Gone But Not Forgotten

On a recent trip to Budapest, our family stopped at the Communist Statue Park (graveyard). My children were raised on a steady diet of anti-communism, so it was interesting for them at an intellectual level.

But standing before these icons of an oppressive era thankfully gone by, I was struck by a tremendous sense of what I could only identify as nostalgia mixed with de ja vu.

Nostalgia:
Growing up in the 60's we learned to duck under our desks during the mock air raid drills. We cheered on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacemen as they sought to best the Cosmonauts. We heard the body counts on the radio as young men came back from Vietnam in bags in the fight against Communist North Vietnam. We saw Communism spread across the globe from Peru to Nicaragua in our hemisphere to places like Ethiopia and Burma half a world away.

De Ja Vu:
I remember that there was a sense of invincibility about Communism in general and about the Soviet Union in particular. Nobody really thought you could beat the Soviet Union - they were too big, too committed AND they were everywhere. The Communists were pressing us everywhere. The only continent that seemed safe was Antarctica. The best we could hope to do is to appease and contain them.

Amazingly enough, we hear the same things today about Radical Islam.

They're too big.

Too committed.

And besides, they're everywhere. Muslims in Africa. Muslims in Asia. Muslims taking over Europe.

The best we can do is appease and contain them.

One day, my children will take my grandchildren to the new World Trade Center. They'll tell them how when they were growing up nobody thought that we'd be able to defeat Radical Islam. How they bombed us and killed our innocents. How we fought great wars to free enslaved peoples in their countries.

I'm sure at an intellectual level, my grandchildren will be interested.

But the sight won't stir their souls like it will for my children.

Just like it did for me when I saw this statue.