Never Again, Always And Forever

Auschwitz was liberated 60 years ago. 

I'd just like to remind people who say something like the Final Solution could never happen here that Hitler's regime didn't start with genocide out of the gate.  It was an incremental thing, following precisely the maxim laid out in Mein Kampf: A shrewd victor will, if possible, always present his demands to the vanquished in installments. 

And so many of us hope to apply lessons that the rise and fall of the Third Reich taught us.  When we see the slow erosion of civil liberties at home, preventive war being waged abroad, and foreign nationals tortured in our name, we fear that Americans could be marching down the very same path, convinced of their righteousness just as the Nazis were.

For all the comparisons of our current situation with WWII, I find the most disturbing parallel is that we are, deliberately or unwittingly, playing the part of the bad guys this time.  "Never again" doesn't mean we just don't want to ever see evil committed by Germans.  It means never again.  Period.

ntodd