The old saying says:
Those who do not learn from the past are destined to repeat it.
Perhaps we should re-phrase it to:
Those who do not learn the right lesson from history are destined to repeat it.
After all, learning the wrong lesson could be worse than learning no lesson at all!
This all goes back to my rant on how often people do not recognize the difference between ‘symptom’ on the one hand, and a ’cause’ on the other. Are they really so difficult to tell apart?
Many years ago, I went through a period when I was reading a lot of eyewitness books about WWII and the political atmosphere in Europe following the war. I came across something intersting that Barbara Amiel had written: she spent her childhood in ‘wartime London’. Following the war, there was a determination among her relatives that nothing like this must ever be allowed to happen again. And because Hitler was perceived as being ‘right wing’, Ms. Amiel asserts, ‘everyone’ became suspicious of – and opposed to – everything that was deemed to be ‘right wing’.
In other words, the lesson this group of people learned was:
- Hitler = right wing
- Hitler = evil
- ergo, right wing = evil
This is almost as sophisticated reasoning as that used for forcing women to wear a hijab, so they would not tempt men to rape them – as uncovered meat tempts cats to eat it. In other words, that is not the correct lesson. Yet, many very intelligent people still fall into this trap in one form or another.
Yet, lots of people do learn the right lesson. This one may be exemplified by the ‘First they came for…’ poem, attributed to Martin Niemoller:
“First they came for the Communists, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Yet, even now, people are misunderstanding the poem! So, please, in my never-humble way, let me pay homage to the right lesson here and write today’s version, as it could be.
“First they silenced the crackpot and nutcases, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a crackpot or a nutcase.
Then they silenced the bloggers, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a blogger.
Then they silenced the journalists, newspapers, magazines and books, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a journalist and didn’t write newspapers, magazines or books.
Then they silenced the Christians, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t religious.
Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left who was allowed to speak.”
If we fail to learn this lesson, this will be in store for us! This is NOT HISTORY! This is now, here, in OUR WORLD!
This is what happens when people think a political party, or a particular political bend is the problem and fail to recognize that political oppression and governments who do not follow due process of law to achieve their ends that is the problem!!! And if you are an adult, and not afraid to see a graphic example of the result of a state not bound by its laws is, here are some pictures that were too gruesome to print in a newspaper.
But I warn you – do not look if you are sqeemish. It took me a while to realize what part of the human body I was really looking at…
As it is taking so many of us to realize what type of oppression it is that we are facing!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
May 17, 2008 at 03:06
I don’t know whether we’ll all wake up in time or not. All I know is that, in this confusion, those others who sneer at their own heritage, those who don’t recognize what we’ve had, those and put on sunglasses and turn the other way right at this time in history, just to agree with those who oppose us, those people are not as evil as they seem, but they’re ten times as dangerous as they seem.
To be political is understandable up to a point; but when one becomes a corporeally serious opponent to common grace and to many hundreds of years of hard desperate work, you’ve crossed a line that is very severe.
I think we can all agree that if prideful sophists start measuring and sacntioning our own beliefs and expressions, and our *observations*, and shamelessly invoking the interests of humanity in general in the interest of finally shutting down the ongoing chatter that defines our species, we’re not just fuly entitled but also required to rise up, to defend the hard, hard edges of individuality.
The freedoms the Anglosphere has provided to us to give our own worthless soul’s unvarnished opinion as a matter of course is not the result of a battle that’s won. Rather, it’s the interregnum between rounds 3 and 4.
Those flapping citizens who have no idea what they’ve got ’til it’s gone *will not know* when it’s gone. That will be our problem. It’s all one flat assemblage to them. They’re locked in a pachinko machine of time-bound, prideful quick exits that doesn’t acknowledge ancestry or connection; they go looking for corporeal reasons for their pride, and they misidentify the strength of those outside. Those people are mildly eerie, at this particular point.
Anyhoo, this is THE all important, as you note and reflect. Thanks for throwing some weight around. The truth is an awfully sharp weapon.
Hey, here’s a song to cheer us all up:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7zTqeA94goQ
May 18, 2008 at 00:53
It’s just a pity you quote Barbara Amiel as an example. For one thing, she was only 4½ when the war ended and can’t remember much of it. Second, she has learned nothing from history or anything else. If she had, she might remember hos history treats the greedy, haughty and hubristically arrogant. It was her greed and desire to lord it over the “ordinary” people that pushed her greedy and crooked husband across the thin borderline between sharp practice and illegality and got him where he is now – in the hoosegow at the mecy of Bubba.
May 18, 2008 at 09:45
Perhas you missed the point of the post….
Censoring a good, erceptive idea, because we do not like the person who delivered it – well, that is what the HRCs are doing!
May 19, 2008 at 16:41
The point *was* missed. But that actually dovetails rather nicely into what I see as the point of your post, that people are quite unaware of the consequences of neglecting to defend our freedoms.
Our freedoms are not some natural resting point, they are the result of a tremendous struggle, at great cost, followed by vigilance. There is a struggle going on right now in Canada to put a halt to the repulsive possibility that the state will become the arbiter of what aspects of one’s own consciousness are allowed expression, and where. We’ve been softened up for a long time by mushy, platitudinous political correctness, but fortunately there’s a lot of backbone left in this country.
The people within the system — the HRC employees and so on, and “hate” investigators, and people like Barbara hall — who push for the right to control the expressions of others are just a small part of the problem; the — arguably — bigger danger stems from the sheer extent of apaty, ignorance and questionable morality many people apply to this issue.
A lot of people haven’t thought about it, or are unaware, and that’s fine, but then there are others who are aware of the debate but who see everything through a lens of hideously time-bound and ephemeral partisan politics so that a precious right that good people have fought and died for turns into, say, a snide comment about Barbara Amiel.