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Banned
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This thread got derailed because I used the metaphor of the "Good German", to emphasize Edmund Burke's premise that
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." It seemed and still seems like the best way to describe people who know better, but do not rise to challenge evil when they see it take root. It is the evil itself that should incite objection, not the effort to describe lack of resistance to it.
Toaster126 and politcophile temporarily turned the intent of this thread in an unintended direction. I want to make a new effort to put this discussion back on track. Is Ann Wright's response to what she perceives to be happening in American foreign and military policy appropriate? I believe that it is. I am concerned that I have been acting too much like the Ratzinger brothers did when their moment of conscience came and went. Ann Wright seems like today's equivalent of the "White Rose"..........
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"It was in my prison camp that for the first time I understood reality. It was there that I realized that the line between good and evil passes not between political parties, not between classes, but down, straight down each individual human heart." --Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jun15.html
So Torture Is Legal?
By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, June 16, 2004; Page A27
.........The press is hard at work too, at least that part of it that is not supporting the idea that the Constitution somehow permits torture, and always has. But articles, television reports and blogs are useful only insofar as they move the public.
For in the end, it is public opinion that matters, and it is on public opinion that the fate of any further investigations now depends. ..........
.....Indeed, if the voters can't move the politicians, and the politicians aren't courageous enough to act alone, we may wake up one morning and discover that torture has always been legal after all. Edmund Burke, a conservative philosopher, wrote, <b>"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."</b> It looks as if he was right.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...572667,00.html
....Unknown to many members of the church, however, Ratzinger’s past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German army anti- aircraft unit.
Although there is no suggestion that he was involved in any atrocities, his service may be contrasted by opponents with the attitude of John Paul II, who took part in anti-Nazi theatre performances in his native Poland and in 1986 became the first pope to visit Rome’s synagogue.
“John Paul was hugely appreciated for what he did for and with the Jewish people,” said Lord Janner, head of the Holocaust Education Trust, who is due to attend ceremonies today to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. .....
....He has since said that although he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open resistance would have been futile — comments echoed this weekend by his elder brother Georg, a retired priest ordained along with the cardinal in 1951.
“Resistance was truly impossible,” Georg Ratzinger said. “Before we were conscripted, one of our teachers said we should fight and become heroic Nazis and another told us not to worry as only one soldier in a thousand was killed. But neither of us ever used a rifle against the enemy.”
Some locals in Traunstein, like Elizabeth Lohner, 84, whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector, dismiss such suggestions. “It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others,” she said. “The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice.”
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Above are three examples of what I intended for this thread to be about. This sentence in the thread starter;
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By her words and her example, Ms. Wright opens my eyes to consider that, unless each of us interrupts our life, our career, and regulalry engages in aggressive, non-violent, but invasive protest to interrupt and interfere with our criminal leaders....to personally impress upon them in sufficient frequency and numbers, that their own countrymen will not tolerate or allow them to continue commiting these crimes.....each of us is not unlike a <b>"good German"</b> of 60 some years ago.
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was seized upon by two posters who wanted to discredit, not discuss the example of Ann Wright and what it means to the rest of us who believe that the Bush administration is acting against our interest and is committing crimes against humanity.
I wanted to discuss what we should be doing to back the efforts of the too few, "Ann Wrights" out there. At this late date, there is little to gain in trying to convince the remaining 36 percent who support the Bush regime. Nixon still enjoyed 25 percent support on the day that he resigned. I want a discussion that the 60+ percent who disapprove of the Bush job performance will participate in. You object, but what are you doing to tell Bush and Cheney that they must stop and allow an investigation of the investigation of war in Iraq to actually take place without their effort to impede or divert the investigators? Are you full of excuses, as in the above examples of Georg Ratzinger, and his brother, the current pope, or are you wiling to act more like their contemporaries, in the "White Rose", or somewhere in between?
http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/
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http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/huber.html
...On February 27, 1943, Kurt Huber was arrested. On April 19, 1943, he was one of the major defendants at the second trial of the People's Court against the White Rose. Roland Freisler, presiding, launched the most vicious attack against Huber during the show-trial. He denied that Huber had had any honorable motivation and repeatedly humiliated him. Survivors of this travesty of justice remember Huber's last moving words, an affirmation of right, decency and humaneness. This statement gave the young defendants pride and strength. After his arrest, the University stripped him of his doctorate and his professorship.
Until his execution, Huber continued to work on his book on the philosopher and mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716).
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On July 13, 1943, Kurt Huber and Alexander Schmorell were executed by guillotine at the prison in Munich Stadelheim. Clara Huber and her two children were left destitute. Collections for the tormented family led to additional interrogations and to the trial of Hans Leipelt and his friends.
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http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/sophie.html
...In the early summer of 1942, Sophie had also participated in the production of the leaflets of the White Rose and their distribution. She was arrested on February 18, 1943, while distributing the sixth leaflet at the University of Munich. On February 22, 1943, Sophie, her brother Hans and their friend Christoph Probst were condemned to death and executed by guillotine only a few hours later.
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Prison officials emphasized the courage with which she walked to her execution.
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Last edited by host; 11-13-2005 at 07:31 PM..
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