SS Bashing

[JasonC]

SO - and you pretend you don't? lol.

[Cantabron]

SS petty criminals?

2 SS soldiers we're once found guilty of stealing another SSs' pay(this wouldn't be such a big deal in any other service), they we're shot.

[JasonC]

And the faithful fanboys return to their endless labors...

[Yushal]

LOL

To Runyan: I dont pretend to be the proprietor of "Universal Morality". Neither do I think Jason is. (Tho he knows he is right, this has no real basis either for the same reasons that 'History by the Victors' doesn't or he is extrapolating via Objectivist consequences and doesn't affect any 'Universal' principle unless his consequences hold true forever in any given circumstance.)

I do believe that there IS a Universal Morality, so to speak, that there is one correct course of action for each situation, but I cannot with authority list them or their underlying principles.

But if you are genuine and not merely switching to a passive-aggressive approach, there is plenty of guidance on the matter, both from a theologic and an objectivist viewpoint.

But to try to answer your island case, I can only resort to the same argument as JasonC has and ask:

Is anyone adversely affected in any gross manner?

[Runyan99]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Within 3 weeks, some couples uninterested in the goings on would have retired to more distant parts of the island to have each others company securely and to avoid that of the others. In the knot remaining, a few males would have assumed a dominant position in the pairing game. Resentments over initially free choices would have begun to grow. Humor, referral to prior statements, and peer pressure have been used, and are begining to be supplimented by exterior "linked" forms of pressure, to get what individuals want, even if the partner does not want it.

Sounds like a pack of chimpanzees, doesn't it?

I broadly agree with what you have written, and I clearly understand your argument, whereby those things that are harmful to human life or to the function of society (as we know it) are immoral. I therefore agree that morality must exist as long as civilization is to exist, else we are reduced to living in little tribes like chimps, because man is a flawed and needful creature.

I disagree with you partially with respect to ancient morality and the classical mind. While there was clearly some moral discomfort on the part of the Romans with respect to gladatorial games, even thoughtful men like Cicero found no fault with them when the participants were criminals. Clearly, attitudes change as civilazation changes, and I think you're missing something if you don't take the ancients on their own terms, rather than viewing them with a modern eye. But, that's another discussion for a different topic.

Still, I think the treacherous moral ground is that which applies to war. Clearly the Nazis and the SS are the easy case, as their initiation of the Holocaust was an act of human destruction, and therefore of immorality, on an almost unprecedented scale. Therefore, it is very easy to justify a moral argument for their destruction.

However, most other wars are much less clearly divided along moral lines. Based on our discussion of morality so far, it's very difficult for me to see that either side had a claim to moral justification in the war of American Independence, for example. Taxation and British government weren't destructive to human life or society in the colonies, so did the desire for freedom and self-government alone justify warfare and killing?

In my view, it's very hard for states to adhere to a moral code. States must make decisions based on pragmatic, survivalist lines.

To state it radically, I think Jesus would have made a very poor head of state, because Jesus would have put the needs of people (citizens of his country or not) before the needs of the state in every case. Once the military was disbanded, the treasury emptied, and the border abandoned, Jesus' government would simply cease to exist, and the nation would be wholly dependent on the good morality of its neighbors not to send an army in and put the citizens to the sword or enslave them. That isn't good government, in my opinion.

So, states sometimes have to make hard choices for the benefits of their citizens. The war for American Independence was fought for the benefit of the citizens of the colonies, and nothing more. Most wars are started or fought for practical matters like wealth or security, and not for moral reasons. Yet, moral arguments will be constructed to justify them.

So, demonize the SS and get up on your moral high horse if you want. There isn't a problem with that. Just be careful how you perceive morality as it applies to war.

[ May 28, 2006, 12:10 PM: Message edited by: Runyan99 ]

[JasonC]

Our morality is in substance classical, so it hardly amounts to "not taking the ancients in their own terms" to hold them to it as a standard. Plato and Aristotle and Xenophon are ancients. Epictetus is an ancient. The sermon on the mount is ancient.

The doctrine that terror is justified in pursuit of communist utopia is modern; you can find it in a philosopher as talented as Merleau-Ponty. The doctrine that the weak ought to be exterminated is modern; you can find it stated as bluntly as you please in Nietzsche. The doctrine that disbelief in any doctrine promulgated by the state or by a king is high treason and capital, is modern; you can find it preached on all sides from the reformation to the end of the 17th century.

Your conceit that moderns are more moral than ancients is mostly false. Our practices in the parts of the world governed best are superior to ancient practices, by the standards of both ancient and modern theory. Our practices in much of the world until quite recently and in parts of it now, are worse, by our own standards or their best ones. Our worst teachers are more awful than their worst practices.

Moral variation there certainly is. What there isn't, is moral change. The plane on which it all plays out is vastly stabler than historical relativists pretend, and the gap between best and worst vaster in every age than the differences between ages. Where there is substantial change it is in practices or how widespread the better opinions are.

There is justice only where just men rule, and opportunities for error are continuous and various. Men slip, they careen into debauchery, they wallow in slaughter sometimes across whole continents for generations. They also improve, here, there.

As for hard cases and the bad law they make, fine points of distinction always arise in any subject that matters. Art, like morality, consists in drawing a line somewhere, Chesterton said. Reasonable men may differ over where to draw them sometimes. Perhaps because they have disagreements of principle, often because some of them care little for principle, and perhaps most often in the hard cases, because some compromise their principles (out of expediency or self regard etc) more than others are willing to see them compromised.

Burke had the US revolution case about right. The separation was regrettable, but once it began the British were foolish to fight to stop it, and doing so undermined their own principles and weakened their own government.

The existence of disagreement is no more an argument against real morality or justice than the existence of trades is an argument against the existence of value. The existence of disagreement pushed to the point of violent conflict, is par for the course when there are bastards in the field, who don't care a straw for justice, or anyone but themselves. Only the dead have seen the end of war, and pacifists are just out of luck.

Reasonable men can do better when dealing with one another. But there is a bright line beyond which their pacts with each other to settle things short of violence become meaningless. When ruthless men proclaim their ruthlessness from the housetops, condemn morality and praise cruelty, and act on it, the appeal to the sword has already been made. And the rational, just, and moral response is to grant the appeal - and feed them to worms.

[JasonC]

Oh, and as for the remarks about Jesus, you have just mistaken pacifists attempting to appropriate and wave him around like a flag for what we know of the historical person or what records there are, ascribed to him.

He nowhere advocates disbanding militaries, explicitly answers questions from soldiers about how to act by telling them to act justly and obey their commanders, not to leave their profession, tells his followers to sell their cloaks to buy swords when he expects persecution to begin, was non-violent enough to whip men he thought were acting inappropriately, etc. And men who at least thought they were following his teachings were soldiers as effective as you please throughout history.

It's mostly pure bumcomb, in other words. Not that I have any particular brief for Jesus - though the golden rule is as good a short formula of morality as has ever been devised, and sufficient reason in itself for regarding him as one of the foremost moral teachers of all time.

[David I]

For you unfamilliar with the Golden Rule, it's -

"Treat others as you would like to be treated!"

It's simple and it works. At least you can look yourself in the mirror when you shave.

DavidI

[Tero]

Originally posted by JasonC:

The doctrine that the weak ought to be exterminated is modern; you can find it stated as bluntly as you please in Nietzsche.

You are forgetting they left weak infants, old and/or infirm to die in antiquity (and beyond).

Active extermination was rare in this respect but that does not mean the people were opposed to killing off (=exterminating) the weak.

And extermination of groups of people based on their blood line/heritage/ethnic background is a time honoured human tradition not in the least restricted to modern times.

The doctrine that disbelief in any doctrine promulgated by the state or by a king is high treason and capital, is modern;

Promulgating one deity in a society with a host of deities was a certain way to get executed in a number of non-modern cultures. And going against the wishes/doctrine of the ruler (ie established social order) was also dangerous to ones health as can be seen in the cases of countless squashed revolts.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Nazis, and pacifists, are still with us.

i refuse to believe that you are so delusional that you believe that NSDAP still exists.

your attempt to turn your hypocritical, revisionist & racist hatespeech posts into some kind of universal battle against Nazi-like forces is nothing but ridiculous.

Defending Nazis is a popular enough sport at the present time.

you should try visiting planet earth some time, you'd surely enjoy how different these things are over here.

[JasonC]

URD really gets upset when someone wins an argument against Nazism. I wonder why? Note the ranting accusations, some of them so unsupported by anything I've said they are laughable.

As for the delusion that there aren't still Nazis in the world, there are. Revisionists, defenders, revivers - all marginalized but definitely still around in the first world. Plus huge affinity and support in the Muslim world, where it is not at all marginal.

"As of February 2006, (David) Irving is in the Josefstadt Prison in central Vienna...He was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in accordance with the Austrian Federal Law on the prohibition of National Socialist activities" - wikipedia

During a silence to mark the 60th anniversary of the Soviet take-over of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in the Saxon state assembly in Dresden, twelve members of the NPD walked out in protest. (2005)

"All the evils that currently affect the world are the doings of Zionism. This is not surprising, because the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which were established by their wise men more than a century ago, are proceeding according to a meticulous and precise plan and time schedule, and they are proof that even though they are a minority, their goal is to rule the world and the entire human race" - Egyptian state-run newspaper, 2002

"President Ahmadinejad has placed at the centre of international attention, a very important question on the truthfulness of the version that Europe and the Zionists have imposed on the world on the murder of Jews during the years of the great war, and therefore we are of the opinion that it is useful and necessary to organise an international conference on that theme, where all the historians and researchers, even those that do not believe in the official version, will be able to express themselves freely," Mehdi Afzali, spokesperson of the Association of Islamic Journalists - late 2005

Germans should stop feeling Holocaust guilt: Ahmadinejad - last week

I also recall getting email from one CMer after a previous debate on this site, telling me Hitler was right and eventually the world would agree. As I said, you can't tell me they don't exist, they send me mail. (There is a theorem there somewhere).

Then there are the mere intellectual successors and the reuse of its arguments, but that is a lesser (if more widespread) matter, and risks Godwin's Avenger, so I'll let it go.

[ May 29, 2006, 08:45 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[painfbat]

"Germans should stop feeling Holocaust guilt: Ahmadinejad - last week"

JasonC, I get all your points but this one beats me. Is it because an SOB called Ahmadinejad spoke these words or do you truely believe the Germans born after the war should feel guilty for something they didn't do, didn't support and that happened decades before they were born, and saying that they shouldn't feel guilty makes someone a Nazi?

Cheers

[JasonC]

Ahmadinejad (who is not just "some SOB" but the president of a state currently developing nuclear weapons) is a nazi.

Simple as that.

So there are still nazis in the world. And not just cartoonish or impotent ones.

If you aren't one of them, bully for you. If you are, there are some worms you should meet for dinner.

[ May 30, 2006, 05:11 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[JasonC]

"Some SOB" in his own words (sources Al Jazeera, Reuters, Der Spiegel, full text of his recent "diplomatic" letter) -

"We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy"

"Israel must be wiped off the map"

"The Islamic community will not allow its historic enemy to live in its heartland"

"Any leaders in the Islamic community who recognise Israel face the wrath of their own people"

"They have fabricated a legend under the name Massacre of the Jews, and they hold it higher than God himself"

"Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail."

"If you have burned the Jews, why don't you give a piece of Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to Israel"

"I believe the German people are prisoners of the Holocaust. More than 60 million were killed in World War Two ... The question is: Why is it that only Jews are at the center of attention?"

"How long will the German people be held hostage to the Zionists?... Why should you feel obligated to the Zionists? You've paid reparations for 60 years and will have to pay for another 100 years."

"I only accept something as the truth if I am truly convinced of it. In Europe there are two opinions on it. One group of researchers who are by and large politically motivated say the Holocaust happened. There is another group of researchers who have the opposite view and are by and large in prison for that."

"Under the pretext of the Holocaust, a very strong polarization has taken place in the world and fronts have been formed."

"The fact alone that my comments led to such hefty protests, even though I’m not a European, and the fact that I’ve been compared to certain persons in German history, indicates how explosive the atmosphere is for researchers in your country"

"Why are the German people not permitted the right to defend themselves? Why are the crimes of one group emphasized so greatly, instead of highlighting the great German cultural heritage?"

"Would you also permit an impartial group to ask the German people whether it shares your opinion? No people accepts its own humiliation."

"How much longer can this go on? How much longer do you think the German people have to accept being taken hostage by the Zionists? When will that end - in 20, 50, 1,000 years?"

"I am pleased to note that you are honest people and admit that you are obliged to support the Zionists."

"How long do you think the world can be governed by the rhetoric of a handful of Western powers?"

"But the other side is that there are a number of countries that possess both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. They use their atomic weapons to threaten other peoples...What we say is that these countries themselves have long deviated from peaceful usage. These powers have no right to talk to us in this manner. This order is unjust and unsustainable."

"It's interesting to note that European nations wanted to allow the shah's dictatorship the use of nuclear technology. That was a dangerous regime. Yet those nations were willing to supply it with nuclear technology. Ever since the Islamic Republic has existed, however, these powers have been opposed to it."

"Those who themselves produce nuclear arms should not raise hue and cry against those who only want to gain access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes"

"We are sure they have criminal intentions, and there was never any doubt that they were piling weapons of mass destruction to be used against less powerful nations"

"I assure you that we won’t step back one inch from our nuclear rights"

"Your government employs extensive security, protection and intelligence systems – and even hunts its opponents abroad. September eleven was not a simple operation. Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services – or their extensive infiltration? Of course this is just an educated guess. Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret?"

"Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems."

"By siding with Iran, the Europeans would serve their own and our interests. But they will suffer only damage if they oppose us. For our people is strong and determined. The Europeans risk losing their position in the Middle East entirely, and they are ruining their reputation in other parts of the world. The others will think that the Europeans aren't capable of solving problems."

"I'm wondering why you're adopting and fanatically defending the stance of the European politicians. You're a magazine (Der Spiegel), not a government. Saying that we should accept the world as it is would mean that the winners of World War II would remain the victorious powers for another 1,000 years and that the German people would be humiliated for another 1,000 years. Do you think that is the correct logic?"

For those with ears...

[Bewildered]

I hate to break in to a tediously pointless episode of ongoing pseudo-philosphical debate, but isn't all this getting a bit silly. Just because you don't like what soemone says, or because they are against the state of Israel, or capitalism, or are intolerant, does not make them a Nazi. It may make them completely obnoxious, but that's a different matter. Issues surrounding the Western Democratic (but insatiably eploitative)World, the state of Israel, the status of Zionism, the situation of the Palestinians, the relative merits of pacifism, and the various reasons that different Arab or middle eastern countries might have views that are not immeditely clear to some people, is because the issues are complex. Nobody likes Nazis, racists, holocaust-deniers, fascists (unless your a western democracy that happens to like that fascist when it suits you), autocracies (unless you are a western democracy that happens to like that autocracy when it suits you). These issues are beyond the ability of this thread to resolve. For heaven's sake, give each other a break. As for Karl Popper, which I notice is qoted in someones sig, I should perhaps point out that he was not a great fan of gobbledy-gook, cant, pseudo science, pseudo philosophy, meaningless debate of any kind. Popper would probably take the view that if you can't state your case simply and in plain language, you probably haven't got a case at all. So why don't we all agree to hate Nazis, fascists, dictators, democracies that support and arm dictatorships, racists, biggots, warmongerers and all have a peaceful forum. I expect that I shall now be flamed, as an expression of everybody's tolerance. Thankyou for you patience.

[Holman]

I vote that we learn to spell "bigots."

[Bigduke6]

I kind of like warmongerers. That extra "er" gives the word some kick.

(Nice post BTW Bewildered, but you asked for abuse after all.)

[Bewildered]

Sorry for the spelling. I was obviously too busy being self-righteous. Didn't initially mean to get quite so animated about it all.

[JasonC]

B -

The man said "Saying that we should accept the world as it is would mean that the winners of World War II would remain the victorious powers for another 1,000 years and that the German people would be humiliated for another 1,000 years."

Some people are simply against that - they want to reopen the matter and revise the winners.

Pretty darn simple, though some evade it industriously and try to pretend it must be about something else. Ahmadinejad does not try to evade it.

I fail to see anything unsimple in anything I've claimed. Certainly the objections raised by supporters of moral relativism took us to quite academic philosophic points. It is however silly to blame anyone for answering such an objection, or for it requiring length. I wasn't the one who brought it up.

As for the idea that Popper avoided longwindedness, it is laughable on its face. Popper was a systematic Austrian philosopher. In some cases, just the appendices of his books run 400 pages and are published as separate volumes, and he thinks nothing of introducing a 30 page digression on the pre-socratics to make an ancillary historical point.

Yes he recommends pithiness in the matter of theories, but hardly makes a fetish of it. The quote in my sig is my favorite line to lift from him, because he is so often cited in support of a general mushy-headed open-mindedness of the "so open your brains fall out" variety. When he knew better. Reason includes sticking to your guns when you know you have a case.

[Bewildered]

Thanks for the education Jason. I promise to take it to heart, and agree with everything you say from now on. You are an outstanding example to us all. Happy? Now could we please have some peace?

Martin

PS

"No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude" Karl Popper.

"This is my last posting on this subject" Martin

[JasonC]

B - In what way does a thread on a forum you can simply ignore constitute not having peace? If you aren't interested, read something else.

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by JasonC:

SO - and you pretend you don't? lol.

No - I believe I do.