Demi-tasse

I recently finished reading Elie Wiesel's Night. Something about it haunts me, and it is more than the terrible systematic murder of the Jews in the 1940s. What's eating at me is the sense of optimism which Eliezer confesses that he, his family and his neighbors felt about the political situation before and shortly after the Nazis rounded them up and imprisioned them in the ghettos, and even in the initial days of their deportation to concentration camps. Wiesel suggests that his parents' naïve disregard about the evil headed their way resulted in their own demise. If only they could have more clearly foreseen the future, they would have realized the urgency to resist and escape.

What an awful sentiment it must have been to realize the grave consequences of such a mistake.

It makes a pretty good case, in my opinion, for taking a more skeptical view of the decisions that today's powers-that-be flippantly make as they extend government controls on people, all in the name of "national security".