September’s UU Blog Salon topic is the nature of evil. In full awareness that I’m in danger of violating Godwin’s Law, here’s my response:
After December 1941 (if not before) it was a good thing to kill Nazis. If it was December 1941 again, it would be good to kill Nazis again. Picketing and petitions would not have stopped the Holocaust at that point (if they ever would have). Any take on evil that doesn’t deal with the Holocaust, and real ways to end it, is bunk.
Killing Nazi zombies, however, is another matter entirely.
Genocide is happening in today’s world. Are you suggesting that instead of picketing and protesting to get the US or UN to send in forces to stop the genocide, that UUs should themselves assassinate those who commit genocide?
Sticking to the example of WW2, there was the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a minister who was part of a failed plot to assassinate Hitler. But I don’t think an assassination would have stopped the Holocaust. Slowed it, perhaps, but not stopped it.
Wow! You really are trying to be provocative.
Oh yeah, I don’t agree that killing Nazis (at least after we entered the war) was a good thing. Ending the camps and bringing Hitler’s war machine to a halt was the good thing. To claim that killing Nazi’s was good is to suggest that killing 100% of them would have been the best possible outcome of the war. It suggests that we should have had a policy of executing Nazis who became our prisoners of war. It suggests that we should have assassinated everyone who became members of the Nazi Party not because they adhered to its ideology and goals but merely because that was the only path that would allow them to pursue their career. I hope (and yes, trust) you don’t believe that.
I’ll amend my original statement: Killing Nazis in open combat following the Geneva Conventions is good insofar as it speeds the end of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime.
Better?
Nah, you’re not violating Godwin’s Law–you’re confirming it.