Thought Police

A few things come to mind today after being BLASTED by someone for expressing on Facebook my opinions regarding the Boston bombing which after investigation I totally believe to be a staged hoax.

First, I am remined of the fictional Thought Police in George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish thoughtcrime and thought-criminals using psychology and omnipresent surveillance to monitor, search, find and arrest members of society who could potentially challenge authority and status quo, even only by thought. Also included in their bag of tricks was terror and torture. Nice, huh?

But that was fiction. This however is not:

“I lived in Germany during the Nazi holocaust. I considered my-self a Christian. I attended Church since I was a small boy. We had heard the stories of what was happening to the Jews, but like most people today in this country, we tried to distance ourselves from the reality of what was really taking place. What could anyone do to stop it? A railroad track ran behind our small church, and each Sunday morning we would hear the whistle from the distance and then the clacking of the wheels moving over the track. We became disturbed when one Sunday we noticed cries coming from the train as it passed by. We grimly realized that the train was carry-ing Jews. They were like cattle in those cars! Week after week that train whistle would blow. We would dread to hear the sound of those old wheels because we knew that the Jews would begin to cry to us as they passed our church. It was so terribly disturbing! We could do nothing to help these poor miserable people, yet their screams tormented us. We knew exactly at what time that whistle would blow, and we decided the only way to keep from being so disturbed by the cries was to start singing our hymns. By the time the train came rumbling past the church yard, we were singing at the top of our voices. If some of the screams reached our ears, we'd just sing a little louder until we could hear them no mmore. Years passed and no one talks about it much anymore, but I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. I can still hear them crying out for help. God forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians, yet did nothing to intervene."

And lastly, I first read this well-known statement attributed to the German anti-Nazi activist, Pastor Martin Niemöller, at the Holocaust museum in Israel several years ago:
“In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me — and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Pastor Martin Niemoeller

Oops! I’m I talking too much?