Don't Be Stupid, Be a Smarty
O'ROURKE, P.J.
Don't Be Stupid, Be a Smarty Come and join the Nazi party. BY P.J. O'ROURKE Left-wing loudmouth and strident anti-American Gunter Grass has admitted that he was a member of the Waffen SS. This...
...The foreigners...
...It is expensive...
...But both are war crimes...
...In an interview in 2000 he'd told that same newspaper, "I belonged to the Hitler Youth, and I believed in its aims up to the end of the war...
...Preferably the Poles...
...Well, Odin isn't...
...I don't think so...
...Herewith some statements by Gun-ter Grass...
...The New York Times sighed at the revelation: "For many on the left since the 1960s he has come to represent the conscience of a country with much to lament...
...If the Russian winter hadn't forced us back into our wolf-dens, we would have torn every man, woman, and child in Moscow limb from limb...
...Both are sure that God is on their side...
...Colonization is for the Ukraine...
...Capitalism doesn't have enough gulags...
...But there's always next time...
...This has been amply demonstrated in pagan ceremonies handsomely staged for the Volk...
...Nursery Rhyme" (from a collection of Grass's poems, 1960) Who speaks here or keeps mum...
...On America (quoted in the New Republic, 8/12/85...
...Never mind that we knew it already...
...On skinhead violence in Germany (from an interview in the New York Times, 12/29/92) In many ways it is an expression of their own self-hate, which was bound to happen with reunification...
...I almost joined Rotary...
...Both are always speaking about God...
...It reminded me of 1941...
...On American foreign policy (from a 1980 letter signed by Grass and other German writers, urging the West German government not to allow its foreign policy to be led by . . . ) an American Government that since Vietnam has lost all right to moralize, into a policy that could lead to the destruction of all life on this planet...
...What was needed in East Germany was Anschluss...
...Who weren't even Jewish...
...Of course he was angry...
...To speak here is to hide Deep reasons kept inside...
...One more thing now being Gunter himself...
...Fortunately my mother liked my lies...
...Rotterdam, Coventry, Liverpool and London followed...
...We have tried to conquer the earth, with poor results...
...On the Bible (from an interview in the Paris Review, Summer 1991) The Bible teaches a bad lesson when it says that man, rather than German, has dominion over the fish, the fowl, the cattle, and every creeping thing...
...On George W. Bush (from an interview in the New York Times, 4/8/03) In language he is close to Osama bin Laden...
...Anyway, the Nazism of Gunter Grass is out in the open...
...Because the Americans might not have the guts to go through with it...
...O'Rourke is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard...
...For example, in 1990, Grass opposed German reunification, characterizing West Germany's treatment of East Germany as "colonization...
...way we had V-2s aimed at London...
...If you don't win the war...
...On being a liar (from an interview in the Paris Review, Summer 1991) As a child I was a great liar...
...I was really impressed...
...And so the weakest of East and West Germany got thrown to the bottom, and they are fighting to be above somebody or really anybody...
...And who is beneath them...
...On bombing civilian targets (from an interview in the New York Times, 4/8/03) We started the first air raids of this kind, killing a city, with Guernica in the Spanish Civil War...
...This came as a shock to the socialist admirers of the German novelist, who had no idea just how National Grass's Socialism was...
...What Herr Grass left unsaid has been added in italics...
...On capitalism, Part I (from a statement at the PEN International Congress, 1/16/86) Is capitalism better than gulag communism...
...It is unsettling...
...a country that was founded on the stolen land and genocide of Indians...
...On capitalism, Part II (from a 1990 statement on the occasion of German reunification) Capitalism has never been more barbaric, beast-like than after the victory over the communist system...
...Here we denounce the dumb...
...Then it was done to us...
...Eva Braun, be my bride...
...What we started came back to us...
...To which nothing more need be added...
...Given this, perhaps his most strident and mouthy public pronouncements should be reassessed...
...The same P.J...
...On the 9/11 attacks (quoted in National Review, 12/31/01) . . . aimed at expressing an explosion of hatred towards the rich north of the world, towards a world rich, cold, and indifferent to the problems of the poor part of the globe...
Vol. 12 • September 2006 • No. 2
