A fellow Heritage Action Sentinel, Catherine (Twitter handle: 1stBornAmerican), posted a link to:
WHY BOTHER? by William Hennessy
I read it. I appreciate his sentiments. And in like fashion I now add my comments as to WHY I BOTHER:
When I was about six or seven years old, living in Germany, my parents took my brother and me to visit Dachau. That was around 1963-64. It was not that long after World War II ended. The Dachau you see today is not as it was when I was young child. The Dachau Concentration Camp then was clean but not nearly as sanitized as it is today.
I remember walking through the gas chamber units as my mother explained how children were murdered, how their mothers in sincere effort, tried to shield the faces of their babies. I remember the hooks and my mom telling me how women had to hang their babies up, dangling in the air.
But my most vivid memory to this day is the smell in one particular building. My father was walking silently, while I, a goofy child walking beside him, was just in another adult place that could not have been less enticing to play around. The image of red brick is firmly lodged in my mind. Walking down a pathway, unable to find anything interesting to look at except rows of ovens with my father, I will never forget that smell. I will always remember scrunching up my face to the acrid smell that seemed to scratch my throat and burn my sinuses. I can remember thinking “It stinks in here.” And that thought after what seemed like forever, kept running through my head until it popped out of my mouth. I think I mumbled it at first and then repeated it loudly.
“Dad!” I said with my childlike face of scrunched disgust. “It STINKS in here! It really stinks!”
And calmly he replied with solemnity, so I would fully understand the importance of the experience, “That is the smell of death.”
For me, Never Again was born in that moment. I remember it like it was yesterday and that smell, when recalled, brings tears to my eyes.
Is it important to understand and know who our elected officials are, morally and spiritually? Is it important to understand who is surrounding them, whispering in their ears, advising them of policy and directions to push policy forward? Is engaging in methodical and rhetorical discussion paramount to ensuring elected officials are thoroughly and properly vetted?
Indeed. And that is WHY I bother.
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