I remember when I was in college, we were talking about ethics and military rights and responsibilities, and we got into a discussion of WWII, Nazi Germany, the military in Germany and the role it played before and during the war. I remember going to the library and reading portions of the transcript of the Nuremburg trials. I remember this quote of Goerings from the trial and how I thought that it was fortunate that I lived in a country where such a thing could never occur. Fast forward twenty-five years and here I am posting this on a website because I am worried about what might occur.

Hermann Goering was a monster. He was also a highly decorated combat veteran, in fact a hero of WWI. After joining the Nazi party and rising quickly in it's ranks, he saw the potential to abuse his power and took it, never thinking for a moment that there might be a beginning, a middle and an end. The end for him came on his own terms, he took his own life and "cheated" the hangman, but before he went he was in the vanguard of the Third Reich and caused the death of millions and untold destruction and suffering. He knew the secrets of power through unrest, the stirring of nationalistic sentiments and scapegoating of the defenseless and the weak, and rose immeasurably only to fall with the utter defeat of the Nazi's.

I wonder if some of the "Christian" and extreme right might not have learned these lessons in college too, but instead of using them as guidelines, as moral touchstones to help build a better America, they are using them for the same purposes as Herman Goering. To destroy America. Why do they hate the America of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Jay, Hamilton, Lincoln, Grant, Roosevelt (T.R. and F.D.R), Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter?

Goerings words speak to us from the past of the seemingly benign despotism we are now living with. We need to heed them and be careful of how we continue to behave toward each other, and as country to the world we live in. We have no "god-given" mission to tell the rest of the world how to conduct it's affairs; they are not "with us or against us", we have shown time and again when a genuine threat to our security rises we will face it and fight it no matter if it's a relatively brief time like WWII or a long campaign of forty-plus years of the cold war. We do not need to destroy historic alliances, prop up and tear down tinpot dictators, persecute immigrants because they came here believing that we all believe the words on the Statue of Liberty, just like they did, until they received their first taunting or worse, inspired by the likes of Michael "Savage" Weiner or Bill O'Reilly.

We're better than that, we should believe that and continue to be the kind of Americans the rest of the world expects us to be, not what we are becoming, echoes of Goering words.