September 7, 2024

By Dan W. Hall

What have we Americans learned from history these last 85 years? It would seem very little based on a recent conversation my wife and I had at breakfast recently. Like many of you reading this, we have loved Neighbors Cafe in downtown Lee’s Summit, for decades. But I digress, as you see a young 30’s something couple and their engaging two year old daughter was seated next to us. Bashful (no), as I am, I started a conversation with the couple and some how the question of World War II came up. As I had a cousin, Marion Smith, who had fought under the command of George S. Patton in North Africa, then Italy, and finally in Germany, I asked if the couple if they had ever heard of this famous American general? A blank stare occurred and the answer that neither of them had ever heard of this famous American general. I was most surprised, but not my wife who later explained (after the couple had left the cafe) to me that most American young people do not know American history. That, if actually generally true, should be frightening, not only to we Americans, but to all people in the Western World who cherish liberty and freedom.

This writer who has been blessed to have worked and traveled in over fifty-five countries around the world, has seen the horrid results of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party). He has seen the ovens where the Nazi’s murdered tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children who happened to be Jewish. Now he is witnessing American college students on some of our most prestigious campuses calling for the killing of all Jews and the destruction of Israel (from the River Jorden to the sea Mediterranean). These same students carry the flags of terrorist organizations who have murdered thousands of peaceful Jewish young people in Israel. They also burn our United States flag. Perhaps, like German students are annually required to do, they should visit one of the Nazi concentration camps. Short of that, perhaps they be required to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C..

Prior to the Berlin Wall coming down, I visited East Berlin through “Checkpoint Charlie” and saw the utter poverty of the Communist system. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was also known as the “All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party.” My new young friends, at Neighbors Cafe, probably also didn’t know that Joseph Stalin was Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 till his death in 1953. During his tenure as dictator, Stalin, and his henchmen, murdered over twenty million Russian citizens and he was also responsible for the deaths of over twenty million Russian solders during World War II. Following Stalin’s death on February 25, 1956, Premier Nikita Khrushchev told the Soviet Union Congress the truth of what a real scoundrel Stalin had really been. Mysteriously, that same night of the speech, the huge statue of Stalin, on the high banks of the Vltava River running thru Prague, in the Czech Republic was pulled down using ropes by hundreds of Czech citizens. Also incidentally, Khrushchev with an agricultural background, had developed strong connections to Iowa’s Roswell Garst who sold hybrid corn seed to his friend Nikita from 1956 onward.

Now, my friends, on November 5, we voters face a critical election where the fate of our republic hangs in a delicate balance. We must learn from the history of centralized governmental control, as witnessed by the failures of Germany, Russia, and more recently, Venezuela. We voters should look at the true qualifications of the candidates from both major political parties. Look at the history of the voting record and past actions of each candidate. Here, I think we should look closely at all four of the candidates, not just for president, but just as closely or even more closely, at the candidates for vice president. As we have already seen the over the past decades, that American presidents often didn’t serve out their terms. Do we really want someone who assumes the office of US president who may already be or could compromised? Of every one of the four candidates we should ask do you know your American history? Do you know who George S. Patton was and why does it matter?