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EDITOR'S
SIDEBAR
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Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of
the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the
weeks that followed that terrible day, we were united as a people as we
had not been, possibly since December 7, 1941.
In the intervening years, however, that unity has disappeared to the
point that anybody who talks about what happened will have their words
scrutinized for any possible political meaning or purpose. With
midterm elections two months away, that almost seems like the only
thing that people are looking at. Is it being used to bolster
public support for the Administration's foreign policy? Is it too
"soft on terror" or being used to give aid and comfort to our enemies?
It's just a shame that we couldn't come together in unity for even one
day and remember that, regardless of your politics or your views of
what has happened since then, on that day, the blood of innocents was
shed. Innocents that were both liberal and conservative,
male and female, young and old, black and white and more.
Those were the lives that were stolen by evil men that day. Would
that we could put politics aside long enough to grieve together, simply
as Americans.
Brad Pardee
Editor
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If you have any
feedback, I'd love
to hear it. Contact me at:
[email protected] |
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History Lessons
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Most people who are
familiar with the late actor Leon Askin know of him as General
Burkhalter from the 1965-71 sitcom, Hogan's
Heroes. But there was much more to his life than this one
role, and in his life, there are lessons for us to learn today.
Leon Askin was an actor in his native Austria, and in 1928, he
auditioned for the general director of the "City Stages" in
Düsseldorf, Germany, where he remained as an actor until
1933. On March 11, 1933, he was fired. Why? Because
he was a Jew.
This was still five years before the notorious Kristallnacht
which some point to as the beginning of the Holocaust. But the
Holocaust didn't happen over night. If people had stood up in
defense of Leon Askin and others like him in 1933, maybe the foundation
for the genocide that followed would never have been laid. It's
difficult to be certain which "what if" scenario would have taken
place. What is undisputed, though, is that the same people who
would take a man's job based on his religion moved on to take the lives
of men and women on the same basis.
Fast forward to today. I started a new job last month, working as
a temp that had been placed in an insurance agency. The
department I worked with shared parts of their personal lives with one
another. Jobs, relationships, families, and so on. In light
of this, I shared what I had with my co-workers: my writing. I
sent to my co-workers an e-mail with a link to my short stories and a
link to this e-zine. For both links, I gave a brief description
of what was there and the caveat that, if they weren't interested in
reading what I had written, that was fine and that they should feel
free to disregard the links.
Somebody (I don't know who), read the e-mail, and followed the
links. They looked at what I had written here at "One Man
Watching" and reported it as being "extremely offensive". Those
of you who have read "One Man Watching" over the last few years know
that, although I write things that people might well disagree with, I
go to great lengths to avoid being offensive. It ultimately
didn't change the fact, though, that somebody felt that the expression
of my views on politics, faith, and culture were enough to cause
me to lose my job.
I realize that there are differences between pre-World War II Germany
and the present day United States. There is a much longer
tradition of religions freedom in the US than there was in
Germany. There are more organizations prepared to fight in
defense of those freedoms. There are more voices within the
government that believe in those freedoms.
That being said, there is one thing that is true in both cases, and
herein is the lesson we must learn: if those who hate conservative
Christianity get away with forcing the termination of people who
express views that they don't like, what will that embolden them to try
to force in the future? And is that a future that anybody of any
religious or political stripe wants to see?
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