SoT7: Socialists: abolish country, religion, property, marriage

      This concludes from Part 6 (Table of Contents in Part 1) in a series presenting C. F. W. Walther's article defending against the political ideology of the socialists and communists coming into America in the 1840s and 1850s. — Our correspondent now summarizes his findings. I kept trying to figure out if Walther was giving part of this narrative, or even a postscript, but he did not. He found the political paper's account fully capable in its assessment.  — From Der Lutheraner, vol. 7 (1851), p. 93 (Feb. 4) [EN]: 

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Signs of the Times.

[by C. F. W. Walther, quoting the Spectator newspaper]

I have now shown, Mr. Editor:

1. That the principal organs of the Socialists want to abolish Germany, religion, property and marriage — this is their aim, and the means by which it is to be attained, the workers' associations.

2. That the President of "the Congress of the Workers" in the United States, as well as the sole organ of this Congress: The Republic of Workers strive to achieve the same;

3. That the Republic of Workers has itself designated the most influential newspapers in the United States as striving with it for the same goal;

4. That therefore the main bodies of the German population are working towards the abolition of religion, property and marriage.

Do principal organs of the Germans in the United States express the views of the German population? Are they the mouth through which the German people speak? Are you, fellow Germans, ready to declare yourselves for the blasphemies of the Socialists? Are you ready to declare property a robbery, marriage a bond of which the free man must be ashamed? Are you ready, like religion and property, to destroy the bond of family and to send your children as an unbearable burden to the nearest foundling home? If this, fellow Germans, is your intention — then let yourselves be caught up in the maelstrom of the German labor movement and follow Weitling, Rosenthal and their ilk! If this is not the case; if, on the contrary, you view this matter with disgust, then express your disapproval with thunderous words; demand and require of the newspapers which you support, which are therefore your organs, that they no longer go hand in hand with these outlaws, nor court their favor and consideration, but instead seriously and firmly oppose their criminal views. If they do not listen to your voices of disapproval, withdraw your support from them and establish bodies that do not defile the German name but represent it worthily. If you continue to remain silent, you make yourselves guilty of the crime; if you only show a serious face once, you will soon see how they will hasten to have your name struck off Weitling's list so as not to hurt their own pockets; 

for Max Stirner's egotism is not entirely out of the air either. If perhaps the Republic of Workers has included in its category the name of any journal whose editor does not agree with socialism, does not share its criminal, despicable intentions, he owes it to himself, to his paper, to his readers, to the whole decent world, to protest against such misuse of names. All German newspapers should speak out on this subject so that the German public can act with prudence and decisiveness in this matter and distinguish between friends and enemies of civil order.

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      This article may seem too political for some, but the over-arching target of these groups is in reality the Christian faith. And Walther gave his full assessment 27 years later, in 1878, in his lectures on Communism and Socialism. These ideologies are "The Signs of the Times", our times. Let the reader compare the aims of today's Democratic Party in America with those of Germany's socialists and communists in the mid-1800's.