Achtung!

Santayana’s dictum “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it” needs to be remembered: The other night I was watching a news program and they were reporting on a news story from Europe: There is a rogue government agency in Germany (Deutschland) called the “Jugendamt” which has gone totally out of control, the German people are outraged by their arrogance, other German government officials have expressed concern, even the European Union has tried to intervene. The Jugendamt has been abducting children screaming from their homes and the devastated parents have protested and the German government has tried to reign in this rogue agency, which has been accused of selling the abducted children to foster parents and poor children’s homes (like orphanages). The Jugendamt sounds like the new Gestapo or SS, one would think that the Germans would know better after what happened during World War II and the Holocaust, but while we Yanks have a culture, encouraged by our Founding Fathers, of questioning the government, the German people have a culture of not questioning those in charge. Thus they are not as equipped emotionally or culturally as we Americans to resist the jackbooted, goose-stepping, Jew-gassing Fascists who do these sorts of things. The other faucets of the government of Germany, including Angela Merkel, need to intervene more aggressively in this situation. Acton’s Dictum that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, has been played out throughout history, the people of the world need to learn from history and do better.