We have learned all the lessons there are to learn. That, in short, may be the biggest danger to our collective freedoms and represents precisely the sort of atmosphere required to usurp them without the presence of major debate or outright rage. In the 30’s, a cabal of men transformed Germany from a bankrupt nation into a regional power. Prior to the advent of German aggression in Europe, many praised that transformation and the massive public works projects that aided in it. In fact, the New Deal was not that dissimilar in some ways. By maligning those deemed undesirable or threatening, they created a hysteria that saw tens of millions abandon reason because it seemed more reasonable to do so. By the time the democratic had been replaced by the totalitarian, reason dictated that it somehow made more sense. In Heinrich Heine’s play Almansor the following is found: "Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings." Interestingly, that statement was made with regards to the burning of the Qur’an during the Spanish Inquisition – by a German Jew. On May 10th, 1933, Heine’s work, along with the work of others, would be publicly burned in the Opernplatz, or what is now called the Bebelplatz, in Berlin. And as Heine predicted a century before, the burning of human bodies would indeed follow. It is a dramatic comparison to employ, but it is one that speaks directly to the assumption that “we have learned all the lessons there are to learn”. We look back on the usurpation of German democracy and the feverous support of the rise of National Socialism and are shocked that nothing was done to stop it. We study the ultimate product of that movement’s evils and are horrified. And we wonder how reason could have fled so wholesale as Heine’s assertion was realized. All things born in darkness remain hidden until such a time that the perception of daylight is actually a perpetual gloaming, ashen from horizon to horizon. For it is there that the reasonable and the unreasonable become bewildered. Within such a wilderness justice is left bound and tied, replaced by a doppelganger that espouses the need to employ injustices to achieve new notions of justice. And so that becomes reasonable. Within such a wilderness murder is knighted and polished and set loose under the guise of necessity. And so that becomes reasonable. Within such a wilderness the sanctity of those principles held dearest are deemed threatening to the endeavors of authority, and so are, one by one, trammeled and caged. And eventually, that too becomes reasonable. Despite the belief that we are too intelligent to abandon reason, circumstance dictates its definition. Thus, its manipulation can render the most vocal of us mute, the kindest of us cruel, and the most vigilant of us champions of its corruption. That is how the unimaginable becomes reality. And that lesson is certainly not one that we have learned.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:53:06 +0000
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