Old joke: If Obama came out against Hitler, conservatives would defend the Nazis

[Saladin]

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The Corner
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President Obama Commemorates the 'Senseless' Holocaust
By Eliana Johnson
January 28, 2013 1:18 P.M.


President Obama issued a statement yesterday to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. He noted that survivors who bore witness to "the horrors of the cattle cars, ghettos, and concentration camps have witnessed humanity at its very worst and know too well the pain of losing loved ones to senseless violence." (We noted below how some in Europe chose to mark the day, which takes place each year on January 27, the day Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz.)

The idea that all violence is "senseless" violence is one that has taken deep root on the left; it's also, unfortunately, one that poses a major impediment to understanding the world. 

Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was — and to which the president is — implacably opposed, but it is hardly "senseless." By the early 1930s, the Nazi party had hundreds of thousands of devoted members and repeatedly attracted a third of the votes in German elections; its political leaders campaigned on a platform comprising 25 non-senseless points, including the "unification of all Germans," a demand for "land and territory for the sustenance of our people," and an assertion that "no Jew can be a member of the race." Suffice it to say, many sensible Germans were persuaded.

On September 12, 2012, President Obama also lamented the "the kind of senseless violence that took the lives" of four Americans in Benghazi. That, you may recall, is the day the president supposedly said the murders occurred as a result of a non-senseless terrorist attack carried out by jihadists.

This sanitized version of events, both past and present, is surely more comforting. It's also truly senseless.



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[fhdz]

The fortunate thing for pundits is that they don't even have to have a real point in order to retain their readership. The only thing "senseless" would be giving a shit about her either way.

[citizen k]

Saladin? Fahdiz? Did this thread come through a time portal?

[fhdz]

Saladin? Fahdiz? Did this thread come through a time portal?

[jimmy olsen]

Saladin! Fahdiz!

[Tonitrus]

She wrote a "rebuttal" to the criticism, that makes her point much more clearly/coherently...perhaps because it also omitted the obligatory anti-Obama "gotcha" slant.  But yeah, the original piece above is not as clear nor coherent as one needs to be when you're working with words like "Nazi" and "sensible", and easily makes her look foolish.  I don't read enough National Review anymore to determine is simply is so.

But...she appears to be a cutie. 

[merithyn]

Her rebuttal does make it more clear, but she still sounds like a harpy.

On 'Senseless' Violence
By Eliana Johnson
February 1, 2013 4:34 P.M.
   
Pundits and non-pundits on both the left and the right have reacted with derision and horror to a Corner post in which I criticized President Obama for referring to those who perished in the Holocaust — as well as the four Americans who were murdered in Benghazi — as victims of "senseless violence." I argued that violence carried out in the service of ideology is a more serious threat than violence that we typically refer to as "senseless" or "random," and that, as a result, it deserves more serious attention and analysis.

I've since been accused both of justifying Nazism and of anti-Semitism. This is not only wrong, but cheap.

The opposite of "senseless" is not, as many have suggested, "sensible." Nor is it "good." According to Merriam-Webster, "senseless" means "destitute of, deficient in, or contrary to sense: as: unconscious," or "foolish, stupid," or "meaningless." Even the most cursory understanding of Nazi Germany reveals this to be a poor description of its behavior. It was precisely the threat posed by the "organized and calculated violence" of the German state and the "party organization, several millions strong, who derive all kinds of profits, good and bad, from the upkeep of the regime" to which Churchill sought to awaken his countrymen. Were the gravestone of the Third Reich a monument to caprice, its consequences would likely have been less dire.

Many tragedies are indeed "senseless." Those, by and large, are the ones that occur despite human attempts to understand and prevent their causes: the hurricanes that have ravaged large swaths of the country in recent years; motor-vehicle accidents; terminal illnesses; acts of violence that are truly random in nature; events, in other words, to which nearly any one of us, at any time, could fall victim.

Those carried out with forethought, purpose, and intent by men who have convinced sensible people — yes, sensible people — that the murder of innocents is justified in the name of Communism, Nazism, fascism, or Islamism are a different matter altogether. Dismissing such acts, and their perpetrators, as senseless demonstrates a failure to engage with a reality that is much more complicated; one in which politics, ideology, and human nature have combined to produce with careful planning some of the greatest episodes of evil in human history. Not for nothing did Churchill refer to Nazi Germany as a "monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime." The lamentable crime to which he referred was more premeditated murder than manslaughter; sadly, it was not senseless, but the logical conclusion of a perverted worldview that was distressingly popular in its era.

The hysterical reaction elicited by my post underscores precisely the point I intended to make–that the notion, now deeply ingrained on the left, that violence is by definition senseless and incomprehensible poses an enormous impediment to understanding the world and the forces at work in it.

[Tonitrus]

The original piece, heck, even the "rebuttal", are one of those kinds of things that, even if "right", still look pretty stupid to have brought up in the first place.

[Razgovory]

Out of curiosity I looked up the 25 points.  It's interesting how many Hitler ended up ignoring.

1. We demand the union of all Germans in a Great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples.

2. We demand that the German people have rights equal to those of other nations; and that the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain shall be abrogated.

3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the maintenance of our people and the settlement of our surplus population.

4. Only those who are our fellow countrymen can become citizens. Only those who have German blood, regardless of creed, can be our countrymen. Hence no Jew can be a countryman.

5. Those who are not citizens must live in Germany as foreigners and must be subject to the law of aliens.

6. The right to choose the government and determine the laws of the State shall belong only to citizens. We therefore demand that no public office, of whatever nature, whether in the central government, the province, or the municipality, shall be held by anyone who is not a citizen.

We wage war against the corrupt parliamentary administration whereby men are appointed to posts by favor of the party without regard to character and fitness.

7. We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. If it should not be possible to feed the whole population, then aliens (non-citizens) must be expelled from the Reich.

8. Any further immigration of non-Germans must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately.

9. All citizens must possess equal rights and duties.

10. The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.

Therefore we demand:

11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.

12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.

14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.

15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.

16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.

17. We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.

18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.

19. We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the world, be replaced by German common law.

20. In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.

21. The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young.

22. We demand the abolition of the regular army and the creation of a national (folk) army.

23. We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press. In order to make possible the creation of a German press, we demand:

(a) All editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens.

(b) Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State. They must not be published in the German language.

(c) All financial interests in or in any way affecting German newspapers shall be forbidden to non-Germans by law, and we demand that the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper and the expulsion of the non-Germans from the Reich.

Newspapers transgressing against the common welfare shall be suppressed. We demand legal action against those tendencies in art and literature that have a disruptive influence upon the life of our folk, and that any organizations that offend against the foregoing demands shall be dissolved.

24. We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race.

The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to any one particular confession. It fights against the Jewish materialist spirit within and without, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the pinciple:

COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD

25. In order to carry out this program we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the State, the unconditional authority by the political central parliament of the whole State and all its organizations.

The formation of professional committees and of committees representing the several estates of the realm, to ensure that the laws promulgated by the central authority shall be carried out by the federal states.

The leaders of the party undertake to promote the execution of the foregoing points at all costs, if necessary at the sacrifice of their own lives.

[Eddie Teach]

The original piece, heck, even the "rebuttal", are one of those kinds of things that, even if "right", still look pretty stupid to have brought up in the first place.

Kind of reminds me of Bill Maher's reaction to all the comments about how terrorists were such "cowards".