From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jan 12 2003 - 01:58:00 GMT
Kevin, Platt and all vodka drinkers:
Kevin said:
Did the Nazi's gather around the conference table and decide, "what is
the most absolute evil thing we could do this year?" On the contrary,
they deemed their project to be the highest good for the German people
and the world to be. Such is the staggering implications of this
horrific chapter, that rational, scientific, reasonable men decided that
the world would rise up and cheer them forever if they simply wiped out
a race of "undesirables" that were the cause of all their problems.
DMB says:
I'm going to pick some nits, but don't get me wrong. I think your post is
excellent, even brilliant, and you say it well. The only thing I'd object to
is the idea that the designers of the "final solution" were "rational,
scientific, reasonable men". Yea, they had appropriated philosophers and
employed many scientists, but the NAZI ideology, if one can even call it an
ideology, was wildly irrational. One of Hilter's top men killed himself for
failing to find the holy grail. No kidding. The top NAZIs believed in the
grail in a very literal way and thought they would find an acutal object. If
that's not fundamentalism, the word has no meaning. This is consistent with
what Pirsig says, that Hilter was motivated by extreme anti-intellectualism
and a desire to agrandize social values over everything else.
Kevin wrote:
The Holocaust happened because it was deemed an Absolute Good by the
perpetrators. And the horrible fact that this rationalization sufficed
for thousands of military personnel and civil servants who carried out
this atrocity and for a nation what let it happen stands as further
testament to the destructive might of the human mind when it is
convinced it has discovered Absolute Truth.
DMB says:
Exactly. You won't hear it from today's sympathetic reactionarys, but Hitler
was forever ranting about freedom, morality, family values, patriotism and
all kinds of things that are presently trumpeted by the religious right in
America. Jerry Falwell and Hilter would agree on many, many things. And the
chilling thing, as you rightly point out, is that these kinds of guys are
entirely sincere in believeing they have the moral high ground and are
engaged in a moral battle for the future of mankind. Nobody thinks they're
evil. The lion might eat your baby girl, but he doesn't think that's evil.
To him, its only lunch.
Kevin said to Platt:
Now you'll be pontificating about how I'm simply demonstrating the evil
that is "moral relativism". I beg to differ. In my mind, the purest form
of "moral relativism" is performed by those individuals who convince
themselves that their short-sighted selfish interest is, in fact, the
Absolute Good for all people, at all times, and in all circumstances.
DMB says:
Wow. I don't know if it was intentional, but you have just leveled a
devastating blow against the "free enterprise" argument. I've heard it many
times from many quarters, but summed up nicely in the film WALL STREET.
"Greed is good" I know people who went around quote Oliver Stone without any
sense of irony and apparently unaware that it was a parody, a morality tale
about the dangers of greed.
Kevin said:
If the people of Germany had been skeptics, ironists, doubters and
"moral relativists", then would have asked themselves, "Can killing all
Jews really be a boon for all civilization when it's obviously such a
bad thing for Jews themselves?" They would have been frozen in their own
"moral ambiguity" and "moral vacuum" or any of the other phrases with
which you like to paint persons who aren't comfortable with the idea of
standing up and declaring their self-interest as the Absolute Good for
All Time & Eternity.
DMB says:
Again, I very much agree, except for one little thing. Germany had its fair
share of skeptics and dissenters, but they were among the first to die. The
NAZI were bashing in the heads of liberals and intellectuals even before
Hitler came to power.
Finally, I'd like to something about the thing that motivates fascists,
reactionaries and even your basic garden variety conservatives, namely
anti-intellectualism. I think Pirsig was quite right to identify the social
level ideologies with this impulse. I'd encourage you to look at
politicians, political partys and ideologies with this in mind. A former
White House insider and Bush speech writer by the name of David Frum has
written a book about the current administration. In it he says that our
President is "uncurious and therefore ill-informed". He also says that Bush
and his staff were suspicious of and openly hostile toward anyone with
"conspicuous intelligence". Obviously, this is miles away from NAZI Germany,
but this anti-intellectual attitude speaks volumes nevertheless. Remember
this next time you hear some ignoramus bashing "the experts" or "the elite"
or whatever other codeword is contrived to describe intellectual people.
Thanks for your time and for your moral courage.
DMB
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