This piece at the Neo-Neocon Blog is short, brilliant and powerful. It is a simple message. It is about being wrong:
I remember one of those original blogs had a joke that amused me mightily at the time. It went something like this: Hey, I think I know what’s wrong. We thought it was 9/11/2001, but actually we got the year backwards; it was really 1002.
The idea was that progress was an illusion, and that somehow through some terrible time warp or wormhole we’d been catapulted to the Middle Ages, or what used to be called the Dark Ages.
That was a joke, but not really a joke either. I’ve had occasion to think of it many times since. It seems to be a common thought among people who live in times of jarring transition.
Please read the whole thing, then think about it. A lot.
This week marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Our President didn't bother to attend because after all, they were only Jews. I went to Auschwitz not because I wanted to, but because I felt like I had to. I needed to touch the boxcars with my own hands; stand in the gas chamber as if I could read the scratches on the walls; if I could stand beneath those guard towers and explain why the rights we have as Americans are important; if I could change one mind, it would be worth it. The camps will haunt my nightmares until I die.
And like Neo-Neocon, I wonder what else I'm wrong about.
6 comments:
The veneer of civilization is thin. I suggest a visit to the Holocaust Museum in DC if you have any doubts.
Keep in mind that the Germans were told they were changing Germany and then the world to make it a Socialist Utopia where their sacrifice would be rewarded with free health care and healthy children. All they had to do was murder enough PPL to make it happen. They were the 'Good Guys'
Our elderly next door neighbor has faded numbers on his arm. Those numbers are all I need to remind me of the cost of freedom.
It started with confiscation of personal firearms by Hitler
Do you really think the american people of today would sacrifice the "things" they have today to fight for what is right or wrong? They don't have the stomach to finish the fight we are in now. Not until it hits their town, their family will they be willing to stand up to what is currently going on in the world we live in. The daily atrocities against women and Christens in the Middle East. I'm afraid by the time people wake it will be to late for us too.
What makes moral choices difficult is that evil usually comes disguised as good. When the question becomes important it becomes hard to distinguish light from darkness. The abyss looks like broad sunlit uplands.
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