The spirit of fascistic book burning has entered the American system

“In his 1989 movie, “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” Steven Spielberg has a remarkable scene of Nazi book burning. The looks of ecstasy as the actors-playing-Germans parade past Hitler and throw inappropriate books on the fire are compelling and convincing. These people are cleansing their society of past and future sins.

Of course, the real Nazis went much further through their attempt to physically cleanse their society of perceived impurities through a holocaust of the Jewish people, murders of minority groups, political prisoners, and the selective killing of Germans with genetic defects, and a maniacal sense of righteousness which remains horrifying to this day.

Unfortunately, the Nazi effort to destroy the past in search of a pure future is not an isolated event.

During the Reformation, militant Protestants destroyed art in Catholic churches.”