I grew up in the twilight of the Cold War and there was definitely a lot of side eye thrown at socialists, labor agitators and pacifists of all kinds. I did hav

I grew up in the twilight of the Cold War and there was definitely a lot of side eye thrown at socialists, labor agitators and pacifists of all kinds. I did have one teacher who proudly shared Helen Keller’s letter to the students who burned her books in Nazi Germany. —— To the student body of Germany: History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books for all time to the German soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and compassion for the German people. I acknowledge the grievous complications that have led to your intolerance; all the more do I deplore the injustice and unwisdom of passing on to unborn generations the stigma of your deeds. Do not imagine that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here. God sleepeth not, and He will visit His judgment upon you. Better were it for you to have a mill-stone hung around your neck and sink into the sea than to be hated and despised of all men. https://www.openculture.com/2017/05/helen-keller-writes-a-letter-to-nazi-students-before-they-burn-her-book-history-has-taught-you-nothing-if-you-think-you-can-kill-ideas-1933.html https://www.openculture.com/2017/05/helen-keller-writes-a-le...