Veterans Day Reminders
This past Monday marked Veterans Day. From a speech given early in World War II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill marked the success of the RAF (Royal Air Force) to protect England from the German Luftwaffe.
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
His words became prophetic as well as historic, capturing the qualities of sacrifices made by nations and individuals for the cause of freedom from tyranny.
Arlington Cemetery, Washington, D.C.
The Rise of Anti-Semitism
Earlier this month, mobs in Amsterdam attacked the soccer team from Israel. (READ more in this article by Jim Denison.)
Jim Denison points out the irony that these attacks took place where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis in the attic of her father’s business for 761 days before an anonymous tip led the Gestapo to arrest them. Anne died at age 15 in a concentration camp six months after her arrest.
I’ve been there, inside that space. Seen with my own eyes and imagined the terror-filled days when ordinary citizens, Jews, were designated targets by an evil enemy.
But the arrogance and gaul of those who today deny these things happened troubles me.
Didn’t the world believe we would never again confront such inhumanity?
Well, Yes and No.
Read the Bible. It sheds enormous light on the daily news.
The Long Lens of History
Each year since 1945, fewer people who survived WWII are alive to bear witness to the atrocities of that war.
In order to appreciate sacrifices others made against the threat of evil, every successive generation needs survivor stories to link to their own story.
You and I need to validate those stories, believe those testimonies almost as if what happened to them had happened to us.
I have visited the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, and the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam, and Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany both offer chilling reminders of attempted genocide by a madman.
The records and remains of what and how the Nazis annihilated six million Jews are among the ugliest and most appalling pages of human history.
When in 2024 mobs attack Jewish soccer players in Amsterdam, Americans should shudder. Antisemitism has risen to record highs as Marxist ideology spreads throughout the world.
This memorial in D.C. holds thousands of pairs of shoes, each pair belonging to someone targeted by the Nazis. The people were herded like animals led to a slaughter.
The Shoes Bear Witness
The words describe the horror.
Photos I took at Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C.
The Shoes memorial in Budapest, Hungary marks where Jews, including mothers with children, were shot by the Nazis and then fell into Danube River, 1944.
Post-WWII America and “The Good Ole Days”
Europe was demolished, Britain was war-torn and impoverished, Japan was nearly wiped off the world map, China and Russia were not world powers. Yet.
That left America sitting in the cat-bird seat. No battles fought on American soil. The industries that grew to contribute to the Allied resistance overseas had during the war trained workers, raw materials, and ambition. America was poised to flourish.
And what many consider America’s “Best years, the Boomer years” launched the first man on the moon.
My husband’s career in the chemical industry led to a consulting business for Six Sigma––a quality control system for business management.
One thing my husband learned and shared with me was from W. Edward Deming “the Rule of the Funnel.” After the war ended, Deming went to Japan to help rebuild that country. Do you think he succeeded?
In trying to reduce variability in processes, the Rule of the Funnel shows how when you drop the first marble into a funnel to hit a target, don’t move the funnel over the point where that marble landed. In other words, to control process, the target stays the same and does not move with successive moves of the funnel and marbles.
“If you move it to where the first marble landed,” Deming said, “you’re off to the Milky Way.”
What’s that got to do with the price of cheese in Denmark?
“It is not enough to do your best, you must know what to do, and then do your best. Experience by itself teaches nothing ... Without theory, experience has no meaning.”
Without adherence to a recognized standard, decline is inevitable. The standard was “In God We Trust.”
Americans did work really hard after the war, but America had no worldwide competition. Affluence came quickly. Halcyon days of peace and prosperity followed.
Those people born before or during the war years realized the contrast between scarcity and prosperity.
Once upon a time, maybe, more people were civil and fewer people flaunted immorality, but there has never been a time when evil did not exist and the Enemy has not prowled about to deceive, lie, and kill what God values most.
God values Life––humanity in all its multi-colored, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-faceted expressions, including life of the unborn.
“If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.
Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become ‘fools’ so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness..’”
Americans, I fear, have moved the funnel, chasing a marble far from God’s standards of civility, morality, and humility.
While you and I as Christians cannot answer for the venom and hatred in the hearts of others, each of us can choose to uphold the unchanging standards of righteousness. We can teach our children and grandchildren lessons from history in hopes that in their lifetime history does not repeat itself.
When Veterans stand to be recognized for their service to our country, I ask myself, Will I prove willing to sacrifice my life for what I believe?
