Re: War Between Good and Evil (was Re: Is Bob Only Exaggerating?)

Mark Van Alstine (mvanalst@rbi.com)
Fri, 24 Jan 1997 03:20:18 -0700

In article <199701212042.MAA26563@mailmasher.com>, Mark Raven
<markraven@mailmasher.com> wrote:

> On 21 Jan 97 00:30:14 GMT, Alex Vange <vange@mail.cdmnet.com> wrote:
>
> >smaceach@polar.bowdoin.edu wrote:
> >>Hitler probably leads the pack of monsters for the 20th century at
> >>least, likely neck-and-neck with Stalin and Mao. Monsters are monsters.
> >>OTOH, I actually don't see the latter being defended with the passion
> >>with which revisionists defend Hitler. Have you seen anyone within the
> >>last few years seriously deny that Stalin's purges happened?
> >
> > Stalin was on the side of evil. America joined with the side of evil
> >to fight the good side which was the axis.
>
>
> If you think that the Axis was "the good side", I guess you're not bothered by
> the mass tortures inflicted upon civilian populations and upon prisoners of
> war--including Americans-- by the Japanese.
>
> One day, people will learn that wars are fought between opposing interests,
> not between "Good" and "Evil".
>
> Mark Raven

Ah, Mr. Raven moralizes about morilizing! How droll.

However, as to World War II being an issue of "Good" and "Evil", British
historian John Keegan wrote about this in regard to David Irving's
"vision" of World War II which, it appears, is somehwat similar to Mr.
Raven's:

"...Nevertheless, it is a flawed vision, for it is untouched by moral
judgement. For Irving, the Second World War was a war like other other
wars - naked struggle for national self-interrest - and Hitler, one war
leaders among others. Yet, the Second World War must engage our moral
sense. Its destructiveness, its disruption of legal and social order, were
on a scale so disordinate that it cannot be viewed as a war among other
wars; its opposition of ideologies, democratic versus totalitarian, none
the less stark because democracy perforce allied itself with one form of
totalitarianism in the struggle against another, invariably invests the
war with moral content; above all, Hitler's institution of genocide
demands a moral commitment." (Keegan, _The Battle for History pp.50-51.)

>...But that pablum seems to work for the masses.

Rather, a few "flawed" and amoral twits reject it. Not to mention Nazi
apologists and Holocaust deniers.

Mark

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"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes
not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties--but
right through every human heart--and all human hearts."

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"
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