Yet similar events occurred just a few years later in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

When freedom is lost, human beings abuse power to the extreme of true inhumanity.

The problem is that people who haven't experienced such deprivation seldom realize how important freedom is -- until it's too late. This pattern has repeated itself many times in history.

Most Americans today, basking in the benefits of decades of relative peace and prosperity, seem to think that such things won't ever happen here.

We hear of our own government using drones and other means to spy on its people, of secret courts that aren't overseen by anyone, of the government's new power to detain, imprison and torture its people without any due process.