tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3977332822303694593.post4152293408762415524..comments2024-01-26T08:15:22.843+00:00Comments on A Girl, A Blog & Life In-between!!!: Lau & Lessons of the Holocaust!!Princess Panahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11772116818990715919noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3977332822303694593.post-84345098355587180102011-05-04T18:13:26.815+01:002011-05-04T18:13:26.815+01:00Lau warns: “Neither the youth nor the adults, neit...Lau warns: “Neither the youth nor the adults, neither the Jewish people nor the peoples of the earth have learned the lessons of the Holocaust.” And he is mostly CORRECT. Not many people contemplate a clear potential danger because it doesn't feel very nice. But if Lau's thesis were in fact WRONG, then the genocides in Rwanda, the Sudan, and Cambodia could not have taken place. There exists a kind of fairy tale, magical thinking wherein well-off westerners (you and me) fantasize that the established governments will ride in on White Horses and stop the Evil doers. Nothing could be further from the truth. DESPITE all the rhetoric about "Never Again!" what *really* happens in government is Management by Committee and a genocide response is almost always miscarried. I am sure that everyone realizes by now that the UN is flatly incapable of anything more than running the international postal service, setting conventions on air traffic control standards (mostly imposing United States protocols on the world), and being a mouthpiece for Western governments who wish the appearance of being enlightened and all inclusive.<br /><br />Lau is correct. We have NOT learned the lessons and I believe that we are IMMUNE from edification in this respect. <br /><br />But what you CAN do, what any nation which wishes to survive MUST do is the following: Build up your defenses so that would-be attackers will never be willing to pay the price for an attack. This much is POSSIBLE. Educating the public and convincing them to voluntarily embrace this idea? Not so much. <br /><br />Further, we MUST, to the extent possible, REMEMBER and continue to tell the story of genocide despite its seeming futility. In the instant case of Holocaust Remembrance, you must continue to tell the truth. The world doesn't WANT to remember because confronting Evil turns the stomach and creates moral obligations that otherwise moral people would not willingly embrace. If you FAIL to REMEMBER, you FAIL to prevent a repetition. The West was struggling to forget the Armenian/Greek/Assyrian Genocide of 1915 even before it had even concluded. Everyone KNEW it had happened, but PRETENDED that it had not. When the world sticks its head in the sand like this, Nuremberg Laws become possible....<br /><br />And now, I would like to present a quote from philosopher George Santayana. It is a threadbare, overused, tired old cliche, but I would like to use it once more time because it is apropos:<br /><br />"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual- THOSE WHO CANNOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT."Greghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11711889008653348555noreply@blogger.com