Hiroshima and Dinner with a Nazi

Today is the anniversary of Hiroshima. 

A conversation I had with Thayrone X today on his way too cool for school radio show, On The Edge:

First, let's bring up Ed. Apparently, Ed had dinner with a Nazi. Ed, welcome to On The Edge. You had dinner with a Nazi.

Ed

Yeah, so anyways, coincidentally, for the last couple of nights, my wife and I have been watching a movie. We finished it up. Real good movie. World War II submarine movie called The Enemy Below with Robert Mitchum and Kurt Jurgens. And it's about... Robert Mitchum hunting a Nazi, or I should say a German submarine commander, and then the battle back and forth between. Real good movie. But I totally forgot about something while watching it. I once had dinner with a Nazi U-boat commander. And of all things, the discussion during dinner was the anniversary of Hiroshima, which is today.

Thayrone

Can you tell us, can you go back in the story to where and how you met this guy? What made you sure he was a Nazi U-boat commander?

Ed

I was working with him. And he... You know, we didn't talk about his being a Nazi, but he was a German U-boat commander during World War II, and he was assigned to Japan, actually Tokyo, to teach the Japanese German submarine tactics.

Thayrone

Was this here in America you were working with them?

Ed

No, I happened to be in Italy working there.

Thayrone

Okay.

Ed

Okay and so I was working with an Italian-American and I was on a team that was working there and this guy was part of the business we were in and so we had dinner with him and actually I was told he wasn't a great guy don't trust him blah blah blah but you know we're sitting there having dinner with him and the subject of Hiroshima came up because it was the anniversary Hiroshima. So we're talking about Hiroshima and when this guy had been in Japan he married a Japanese woman and during the conversation they both said the United States did the right thing when they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, did the exact right thing and this Japanese woman said the same thing besides the German U-boat commander so I just thought I was interested to share with you since you said you would have liked having dinner with a Nazi and actually I did.

Thayrone

Well did he expound at all on what it was like being a Nazi back in the day back then?

Ed

You know what? I was very young, obviously very young, and I didn't think about it and I to some degree I think it might have not been the thing to bring up at dinner, We were talking more about the submarine experiences and then the conversation turned to Hiroshima and then some other stuff.

Thayrone

I would have had to have probed. I'm really always curious as to how somebody reconciles wanting to waste an entire race of people or section of humanity and say we're going to kill all these people and then life will be good. How do you get your head wrapped around that?

Ed

Well, you know, for instance, if you watch this movie, The Enemy Below, you see the character that Kurt Jurgens plays, the U-boat commander, and there is a die-hard Nazi that works for him on the boat. And the regular Navy guys, they just have no use for him. They kind of scorn him. And to my understanding, that was true of a lot of the German Navy. They were in there in the Navy when the war started. They were, you know, the Reichsmarine, and they just served because they were Germans and they were fighting for Germany, not for the Nazis. Not, you know, the good Nazi thing, whatever. I doubt that. But I do believe that there were German veterans who were just fighting for their country, not for a political regime.

Thayrone

Civilians as well didn't go along with it, but kept their mouths shut and didn't say anything. They didn't want to wind up in the camp.

Ed

Well, you got to remember that von Trapp of The Sound of Music, he refused to serve in the German Navy. Period. I mean, he was Austrian, but he was called in the German Navy, and he said, No, not gonna happen, and they ran off to the States.

Thayrone

I was at a thing out in Chelsea way back when I've talked about this before. It was not really a dinner, but the guy would throw what's called a salon, where he'd get everybody together at his house. He'd sit there with a white dinner coat on, he had a bell, he'd go around the table with subject matter. It was very interesting. He did it once a year. And I got invited because I'm Theron X, so they love me coming there. But at the end of the table, there was an old woman, I mean really old. She didn't say a word. And all of a sudden she chimed in, she was the mother of the couple sitting next to her, and she was full on German with a thick accent. She talked about how she was in the Sudetenland when she was taken from her parents by the Nazi party and put it to a Nazi school. And she started talking about what that was like. And she said, we have no idea here how close we are to the socialism that her parents witnessed back in the day. And I had a Romanian woman tell me that in Costco, of all places, about we have no idea how close we are to that. I mean, all the little things chime in that happened back then, too, before it caught fire and took over the entire country.

Ed

I've heard, yes, you're absolutely right. I've, there's a woman, Xi Van Ping or something like that. I can't remember her name exactly but I'm trying to get her on my show, frankly, but I've heard her speak and she talks about having been raised under Mao and says, this is, this is what we're looking at here now.

Thayrone

Right.

Ed

Of course, you see Vietnamese expatriates, people who fled, you know, the communists in Vietnam for freedom here and then all of a sudden, they're seeing, they're.

Thayrone

Yeah, and I've had that experience several times. I spoke once out to a bunch of women in Bloomfield Hills, Bloomfield Hills Women's Club or something like that, and a woman there, Polish, same thing, was freaked out at how Americans are so casually accepting communism a little at a time.

Ed

Well, the educational system's working. Hey, look, I'll talk to you later. I hear the music.

Thayrone

And have a great day. All right, thanks, Ed. Thanks a lot. Mr. Your American Heritage right there. A great show that you hear on WAAM Radio. Yeah, and they take it for granted. The kids today have been so dumbed down, so completely groomed by kids today. I mean, all the way up, I'd say, through the age 40. You can't let it happen. You got to rebel against it every chance you get. You got to take it down. You're on the edge.

Muslims and Piracy

 Bill Federer of AmericanMinute.com talks about The Barbary Pirates,

the first Middle East challenge America faced.

We've been there before.

Bill Federer on Barbary Pirates

The Odyssey Explained.

 I interviewed Professor Ben Whalen of Hillsdale, the creator of the new online course they offer on the Odyssey about the story.

We also discussed the Christopher Nolan movie. We both felt it was good and not "woke".

We did a Compare and Contrast.

You can listen: Ben Whalen on the Odyssey.

I also spoke with Dr Matt Spalding, of the Hillsdale Washington D.C. Van Andel Center, who testified before Congress on the Smithsonian leaving it's lane.
Followed by my friend Dave Kallman on some cultural legal victories.

 You can listen here: 7 25 2026 Matt Spalding Dave Kallman

I hope you enjoy. If you listen, you will. It's up to you.

I Love a Happy Ending

 Don't you?

The Declaration

 First we had a roundtable discussion of the Declaration including The Abolitionist Roundtable..
This discussion was supposed to happen on their radio show earlier, but their were many technical difficulties due to weather related power outages.

I asked them to join me on my show where we would try again. Much better.

Then I spoke with Hillsdale Professor and Van Andel Chair Matthew Spalding about the influences that brought the colonists to the Continental Congress to declare independence.
The Making of the American Mind.

SemiQuinCentennial Stuff

We're coming up on the 250th. SemiQuinCentennial. QuarterMillenial, Sestercentennial. 250th.
I've been interviewing authors and scholars regarding it.

Lately I spoke with Hillsdale Professor and Victor Davis Hanson Chair Wilfred McClay about George Washington.
You can listen here. (We got a lot of positive reviews on this.)

I also spoke with Randall DeSoto.
Randy is a frequent contributor to Western Journal.

We discuss his book on the Declaration of Independence, We Hold These Truths, it's roots and it influence over our history.

You can listen here. (We got positive reviews on this also.)

When you go to the Spotify links you can click on the Transcript Tab and read the interview, if listening audibly upsets your significant other :)

Interview With Lambert Pasha

 I spoke recently with Larry Lambert of Virtual Mirage about things Middle Eastern and more.
Larry has been involved in discussions recently with many Middle Eastern leaders in Iraq and Kurdistan, among others. He has some insight.

You can listen here. 

The Declaration

Hillsdale Professor Brad Birzer and I talk about his latest book, ⁠The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty⁠

This is a great book, and a great interview about it.

Flag Day 2026

 Today is Flag Day. The American Flag is my Pride Flag.

It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777, by resolution of the Second Continental Congress. The Flag Resolution stated "That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.

The holiday was first proposed shortly after the 1861 attack on Fort Sumter that started the Civil War.

On August 3, 1949, National Flag Day was officially established by an Act of Congress.

Let your free flag fly.

Memorial Day

 

What Does it Matter?

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

God spoke creation into existence. And the first thing He manifested was light.
Is that the Big Bang?  I don't know, I wasn't there.

When I was young we were told that everything around us is composed of atoms, and these atoms were composed of electrons, protons and neutrons and that they were mostly empty.
It kind of boggled my mind that most of the "matter" that I saw and touched (and roughed me up sometimes) was mostly empty space occupied by these elements. 

Now, the latest theories posit that that was wrong.
Actually, what we see as "matter" is actually the influence of energy (and at that, light) that vibrates and produces effects that appear as solid (or gaseous or liquid, I hope you get my drift).

Everything is vibrating like a string on a guitar that God plucked.

Hebrews 1:3 notes that the Son “upholds the universe by the word of his power,” and Colossians 1:17 says that “in Him all things hold together”.

The Bible also goes on to say that all things were created in Christ.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend (surround) it.

The same One who holds it all together with His word, perhaps His voice.

Now the concept of energy vibrating at different frequencies manifesting itself as matter makes perfect sense. It’s the resonant frequency of God’s voice that suspends the creation.

In Revelation, John speaks of hearing a voice as of many waters. Is that the sound, the source of the vibrations that define the universe?

Powerful imagery. 

In acoustics, there is a concept called "resonant frequency".

If you strike on a tuning fork and place it next to another of that frequency, the second one will begin vibrating also, the sound emanating from the first moving the second.

If you've ever been in a room with loud bass notes and you realize that one of those notes comes out louder than the rest or seems to vibrate the room, that is the "resonant" frequency of that room, that cavity.

Blaise Pascal said:
"There was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace. This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him... though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself."

The God-sized hole has a resonant frequency that vibrates when exposed to the Word of God.

We have sayings: "that moved me" or "I really felt that" or "that really resonates with me".

The Word of God can cause a resonance in the cavity that He was meant to fill.

The Invisible Coup

My friend Mark Tapson interviews Peter Schweitzer about his book Invisible Coup.
And then I spoke with former Ambassador to the Vatican Francis Rooney about Trump's Foreign Policy.

Turns out Francis is a friend of the new pope Leo. I'll have to have him back.

John G West: Endowed by Our Creator.

Ed Bonderenka is joined by author and scholar John G. West to talk about his book, Endowed by Our Creator.

The book explores the basis for the Declaration of Independence, the attacks on it and it's defence.

The Declaration is antithetical to the humanist left.

4 18 2026 John G West

Then Gary Wellings and I talk with author Claudia Logan about Trump and his architectural activity. The Ballroom, The Arches, The Reflecting pool, etc.

4 18 2026 Claudia Logan Gary Wellings

Backlog

Constitutional Professor Will Wagner and I discuss the recent Supreme Court hearing on Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment.

This is probably the clearest analysis you will hear of the issue.

4 4 2026 Professor Will Wagner

Then Will came back to continue a discussion of recent Supreme Court activity including some of the briefs he has filed.

4 11 2026 with Will Wagner pt2

Then longtime columnist and commentator Cal Thomas joins Will Wagner and I to talk about his career and his book A Watchman on the Wall, among other topics regarding our heritage.

4 11 2026 with Cal Thomas 

Ressurection!

 I spoke with William J. Federer about Resurrection Sunday, more familiarly known as Easter.

If you are familiar with Bill then you know this is good stuff.

Your American Heritage 4 4 2026 Bill Federer: the Resurrection

Birthright Citizenship and SCOTUS with Prof William Wagner

I had a conversation with Constitutional Professor William Wagner about the Supreme Court hearing on Birthright Citizenship.

This is one of the most cogent of analyses of the subject I've heard.

And easy to understand.

If you have any interest in the subject, this is for you. 

Your American Heritage 4 4 2026 Professor Will Wagner

Why It's Called Good Friday

 

When they take the Son of God and put Him to death, why is that considered good?

Because when He died that horrific tortured death on Calvary, He took the punishment due us for our rebellion against God.

It was good for us. Was it good for Him?

When He arose from the dead on Easter, He proved that what He said was true. He had been predicting these moments to His followers for a couple years and they did not believe Him.

Until He did it.

The Bible says, "… who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." (Heb 2:2).

So if Jesus came down from Glory, endured the cross, and went back to Glory, what was His net gain?

Us.
We were the joy set before Him.

We are the bride He travelled to a far land to obtain (like Jacob did, among other examples).
Granted we're not the finished product, yet, but if we cooperate with His plan, He sees something in us He wants to spend eternity with.
I'm good with that. That's good.

I want to share a cool thing with you.
If you're not a Christian, please read anyway, because it never hurts to have a little information about what those whackos around you believe.

A few people know that Psalm 22 is a description of the crucifixion of Jesus that was written hundreds of years before the event.
David saw it in a vision and it shakes him up so much that he starts out with:
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
Many Christians have been taught that, as He was crucified, Jesus was crying this out to His Father in heaven, because the Father could not bear to look on Jesus, our scapegoat.
That He was separated from the Father.
That Jesus was accursed (and the Father could not be in fellowship with Jesus because it would violate His holiness) because Jesus was carrying the penalty of the sins of the world.

Give me a break.

<< 1 Corinthians 12:3 >> Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed.

Jesus and the Father had this worked out since before the universe was created, and at the last minute The All-Powerful Ruler of More than the Universe flinches?
No.
If the Father and the Son (who with the Spirit are referred to as the "Godhead" in perfect unity) ever separated, I believe the universe would crumble.

If the Father looked away from His Son in His greatest trial. how could you be sure He would stay with you in yours?

As you read the gospels, particularly John's, you see that the Pharisees (some of them, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, were good guys, by the way) were asking Jesus for a sign that he was the Messiah. He continually answered them that when they saw Him lifted up, that would be their sign.
Here He is, lifted up in front of them. He's surrounded by "strong bulls" (prison slang for guards), and the crowd is taunting Him. It's the scene predicted in Psalm 22 .
Then He quotes the first verse of Psalm 22.

This is called a "Remez". It's a teaching tool Jesus had used for 3 years.

When they hear this verse, they remember the rest of the Psalm.
The Pharisees had asked Jesus for a sign.
He said that they would have it when the Son of Man was lifted up.
(Remember that joke, "Here's your sign."?)
Can you imagine the look on their face when they get it?
This death on this cross by this man was predicted hundreds of years ago.
Here was their sign.
The ramifications are huge.

Do you get it?

These people did:
https://stream.org/did-god-abandon-jesus-on-the-cross/

Negotiating with Iran

 How Trump negotiates with Iran’s leaders:

CDR Salamander, Larry Lambert, Paul Kengor and David Kallman!

First, it's a conversation with Former Lt Commander (Seal Team 5) Larry Lambert and CDR Salamander about the US Navy.

The effects of being out to sea too long, not enough ships, mine warfare, the Straits of Hormuz and China.

Your American Heritage 03 28 2026 with Cmd Salamander and Larry Lambert

Next I'm talking to Paul Kengor, professor and author of :

American Pontiff: Pope Leo XIV and His Plan to Heal the Church 

Then attorney David Kallman discusses the case he's representing in Wayne County regarding a Grosse Pointe school banning a father from seeing his son in school functions for pointing out on Facebook all the gay flags in his sons school.

Your American Heritage 03 28 2026 Paul Kengor, Dave Kallman

William J Federer on Islam

I spoke with (mostly listened to) Bill Federer on the history and tenets of Islam. 
People who have a familiarity with Islam have said that it is a tour de force and an enlightening summation.
You decide:
Your American Heritage: William J Federer on Islam 

Afterwards, Gary Wellings and I with callers discussed the news of the day.

Given what Bill said, "What do we do with Muslims?"

What do we do with Tucker Carlson?