Deflection

Today I visited the World War II Museum here in New Orleans. One might think that there are just going to visit a great museum on a world wide war. Although this is true, the start of the museum is a stark reminder of the number of people that was killed during this war, so the feeling becomes sobering in a hurry.

When I bought the ticket, I paid extra for two extra movies, since I am from the hometown of Stephen Ambrose the founder of the museum, I wanted to see it all. As for this discussion, I am going to write about the second movie, the Freedom Theater. What came out of the WW II was a Freedom Seal with the following four categories:

• Freedom of Speech
• Freedom of Religion
• Freedom from Fear
• Freedom from Want

After reviewing the museum today, it is clear that the first amendment to the US Constitution was freedom of speech. If freedom of speech would have been part of the German and Japanese governments, there would have been no WWII. Hitler control what was printed in Germany, and, if an editor wanted to print something other than what Hitler gave them, he was executed. Only the SS officers know what was going on in Hitler’s government. Most of the military offices did not know that millions of people were killed in the concentration camp. Without freedom of speech, the German people were kept in the dark.

The Japanese were also kept in their citizens in the dark on what was going on in their government. With their government only giving the citizens propaganda on how the ally solders would treat them, they would rather kill themselves instead of being capture. After the war, when the Japanese Officers were tried for committing war crimes against humanity, these officers did not know anything about war crimes against prisoners from other countries. This really lead to difficult court proceedings. Therefore, as with the Germans, if freedom of speech was in affect with the Japaneses, there would have been no war, since the Japanese would have known that other counties would have treated them like human beings. There are stories of US soldiers being highly torched as prisoners of war, and then actually became friend with individual Japaneses after the war.

During George Washington’s presidency, he found that Martha had been shielding him from negative items that was coming in about him and his presidency, and he clearly told Martha that she could not shield him, because he needed the hear both sides on all issues to properly govern this country. As with so many items in out government, George Washington and so many of the bureaucrat of the first few years set precedence on how this country should be governed, like France’s equivalent to our secretary of state knocked on Washington’s door without any per knowledge, and Washington promptly told him that he would have to work through the Secretary of State to see him and this unwritten policy still stands today.

As we are aware of in this country, freedom of speech has taken a hit with citizens getting their news through the internet. As for the press and media news that were proud of their fair and balanced news, like we saw about fifty years ago, the news today is based on the feelings of the editors and producers. That seems to come out slanted. As we have seen in this past election, there are people that are taking acceptation to this idea that they are being feed slanted news. With the talk that has been taken the last few days, President Biden has pardoned his son make Biden look guilt of the crimes that have been reported on one side and making the others side look like they have been lying in the media. It is unbelievable that in this country, where President George Washington set the precedence of freedom of speech, that we would be facing the issue with the presidency today. But, regarding Washington’s attorney general, he found out that there are real people in government and they are not all creditable. Just as we are finding out about our current president. Without freedom of speech, just as there were with the atrocities in WW II, major negative issues can come up in government.

As a side note: when President Ronald Reagan was giving his speech on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day on the cliffs of Normandy, there were some of the soldier there that day, and they climbed that cliff again in their 60s. After his speech, all him could talk about was these men climbing this high steep cliff, despite what happened on D-Day, since he was so into the human spirt. As with my writings, I hope that I can take some of his spirt in to what I am writing, since it might not be what people are thinking.

Roger