Resonating echoes of Nuremburg

One thing about ringing a bell is that is can never be unrung. As it cannot be unrung, it can also never be unheard. Its clear and clarion tone, once generated and once heard, will be forever remembered by all reached by its distinctive clang. This concept may be relatively easy to understand but I never ceased to be amazed when someone, anyone, either dismisses it outright or demonstrates no comprehension of it. Those who do not or refuse to remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Deliberately demonstrating any belief that a well documented idea has been forgotten by enough people familiar with it can be reinvented into an acceptable norm or worse, twisted into some sort of virtue, will not end well for the promoters of it. For so many alive today, the concept of a World War waged over the essence of ideals imposed by force of arms which were inconsistent with American humanitarian values may be an abstract concept. Rest assured though that there are still enough people alive who were actual combatants in or victims of that conflagration. Granted, many of that generation are no longer living but their children and grandchildren carry quiet witness of the toll it took on many of those survivors. When those who know the sound of that certain bell they cannot mistake, do not expect them to take the insult lightly.

A few months ago I wrote a post entitled in which I explained,

<<” Recorded history is littered with the flotsam of individuals and nations who either surrendered or traded their humanity for monetary profit, social advancement, personal gain or to even scores for wrongs that were too often more perceived than actual.  The proceedings at Nuremburg following the fall of Nazi Germany was a needed exercise in adjudicating criminal liability for such individuals.” >>

Once more we find ourselves in the midst of irony in what can only be described as a historical oddity. It is well known that Nazism and all its associated symbology is illegal in the nation of Germany. In the USA, whereas Nazism is not in and of itself an outlawed ideology, symbols associated with it are recognized as conveying hatred or hate speech. Such emblems of intolerance are of course not protected as free speech as delineated by the First Amendment. When someone draws a swastika and scrawls any sort of epithet beside it, the bell it rings clangs loud and clear from the abyss of hate from which it emanates.

At this time, the person responsible for this vandalism has been arrested and booked into jail on a complaint of “Terroristic Threats.” With justice pending, we can focus our concern on what the aftermath of these incidents bears for the rest of us. This whole story serves as a grim reminder that in spite of the standing historical fact that they lost and lost ugly on the field of battle all those years ago, the misguided ideals fueling such actions remain alive and well and show their ugly face occasionally the way they have just done. Those who would willingly surrender or abandon their humanity, for whatever reason, must never be allowed to destroy ours. It is an overarching moral imperative for all enlightened souls to not only maintain but promote our own humanitarian values of kindness, compassion, empathy, generosity, inclusiveness, dignity and the inherent worth of each individual. It is especially important to go the extra mile in doing so in the face of brazen assaults upon these values. The cruel tactic of stripping us of our humanity must never be allowed to succeed. In doing so the hatemongers win by bringing us to down to the level of their toxic values, the ones they seek to renew which have been thoroughly discredited and relegated to the dustbin of history. In these times when we cannot depend on our senior national leadership to set any sort of suitable example, the responsibility of safeguarding those values preserved by so many who have gone before us falls to us. To make America and Oklahoma great again, we must ensure that we sustain ourselves as citizens of the caliber worthy of the sacrifices made by those whose lives ended in the struggle to defeat the inhumane ideals embodied by the message sent in these acts of criminal vandalism. We must redouble our efforts to decline the urge to respond in kind for in doing so we begin the process of our own self-destruction. When we hear the clanging of that particular brand of bell we must never allow those who desire to destroy us the privilege of defining who and what we really are. That milestone marked by the judgements at Nuremburg stands as a stark reminder of when Humankind resumed its long and slow slog forward. We must never forget the past if we desire to never repeat it!