The great joy of studying history is the ability to tell the future. Perhaps a cliché your history teacher told you before making you remember a bunch of dates in a time period way too long ago and in a place way too far away. That’s why two historical periods stand out the most to me, as an American.  The first is the Revolutionary War and the second is World War 2 (particularly Nazi Germany). One Teaches me where we come from and how to keep it( the constitution), while the other teaches how we can lose it all in a short period of time.

Liberty is a fragile thing.  Today, as in the past, the masses watch liberty erode on a daily basis. Hayek points it out greatly in the Road to Serfdom:

“What had been achieved [freedom] had come to be regarded as a secure and imperishable possession, acquired once and for all”.  The eyes of the people became fixed on the new demands, the rapid satisfaction of which seemed to be barred by the adherence to the old principles, It became more and more widely accepted that the further advance could be expected not along the old lines within the general framework which had made past progress possible, but only by a complete remodeling of society. It was no longer a question of adding to or improving the existing machinery but of completely scrapping and replacing it.  And the hope of the new generation came to be centered on something completely new interest in an understanding of the functioning of the existing society rapidly declined and with the decline of the understanding of the way in which the free system worked awareness of what depended on the existence also decreased.”

Many in America today think it’s guaranteed freedom forever.  The irony is that she has already given up so much freedom.  The left has been the traditional theft of liberty.  “Protecting” us from each other with regulation after regulation.  The nanny state of the left tells us not to drink too much Soda, make too much smog from driving cars, and to stop hating each other because of differences. They have “protected” us so much that we seem to have the largest divide among races, sexual orientation, and gender identity in our history.  I still see a ton of smog and we are all getting fatter and racial tensions are worse now even after 8 years of Americas first black president. This “protection” isn’t just from the left. Whether it’s in reaction to the left’s overbearing control of everything or just a dressed up version of progressivism from the right, theft of liberty is and will come from the right as well.  An overbearing Nationalist fever is starting to heat up.  The republicans vow to “repeal” and “replace” Obama care instead of “repeal only”, the lack of the use of the phrase “Free Markets”, and the strong man Executive in President Trump (I’d argue that Obama was the first of the strong man executives and Trump’s election is a direct reaction to that), or all threats to liberty from the right.

I recently finished Defying Hitler, in which we are given a ground level glimpse of the transformation of Germany into the eventual Nazi state. It’s so easy for us in 2017 America to look back at 1933 Germany like it’s an alien planet. If tyranny were a live being, it would love for us assume that late 1920s Germans were so different from Americans. That Germany was basically a different planet and the evil of the Nazi regime was born in an instant.  Cartoon evil is not real evil.  Even Adolf Hitler wore diapers and cried out for his mother as a little boy. I am in no way trying to make Hitler or any other evil dictator look better than he actually was.  I believe that we actually de-humanize figures like Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini through the passage of time and the watering down of history.

Why do we do this?

I believe its simply easier to understand. The human tendency to look the atrocities of Nazi Germany and convince ourselves it won’t ever happen again is powerful....