I’ve written about this before, but we should really try hard to learn from the German people. When I was a young man, I spent five years in the military stationed in West Berlin. Because I spoke German, most of my friends were German young people my age.

I didn’t just go out partying with them, I spent long hours of heart-to-heart conversation in their homes and around their family dinner tables.

Sometimes a former member of the Nazi party would be literally in the room, eating at the same table.

Did my friends realize their family members had been complicit with evil? They couldn’t avoid realizing it when Grandpa was dishing up potatoes in the next chair over.

But my friends had been met with real history from the moment they began attending school. They learned what their immediate ancestors had done, and they learned that they must take lessons from that, that they alone will be responsible for ensuring nothing similar ever happens again.

Germany is an economic success story, and a wonderful place to live. It’s also something like the moral heart of western Europe. It’s not an accident that Germany does more than its fair share of welcoming displaced refugees and other hurting people.

It’s not a perfect society, but it’s a very good, decent society. Much of that is due to the fact that the German people have faced responsibility for their families' moral failings. They’ve accepted the challenge of being better people who will build a better society.

If only most of us Americans could do the same.