Ante Diem III KALENDAS MARTIAS
MMDCCLXI AUC
27 February 2008
Day of Mercury
Mercurius
Inhumanitas omni aetate molesta est.
Inhumanity is harmful to every age.
This one quote of Cicero continues to haunt my mind each time I read it and use it in a blog. I believe that his words are as vital and vibrant as they were two millennia ago. There is another quote from George Santayana from the early part of this past century that has had the same impact upon me.
Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (January 14, 1892 - March 6, 1984) was a prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known as the author of the poem First they came....
Although he was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, he became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the nazification of German Protestant churches. Despite his own anti-Semitic attitudes, he vehemently opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph. For his opposition to the Nazi's state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution and survived imprisonment. After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help the victims of the Nazis. He turned away from his earlier anti-Semitic and nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. Since the 1950s, he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International from 1966 to 1972. He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
We live in an era where racial, religious, and political profiling is becoming too common place and individual rights and the dignity of humanity seem to have less importance and sanctity every day. We once had a Constitution in this country that guaranteed legal rights to citizens as well as anyone legally residing or traveling in the United States. When people speak of Rendition and Torture, it brings images to my mind of Hitler and National Socialism as well as Stalin and the Gulags of Soviet Communism. The tragic reality is that we are talking about the United States in the first decade of the twenty first century. Let us continue to remind ourselves of the words of Marcus Tullius Cicero and George Santayana.
Senex Magister
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