I found this seemingly blasé article disturbing because this is how erasing history starts—one “inconsequential” item at a time.

“Two German WWII tombstones at a Texas veterans cemetery — each bearing Nazi swastikas — have been removed and replaced with new ones that do not use the symbol.”

NYPOST.com

I’ve heard some of the reasons for the removal and replacing of these tombstones and found them to be nothing but straw men arguments:

• Racist will flock to these sites — they can do so in their living rooms or garages.
• It’s offensive to X people — being offended is not a protected right.

While reading this article, it reminded me of the fire chiefs monologue in Fahrenheit 451 (I’ve only included a small part of it, you can find the full speech here):

“Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic-books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!

Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals”

A free society should not give in to pressures to erase our history. No matter how painful, violent, or embarrassing, we have to develop methods to cope and learn from past events, not hide them.

At first, glance, who gives a shit about two dead nazis? I certainly don’t. But where does it stop? Who decides what goes and what doesn’t?

If you haven’t read Fahrenheit 451 do yourself a favor and do so now.