The silence that destroys democracy
By GuestDear Editor:
“Silence condones” — our eighth grade teacher’s challenge to the evil of segregation. And today we have the same disgusting silence where we are following Germany’s lead in 1933. As detailed in Erick Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, “Beneath the surface … Germany had undergone a rapid and sweeping revolution that reached deep into the fabric of daily life … Change came to Germany so quickly and across such a wide front that German citizens who left the country for business or travel returned to find everything around them altered, as if they were characters in a horror movie.”
Larson cites Gerda Laufer, a socialist, who wrote that she felt “deeply shaken that people whom one regarded as friends, who were known for a long time, from one hour to the next, transformed themselves” into Nazi sympathizers.
How many senior citizens turn away and say, “Don’t bother me with politics” as they succumb to the terrible silence that turned Germany into a savage nation? Is it a feeling of hopelessness, a desire to “go with the flow?” There are two shelves at the thankfully still free (in all that it means) Canton library, numbered 943.086 that were written to try and unveil our ignorance to our history about the German citizens who succumbed to the horrors of the Hun. I so admire Angela Merkel and cringed at the rudeness and barbarity of our own hun, Donald Drumpf/Trump, whose grandfather, an immigrant, changed their name from Drumpf to Trump, fearing the fear that Americans had of Germans when he emigrated to the U.S. during World War I. Yet he never mentions his background. Why is he so ashamed of his Scotch and German forebears? Why should any of us be afraid to mention the lessons we should have learned from World War II? Have we become so materialistic, so hopeless, that we will willingly stand by and watch our country be taken over by American Nazis? If you let prejudice and bullying reign, you will make it worse. If we are cowards and let others speak out against citizens of different religions or races without objecting, we are just as bad.
I am so glad to see that Massachusetts students will be learning civics and participating in civics projects thanks to a bill that is being finalized by the state legislature. Beware of any college that only offers you science and math with no humanities (history, literature, psychology, philosophy, etc.). That was one lesson that German people discovered about the causes of their downfall: no education of their kids in the humanities. When people express scorn for such, they are setting you up for yet another world war, believe it.
We can’t back away from the truth. If we don’t learn from it, we will repeat it. Be thankful for our public schools, and libraries here in Canton. And the free press. When we turn our backs on truth, we are lost as a society.
Alice C. Brown
Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=39485
Posted by Guest
on Jul 28 2018. Filed under From One Citizen to Another, Opinion.
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