Back in ancient times, when I was in college, I overheard a conversation between two professors that concerned me. I mentioned it to one of them a while later and they were weary eyes that turned to me. He said, "Tell me, why does that upset you?" I said, "If we deny the things that have been done to us, or the things we have done to others, how will we ever stop those things from happening again?" He nodded. He said, "Yeah. That is why I teach it. My parent's died at a prison camp in Poland. If we don't remember it, and study it, and learn from it, will we stand by silently when it happens again?"
He was teaching a class called The Holocaust. The first day of that class, he walked out after 20 minutes of non-stop shouts and denials and statements that it was all propaganda and nothing more. The next semester, the same thing happened to the Viet Nam vet who tried to teach the Viet Nam semester.
And now, so many years later, I see it happening again. We are forgetting that they violated us, slapped the eagle's face and danced jigs on the wasteland of our grief. We haven't forgot to complain about the loss of freedoms we have suffered since then. We haven't forgot to complain about TSA.
But we are growing complacent again, and we are denying that it can happen again. We are ignoring the radical factions building in our own country, determined to clean out Washington DC and take over government themselves.
We are politicizing new terror threats and shrugging as our embassies in the Middle East are cleared and closed. One man told me what a drag his upcoming business trip is going to be if everything has to be focused on security and crap, and didn't they kill that guy, that Bin Laden guy, so what's the deal?
Yeah, we killed that Bin Laden guy. But he wasn't the entire organization. He was one man and he was their leader, but where one leader falls, another will step up.
Where discontent boils and has no lawful outlet, it will find an outlet, lawful or not. Where heated heads rule, and change is brought about by gunfire, whose finger will be on that button? Will it be under the control of a level head inside that radical faction? Or will there be a heated mind flush with victory, a finger shaking with adrenaline on that button?
Will we after all go quietly into the night, denying to our very last instant that it ever happened here or ever could? Did they cripple the eagle and take the spine from America? Did they turn us into angry, hateful, vengeful partisans who can only throw invective at each other?
I am worried for the human race, being herded like cattle to its ultimate destruction.
He was teaching a class called The Holocaust. The first day of that class, he walked out after 20 minutes of non-stop shouts and denials and statements that it was all propaganda and nothing more. The next semester, the same thing happened to the Viet Nam vet who tried to teach the Viet Nam semester.
And now, so many years later, I see it happening again. We are forgetting that they violated us, slapped the eagle's face and danced jigs on the wasteland of our grief. We haven't forgot to complain about the loss of freedoms we have suffered since then. We haven't forgot to complain about TSA.
But we are growing complacent again, and we are denying that it can happen again. We are ignoring the radical factions building in our own country, determined to clean out Washington DC and take over government themselves.
We are politicizing new terror threats and shrugging as our embassies in the Middle East are cleared and closed. One man told me what a drag his upcoming business trip is going to be if everything has to be focused on security and crap, and didn't they kill that guy, that Bin Laden guy, so what's the deal?
Yeah, we killed that Bin Laden guy. But he wasn't the entire organization. He was one man and he was their leader, but where one leader falls, another will step up.
Where discontent boils and has no lawful outlet, it will find an outlet, lawful or not. Where heated heads rule, and change is brought about by gunfire, whose finger will be on that button? Will it be under the control of a level head inside that radical faction? Or will there be a heated mind flush with victory, a finger shaking with adrenaline on that button?
Will we after all go quietly into the night, denying to our very last instant that it ever happened here or ever could? Did they cripple the eagle and take the spine from America? Did they turn us into angry, hateful, vengeful partisans who can only throw invective at each other?
I am worried for the human race, being herded like cattle to its ultimate destruction.
