The Punning Pundit

"...if we erase from our society the pernicious idea that humanity can be divided into separate "races", we’ll never again see evil of the NAZI kind."

Of course we will. Where difinitions of race are lacking, those who would kill to get (and keep) power will invent the semantic equivalent to describe those they wish to kill. Racial (and religious) definitions are convenient excuses, but are not the root cause.

(Gosh, I sound so pessimistic!)

jlb

Dude, take a chill pill. Not everyone can become a Nazi just like not everyone can become a Ward Churchill. The key is moderation.
This is what is wrong w blogs- only the looniest and loudest get on. Recently I came acros this article on the war:

http://cosmoetica.com/B194-DES136.htm

Iraq, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, And The Couch Potato’s Burden:
A Muscular Centrist Attack On The Pro-War Position

By far the best I've read cuz it rips the left and right, and cuts thru the bs- although it does take yr pal Dean Esmay to task too. Still, it shows that real thought isn't dead, or sacrificed to political ideology. Human rights are great, but imposing one's will in their name viollates the very concept of freedom. Anyway, keep breathing dude.

"The men and women who were complicit-- who knew and did nothing-- were otherwise good and decent people. The Hitler Youth, aside from being fervent supporters of the Final Solution, were decent, moral children."

Um, no. If they were truly good and decent, they would have done something. I think you have confused "good and decent" with "well-intentioned."

The Hitler Youth are a tougher call (that's a terrible thing to do to a child) but still, I can't call a child decent, or moral, when they inform on their neighbors, or join in the Jew-hating Ubermench society.

Of course, if you're talking about the kids who just bore arms against the Allies in the last 6 months of the war, that's different...

assholes? what kind of intolerant expletive is that? you refuse to evaluate the work of an entertainer with an opinion and yet have the right to label them personally?
why haven't you seen schindler's list yet or any of its equivalents mr. civic-minded idealist? and haven't you sat through the sound of music enough times to realize that not everybody can be turned inot a nazi? there is always a choice, and "goodness" and "decency" are very flexible standards depending on the social contract in which you live. wake up call: genocide is not a function of race. nor is one member of a species killing another a human issue. there will always be evil of the Nazi kind, and as technology and human capability of evil grows greater so will the atrocities. people commit them because they can. hopefully your class shows you as many graphic pictures of hiroshima and you will think it was because the heroic americans saw this as the only way to end the war. it was not. they did it because they could and they wanted to win. if you really want to do your part to slow the human decline, start by cutting out the namecalling.

I think the "erase... idea that humanity can be divided" line was a bit naive. Race is but one of many divisors the human race has used over the ages to commit genocide. So long as humanity insists on an us and them, there will be "them-icide." Greeks and Troy. Romans and Carthage. The modern Balkens, Mogahdishu, the Inquisition, the biblical flood, the biblical Sodom and Gahmora, etc.

Granted, if we can get rid of the race issue, it'll be a better world. All of the race issues. Jews too. You know, the whole thing that spurned the "never again" quote. The thing that's been spurned when it comes to Israel. You know, those people we keep trying to appease, the ones who've sworn oaths to never lay down arms so long as Jews hold the holy land... etc.

Nope, not accusing any one other than our state department, and former presidents, foreign countries like France, anyone who keeps crying that there can be peace in the middle east if they would just talk to each other, Jimmy Carter, (who deservces SEVERAL mentions in this list) etc.

So, anyone who's kept reading...

To argue against the replies so far, anyone, ANYONE, can become "nazi" like, given the right conditions. Granted, some of those conditions are rather extreme, but how do you think those corrupted in Germany got that way? It didn't happen, one night, where everyone woke up the next day and said, "Kill the Jews, Kill the Gypsy's, Pure blood, Uber Alles" It happened gradually, and fairly slowly, with huge stresses placed on people. And it happened to people that are identical to the ones here, and elsewhere. Racism is NOT so old in the US that there's no one around who lived and grew up during Racist times. It was not so long ago that 1/2 a populace thought it was right and the religeous thing to be.

It can happen. So what will keep it happening? Speech, free and true. That'll help. But it's not enough. Speech by itself, can't garuntee itself. How about the Government? Can we trust government to help us keep our speech? Patriot Act? Bet that hit a button. How about King George? Would he have prevented it? The founding fathers didn't beleive so, since they saw fit to require it to be the first of the Bill of Rights. How about the elected government of the Nationalist Socialist Party? You know, NAZI? Nope, government won't do it. About the only thing that will protect itself, and Speech, is the 2nd amendment. The one that spells out that the security of a FREE state is dependent on the right to bear arms. Without those two rights, no man is safe.

And we're losing both. Slowly but surely. No gun zones that are city, or in some cases, darn near state wide. Overly broad, open-ended anti-gun legislation. Irresponsible propaganda about the evils of guns, gun owners, etc. Overly "liberal" views that violence is never the answer. Lack of civic education to properly teach the lessons that will help keep guns and/or violence from being necessary. Sure, they're dangerous. So's freedom and equality.

And let's not forget free speech. Everyone has responsibility for the degradation of free speech. Flag burning as speech, Politically Correct requirements, Colleges/University Speech codes, so called Hate Speech, Mainstream Media, Propaganda. It's all causing free speech to erode. And it's all a path to the same conditions that let rise to us-vs-them-o-cide.

Feh. Ranting done for the day.
Rand.