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We are the gatekeepers of democracy, freedom

| May 24, 2020 1:00 AM

Want to know how and why a man like Hitler could mesmerize Germans and march the country to ruin in only a dozen years? German-born American historian Fritz Stern died this month, at the age of 90. His professional academic life centered on this understanding. His final conclusion was: “Hitler’s rise owed less to the Austrian corporal’s personality, his thuggish supporters and brutish ideas, than to his opponents’ cowardice and the weakness of Germany’s “gatekeepers” — the guardians of its cultural and moral standards.

He ended his life worrying that democracy was disintegrating, just as it had in his youth. A life spent studying how quickly and terribly things can go wrong, and the cost of righting them, sharpens the senses for such things.

Our Founding Fathers gave us, Americans, the tools, in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution, to be our country’s gatekeepers. Our military personnel take an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution.” We, too, have a duty to know how to use those tools of our founding documents to protect our individual freedoms. 1

MAUREEN PATERSON Priest River

1 https://constitutingamerica.org/a-memorial-day-message-by-constituting-america-founder-co-chair-janine-turner-2-2/