HISTORY IS OUR TEACHER AND THE PRESENT IS OUR TEST

How will the generations to come look back and judge us?

There are two parts to this post:

1. References to history which may be in the process of repeating

2. References to analysis of how what is happening is being brought about

I received the following from a special, hard working FaceBook friend who keeps many of us up on the political humor.

Steven Laboe November 15 at 2:56pm Reply
A German's View on Islam


A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'


We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.


The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.


The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.


Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China 's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.


The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japanmurdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.


And who can forget Rwanda , which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?


History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.


Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun..


Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.


As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts -- the fanatics who threaten our way of life.


Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world-wide, read this and think about it, and send it on - before it's too late.


My reply to Steve:

Thank you very much Steve. You are an army of one who feeds many. The above adds to the example I often give with the quote, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” -- Winston Churchill


About the time that our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government."
"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."
"From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years."
"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage"

In addition to my above reply, I want to also remind us of a WORLD WAR II POEM
There is a new importance for a poem describing the perils of apathy and calls to us to be vigilante for an analagous progression in the world in 2010 with Political Correctness and Apathy allowing history to repeat itself once more.

In Germany:
They first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me — and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Is this what the healthcare reform is truly about? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs

Should we be doing job creation in another manner following the suggestion of someone who actually does provide jobs and healthcare? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdrxfFFeMbc

Ask yourself if you see the possibility of this happening described in an article at http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/clowardpiven_crisis_care.html

" Cloward-Piven instructed activists that if a crisis did not exist, promote or manufacture one by exaggerating a benign or unthreatening predicament. In doing so, contrived commotion would serve as a tool to convince the masses of their urgent need for rescue. In order to achieve the ultimate goal, students were encouraged to stress the social system to the breaking point, which would quash capitalism and institute socialism through a massive infusion of government intervention
Cloward-Piven repeatedly cited Alinsky's, Rules for Radicals, in all their work. Marxism advocates were taught by Cloward-Piven to, "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." Never failing to remind their apprentices that, "...when pressed...human agencies inevitably fall short...the system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then is used to discredit it altogether." The definitive goal: "... replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one." "