>> ^conan:

difference is: a human can be prosecuted. but whose fault is it if this thing goes bananas? operator? creator / engineer? manufacturer? they'll all say "nono, this other part is faulty, not ours".


I would say the people that deployed it would own the lion's share of the responsibility in your hypothetical situation.

Situation A: Whack-job soldier takes his government issued rifle, his military-instilled proficiency with that weapon/tool, and either an inborn but latent mental instability OR a poor reaction to an extremely stressful situation, and goes nuts and shoots some civilians / kids / baby bunnies.

Who was at fault for him going bananas? The gun manufacturer? I would say no, but would accept that they have a *very* tertiary share. The soldier's parents? Gonna have to go with no. The soldier himself? Quite possibly. The military that trained him? Certainly in a sense, but it would be very difficult to hold them accountable. His commanding officers? Definitely a possibility, but "I was ordered to do it" only gets you so far (see Nuremberg).


Situation B: Autonomous robot sentry is enabled and placed into a live-fire environment by a commissioned military officer. It suffers from either a computer-bug "glitch" that results in it incorrectly identifying enemy combatants versus civilians while in the field or a complete lack of any system to differentiate the two, and goes out and mows down civilians / kids / baby bunnies.

How about this time? The development team of engineers, programmers, designers, etc.? Again I would say no, but if they were provably negligible in either fully testing and implementing good, working threat / non-threat identification OR clearly conveying the limitations of the system to the military they are selling it to, then sure they share in the responsibility. The assembly line workers that put the machine together? Nah. The robot sentry itself? Not unless you blame the gun in situation A. The officer that turned the thing on and turned it loose? I figure this is most analogous to the soldier in situation A. This person should know their tool, whether it be a firearm or an automated sentry robot, and is most directly responsible for what happens as a result of its use. The military itself? Certainly for a share, particularly if they failed to train the deploying officer and inform them of the limitations of the tool / weapon / platform.


It is never black and white and arguments could be made for any assignment of blame in either situation, but to me I don't feel that situation B is particularly more gray than A.

^ ^ Noone held a gun to these cops' heads and told them to do this. Just the same as noone told the guards at Guantanamo they'd be killed unless they tortured people. Nuremberg answered this question long ago.

If you are a cop who knows nothing about the constitution and the laws you are supposed to protect, you need to quit now.

Bush without a military couldn't invade Iraq. Pol Pot without the Khmer Rouge would've just been some lone, powerless angry dude. The judge in Missouri couldn't have his way unless there are thugs with badges willing to commit these types of incidents.

You know that delightful red spray that shoots out of someones body when a projectile traveling at high speeds hits them? Or the wonderful mixture of shrapnel, shit, and intestines when someone blows up? What about the arterial splatter that is caused by severing the Carotid artery?

Well these guys don't get to witness that first hand, they see it through a CRT or LCD there's no direct threat to their lives; unlike an infantryman. Who's to say that the target is legit? The boss, well how about that Milgram_experiment? How do you know you made a righteous kill? Because someone told them so? I'm sure that will put a whole new spin on the Nuremberg Defense. The fact of the matter is this, it's fucking complicated. Made more complicated by the fact that they are pulling the trigger from the comfort of they're god damned arm chair.

It's a lot like lethal injection. Lethal injection makes it easier for a killer to kill. Make no mistake about it, if you take part in killing someone, even if it is lawful you are still a killer.

But, it is noted that even drone pilots get PTSD, and for good reason. They get to go home like nothing fucking happened. In my mind that makes it worse.

http://trueslant.com/jefftietz/2009/04/16/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-drone-pilot/
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/08/09/pilots-of-predator-drones-suffering-ptsd/

Footage of what a predator drone sees, caution I didn't watch it all but someone probably died. It's liveleak.com after all.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7bb_1210698031

Myth: Hitler was a leftist.

Fact: Nearly all of Hitler's beliefs placed him on the far right.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-hitler.htm

Summary

Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named "National Socialist." But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production. In Nazi Germany, private capitalist individuals owned the means of production, and they in turn were frequently controlled by the Nazi party and state. True socialism does not advocate such economic dictatorship -- it can only be democratic. Hitler's other political beliefs place him almost always on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism, nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness, common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an atheist.



Argument

To most people, Hitler's beliefs belong to the extreme far right. For example, most conservatives believe in patriotism and a strong military; carry these beliefs far enough, and you arrive at Hitler's warring nationalism. This association has long been something of an embarrassment to the far right. To deflect such criticism, conservatives have recently launched a counter-attack, claiming that Hitler was a socialist, and therefore belongs to the political left, not the right.

The primary basis for this claim is that Hitler was a National Socialist. The word "National" evokes the state, and the word "Socialist" openly identifies itself as such.

However, there is no academic controversy over the status of this term: it was a misnomer. Misnomers are quite common in the history of political labels. Examples include the German Democratic Republic (which was neither) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's "Liberal Democrat" party (which was also neither). The true question is not whether Hitler called his party "socialist," but whether or not it actually was.

In fact, socialism has never been tried at the national level anywhere in the world. This may surprise some people -- after all, wasn't the Soviet Union socialist? The answer is no. Many nations and political parties have called themselves "socialist," but none have actually tried socialism. To understand why, we should revisit a few basic political terms.

Perhaps the primary concern of any political ideology is who gets to own and control the means the production. This includes factories, farmlands, machinery, etc. Generally there have been three approaches to this question. The first was aristocracy, in which a ruling elite owned the land and productive wealth, and peasants and serfs had to obey their orders in return for their livelihood. The second is capitalism, which has disbanded the ruling elite and allows a much broader range of private individuals to own the means of production. However, this ownership is limited to those who can afford to buy productive wealth; nearly all workers are excluded. The third (and untried) approach is socialism, where everyone owns and controls the means of production, by means of the vote. As you can see, there is a spectrum here, ranging from a few people owning productive wealth at one end, to everyone owning it at the other.

Socialism has been proposed in many forms. The most common is social democracy, where workers vote for their supervisors, as well as their industry representatives to regional or national congresses. Another proposed form is anarcho-socialism, where workers own companies that would operate on a free market, without any central government at all. As you can see, a central planning committee is hardly a necessary feature of socialism. The primary feature is worker ownership of production.

The Soviet Union failed to qualify as socialist because it was a dictatorship over workers -- that is, a type of aristocracy, with a ruling elite in Moscow calling all the shots. Workers cannot own or control anything under a totalitarian government. In variants of socialism that call for a central government, that government is always a strong or even direct democracy… never a dictatorship. It doesn't matter if the dictator claims to be carrying out the will of the people, or calls himself a "socialist" or a "democrat." If the people themselves are not in control, then the system is, by definition, non-democratic and non-socialist.

And what of Nazi Germany? The idea that workers controlled the means of production in Nazi Germany is a bitter joke. It was actually a combination of aristocracy and capitalism. Technically, private businessmen owned and controlled the means of production. The Nazi "Charter of Labor" gave employers complete power over their workers. It established the employer as the "leader of the enterprise," and read: "The leader of the enterprise makes the decisions for the employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise." (1)

The employer, however, was subject to the frequent orders of the ruling Nazi elite. After the Nazis took power in 1933, they quickly established a highly controlled war economy under the direction of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Like all war economies, it boomed, making Germany the second nation to recover fully from the Great Depression, in 1936. (The first nation was Sweden, in 1934. Following Keynesian-like policies, the Swedish government spent its way out of the Depression, proving that state economic policies can be successful without resorting to dictatorship or war.)

Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in response to the Great Depression. During his drive to power, Hitler exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living. But these were empty promises; privately, he was reassuring wealthy German businessmen that he would crack down on labor once he achieved power. Historian William Shirer describes the Nazi's dual strategy:

"The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow [Nazi officials] Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly 'socialists' and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it." (2)

Once in power, Hitler showed his true colors by promptly breaking all his promises to workers. The Nazis abolished trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. An organization called the "Labor Front" replaced the old trade unions, but it was an instrument of the Nazi party and did not represent workers. According to the law that created it, "Its task is to see that every individual should be able… to perform the maximum of work." Workers would indeed greatly boost their productivity under Nazi rule. But they also became exploited. Between 1932 and 1936, workers wages fell, from 20.4 to 19.5 cents an hour for skilled labor, and from 16.1 to 13 cents an hour for unskilled labor. (3) Yet workers did not protest. This was partly because the Nazis had restored order to the economy, but an even bigger reason was that the Nazis would have cracked down on any protest.

There was no part of Nazism, therefore, that even remotely resembled socialism. But what about the political nature of Nazism in general? Did it belong to the left, or to the right? Let's take a closer look:

The politics of Nazism

The political right is popularly associated with the following principles. Of course, it goes without saying that these are generalizations, and not every person on the far right believes in every principle, or disbelieves its opposite. Most people's political beliefs are complex, and cannot be neatly pigeonholed. This is as true of Hitler as anyone. But since the far right is trying peg Hitler as a leftist, it's worth reviewing the tenets popularly associated with the right. These include:

* Individualism over collectivism.
* Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance.
* Eugenics over freedom of reproduction.
* Merit over equality.
* Competition over cooperation.
* Power politics and militarism over pacifism.
* One-person rule or self-rule over democracy.
* Capitalism over Marxism.
* Realism over idealism.
* Nationalism over internationalism.
* Exclusiveness over inclusiveness.
* Meat-eating over vegetarianism.
* Gun ownership over gun control
* Common sense over theory or science.
* Pragmatism over principle.
* Religion over secularism.

Let's review these spectrums one by one, and see where Hitler stood in his own words. Ultimately, Hitler's views are not monolithically conservative -- on a few issues, his views are complex and difficult to label. But as you will see, the vast majority of them belong on the far right:

Individualism over collectivism.

Many conservatives argue that Hitler was a leftist because he subjugated the individual to the state. However, this characterization is wrong, for several reasons.

The first error is in assuming that this is exclusively a liberal trait. Actually, U.S. conservatives take considerable pride in being patriotic Americans, and they deeply honor those who have sacrificed their lives for their country. The Marine Corps is a classic example: as every Marine knows, all sense of individuality is obliterated in the Marines Corps, and one is subject first, foremost and always to the group.

The second error is forgetting that all human beings subscribe to individualism and collectivism. If you believe that you are personally responsible for taking care of yourself, you are an individualist. If you freely belong and contribute to any group -- say, an employing business, church, club, family, nation, or cause -- then you are a collectivist as well. Neither of these traits makes a person inherently "liberal" or "conservative," and to claim that you are an "evil socialist" because you champion a particular group is not a serious argument.

Political scientists therefore do not label people "liberal" or "conservative" on the basis of their individualism or collectivism. Much more important is how they approach their individualism and collectivism. What groups does a person belong to? How is power distributed in the group? Does it practice one-person rule, minority rule, majority rule, or self-rule? Liberals believe in majority rule. Hitler practiced one-person rule. Thus, there is no comparison.

And on that score, conservatives might feel that they are off the hook, too, because they claim to prefer self-rule to one-person rule. But their actions say otherwise. Many of the institutions that conservatives favor are really quite dictatorial: the military, the church, the patriarchal family, the business firm.

Hitler himself downplayed all groups except for the state, which he raised to supreme significance in his writings. However, he did not identify the state as most people do, as a random collection of people in artificially drawn borders. Instead, he identified the German state as its racially pure stock of German or Aryan blood. In Mein Kampf, Hitler freely and interchangeably used the terms "Aryan race," "German culture" and "folkish state." To him they were synonyms, as the quotes below show. There were citizens inside Germany (like Jews) who were not part of Hitler's state, while there were Germans outside Germany (for example, in Austria) who were. But the main point is that Hitler's political philosophy was not really based on "statism" as we know it today. It was actually based on racism -- again, a subject that hits uncomfortably closer to home for conservatives, not liberals.

As Hitler himself wrote:

"The main plank in the Nationalist Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood." (4)

"The state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation and advancement of a community of physically and psychically homogenous creatures. This preservation itself comprises first of all existence as a race… Thus, the highest purpose of a folkish state is concern for the preservation of those original racial elements which bestow culture and create the beauty and dignity of a higher mankind. We, as Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality which… assures the preservation of this nationality…" (5)

"The German Reich as a state must embrace all Germans and has the task, not only of assembling and preserving the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements in this people, but slowly and surely of raising them to a dominant position." (6)

And it was in the service of this racial state that Hitler encourage individuals to sacrifice themselves:

"In [the Aryan], the instinct for self-preservation has reached its noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands it, even sacrifices it." (7)

"This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture." (8)

Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance.

"All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan." (9)

"Aryan races -- often absurdly small numerically -- subject foreign peoples, and then… develop the intellectual and organizational capacities dormant within them." (10)

"If beginning today all further Aryan influence on Japan should stop… Japan's present rise in science and technology might continue for a short time; but even in a few years the well would dry up… the present culture would freeze and sink back into the slumber from which it awakened seven decades ago by the wave of Aryan culture." (11)

"Every racial crossing leads inevitably sooner or later to the decline of the hybrid product…" (12)

"It is the function above all of the Germanic states first and foremost to call a fundamental halt to any further bastardization." (13)

"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood…" (14)

Eugenics over freedom of reproduction

"The folkish philosophy of life must succeed in bringing about that nobler age in which men no longer are concerned with breeding dogs, horses, and cats, but in elevating man himself…" (15)

"The folkish state must make up for what everyone else today has neglected in this field. It must set race in the center of all life. It must take care to keep it pure… It must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one's own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world, and one highest honor: to renounce doing so. And conversely it must be considered reprehensible: to withhold healthy children from the nation. Here the state… must put the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and therefore pass it on…" (16)

Merit over equality.

"The best state constitution and state form is that which, with the most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in the national community to leading position and leading influence. But as in economic life, the able men cannot be appointed from above, but must struggle through for themselves…" (17)

"It must not be lamented if so many men set out on the road to arrive at the same goal: the most powerful and swiftest will in this way be recognized, and will be the victor." (p. 512.)

Competition over cooperation.

"Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." (18)

"It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been the success of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the very nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions." (19)

"The idea of struggle is old as life itself, for life is only preserved because other living things perish through struggle… In this struggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things… It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself in the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle… If you do not fight for life, then life will never be won." (20)

Power politics and militarism over pacifism.

Allan Bullock, probably the world's greatest Hitler historian, sums up Hitler's political method in one sentence:

"Stripped of their romantic trimmings, all Hitler's ideas can be reduced to a simple claim for power which recognizes only one relationship, that of domination, and only one argument, that of force." (21)

The following quotes by Hitler portray his rather stunning contempt for pacifism:

"If the German people in its historic development had possessed that herd unity [defined here by Hitler as racial solidarity] which other peoples enjoyed, the German Reich today would doubtless be mistress of the globe. World history would have taken a different course, and no one can distinguish whether in this way we would not have obtained what so many blinded pacifists today hope to gain by begging, whining and whimpering: a peace, supported not by the palm branches of tearful, pacifist female mourners, but based on the victorious sword of a master people, putting the world into the service of a higher culture." (22)

"We must clearly recognize the fact that the recovery of the lost territories is not won through solemn appeals to the Lord or through pious hopes in a League of Nations, but only by force of arms." (23)

"In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism." (24)

One-person rule or self-rule over democracy.

"The young [Nazi] movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects… a principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of mere executant of other people's wills and opinion." (25)

"The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!" (26)

"By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature…" (27)

"For there is one thing we must never forget… the majority can never replace the man. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards." (28)

"There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons, and the word 'council' must be restored to its original meaning. Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man." (29)

"When I recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy, the scales dropped from my eyes." (30)

"The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism…" (31)

"Only a knowledge of the Jews provides the key with which to comprehend the inner, and consequently real, aims of Social Democracy." (32)

Capitalism over Marxism.

Bullock writes of Hitler's views on Marxism:

"While Hitler's attitude towards liberalism was one of contempt, towards Marxism he showed an implacable hostility… Ignoring the profound differences between Communism and Social Democracy in practice and the bitter hostility between the rival working class parties, he saw in their common ideology the embodiment of all that he detested -- mass democracy and a leveling egalitarianism as opposed to the authoritarian state and the rule of an elite; equality and friendship among peoples as opposed to racial inequality and the domination of the strong; class solidarity versus national unity; internationalism versus nationalism." (33)

As Hitler himself would write:

"The German state is gravely attacked by Marxism." (34)

"In the years 1913 and 1914, I… expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism." (35)

"In the economic sphere Communism is analogous to democracy in the political sphere." (36)

"The Marxists will march with democracy until they succeed in indirectly obtaining for their criminal aims the support of even the national intellectual world, destined by them for extinction." (37)

"Marxism itself systematically plans to hand the world over to the Jews." (38)

"The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight." (39)

Realism over idealism.

Hitler was hardly an "idealist" in the sense that political scientists use the term. The standard definition of an idealist is someone who believes that cooperation and peaceful coexistence can occur among peoples. A realist, however, is someone who sees the world as an unstable and dangerous place, and prepares for war, if not to deter it, then to survive it. It goes without saying that Hitler was one of the greatest realists of all time. Nonetheless, Hitler had his own twisted utopia, which he described:

"We are not simple enough, either, to believe that it could ever be possible to bring about a perfect era. But this relieves no one of the obligation to combat recognized errors, to overcome weaknesses, and strive for the ideal. Harsh reality of its own accord will create only too many limitations. For that very reason, however, man must try to serve the ultimate goal, and failures must not deter him, any more than he can abandon a system of justice merely because mistakes creep into it…" (40)

"The same boy who feels like throwing up when he hears the tirades of a pacifist 'idealist' is ready to give up his life for the ideal of his nationality." (41)

Nationalism over internationalism.

"The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when… their international poisoners are exterminated." (42)

"The severest obstacle to the present-day worker's approach to the national community lies not in the defense of his class interests, but in his international leadership and attitude which are hostile to the people and the fatherland." (43)

"Thus, the reservoir from which the young [Nazi] movement must gather its supporters will primarily be the masses of our workers. Its work will be to tear these away from the international delusion… and lead them to the national community…" (44)

Exclusiveness over inclusiveness.

"Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of Nature; they imagine that they know practically everything and yet with few exceptions pass blindly by one of the most patent principles of Nature: the inner segregation of the species of all living beings on earth." (45)

"The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others." (46)

Meat-eating over vegetarianism.

It may seem ridiculous to include this issue in a review of Hitler's politics, but, believe it or not, conservatives on the Internet frequently equate Hitler's vegetarianism with the vegetarianism practised by liberals concerned about the environment and the ethical treatment of animals.

Hitler's vegetarianism had nothing to do with his political beliefs. He became a vegetarian shortly after the death of his girlfriend and half-niece, Geli Raubal. Their relationship was a stormy one, and it ended in her apparent suicide. There were rumors that Hitler had arranged her murder, but Hitler would remain deeply distraught over her loss for the rest of his life. As one historian writes:

"Curiously, shortly after her death, Hitler looked with disdain on a piece of ham being served during breakfast and refused to eat it, saying it was like eating a corpse. From that moment on, he refused to eat meat." (47)

Hitler's vegetarianism, then, was no more than a phobia, triggered by an association with his niece's death.

Gun ownership over gun control

Perhaps one of the pro-gun lobby's favorite arguments is that if German citizens had had the right to keep and bear arms, Hitler would have never been able to tyrannize the country. And to this effect, pro-gun advocates often quote the following:

"1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future." - Adolf Hitler

However, this quote is almost certainly a fraud. There is no reputable record of him ever making it: neither at the Nuremberg rallies, nor in any of his weekly radio addresses. Furthermore, there was no reason for him to even make such a statement; for Germany already had strict gun control as a term of surrender in the Treaty of Versailles. The Allies had wanted to make Germany as impotent as possible, and one of the ways they did that was to disarm its citizenry. Only a handful of local authorities were allowed arms at all, and the few German citizens who did possess weapons were already subject to full gun registration. Seen in this light, the above quote makes no sense whatsoever.

The Firearms Policy Journal (January 1997) writes:

"The Nazi Party did not ride to power confiscating guns. They rode to power on the inability of the Weimar Republic to confiscate their guns. They did not consolidate their power confiscating guns either. There is no historical evidence that Nazis ever went door to door in Germany confiscating guns. The Germans had a fetish about paperwork and documented everything. These searches and confiscations would have been carefully recorded. If the documents are there, let them be presented as evidence."

On April 12, 1928, five years before Hitler seized power, Germany passed the Law on Firearms and Ammunition. This law substantially tightened restrictions on gun ownership in an effort to curb street violence between Nazis and Communists. The law was ineffectual and poorly enforced. It was not until March 18, 1938 -- five years after Hitler came to power -- that the Nazis passed the German Weapons Law, their first known change in the firearm code. And this law actually relaxed restrictions on citizen firearms.

Common sense over theory or science.

Hitler was notorious for his anti-intellectualism:

"The youthful brain should in general not be burdened with things ninety-five percent of which it cannot use and hence forgets again… In many cases, the material to be learned in the various subjects is so swollen that only a fraction of it remains in the head of the individual pupil, and only a fraction of this abundance can find application, while on the other hand it is not adequate for the man working and earning his living in a definite field." (48)

"Knowledge above the average can be crammed into the average man, but it remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge. The result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless falls down miserably in all special situations and decisive moments in life." (49)

"The folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary. And here again, first place must be taken by the development of character, especially the promotion of will-power and determination, combined with the training of joy in responsibility, and only in last place comes scientific schooling." (50)

"A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed, they will not be able to safeguard their existence on this earth." (51)

Pragmatism over principle.

"The question of the movement's inner organization is one of expediency and not of principle." (52)

Religion over secularism.

Hitler's views on religion were complex. Although ostensibly an atheist, he considered himself a cultural Catholic, and frequently evoked God, the Creator and Providence in his writings. Throughout his life he would remain an envious admirer of the Christian Church and its power over the masses. Here is but one example:

"We can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice… comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas. It has recognized quite correctly that its power of resistance does not lie in its lesser or greater adaptation to the scientific findings of the moment, which in reality are always fluctuating, but rather in rigidly holding to dogmas once established, for it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of faith. And so it stands today more firmly than ever." (53)

Hitler also saw a useful purpose for the Church:

"The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, [religious] faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude… For the political man, the value of a religion must be estimated less by its deficiencies than by the virtue of a visibly better substitute. As long as this appears to be lacking, what is present can be demolished only by fools or criminals." (54)

Hitler thus advocated freedom of religious belief. Although he would later press churches into the service of Nazism, often at the point of a gun, Hitler did not attempt to impose a state religion or mandate the basic philosophical content of German religions. As long as they did not interfere with his program, he allowed them to continue fuctioning. And this policy was foreshadowed in his writings:

"For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else he has no right to be in politics…" (55)

"Political parties have nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties." (56)

"Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends." (57)

"Therefore, let every man be active, each in his own denomination if you please, and let every man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into the other." (58)

Hitler was raised a Catholic, even going to school for two years at the monastery at Lambauch, Austria. As late as 24 he still called himself a Catholic, but somewhere along the way he became an atheist. It is highly doubtful that this was an intellectual decision, as a reading of his disordered thoughts in Mein Kampf will attest. The decision was most likely a pragmatic one, based on power and personal ambition. Bullock reveals an interesting anecdote showing how these considerations worked on the young Hitler. After five years of eking out a miserable existence in Vienna and four years of war, Hitler walked into his first German Worker's Party meeting:

"'Under the dim light shed by a grimy gas-lamp I could see four people sitting around a table…' As Hitler frankly acknowledges, this very obscurity was an attraction. It was only in a party which, like himself, was beginning at the bottom that he had any prospect of playing a leading part and imposing his ideas. In the established parties there was no room for him, he would be a nobody." (59)

Hitler probably realized that a frustrated artist and pipe-dreamer like himself would have no chance of achieving power in the world-wide, 2000-year old Christian Church. It was most likely for this reason that he rejected Christianity and pursued a political life instead. Yet, curiously enough, he never renounced his membership in the Catholic Church, and the Church never excommunicated him. Nor did the Church place his Mein Kampf on the Index of Prohibited Books, in spite of its knowledge of his atrocities. Later the Church would come under intense criticism for its friendly and cooperative relationship with Hitler. A brief review of this history is instructive.

In 1933, the Catholic Center Party cast its large and decisive vote in favor of Hitler's Enabling Bill. This bill essentially gave Chancellor Hitler the sweeping dictatorial powers he was seeking. Historian Guenter Lewy describes a meeting between Hitler and the German Catholic authorities shortly afterwards:

"On 26 April 1933 Hitler had a conversation with Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinmann [the Catholic leadership in Germany]. The subject was the common fight against liberalism, Socialism and Bolshevism, discussed in the friendliest terms. In the course of the conversation Hitler said that he was only doing to the Jews what the church had done to them over the past fifteen hundred years. The prelates did not contradict him." (60)

As anyone familiar with Christian history knows, the Church has always been a primary source of anti-Semitism. Hitler's anti-Semitism therefore found a receptive audience among Catholic authorities. The Church also had an intense fear and hatred of Russian communism, and Hitler's attack on Russia was the best that could have happened. The Jesuit Michael Serafin wrote: "It cannot be denied that [Pope] Pius XII's closest advisors for some time regarded Hitler's armoured divisions as the right hand of God." (61) As Pope Pius himself would say after Germany conquered Poland: "Let us end this war between brothers and unite our forces against the common enemy of atheism" -- Russia. (62)

Once Hitler assumed power, he signed a Concordat, or agreement, with the Catholic Church. Eugenio Pacelli (the man who would eventually become Pope Pius XII) was the Vatican diplomat who drew up the Concordat, and he considered it a triumph. In return for promises which Hitler increasingly broke, the Church dissolved all Catholic organizations in Germany, including the Catholic Center Party. Bishops were to take an oath of loyalty to the Nazi regime. Clergy were to see to the pastoral care of Germany's armed forces (regardless of what those armed forces did). (63)

The Concordat eliminated all Catholic resistance to Hitler; after this, the German bishops gave Hitler their full and unqualified support. A bishops' conference at Fulda, 1933, resulted in agreement with Hitler's case for extending Lebensraum, or German territory. (64) Bishop Bornewasser told a congregation of Catholic young people at Trier: "With our heads high and with firm steps we have entered the new Reich and are ready to serve it body and soul." (65) Vicar-General Steinman greeted each Berlin mass with the shout, "Heil Hitler!" (66)

Hitler, on the other hand, kept up his attack on the Church. Nazi bands stormed into the few remaining Catholic institutions, beat up Catholic youths and arrested Catholic officials. The Vatican was dismayed, but it did not protest. (67) In some instances, it was hard to tell if the Church supported its own persecution. Hitler muzzled the independent Catholic press (about 400 daily papers in 1933) and subordinated it to Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment. Yet soon the Catholic Press was doing more than what the Nazis required of it -- for example, coordinating their Nazi propaganda to prepare the people for the 1940 offensive against the West. (68) Throughout the war, the Catholic press would remain one of the Third Reich's best disseminators of propaganda.

Pacelli became the new Pope Pius XII in 1939, and he immediately improved relations with Hitler. He broke protocol by personally signing a letter in German to Hitler expressing warm hopes of friendly relations. Shortly afterwards, the Church celebrated Hitler's birthday by ringing bells, flying swastika flags from church towers and holding thanksgiving services for the Fuhrer. (69) Ringing church bells to celebrate and affirm the bishops' allegiance to the Reich would become quite common throughout the war; after the German army conquered France, the church bells rang for an entire week, and swastikas flew over the churches for ten days.

But perhaps the greatest failure of Pope Pius XII was his silence over the Holocaust, even though he knew it was in progress. Although there are many heroic stories of Catholics helping Jews survive the Holocaust, they do not include Pope Pius, the Holy See, or the German Catholic authorities. When a reporter asked Pius why he did not protest the liquidation of the Jews, the Pope answered, "Dear friend, do not forget that millions of Catholics are serving in the German armies. Am I to involve them in a conflict of conscience?" (70) As perhaps the world's greatest moral leader, he was charged with precisely that responsibility.

The history of Hitler and the Church reveals a relationship built on mutual distrust and philosophical rejection, but also shared goals, benefits, admiration, envy, friendliness, and ultimate alliance.

>> ^jmzero:
Haaretz: Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques

Soldiers say all sorts of offensive things about their enemies. I've heard extremely offensive things from Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan (I'm Canadian). I don't excuse these things as jokes - they're vile, and demonstrate a pernicious racism. But that doesn't mean they (the Canadians or the Israelis) are actually killing babies. I'm sure you understand this difference too.
So I'm curious - do you actually believe this Israeli soldier, in this instance, deliberately and point blank executed a baby being held in its screaming mother's arms? If so, do you think this is something very far out of the ordinary - or would that be something one would expect to happen during this kind of operation?


I don't want to believe that someone would do that, that anyone could do that. However there's nothing in our history which says we're incapable of such horrific acts. I think it matters little to that baby or it's family though...it's dead while under military assault and occupation for almost 40 years. That to me defines the crime of aggression, which carries with it all the evil that follows, including this killing whether purposeful or accidental. If the Nuremberg Principles were actually followed almost all Israeli Politicians would be hanged for this.

>> ^entr0py:
but I do distinctly remember being offended and irritated by the pledge, even when no one around me questioned or criticized it.

Same here.

Interesting stuff about the salutes.
As i recall, impassioned rhetoric for "one nation (reich) under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." made up a good portion of Hitler's Nuremberg Rally speech at the end of the "Triumph of the Will" propaganda film.

>> ^Nithern:
further evidence that Bush should have not just been impeached but executed for being to stupid to do his job! No accountability at the White House. Ironically, wasnt the GOP complaining about accounting standards to the Democrats and Acorn back at the election? Maybe they should hold themselves fully accountable? But no, being irresponsible is the hallmark of the Republican Party.
Still, it does show there were alot of educated people, who warned that the storm was not looking good. Hell, a Cat 5 Hurricane should NEVER be blown off (no pun intended) like the president did.
I would rank Hurricane Katrina as Bush's second worst issue in his two terms (the first being the handling of Iraq & Afghanistan).


Nuremberg the Bush.

America's eugenics program, and individual eugenecists actually inspired (and supported) Hitler, to a certain degree:

Some states sterilized "imbeciles" for much of the 20th century. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case that the state of Virginia could sterilize those it thought unfit. The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963, when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States.[63] A favorable report on the results of sterilization in California, the state with the most sterilizations by far, was published in book form by the biologist Paul Popenoe and was widely cited by the Nazi government as evidence that wide-reaching sterilization programs were feasible and humane. When Nazi administrators went on trial for war crimes in Nuremberg after World War II, they justified the mass sterilizations (over 450,000 in less than a decade) by citing the United States as their inspiration.[59] American eugenicists inspired and supported Hitler's racial purification laws, and failed to understand the connection between those policies and the eventual genocide of the Holocaust.[64]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#United_States

Yes, greed fear, and ignorance are the main tools of the business that is politics. I am just over 2 years of college, with a bachelor of arts. I voted independent. My main reason is that I distrust both parties. I believe that each election is a show, reality TV only its reality.

I think free market is excellent so long as the participants are ethical, and currently all of the US systems are lacking in ethics.

The current problem with the Systems of the world are the Incentives to take action, whether that action be evil, good, or neutral.

I urge all of the US citizens, who see this comment, if you take nothing away from here then take this: how many of you know what the Office of Government Ethics or Federal Office of Special Counsel are?

Please see: FAA Whistle blowers fired and defamed. The client serving culture costs the Consumer.

Take for example, the cure of HIV : http://www.baldwincountynow.com/articles/2009/05/28/local_news/doc4a1d63cb68531598814432.txt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5

Little publicity? Incentives! The big names didn't find the "cure" so they stifle the little names. We see the same thing when it comes to politics, wars, freedom, and traffic laws. HIV is treatable. Yet the public still thinks that it is not?

As to your question JiggaJphnson, allow me to quote Göring from the Nuremberg trials.

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

^Fuck that. Nice Nuremberg defense ponce.

>> ^imstellar28:
soldiers who commit war crimes are just "following orders" you'd have to be a "jackass" to confront them about it, you don't have any business complaining to anyone except the president.

Actually, in this case it's more like going to the local IRS branch and "confronting" the clerks there, and accusing them of being guilty for what was done in Guantanamo by people who aren't them, and who aren't answerable to them.

Logic fail.

This is a bit like calling up the GE home appliance support line to accuse the guy who answers of being a murderer because he works for GE, and GE built the engines that are used on the aircraft that bring supplies to Guantanamo, so therefore he may as well have waterboarded detainees to death with his own two hands.

This isn't a case of accepting the Nuremberg defense, the "I'm only following orders" defense. This is the "I didn't do anything illegal or immoral, directly or indirectly, now get out of the way, please, I have other customers waiting" defense.

You want the law changed, and for taxes to end? Great, best of luck on that. How is harassing people in the county clerk's office going to accomplish that?

Did you see this reply to your comment? Why is this idiot holding you accountable for Nuremberg?

You ask the question "Why are we shouting about it now? And why are we only shouting about this particular torture?"

He answers "But we found the nazis guilty of torture!"

>> ^Stormsinger:
No one had a problem with prisoner treatment under Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, FDR, et al.
And yet, we prosecuted Germans for torture, and waterboarding was a prime example. They also had plenty of documented legal opinions explaining why it was legal to do so, but we clearly judged the acts indefensible. Remember the Nuremberg trials, and the famous statement that "following orders is no excuse"?
Selective outrage makes me suspicious. When a person really believe in something then they believe it at all times for ALL people - not just when they have a political axe to grind. I don't see 'thinking' when it comes to this issue. I see people reactionism, groupspeak, talking points, and a LOT of people who are rather too willing to let someone else do thier thinking for them.
Taking you at your word, unless you're also going to object to the Nuremberg trials, I suggest you should be pushing -for- investigation and prosecution.

>> ^Stormsinger:
No one had a problem with prisoner treatment under Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, FDR, et al.
And yet, we prosecuted Germans for torture, and waterboarding was a prime example. They also had plenty of documented legal opinions explaining why it was legal to do so, but we clearly judged the acts indefensible. Remember the Nuremberg trials, and the famous statement that "following orders is no excuse"?
Selective outrage makes me suspicious. When a person really believe in something then they believe it at all times for ALL people - not just when they have a political axe to grind. I don't see 'thinking' when it comes to this issue. I see people reactionism, groupspeak, talking points, and a LOT of people who are rather too willing to let someone else do thier thinking for them.
Taking you at your word, unless you're also going to object to the Nuremberg trials, I suggest you should be pushing -for- investigation and prosecution.


Why has Nuremberg got anything to do with the person you are quoting? I'm sure he was disgusted by the torture in nazi germany too. I don't necessarily agree with everything he said, but a lot of it was pretty much pinpointing a bit of an inconvenient question.

The question he's asking is why are we suddenly shouting about it now? And why aren't we shouting about all forms of torture? Unfortunately, he goes on to hint that confinement and restraint is torture and therefore also should be a target of outrage, and this i completely disagree on. In that case, prisons would have to shut down. But other than that it's a pretty good point.

And the answer you're giving him is "But we found the nazi's guilty of torture!"

The answer does not seem to relate to the question.

No one had a problem with prisoner treatment under Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, FDR, et al.

And yet, we prosecuted Germans for torture, and waterboarding was a prime example. They also had plenty of documented legal opinions explaining why it was legal to do so, but we clearly judged the acts indefensible. Remember the Nuremberg trials, and the famous statement that "following orders is no excuse"?

Selective outrage makes me suspicious. When a person really believe in something then they believe it at all times for ALL people - not just when they have a political axe to grind. I don't see 'thinking' when it comes to this issue. I see people reactionism, groupspeak, talking points, and a LOT of people who are rather too willing to let someone else do thier thinking for them.

Taking you at your word, unless you're also going to object to the Nuremberg trials, I suggest you should be pushing -for- investigation and prosecution.

For the most part, I follow and agree with what Obama is saying, in that this has to be dealt with carefully and especially in a bipartisan fashion. However, I am not as sure I agree regarding where the guilt fully lies.

Guilt at the top of the chain of command, those giving the orders, is of no debate to me. Those people need to be punished (according to Rule of Law) as they gave criminal orders to those that performed the torture. On a side note, I hate the use of the words "enhanced interrogation"... fucking call it what it is.

At the same time, "I just following orders", the Nuremberg Defense, has been used many times in modern history as an excuse for doing the inexcusable. There is a reason why international law, such as the Geneva Conventions, exist. This is specifially why the Nuremberg Principle IV was written.

There are rules, even in war. This is a moral issue that deserves greater international public debate, and I think Obama may have spoken too early, essentially giving pardons to those on the frontlines, those that performed the actual torture.

The sad thing, is that if it was a weaker country (in other words, one that could not defend it's sovereignty, not a superpower) that performed these acts the debate would be alot shorter, and those involved could expect to be punished for their actions. This will not be the first time the US government says "screw you" to international law and decide to prosecute/pardon these people under their own system, which will be much more gentle.

That is a perpetual problem with international law and world courts... ultimately a country that exercises it's sovereignty to the degree of the US (China and Russia are included in this) can do whatever they want with little consequences in the short term, if ever. They have no obligation to international law or the world courts because they can do whatever they want. The illegal war in Iraq is a perfect example of this sort of violation. A justice system with no real accountability or support is in the end a failure.

In the end, I will be happy enough if the big players, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield answered for their crimes (not just related to torture, but going into Iraq, illegal wire tapping... the works). I just think it is too early to be dishing out pardons to anyone.