Maybe the only way to tell a "good" revolutionary from a "bad" one is
staying power. Quality will win out. Those revolutionaries that
improve things, their changes last. Those that don't - don't.
Maybe I'm being too simplistic?
Shalom
David Lind
Trickster@postmark.net
Platt Holden wrote:
> David B. and Group:
>
> David, Your post about “good revolutionaries” (Jesus, Ghandi, John Brown,
> etc.) was persuasive. The question boils down to, “How do you tell the good
> guys from the bad?” You wrote:
>
> DAVID B:
> He (Pirsig) says that the MOQ can do something that SOM couldn’t; tell the
> difference between criminals and revolutionaries.
>
> PLATT:
> We saw in the varied answers to Roger’s moral dilemmas that the group’s
> application of the MoQ to “real life” moral issues was uneven, to put it
kindly.
> (-: Now the challenge is to see if the MoQ can do better in identifying
good
> revolutionaries from bad.
>
> The following editorial appeared recently in the N.Y. Post. My question is,
> “What principles of the MoQ would you use to show that Fred Leuchter, Jr.
is
> one of the bad guys?” My point in asking is that if the MoQ (or other
method)
> cannot determine in advance the good contrarians from the bad, my paranoia
> about self-appointed champions of humanity may be justified.
>
> NYPOST
> The Holocaust, in which the most culturally and technologically advanced
> nation on earth systematically murdered a people in the name of an Idea, is
> the signal event of the 20th century. Stalin and Mao practiced variations
on
> the theme.
>
> How could such a thing happen? The peculiar case of a little man from
> Malden, Mass., named Fred Leuchter Jr. goes a long way toward explaining
> it.
>
> Leuchter is the title character of “Mr. Death,” another riveting nonfiction
> portrait of an eccentric personality by the great filmmaker Errol Morris.
>
> Morris’ film is a tale of how a garrulous mild-mannered Everyman gave his
> mind over to pure evil. It offers nothing less than a moral history of
mankind
> in the 20th century. Leuchter, the son of a state prison official,
developed
> early on an obsession with death – specifically, prison executions. As an
> adult, the affable egghead taught himself enough engineering to become a
> much-sought-after expert on electric chairs, gas chambers and the like.
>
> In 1987, the neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel was put on trial in Canada for denying
the
> Holocaust, a crime there. He commissioned Leuchter to travel to Auschwitz
> to evaluate the ruins of the crematoria there. The result was “The Leuchter
> Report,” which concluded that no one could have been gassed at Auschwitz.
> The report was thrown out of court, but has had a galvanizing effect on the
> Holocaust-denial movement.
>
> “Mr. Death” makes it crystal clear that Leuchter’s analysis is hopelessly
> faulty, and that Holocaust denial is utter nonsense. And yet, Leuchter,
> consumed by vanity and pride, still believes he is correct.
>
> Morris, who is Jewish, doesn’t believe Leuchter is a Jew-hater. Leuchter
> sees himself as a Galileo figure, a courageous martyr for free speech and
> scientific inquiry.
>
> Here’s the rub: He thinks he’s a hero.
>
> This is what makes Leuchter so fascinating, and disturbing – and an
unlikely
> metaphor for us all in this century in which much evil has been committed
> and defended by PEOPLE WHO BELIEVED THEY WERE DOING GOOD.
> (Emphasis added.)
>
> Is amiable Fred Leuchter guilty of thoughtlessness, of leading an
> unexamined life?
>
> Yes, but Morris says this blindness comes not from neglecting to think; it
> comes from turning his mind’s eye away from reality to the “truth” one
would
> prefer to see.
>
> “That’s more disturbing, construing the world to suit your own purposes,
> despite evidence to the contrary,“ he says.
>
> Morris wants audiences to come away from the film wondering about
> themselves. How do we know we’re not like good old Fred, who looks as
> about as dangerous as Don Knotts?
>
> We celebrate freedom of expression, for example, as a virtue. But will our
> descendants consider us criminally insane for creating a culture where
lurid
> sex and extreme violence were mainstays of popular entertainment?
>
> What about abortion, of the killing of 1.6 million unborn American children
> annually. Will people a hundred years from now think of us as we do about
> ordinary Germans of the Nazi era: as willing accomplices to mass murder?
>
> This next hundred years will tell much. The tragic rise and fall of Fred
> Leuchter is a timely warning that the unreflective egotism and hysterical
> optimism of modern man is a blind trap leading to what Robert Conquest, the
> great historian of Soviet terror, calls “mindslaughter.”
>
> The rest follows.
>
> PLATT:
> I’ve tried to apply MoQ principles to the Fred Leuchter case without much
> success, due no doubt to my inability to see the light. I hope David B. or
> anyone else who cares to tackle the problem can set me aright.
>
> If there are many truths, why isn’t Leuchter’s as good as anyone’s?
>
> Was the Canadian court, representing social values, acting morally when it
> threw out his report?
>
> How do MoQ principles prevent one from “turning his mind’s eye away from
> reality to the “truth” one would prefer to see?”
>
> Is the author correct in calling Leuchter a “metaphor for us all in this
century
> in which much evil has been committed and defended by people who
> believed they were doing good?”
>
> Platt
>
>
>
>
> MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
> Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
> Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
> MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
>
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:17 BST