On Mon, 9 Feb 2009 07:38:31 -0500, (gu)stav <no@hushmail.rightnow>
wrote:
>On 2009-02-08 18:38:08 -0500, HMS Victor Victorian
><VictorVictorian@HRM.com> said:
>
>> I've come across two images on this good Sunday,that has given me
>> pause.
>>
>> Truly a child is born of innocence and potential,
>> Without preordination
>> And his potential is shaped by love and caring,
>> Or horribly misshaped by the cruelties of
>> An angry and bitter world.
>> And through that tutelage
>> Learns True Evil.
>>
>> HMS Victor Victorian NP-g18
>>
>>
>> God Save the Queen!
>> God Preserve the Prince of Wales!
>> Rule Britannia!
>
>Your overall point is very well taken.
>
>However, I think in using photos of young Adolph Hitler to make your
>point -- and placing your captions in the mouth of Hitler himself,
>paraphrasing "Mein Kampf" perhaps? -- you undermine the whole thing on
>historical grounds. There is no particular evidence outside Hitler's
>own claims decades later -- which were part of a general program of
>auto-hagiography that painted his early life and struggles in a very
>dark light, in order to magnify the splendour of his triumph -- that he
>was abused as a child. The only testimony to this effect is Hitler's
>own. And please remember, we are not talking here about one of the
>great truth-tellers of history.
>
>This does not negate the idea that children are born innocent and
>should be treated with love and care ... if that IS your point. But if
>you are also suggesting that Hitler should be remembered as a victim,
>and that therefore his crimes -- against humanity in general, against
>Jews in particular, against the German people, against the rule of law,
>against the whole enterprise of civilization -- that these crimes are
>SOMEBODY ELSE'S FAULT, the fault of his mean daddy, then you are on
>shaky ground, to say the least.
>
>Surely you're aware of Godwin's Law.
Dearest Gustav,
Yes, I am quite aware of the convention to which you refer and do not
wish to further pursue that skewed line of reasoning, which I consider
juvenile--as I do casting the accusation it addresses.
Thank you for your incisive comments. My position regarding the worn
arguments about nature versus nurture is simple.
Monsters are not born ... they are made.
Hear me clearly ... there is no justification; indeed there can never
be any justification, for exacting such unbelievable cruelty on
others. The fact that Hitler did so with such apparent ease does not
and can never absolve his responsibility for such cruelty. I would
say that, accepting he himself purportedly had been the victim of
cruelty, his actions in later life were all the more damning. As to
whether he suffered as a child at the hands of his father, those very
acts seem solid evidence, irrespective of the disrepute of the source,
indicating that it may well have been so.
Yet such a malevolent seed could not have grown without the
nourishment of poisonous humus, poisoned by the violence of his
father, the ravages of the Great War, the revenge-filled, crippling
humiliation administered to Germany by the victorious Allies, most
particularly and regrettably England and France,the simultaneous
scourge of financial depression and inflation during the Weimar
Republic. These, coupled with Hitler's own sense of rage and
inadequacy, allowed that seed to germinate. I firmly believe, that
without these conditions, he would have been consigned to the
historical dustbin of second rate politicians--as he initially had
been during the 1920's.
For it takes a village to raise a child. Thus, the village takes a
certain responsibility ... do you not believe?
You may indeed be correct--I have not read Mein Kampf--I dislike
reading treatises which endorse hatred ... by anyone. Please do not
construe my musings as an endorsement of Hitler the man, his
philosophy, or his deeds ... for I loathe them all. Rather, I mourn
the child.
The belief, in any and every case, that the ends justifies the means,
is the unending torment of mankind, for with it rises yet another
child, from the womb of innocence, to wreak havoc upon the helpless.
Thank you very much for your response.
HMS Victor Victorian NP-g18
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