Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
The above quote is from “The Life of Reason” written by George Santayana and published in 1905. Perhaps more of you remember Winston Churchill’s version of it:
Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
Which was uttered in a 1948 speech to the House of Commons. It really doesn’t matter which version of it you remember. What matters is just how many remember the quote but fail to make it part of their life. A goodly number of such people have now converged on U.C. Berkeley making it the birthplace of The Fourth Reich.
I feared this during the 2016 Presidential campaign. You see, history is a pendulum. It swings back and forth because so many genetic misfits fail to learn from history. This failure to learn started to manifest itself most horrifically in Chicago when a team of anti-trump people came up with a plan to sneak into the Trump rally and commit violence. They then leaked widespread rumors of this impending violence and the rally was cancelled. What shocked and appalled me even more was WBEZ, an NPR station airing an interview with one of the perpetrators of this crime and her gleefully proclaiming this could become the model for all other states. To some extend it did become that but it did not change the outcome of the election, it only increased the amount of hatred felt in the country.
This is why U.C. Berkeley became the birthplace of The Fourth Reich, because it was the birthplace of free speech. There could be no greater violation of free speech than violently shutting down a scheduled speech. Allowing a mob to decide what speech should be allowed is exactly the mentality Adolf Hitler’s followers had during the early days of his rise to power. They violently suppressed any message which did not agree with their doctrine. This allowed him to eventually become Chancellor.
Once he became Chancellor we had the Night of the Long Knives. For those who did not pay attention to history, this was a purge killing at least 85 people to cement Hitler’s power. We also had the Nazi book burnings destroying or at least attempting to destroy all ideologies opposed to Nazism.
The Fourth Reich at U.C. Berkeley are not far away from book burnings if they haven’t already began burning them in the current violence. There have been calls from them to shut down right-wing sites which disagree with their point of view, or at least so I’ve heard in various interviews with those who participated in the riot. Shutting down Web sites you don’t agree with is the modern day equivalent of book burning. More people surf the Web than read books these days.
No my dear people, we are watching the early days of The Fourth Reich starting at U.C. Berkeley. This movement will spread, if not to other universities immediately, by virtue of the students graduating and trying to put someone in power “who thinks like them.”
It is well and truly sad that the next iteration of what history will record as the new Nazi party with a different name took root at the very place which previously championed the idea all voices should be heard.
Cancelling any speech rather than bringing in enough security to ensure safety of attendees is a gross violation of that which U.C. Berkeley used to represent. It is also a gross and heinous violation of the mandate for higher learning, exposing students to all schools of thought so they might better form their own opinion.
