Published: April 01, 2008 06:25 pm         

THE WAY I SEE IT: Look closely at those feathers

The pressing political question of the day is one of associations. Should candidates, and ordinary people for that matter, be known by the company they keep? Never mind the fact that until the turbulent 1960s, that was the accepted rule. Until then we all knew that there were some things about which we had better be judgmental. In those times, sound judgment was an attribute.

Previous generations were admonished by their parents to choose their friends wisely. In my own family, the rule was quite simple. You didn't need anyone to help you choose your acquaintances. You knew that if you were not comfortable bringing people home to meet your mother and father, you had no business associating with them. It had nothing at all to do with race or religion or social status. It had everything to do with the manner in which they addressed their elders, treated the helpless and adhered to the truth. But then, we were not as politically correct as people are today.

We knew full well that a man who wanted to hold a nation's highest office had to be known by the company he kept. If one of his friends was a racist hate monger who openly wanted to destroy those "inferior" types, he would come to no good. It made no difference whether or not the people involved were articulate. They could be spellbinders and hypnotic. They could be smooth and sophisticated. But, if their words were hateful and inflammatory, they were to be avoided, shunned and denounced.

We knew from experience that people of this ilk were dangerous. The politicians who courted them would ultimately be influenced by these bigots. That influence could easily carry over into the policies and programs the ambitious head of state would endorse. We knew that the hatred and racism of the chosen mentor would indeed influence his pupil. We knew this, not by extrapolation, but by critical observation. We had seen in happen, and we had seen the chaos that resulted from ignoring these relationships.

We witnessed just such a mentor as he spewed his racist hate speech. We heard him blame the people he hated for every ill that had befallen his country. We heard him urge his fellow countrymen to take their country back from these "subhuman" types. We saw the devastating and despicable results of this hatred, as the pupil increasingly adopted the philosophies of his mentor. We did not have a shred of doubt about the logic of judging leaders by the company they kept.

In case you are wondering, the mentor in questions was not a black man, he was a caucasian. His party was neither Republican or Democrat. He could not be called a liberal nor a conservative. The mentor's name was Paul Joseph Goebbels. His party was the National Socialist Party. His identity was Nazi. The pupil he mentored, and whom he served as his minister of propaganda, was Chancellor Adolf Hitler of Germany. No one dared to examine this association. Soon, the entire world would learn that it would have been wise to do so.

Robert Evans Burnette is a Crossville Chronicle columnist. His column appears on Wednesdays in the Chronicle.