Monday, November 22, 2004

Those Who Forget History....

Wretchard's posts are always thought-provoking and inspired, but this time he has outdone himself. Check out "Through A Glass Darkly" for a remarkable discussion of why we should not look to Hollywood to give us our history. Just a sample to whet your appetite:

When people aver that 'Bush is like Hitler', it presumes the speaker has a clear historical knowledge of what Hitler was really like, an assumption which is increasingly invalid.
For one, Hitler would have taken a very dim view of
Jesusland, a country which George Bush is said to be in the process of founding, whose geographic location is to the immediate south of the United States of Canada. Martin Bormann said, "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." Hitler, according to Klaus Fischer's Nazi Germany stated that "one day we want to be in a position where only complete idiots stand in the pulpit and preach to old women." In a concession to popular feeling, however, the Nazis offered the public certain acceptable 'faith traditions' including something called "Gottglaubig", a dished-up creed heavily overladen with ancient Germanic pagan beliefs with versions of rituals for birth, marriage and death. "By 1938, carols and nativity plays were were forbidden in the schools, and the words 'Christmas' itself was replaced by the word 'Yuletide'."
AND,
Those who point to the shooting of Jihadi in Fallujah by a US Marine as evidence that America is drifting into Nazism would do well to remember that in 1945, American troops who arrived in Dachau were so disgusted by what they saw they executed hundreds of SS guards on the spot. This is a link to remarkable photographs of the incident.

You should read the entire post to get educated (if you weren't already) about what the Nazis were really all about. These days, the facile use of the term "Nazi" to describe any behavior that someone (especially someone on the Left) doesn't like clearly does not appreciate the full horror of what the previous generation had to eradicate; and it often shows an abysmal ignorance of what Hitler's National Socialism tried to do to the world.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it; but those who never knew it to begin with can obviously distort it to suit their needs.


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