Someone has to stand up

 
This last semester I had the opportunity to be a teaching fellow in a Modern Western Civ class. One week we had a discussion about the Holocaust and the choices many people made leading up to the death of millions of people. I asked the class if they thought something similar could happen today. They said that if they respected a leader enough or if enough people just didn't care. I'm afraid we're reaching that point again.
   I would like to share the story of Martin Niemoller who came out as a political foe of Adolf Hitler. I want to share the whole story of the man who shared the sound bite "First they came for the Socialists"

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.

Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
 
  his point was that Germans—in particular, he believed, the leaders of the Protestant churches—had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people.

When we don't speak out when it is someone else, we are complicit in their suffering and laying the ground work in our own suffering...

My talk of standing up sounds so heroic and yes there is a certain measure of actually standing up for beliefs, for telling someone no if their actions go against your moral or ethic code.  Or not believing what the news is trying to feed you.

And there is another way to stand up, to not be another person who implicitly allows "anything goes".  That is raising your children to respect the word 'No" to raise them with love, discipline and boundaries, help them understand that life isn't always hard and it's not meant to be easy. We live in a world with trophies for every kid who participates, with kids who bad-mouth policemen and students who have their parents make excuses for them. I just came across the story of a 12 yr old boy who might face life in prison for killing his father's pregnant fiance. How is this possible? Because we live in a time when the world says anything goes... We must begin telling our children 'no' and preparing them for a world where they have to work for them to succeed. I love this quote:





We have the power to change the world, if only we will empower ourselves to teach the children in our sphere. I have never raised children of my own flesh and blood, but I have tutored and worked with a young man since he was very young, I've worked with debate students since my junior year in high school (I'm now a super senior in college) and I teach 15 yr olds in Sunday School. I have a wide sphere of teenager influence. Which means I too need to do my part in helping instill in them a strong work ethic and a desire for a better world that they can be successful in. We each can use our sphere of influence to help children and remind ourselves that discipline simply sets us free.

-Alison