...and is what is all this "we",
Good point, that I had to ponder awhile.
Could the "we" be in reference to the many that stood by while Hitler slaughtered so many? Therefore, are the "we" that ignored Hitler partially responsible for their deaths?
Fast forward....We now have a president that is choosing not to ignore what is happening. It is unfortunate that many lives have been lost but I believe lives saved are in greater numbers in both the born and the unborn.
Maybe the authors' "we" is a warning for the world not to ignore Islam....
SirJohn may be long in tooth, but I am not so old as to have given Hitler a green light for the murder of the Jews or to have owned slaves.
I do not believe in "collective guilt." I have quite enough faults and sins of my own, thank you very much, without needing to heap on myself those of certain European leaders of the 30s or slaveowners of the 1800s.
Look, I am not being dense here; I fully understand the author's point. The use of "we" can be an effective rhetorical device to underline an argument, and no doubt I've slipped into that a time or two. But we need to be careful, because this kind of fuzzy thinking is just one step short of liberalism (such as the group guilt concept of "social justice" and other oxymorons) or worse.