There is a square in Berlin, at the center of the square is a Plexiglas window which looks down into an underground library painted all in white. There are no books on the shelves. The plaque refers to German poet Heinrich Heine's quote "Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people" (loose translation). The plaque and memorial sit in the middle of the square made famous in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (sad that a movie is the relevant reference, rather than the fact we should all know this from history classes) where the Nazi's had a book burning party early in the days of the burgeoning hatred. Heine's quote proved prophetic. I've been to that square and I've been to that square, and I've been to a concentration camp outside of Mainz. When I say Hitler was evil, it isn't lip service to some abstract, societally acceptable concept. I cried seeing those places, seeing the bullet holes in buildings still evident in much of East Germany, the lines on the streets where the Berlin Wall once stood. I am blessed to never have felt the persecution that the Jews have, or to have been asked to make the sacrifice that many did to topple the Nazis. What I do know is that we are losing the values of freedom when a) we aspire to ban books, and b) the choice includes the results of this little experiment.
Most of what I write on here has at least some aspect of sarcasm and making light of serious evens. This just scares me. Hitler is more appropriate than Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Ayn Rand?
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