Remember the post World War II movies which demonized the Nazi bad guys, and glorified (rightly so) the heroic actions of the few who stood up to the Nazi’s, running underground resistance groups and providing escape routes to those who were ‘wanted’ for ‘relocation’? I remember them. I watched from the comfort of my unchallenged 1960’s adolescence, and imagined myself—against all odds—doing the right thing in the midst of grave threats and terror from evil authoritarians all around me. It was clear to me then what would have been the right thing to do during the late 1930’s in Nazi Germany, and I hoped that I would have had the courage to do the right thing had I actually been there. I actually lamented the dullness of my life when I was eight, and how, from that vantage point, I could see no such heroic challenge visible anywhere in my future.
What a failure of imagination!
We are there, now. Except that the current economic meltdown is not being caused by a draconian Versailles Treaty, which is what bankrupted Germany and impoverished her people after WWI and set the stage for the birth and subsequent domination of Hitler’s Third Reich. The significant difference is that ours is an ad hoc economic meltdown, conceived, implemented, and executed solely for the purpose of forcing otherwise unwilling free men and women to subvert their common sense and goodwill to the demonic state in exchange for a pittance of relief from the state’s threats of overwhelming harassment, illegal imprisonment, certain impoverishment, and inevitable death only after unfathomable suffering. Free speech will soon be illegal, and is largely so now. Due process is already severely marginalized in the zeal for imposing extra-judicial consequences for activities which heretofore have never been illegal, like owning a gun, having a baby, or refusing a vaccination.
When they come and do what we know is wrong, we will look the other way again and again until there is nowhere else to look. And then, when we have no choice but to face the truth, it will be too late.
Seek out the wrongdoing now! Confront it before it confronts you. And never look the other way. Never. Do something oppositional—no matter how small—every time you see an injustice, especially when those injustices are perpetrated under color of authority. And after one encounter, the second confrontation is just as difficult, but much more effective. Every moment of standing against what is wrong empowers you, advances freedom, and uplifts the human condition to the benefit of us all, not to mention the power of your example inspiring others to do the same. Eventually, standing up for what is right becomes a thousand times more effective than the first time, and the sooner we get that first confrontation done, the earlier we achieve total effectiveness in resisting the abuse, oppression and tyranny that these injustices are designed to impose.
Morality is the final law, and in times like these our consciences can be our only guide. And these truths are self evident, that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We are the new Greatest Generation, like our fathers and grandfathers in World War II, and the times we live in today presents us with the same great privilege they had—to save the World. Again.