Time has come for full self-examination

We Americans think we know evil when we see it. We do, but just as often, evil could storm the Capitol, and many won’t even recognize it as a bad thing at all.

That time heals all wounds is an idea often rejected, but sometimes it works too well. Following World War II, it was debated whether the internment camps should be demolished or left where they were for posterity, to make it clear that the unspeakable evils of the Holocaust must never be repeated. Of course, it was the right decision to keep them, so we remember the horrors of which humanity is capable.

Still, we forget. I just don’t think that we’re as far as we once were from such evil. Because it’s my observation from the past several years that America can breed evil as well as anywhere else.

We Americans take solace in that “It can’t happen here,” but many events have suggested otherwise. We’ve grown too comfortable and self-righteous to where these days if evil knocks at our doors, the weary masses looking for a savior will greet it with open arms and without question.

The attitude that “It can’t happen here” has made us complacent where we think we know evil, such as the battles against communism in the form of the two Red Scares. Then, however, when it’s abundantly clear that right-wing fascism bred from similar Nazi ideologies is here in the open, we fall victim to collective amnesia. We take solace in ideas that we swear we’ll never duplicate.

A time has come in our history as a nation, more than others to be clear, to check ourselves. We must remember the aspirations that made this country great before it’s too late and not fall to our own temptations.

David Smith

Bolingbrook