Quotables
From time to time, everyone ought to stop and consider who’s fool they’ve been lately.
"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.""There is one difference," I pointed out. "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."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."
That was Gustave Gilbert, The Nuremberg Diary, 1947, recounting a conversation with Hermann Göring during the Nuremberg Trials.
(tokyotom via rockwell)
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Free The Animal is an eclectic writing project about everything since November 2003. 23 years, 5,500 posts, 5 million words.
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"…pious moral equivilency, (sic)"
I interpret the quote as relating to the similarly of practical politics and I don't think that similarity can be denied.
The moral equivalence going on today is that of comparing what we faced in WWII and the cold war with what we face from a primitive region of the world today.
Yes. That must be how the Poles were tricked into going to war in 1939. That, and all those Stukas.
But why quibble with that great libertarian authority, Hermann Goering? Of course, it's impossible that he might have had an ulterior motive or two for indulging in a pious moral equivilency, there in the Nuremberg dock.
But it's too bad the Jewish resistence in the Warsaw Ghetto didn't have Lew Rockwell around to tell them that "war is the health of the state." If they had, maybe they could just have all been gassed quietly, without all that fuss.
These days, Lew Rockwell prefers to quote the Hun on his blogs.
Catchy tune & folksy rythm.
Your point?