He who forgets his own history is condemned to repeat it. If we don’t know our own history, we will simply have to endure all the same mistakes, sacrifices, and absurdities all over again.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Why Study Church History?” Christian History, 25 (1990), pg.41
It's interesting how easy it is to forget the past. It's now 30 years since German reunification, and I recently read a 125 page paperback outlining the history of it. The East German leader, Honecker, really was prepared to shoot his own population to put down dissent. It all started to unravel when the mass of protesters used the slogan Wir sind das Volk - we are the people, thereby undermining the claim of the Communist Party to be the sole voice and representative of the people.
ReplyDeleteThis is apart from the fact that the country was quite literally falling apart, with a museum piece economy.
Yet 30 years later a survey of Germany youth revealed about two-thirds are increasingly afraid to express their opinion in public lest it attract social media vitriol, that is fear of not being politically correct. It's the same Marxist forces at work, seeking to suppress opinion and liberty. Far from being woke, it's stupor.
Ken B