character and many stories were told about him. One story revolves around his acknowledged sloppiness.The magazine article made this observation about his appearance

In the country, he affects a proletarian costume, consisting of a sweatshirt and pair of frayed trousers, offset by a considerable expanse of unrelieved Broun in the middle. He wears shoes cracks with age and socks that look as though they might be a continuation of long winter underwear.

His appearance was such that when he first met General Pershing in Paris, the General asked him in all seriousness, "Have you fallen down, Mr. Broun?"

The Church, Fascism and the Remarks of Bishop Daniel Jenky

by Nomad

In the Footsteps of Hitler 

Sometimes you hear statements by supposed authorities that sound so unbelievable you really have to wonder about their grasp on reality.

Take this recent remark by Bishop Daniel Jenky, who currently serves as Bishop of Peoria, Illinois.

As reported by ThinkProgress last month:

As part of a lengthy historical lecture on past attacks on the Catholic church, Jenky claimed that President Obama is following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler:

The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate. . . .

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.  In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

On the Bishop's remarks, Think Progress article concludes :

The very suggestion that Obama or his actions even vaguely resemble those of the Third Reich is deeply offensive and calls into question whether Bishop Jenky possesses the most basic understanding of the history of Nazi Germany.