Re: "Lest you dismiss my words as hyperbole, let me direct your attention to a most revealing book, written by Milton Mayer, titled They Thought They Were Free. In the late 1940s, Mayer went to Germany and got to know a number of German people quite well, actually living with some. These people had not been government officials or Nazi party leaders, but just the ordinary men and women who do the productive work in any society. He eventually began asking them questions about what it was like to have lived under the Nazi police state, to have endured tyrannical practices. Their virtually unanimous responses, as indicated by the title of the book, were that there had been no loss of freedom in Germany that, indeed, they had considered themselves "free" at all times!"
>>> That is an interesting perspective. People generally always want to think of themselves as 'good' (and generally, in a personal sense, they are). The revealing vantage point of history is not available in real time.... |
