Freedom
When a nation is robbed of freedom, no one wins.
I cannot get the images out of my mind. In September 2004, a small but vocal swarm of neo-Nazis converged on my beloved Valley Forge National Park. At the time, I lived only a few miles from that green oasis. I would walk the six-mile trail, sometimes stopping to observe for the millionth time the small huts the Continental Army had wintered in, or I’d hike up to a redoubt overlooking the encampment.
And now, Heil Hitler commingled with other messages of hate reverberated across the lush fields, just starting to be tinged with autumnal glory.
In that place, many young patriots - true patriots, not the sort who wish to overthrow our democracy - succumbed to frost and dysentery. They could not know whether their fantastic noble adventure would succeed. Today, we honor George Washington as the general of that ragtag band and first president of our United States, but in 1777, those notions of liberty, freedom, and fair representation seemed elusive, if not ridiculous.
The images then of men decked out in brown National Socialist uniforms waving swastika-bedecked flags, standing where others had died to make us free, frightened me. True, they were small in number, dwarfed by the immense size of the park and the crowds of protesters who greeted them.
But the NSDAP in Germany was likewise small, likewise inconsequential in its earliest days. Economic woes, skyrocketing crime rates, and an erosion of Germany’s standing in the national community gave the Nazis the fertile ground they needed to plant seeds of hate. They simply had to promise security, peace, and jobs, and they were in.
These would-be Adolfs at Valley Forge made me wish that we could ban all political parties like the Nazis who desire the legalization and legislation of hate.
But my rational mind tells me that - as grotesque as I find them - it is more important that they be permitted to have a voice, that even our sacred sites should not be off-limits to their speech-making.
Equally important: Teaching our children that they are dangerous and why, and what their brown words lead to. They must know of the destruction that follows the lies. And we, the grownups in this affair, must take care that when hate-full thought becomes murder and mayhem, we are first in line to prosecute and protect.
When a nation is robbed of freedom, no one wins.
Today, all of Germany is encircled just as Stalingrad was. All Germans shall be sacrificed to the emissaries of hate and extermination. Sacrificed to him who tormented the Jews, eradicated half of the Poles, and who wishes to destroy Russia. Sacrificed to him who took from you freedom, peace, domestic happiness, hope, and gaiety, and gave you inflationary money. That shall not, that may not come to pass! Hitler and his regime must fall so that Germany may live. Make up your minds: Stalingrad and destruction, or Tripoli and a future of hope. And when you have decided, act.
— Christoph Probst, January 30, 1943. Seventh, unpublished White Rose leaflet.