Fascism survives and thrives wherever there is complicity or a lack of moral courage by individuals. Someone had to design and build the ovens at Auschwitz. Someone had to take a child from its mother or father at the border. Someone drove the trains or vans to take those deemed unwelcome or morally degenerate to their destinations. Someone has to put the padlock on the cages of children. Many working on our borders are there to earn their living, feed their families, doing the jobs conscientiously that they have been hired to do and conducting themselves responsibly but where or when do they as individuals have to draw the line?

"We" generally as a nation and as voters in a democracy are all complicit even if we have played no actual part. General Eisenhower insisted that local Germans living close to newly liberated concentration camps be made to witness the consequences of their government's policies. Moral responsibility is not divisible. Ignorance is no defense. We are all complicit if we did not say no, be it no to Japanese internment camps, to the exploitation of women, or to child abuse. Each one of us has to say no as loudly as we can. You will not take away my neighbor to a labor camp, you will not destroy a family whatever your reasoning. My humanity and my family are worth too much to me. Do it to me first if you have to.

Without each individual's moral courage to say "No! You will not do this" even when his or her own livelihood or life is threatened, we as a nation and as human beings have no moral currency. We're bankrupt. Thankfully in many cases in recent times Americans have stood up, risked their livelihoods and had that courage not to be intimidated and to make such decisions. It is not easy. The moral line is fine and stretched thinly.