Evil times in history should not be ignored, they should be studied.

The reason for this is obvious in a recent discussion I watched.

I mean, listen to the young man in the video below.

He has no idea that the secular China that he so admires killed 45 million of its own people.

Mao made Hitler look like a neophyte, if you want to know the truth.

I think we should work to make situations like this more rare.

The point here is not the religious/philosophical hole that I could go down.

The point here is to remember our past.

Our minds were not made to contemplate evil at great length. We inevitably protect ourselves by distorting and tempering. The mere process of trying to understand becomes a process of taming, of compacting. It is an attempt at intellectual anesthesia lest we be overwhelmed and brought to too much grief. Still, we must find courage to face in peace and comfort what others have endured at the knife-edge of history. We dishonor those who suffer by retreating from their sickening truth and we shame ourselves in the process. An unswerving gaze upon history’s atrocities is the best guarantee that those atrocities will not be repeated.

-Stephen Mansfield, The Miracle of The Kurds