There was a time when the Nazis had never killed a jew. Then there was the day they did. And then there were the days that followed.
There was a time when the title of this story was true. And then one day it wasn't. The line that should not have been crossed was crossed - the days that followed were just further steps into the abyss.
Many times when debating conservatives online I refer back to the rise of Hitler. I don't do it to be mean, I do it because Hitler was a warning to us all. He led his nation from a civilised democracy with all its warts to a corrupted and corrosive hell that killed tens of millions in war and murdered millions more in cold blood.
Germans are not a unique people. And what befell Germany in the 30's can befall any nation at any time. Italy, France, Spain, the UK and even America. Even America. Just like the Germans, we aren't unique either. No national character flaw in Germans led to Hitler, and no national virtue in us will protect us from our own Hitler.
At some point in the formation of the Nazi party an innocent was killed. A jew, a gypsy, a homeless man, a baker, whatever. That person was killed and the Nazis who saw it looked away.
An innocent was killed to further their ideology. An ideology that Germans were better than everyone else, that others were inferior, that anything done to protect Germany; elevate Germany was acceptable. And that included killing those they perceived as a threat - right or wrong, innocent or guilty.
Hitler used this ideology to expand his power and to justify his policies.
Bush and the Republican party have not murdered 6 million muslims at Gitmo. They haven't killed 10 million arabs in war. But Hitler didn't lead his nation into hell once the six millionth jew was slaughtered or the 10 millionth Soviet soldier was shot on the Eastern front. He began the march with a single sanctioned killing of an innocent.
In the past 2+ years we have invaded a sovereign nation for the wrong reasons. For lies stacked upon lies - a stack of lies matched only by the tens of thousands of iraqis killed on the "strength" of those lies. We initiated a war for which there were no right reasons.
Supposedly this was to make us safer. But even that reason isn't proving true. We've killed thousands and we're in greater danger than we were on 9/11.
In the past 3 years we've begun holding people in prison camps without charges and sometimes without acknowledgement. We've tortured prisoners. We've killed prisoners.
We don't know if those people are innocent. We don't know if they are guilty. It is extremely likely that some prisoners killed were innocent. All done to keep us safe. To make sure America stays the strongest nation in the world.
We are taking familiar steps. We are travelling a familiar path. The signposts in the distance say Dachau and Auschwitz. Behind us is a line we crossed several years ago. We can keep going on this path or we can turn back.
What are we as a nation going to do?
There was a time when the Republican party had not killed an innocent. Then there was the day they did. And then there were the days followed.