07-05-2020, 05:07 PM
Eric -- Classic X'er seems to have the idea that there very few ways in which to be American, and all of those involve being like him, looking like him, and believing like him. That of course is too narrow.
He fails to understand as I do why Confederate flags and statues of Confederate leaders could be so offensive to people American by default -- and the 13th, 14th, and 125th Amendments in place for a century and a half. Those Americans are the descendants of people for whom those Confederate leaders waged a war and sacrificed huge amounts of cannon fodder, tax revenue, and honor to keep in bondage. The political heirs of the Confederacy then steadily stripped the rights that freed slaves got until they and their descendants were but shells... until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
If there are memorials to German soldiers of World War II, then those are of the plotters of July 20, 1944, who, had they succeeded, would have put a swift end to the particular horrors of Nazism and sued for peace, putting a swift end to the Nazi nightmare. But those potters failed (they came close to succeeding!) and almost all of them paid with their lives for their courageous deed.
He fails to understand as I do why Confederate flags and statues of Confederate leaders could be so offensive to people American by default -- and the 13th, 14th, and 125th Amendments in place for a century and a half. Those Americans are the descendants of people for whom those Confederate leaders waged a war and sacrificed huge amounts of cannon fodder, tax revenue, and honor to keep in bondage. The political heirs of the Confederacy then steadily stripped the rights that freed slaves got until they and their descendants were but shells... until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
If there are memorials to German soldiers of World War II, then those are of the plotters of July 20, 1944, who, had they succeeded, would have put a swift end to the particular horrors of Nazism and sued for peace, putting a swift end to the Nazi nightmare. But those potters failed (they came close to succeeding!) and almost all of them paid with their lives for their courageous deed.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.