Now, I had no idea what a " swastika" was, really...
My dad certainly did.
Growing up in the camps in Germany and Poland, from birth to about my age, he was acutely familiar with not only the meaning of that symbol, but had first hand knowledge of the atrocities it came to represent. I, a young punk from a tiny mill village, had experienced some anger fallout. He, in contrast, stared straight down the true faces of evil...
He started off yelling, asking if I even knew what a swastika meant. Of course I claimed I did... He got madder still, started to explain, then just shut down, disgusted and stormed out the door. My mom, who had been quietly watching, sat down next to me and explained as well as she could, some of the experiences my dad had, under that "symbol". I remember her eyes, trying to reach me, trying to make me understand in a very gentle way, how much I'd hurt and upset my father with that drawing. I picked up a little of the meaning, but still didn't really get it...
How could he, thirty years later, still be affected by a silly, stupid drawing?
I was young and ignorant and had not yet seen evil, up close and personal...
Fast forward about a thousand years, and I am not the same naive, want-to-be punk that painted the tank on his jacket. The roads chosen did bring me into extremely close proximity to evil and violent stupidity. I cannot really compare it to what my father lived, but it was bad enough.
Let's just leave it at that...
Today I can understand how atrocities can haunt for decades. I get that some memories, some " symbols" can never be viewed without outrage...
I have always been a strange philosophic mongrel. Politically, I leaned toward Libertarian, believing Governments power should be minimal and non invasive.
Granted only the power those under it, freely gave...
Always a strong believer in States rights, individual rights and freedom to do whatever you wanted, as long as it physically hurt no one else...
I guess I'm not exactly that same guy, anymore...
I don't think fanatics have the moral right to disrupt funeral services with messages of hate and intolerance. I don't think that burning the American flag that millions have suffered and died for, shows or says anything other than contempt for those who served,and maybe that a few strands are missing from the DNA sequences of those doing the burning...
Guess I'm getting a little judgmental, here...
And maybe, just maybe, it is time to retire the old General Lee.
It never crossed my mind that possibly the black community feels the same way about the Confederate flag as my dad felt about swastikas...
So once again, I find myself, caught between what I think should be legal and what I think is right...
I strongly believe in freedom of speech and that that we have no legal rights to not be offended, at least in my own Libertarian vision.
But I also believe that respect for those offended needs to be balanced into the equation, and sometimes even supersedes " legal" rights...
And again, I am perplexed, in my own changing views and values.
The older I get, the less I find I " know"...
Maybe I should be more concerned with the freedom to nurture someone else's spirit, than license to offend. Maybe common concern and general decency should be paramount, before individual liberties...
We shouldn't need laws to achieve this. Maybe we all could consider what we're saying with our freedom of speech, before actually exersizing it.
The sad thing is, this is such a slippery slope and so easily manipulated...
I suppose that is why principal of law is so different than just being a good human being.
If enough people see what things like swastikas and confederate flags do to others souls, then maybe, eventually, excuses like history and heritage will completely lose there already disintegrating illusion of credibility...
Here's hoping...
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