Maybe don't skate to the theme from Schindler's List if you're from Germany. It's just a little bit #Awkward. #Olympics https://t.co/VgVlBfgfY6— Ann Dystopian Fan (@AnnDystopianFan) February 23, 2018
... as by the German cross-country skier who accepted a German flag as he skied into the stadium and waved it as he crossed the finish line. I said out loud: "I don't see how you can wave the German flag." Prompted to think of all the great Germans in history, I said: "You can express pride about particular Germans" — I'm thinking, Beethoven... — "but don't express pride in Germany." Maybe in 100 years.
IN THE COMMENTS: Livermoron wrote:
I lived in Germany for a decade. The Germans are very split on this issue. Here is an article from 17 years ago that addresses that issue. Note that a parliamentary representative was taken to task for saying he is proud to be a German while the former Bundespraesident refused to say the same thing.
The Germans are a fucked-up people, politics-wise. They took away the wrong lessons from WW2. Instead of learning that they need to stand up and actively fight against evil they simply fall back on a lazy and disingenuous pacifism and let others do the lifting. Maybe it is because they don't trust themselves to do the right thing. They shouldn't.
My German wife (yes, I organize my wives by nationality) and I were discussing current German politics and the debacle that Deutschland has become. We wondered why there were no great German champions of Democracy/natural rights. No Rousseau, no Locke.
Ultimately we ended-up agreeing that people who derive their politics from German philosophers, well...shouldn't.
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163 comments:
Springtime for Merkel?
Is that a Godwinism?
""You can express pride about particular Germans... ...but don't express pride in Germany."
My comment is:
The Germans have a word for this.
It didn’t bother me. It’s a beautiful piece of music.
From wikipedia: “Theme from Schindler's List is one of the most recognized contemporary film scores, particularly the violin solo. Many high-level figure skaters have used this in their programs, including Katarina Witt, Irina Slutskaya, Johnny Weir, and Yulia Lipnitskaya.”
These athletes were not alive during WWII. Their PARENTS were probably not alive then either. Why can they NOT have pride in their country as they feel it is today.
History exists and people can and should learn from it. However, because there were terrible and horrible things done in your Country in the past, does not mean that you either have to bear the burden of the sins of people long dead or that you can never be proud of your country.
If your country is still doing the horrible things it would be incumbent on the young (everyone actually) to fix that problem. The USA doesn't have slavery anymore. I have no guilt or burden to bear in that respect. The people of Germany are not transporting Jews to concentration camps. Antisemitism does seem to be on the rise in Europe, but that also seems to be a result of the mass swarms of Muslims invading the Continent.
Who are WE to tell others how to feel anyway?
I said out loud: "I don't see how you can wave the German flag."
Seriously? Or just trolling.
Lots of film scores are serious music.
Miklos Rozsa wiki.
It's like white people in the US today being blamed for slavery.
Is this an "Either / or" situation?
More hypersensitive virtue signalling; much much easier than authentic virtue.
Don't wave a Japanese flag. Not in Korea.
Note: DBQ beat me to the slavery issue.
If the skier had been waving the flag of the Third Reich we might be appropriately appalled.
Do you have the same feelings about the Japanese or Italy or France (yes many did help the Nazis exterminate Jews) or Poles or Austrians or China or those countries making up the former Yugoslavia or Romania or just about any country including the US (remember we exterminated Native Americans and held Slaves)? Yes I have lots of snark in this comment.
"but don't express pride in Germany." Maybe in 100 years."
100 years? Germany will be an Islamic shithole long before that. This may be their last chance.
Why after 100 years? Ann going full Old Testament?
I don't have a problem with Germans waving the German flag.
I said out loud: "I don't see how you can wave the German flag."
Perhaps you could give us a list of the nations whose unblemished history entitles their citizens to exhibit national pride?
What would be the Twitter reaction if the theme from 'Schindler's List' was used by a figure skater from Israel?
I know, I know: the Palestinians are oppressed.
But they already won a Gold Medal during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany. In the Terror and Castration events.
Not sure what music was playing.
The Germans have a word for this.
I'm surprised to see such a mean-spirited post.
What other nationalities make you so mean and unforgiving?
Jews? Arabs? Russians? Japanese?
My former father-in-law was a soldier in the Pacific Theater in World War Two. He used to blather endlessly about the evil Japanese. He never would forgive any of them, even in 200 years!
Hardness of heart is a major problem in the world today. Very few Germans are alive today that were alive when atrocities were committed. Ditto most of Asia in regards to Japan.
It corrupts our discourse.
Be better.
The music shouldn't be used at all now. It should be removed from the movie soundtrack. Playing it now somehow pays homage to Nazi Germany?
Perhaps the skater is playing tribute to:
Oskar Schindler, a man who saved many Jews and serves as a model for other Germans.
The movie itself, a historical reference and uplifting movie about saving Jews from evil men.
Steven Spielberg, who made a great movie honoring a German who helped save many Jewish lives, and chose to use this music.
Take your pick. They are all good reasons, along with the quality of the music itself, to use the movie score. Perhaps if the music was only used as Amon Goeth's favorite tune, then it might be a problem.
I guess Wagner is completely off the table.
"Newman!"
Wonder if Jerry Seinfeld was 'necking' during that skating routine?
"And a more offensive spectacle I cannot recall !"
The Serbs hate the Bosnian Serbs because the Bosnian Serbs collaborated with the Turks in the late 1400s.
The Serbs are still so mad about it that they tried to expel all the Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s.
The Federal Tepublic of Germany is not the Third Reich. It is a different country with a different flag. The FRG has been a friend and ally to the USA. It is in many ways an exemplary country. Germans deserve to be and should be should be proud of their country.
Up through about 15-20 years ago I was willing to cut Germany a break by thinking that that 3d Reich thing (formally 1933-1945, but actually 1924-1945) was an aberration. But then I started to notice the growing influence of Islam in Germany flowing from that foolish guest-worker program bringing Turks to Germany. Remember that Atta and the other 911 murderers had a base in northern Germany. And since 911 the influence of the Turkish Muslims has only grown. Erdogan and his henchmen demand the right to campaign on German ground for Turkish elections. And Erdogan has visions of his becoming the next rightful Ottoman caliph.
Then when Merkel, who had no problem with a general increase of more and more Muslims over her years in power, opened the floodgates to a wave of more and more Muslims my thinking changed into believing that there's sometime really, really anti-Jew and pro-totalitarian in the German heart.
"The Federal Tepublic of Germany is not the Third Reich. It is a different country with a different flag. The FRG has been a friend and ally to the USA. It is in many ways an exemplary country. Germans deserve to be and should be should be proud of their country."
Well, I know they are not waving the Nazi flag. I know they've done a lot to distance themselves from what they obviously must distance themselves. But the expression of pride in Germany does not feel right to me. I guess that's the way Colin Kaepernick feels about the National Anthem ceremony.
My former father-in-law was a soldier in the Pacific Theater in World War Two. He used to blather endlessly about the evil Japanese. He never would forgive any of them, even in 200 years!
My father also fought in the Pacific but never held any grudge against the Japanese. One of his best golfing buddies was an American of Japanese descent and I'll wager they never discussed WWII even though this fellow and his family were interred during the war. Some people just like to hold a grudge, I guess. Sad.
You know Beethoven was an asshole, right?
Its a very haunting piece if music, I can recognize if I hear it. But I don't see why it shoyldnt be played
The Germans made a big deal out of waving the flag again in the 2006 World Cup, which they hosted. It's been more common since then, but I still think there's a lot of debate within Germany on the topic.
http://www.dw.com/en/world-cup-patriotism-in-black-red-and-gold/a-2032823
Anybody check to see if she might be Jewish? Or, maybe a relative of Oscar Schindler?
It’s standard practice for an athlete with a clear lead to carry their country’s flag to the finish line. I see no reason for the athletes from Germany to do differently. With this hypersensitivity towards routine actions you demonstrate that you are a true denizen of Madison.
I guess that's the way Colin Kaepernick feels about the National Anthem ceremony.
In most people's eyes, Colin Kaepernick has made a damn fool of himself.
I lived in Germany for a decade. The Germans are very split on this issue. Here is an article from 17 years ago that addresses that issue. Note that a parliamentary representative was taken to task for saying he is proud to be a German while the former Bundespraesident refused to say the same thing.
The Germans are a fucked-up people, politics-wise. They took away the wrong lessons from WW2. Instead of learning that they need to stand up and actively fight against evil they simply fall back on a lazy and disingenuous pacifism and let others do the lifting. Maybe it is because they don't trust themselves to do the right thing. They shouldn't.
My German wife (yes, I organize my wives by nationality) and I were discussing current German politics and the debacle that Deutschland has become. We wondered why there were no great German champions of Democracy/natural rights. No Rousseau, no Locke.
Ultimately we ended-up agreeing that people who derive their politics from German philosophers, well...shouldn't.
Yo didn't realize that song was from "Shindler's List." I have never seen the movie.
I don't watch movies made by pedophiles.
The North Korean delegation to the closing ceremony is led by General Kim yong-choi, who is responsible for killing 46 South Korean soldiers in 2010. Why would they allow him in? Crazy.
forgot the link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/mar/25/kateconnolly.theobserver
My mother's family was both German and German-Jewish. It's a weird thing, but the culture and language that most Jews of Central and Eastern Europe aspired to be a part of was German. Freud, Einstein, Marx, Kafka et al. we're all extremely krauty. I think Herzl got the idea for Zionism while watching a Wagner opera. The man who introduced poison gas into warfare was a German Jew who wanted to impress the Kaiser with his patriotism........German culture gave us both the waltz and a Prussian ruling class that considered the waltz degenerate. You can drive yourself crazy tieing all the loose ends together.
A proud German should be proud of their flag.
I just wish we had more Americans at the Oylmpics who honored our flag. It seems they are more invested in bashing the God Emperor.
At least the losers are doing that to the absolute delight of NBC who offers them jobs and money to hate on the administration.
70 years is long enough. The Japanese killed more civilians than the Germans - mostly Chinese. But I guess they don't count.
The Bavarian Flag is pretty. Simple.
Ann Althouse said...
"I guess that's the way Colin Kaepernick feels about the National Anthem ceremony."
And I ask again; can you give us the list you keep, of nations whose unblemished history entitles their citizens to feel national pride? To paraphrase Beria, show me the nation, I'll show you the crime.
Stalin killed Millions, but I dont' see Georgia feeling guilty about it.
Hitler was an Austrian.
Wave that flag, Germany! The guilt people try to impose on you who were born decades after Hitler stained your nation is a destructive shaming. Frankly, I’m shocked Althouse wrote this.
I believe 96.3 years should pass first. That sounds just about right to me.
Kapernick refuses to love America because of "police brutality" and our lack of great leaders like Che and Fidel Castro.
Mrs. Merckle (please don't squeeze the Muslims) evidently agrees with Althouse, since she hates Germany 1.0 and wants to change it into Germany-Islam.
I do not watch The Olympics and have not for 30 years. I am repelled by it, from start to finish, from A to Z.
Plus, I fervently hope NBC loses their financial ass from it.
"In most people's eyes, Colin Kaepernick has made a damn fool of himself."
The moral challenge is to see things from another person's point of view. You're choosing to see things from your own point of view, augmented by all those other people who agree with you. Do you ever step up to the moral work of understanding how it looks from the position of someone who has a different opinion from yours?
Hitler was spectacularly evil, but he was in power for only half a generation. He played to the German grudges. Some of the grudges were justifiable. Germany was kept as a collection of small, warring principalities for centuries by the great powers that surrounded it. The Allies won WWI on the cheap by starving Germany after the Armistice. The Versailles Treaty was not all that draconian, but it was not so generous as they were led to believe by Wilson's Fourteen Points. The Germans after WWI went a little crazy by luxuriating in their grudges instead of contemplating how assholes like Ludendorff and Hindenburg had led them off the cliff. Maybe there's a lesson for other people in the German history......In any event, you can't adopt an attitude that Germans are uniquely and especially evil without to some extent adopting the Nazi philosophy that some races are ontologically evil.
Hitler killed many Jewish Germans... Schindler himself was German. Ann Dystopian only display his/hers/whatever lack of historical knowledge.
Odd comment.
The Germans are very proud of the morally superior pacifist nation they have become. They positively wallow in their displaced self-loathing. Look how much we hate the Nazis: aren't we good? Hence Merkel and the Muslims.
But ideological posturing aside, the Germans really have done a lot to come to terms with their history and really have behaved much better for several generations now. We should encourage them, and we have.
Using a good tune from a movie about a good German seems OK. Other flags cover bigger recent sins.
But the expression of pride in Germany does not feel right to me.
It doesn't bother me and my grandparents on both sides had relatives die in concentration camps.
First, the Germans have done a much better job of acknowledging their atrocities than most nations. The Japanese still deny what they did in China and with Korean comfort women. In some countries, like Turkey and now Poland, it's a crime to look candidly at some historic events
Second, the pride is not of the extreme, nationalist type. There's nothing militaristic about it and it's not harking back to some golden era. It's a pride in current German society, which has a strong work ethic and productivity.
Ann Althouse: The moral challenge is to see things from another person's point of view.
What do you see when you look at the German flag from that skier's point of view?
So Ann has this " does not seem right to me" No redemption in your DNA. Justice is getting what you deserve, Mercy is not getting what you deserve and Grace is getting what you don't deserve.
Livermoron, Rousseau was to France what Hegel was to Germany. IMO, the French Revolution was every bit as horrendous as the Third Reich.
In Germany it is illegal to have Nazi memorabilia, give the Nazi salute, profess support for the Nazis, etc. It was illegal until (iirc) two years ago to sell copies of the Mein Kampf. I think possession of that book was illegal, too.
So instead of fighting speech with more speech they just outright ban it. Yet I have seen German skinheads walking through a train station wearing wife-beaters and proudly displaying their Hakenkreuz tattoos...with no one saying a thing. I've sat on public transportation and listened to a couple of drunks shout out to all around that there was nothing wrong with dem Vaterland that a strong man like Hitler couldn't fix...and not one of the dozens of people around said anything except, eventually, for me. I still recall the shame I believe I saw on the faces of those passengers when I shut those Nazi motherfuckers up... and then turned my wrath on the rest of the bus for not saying a goddamned thing, calling them disgraceful and asking them when they will stand for themselves and not wait for an American to do it for them.
I was pissed.
And I have other, similar stories.
I love the Germans. I do believe they have a fatal flaw, They are human. And they should never forget that.
Completely agree with the Germany flag thing. Would also add the Russian flag, the Chinese flag, and of course the most despicable of all, the Belgian flag (if you can call that dirty rag a flag).
Althouse asks a commenter: Do you ever step up to the moral work of understanding how it looks from the position of someone who has a different opinion from yours?
Et tu, Brute?
mockturtle:
The French Revolution and its excesses set back other European revolutions for decades until the dam burst in 1848 all over Europe.
No, Althouse. That's not moral hard work. That's a waste of time.
Wrestle with a pig if you must. Or wrap it in a blanket and fry it like bacon.
You're accomplishing nothing. And lecturing others that your preferred method is the better method.
Have you ever tried thinking about this from the position of those with whom you disagree?
Livermoron wrote:
We wondered why there were no great German champions of Democracy/natural rights. No Rousseau, no Locke.
Try The Limits of State Action by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Just the title is inspiring.
Hayek was Austrian. Pretty close.
Birkel wrote No, Althouse. That's not moral hard work. That's a waste of time.
I've written about 1000 words over the last week trying to convince a liberal friend that gun rights advocates aren't sociopaths. Maybe it was a waste of time. I'm not sure. I prefer to try.
Sean F. wrote What do you see when you look at the German flag from that skier's point of view?
The sky?
Ann Althouse at 10:09 AM
The moral challenge is to see things from another person's point of view.
Let's try to see things from the view of a young German athlete who has represented his country in an international competition and has won his game.
"What do you see when you look at the German flag from that skier's point of view?"
That's not really worth asking. Of course, I don't think of him as a Nazi. He's on a team and he's proud to win for the team and signaling to the people back home that we won. Waving colors. He's exultant and rightly so. I'm not saying he did anything wrong, only that I don't like seeing the German flag waved and that if I were German, I would not want to wave a flag.
I certainly understand that for younger Germans it must feel unfair to have to carry a burden of shame your whole life for something that happened long you were born. Why doesn't every human being feel ashamed for anything evil than any human being has ever done?
By the way, I like watching the individual athletes and feel a human bond with whoever wins, for the joy of winning. I watched the German winning and was happy for him, but I did think — oh, that's the flag he's stuck with? ugh.
Henry,
I'll do you the kindness that Althouse won't and tell you that you are the best judge of what is and what is not a waste of your time. Do the results obtained so far confirm (the position you reveal by your actions) that your time is, indeed, well spent?
Do you tend to have a negative feeling about the waving of national flags in general?
In most people's eyes, Colin Kaepernick has made a damn fool of himself.
I respect Kaepernick for his courage of his convictions.
Nevertheless, he has shown very bad judgment on the police-brutality issue and on his method of expressing his opinion.
@Livermore,
We wondered why there were no great German champions of Democracy/natural rights. No Rousseau, no Locke.
Okay, this is simply not true. The late Kant is most definitely pro-democracy, & if you read Hegel's Philosophy of Right, he ends up with a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarchy as the form of government as the latest & greatest instantiation of Spirit.
Matter of fact, I'm trying to think of any of the late 18th to mid 19th German philosophers who are actively hostile to Classical Liberal democracy. Schopenhauer, yeah, probably. Nietzsche, definitely. But, even the "Romantic conservatives" like Hamann & later Jacobi, who may have not been too keen on the masses, were even less keen on the the Junker feudal aristocracy.
The influence of 19th C German philosophy on political thought came too late to shape the mindset of the Founding Fathers & the country they founded, but their influence on American democracy is there nonetheless. The New England Transcendentalists all knew their German philosophers, as did, believe it or not, Frederick Douglas, who read & spoke German fluently (he even had a German mistress for a while). The first journal of academic philosophy in the US is set up by the St. Louis Hegelians. But, most importantly for American culture, these are the people who set up the American university system modeled after the University of Berlin. This is why, even though we are a child of England, we don't do "firsts" at university, we "major" in a subject.
Ann Althouse: The moral challenge is to see things from another person's point of view.
SeanF: What do you see when you look at the German flag from that skier's point of view?
Ann Althouse: That's not really worth asking.
From "moral challenge" to "not really worth asking" in half an hour. You should really make a beeping noise when you back up like that.
Your out-loud comment was "I don't see how you can wave the German flag." Take your own moral challenge, and maybe you'll see how he can.
The is diversity politics that judges people by the "color of their skin", carries out muli-decadal witch/warlock hunts, and generally denies individual dignity (e.g. attributes muligenerational culpability). It's a quasi-religious doctrine that misses the baby for the colorful clump of cells.
Althouse: "Why doesn't every human being feel ashamed for anything evil than any human being has ever done?"
Because we're not all depraved? Because we believe in autonomy and individual responsibility? Because we don't truly believe as the Bible instructs that the sins of the father will be borne by his offspring for seven generations?
If I feel shame, it will be for what I have done. That is a powerful motivating force to avoid the wrong thing, ex ante.
Are you really trying to argue FOR nihilism?
Germans it must feel unfair to have to carry a burden of shame your whole life for something that happened long you were born. Why doesn't every human being feel ashamed for anything evil than any human being has ever done?
People don't have to carry a burden of shame for anything that they personally didn't do, or personally didn't try to stop from happening. Things that happened long ago or far way are not are not our burden. It is unfair to try to saddle people with a guilt that is not theirs.
We can be aware of those awful things and not let them happen again and try to make other's aware....but there is not one iota of 'personal' shame or guilt that I or anyone else should be required to bear.
All kinds of evil happens. I am not personally ashamed. Appalled and even angry at the frailty of human nature and the failure of people to stand against evil. BUT....it is NOT MY burden.
von Humboldt was born around the time of the American Revolution, so he can't have been an influence on the founders of this country. Friedrich Hayek, of course, was a philosopher of the 20th C., so ditto on his ability to influence the creation of this great country.
That some Germans have come to embrace democracy is something I readily stipulate. And there were Germans (not many) who were pushing for representative democracy during the 1848 revolution, but they were not in the majority who wanted to maintain the monarchy.
No German philosophers were instrumental in providing intellectual impetus to the founding of the US.
We do appreciate that they gave us von Steuben, however.
"From "moral challenge" to "not really worth asking" in half an hour. You should really make a beeping noise when you back up like that."
It's not worth asking because the answer is so obvious, in my opinion. I'm not going to take every off ramp when making a point. But somebody thought it was a strong challenge to what I was saying. It wasn't. I made a strong challenge to the assertion that Kaepernick is just "a fool." Notice that I never said anything like that about the German skier. I didn't call him a fool or a Nazi or anything else negative. If I'd attacked him, the moral question I'd raised would be properly aimed back at me, but I hadn't. That's the difference.
Germany bad. Kaepernick good. We get it.
YoungHegelian:
Perhaps my initial comment was unclear. I meant to imply that the founders of this country took no intellectual inspiration from any German philosophers.
Pointing out the late-comers doesn't change that.
RE: Kaepernick
I am surprised that Althouse will not call the man who is currently throttling the golden goose a fool. The NFL will not survive the non-fools.
The enemy is calling. And the call is coming from inside the house.
The Weimar Republic had its faults, but it was a perfectly serviceable democracy. It's a shame that the German people did not pledge allegiance to it and honor its flag. A lot of Germans thought that they had been unfairly treated and that the Weimar Republic didn't address their historical grievances. They felt no need to respect the Weimar Republic and its chickenshit flag. Ponder the parallels.
Oh I am NOT surprised that people are now 'shaming' over displaying the German flag. Here in Seattle, I am simply waiting for the day when they start rounding up anyone with a German surname..."just in case". Don't you know Nazism is genetic? We can't be too careful!
Why doesn't every human being feel ashamed for anything evil than any human being has ever done?
Many, many do. And they regularly acknowledge those evils and wrongs and, dare I say, sins as being a part of the human condition throughout history. And they believe in the need for justice.
They also believe in the possibility of redemption.
And they believe that once a person or people have found redemption, that we should not continue to judge and condemn and ostracize them for those past evils.
Otherwise -- when are YOU going to disgorge yourself of all of your gains that have been obtained on the backs of others because of your white privilege and all the horrific, inhumane evils committed against other peoples, including denying them their own humanity and dignity and treating them like property?
Get the forest out of your own eye before criticizing specks in the eyes of others.
Ann Althouse: Notice that I never said anything like that about the German skier. I didn't call him a fool or a Nazi or anything else negative. If I'd attacked him, the moral question I'd raised would be properly aimed back at me, but I hadn't.
Don't tell me you didn't say anything negative about him. You said that you "don't see how you can" do what he did. That's a criticism right there.
My problem here, though, is with the disconnect between "I don't see how you can wave the German flag," and "The moral challenge is to see things from another person's point of view." Regardless of anything else, the first sentence shows a failure to live up to the second.
The British royal family is German, of course.
Never made the front page before, Althouse.
I feel....validated.
Why doesn't every human being feel ashamed for anything evil than any human being has ever done?
You mean like killing and dismembering babies before they are born?
The moral challenge is to see things from another person's point of view. You're choosing to see things from your own point of view, augmented by all those other people who agree with you. Do you ever step up to the moral work of understanding how it looks from the position of someone who has a different opinion from yours?
Splooge stooges.
the expression of pride in Germany does not feel right to me
Equating Germany and hence all the German people to the Nazis is of course the kind of short-sighted ignorant prejudice that causes such ill will among people in the first place. In fact, it is a Nazi way of thinking itself.
What is more -- how did the National Socialists rise to power in the first place? And what is at the root of the causes of the start of World War II?
This incessant, unwarranted malice to Germany following World War I that insisted on destroying the German character and people even in their defeat.
To be sure, that mindset is alive and well right here with people who want to start up the Civil War once again.
The better view -- one taken by enlightened people -- is that of President Lincoln, "with malice toward none, with charity for all."
@Livermore,
Perhaps my initial comment was unclear. I meant to imply that the founders of this country took no intellectual inspiration from any German philosophers.
We wondered why there were no great German champions of Democracy/natural rights. No Rousseau, no Locke.
Yes, I consider that second statement "unclear". I also can't imagine why you think the process of "American democracy" ceases after the founders.
I think a more fertile vein of ore to mine is that, while we looking back at the giants of 18th-19th C German culture see guys like Kant as the very archetypes of Enlightenment thought, they, & the German culture around them, saw the Enlightenment as "French", a foreign import. We, as Americans, "own" the heritage of the Enlightenment because British culture absorbed the English & Scottish Enlightenment as somehow "native sons", even though it too was as "French" as the German Enlightenment. For the Germans, the Enlightenment remained always somehow suspect & foreign, as the 19th C Romantic reaction against it proved.
The Germans are, indeed, a strange people.
My supervisor is from Germany, and has explained something similar, that being proud of Germany, proud of being German, even the national anthem is downplayed. We Americans might ask reasonably "what's the big deal? did *you* personally do those terrible things during the Third Reich?" However even two-three generations later, Germans are still skittish about nationalism and national pride.
... as by the German cross-country skier who accepted a German flag as he skied into the stadium and waved it as he crossed the finish line. I said out loud: "I don't see how you can wave the German flag." Prompted to think of all the great Germans in history, I said: "You can express pride about particular Germans" — I'm thinking, Beethoven... — "but don't express pride in Germany."
That's really fucked up, Althouse. Very, very, historically selective.
And oddly childish - how odd that one presume to finger-wag at anyone re what part of their identity they are allowed, or not allowed, to take pride in. But it looks like German pols, media, intelligentsia, etc., are eager to enforce your viewpoint, so you're in luck.
gspencer: Then when Merkel, who had no problem with a general increase of more and more Muslims over her years in power...
Merkel and just about every other Western leader, including American ones.
...opened the floodgates to a wave of more and more Muslims, my thinking changed into believing that there's sometime really, really anti-Jew and pro-totalitarian in the German heart.
There's something really, really anti-native European in the hearts of goodthinkers everywhere. Re migration, I can't see that they hate European Jews any more than they hate European gentiles. And if insane mass-migration policies are anti-Semitic, then there sure are a lot of anti-Semitic Western Jews running around. And even some Jews who make no bones about the fact that their enthusiasm for flooding Europe with culturally alien migrants is motivated by hostility toward Western peoples.
Plenty of "anti" crazy going around these days. Germans certainly have their characteristic pathologies, but the idea that they are a uniquely bad people, the Most Evil People Ever, is also weird and pathological.
Guilt is corroding Western civilization and distorting our view of the past. The Germans or Southerners or the British or white men can cover themselves with ashes and sit around feeling guilty for the sins of their ancestors all day long and it will not change what happened. You can't undo the sins of others and you can't make up for those sins by discriminating against whites instead of blacks or against men instead of women. (Or in the case of the Germans, by bringing in people from a culture which despises Jews almost as much as the Nazis did.)
Western civilization was triumphal and self-confident (and yes, more than a little racist) in 1900. Fourteen years later it began the process of slowly destroying itself and now it's swung to the other extreme. As Mark says, once you have lost the Christian belief in redemption, all you have is endless self-recrimination.
And I don't take Rousseau as any great political philosopher. That asshole has a lot to answer for.
Ultimately, isn't waving a flag a very public way of acknowledging the support of your countrymen?
Presumably, it was Germans that paid for his training and gear, Germans that coached him, Germans that cheered him on, and Germans that competed against him for a spot on the team. Waving that flag is an acknowledgement that he couldn't have done it without them.
@Birkel. Nope. But I keep trying.
Mao's kindly countenance still hangs over Tiananmen Square. Lenin's incorruptible corpse still has an honored place by the Kremlin. Hitler was spectacularly evil, but I don't think he represents the true emanation of German character. The Germans produced only one Hitler. Russia and China produce leaders like Stalin and Mao with a fair amount of regularity. I just don't see the Germans as uniquely and especially evil.
Livermoron wrote: Perhaps my initial comment was unclear. I meant to imply that the founders of this country took no intellectual inspiration from any German philosophers.
I misread you.
My German wife (yes, I organize my wives by nationality) and I were discussing current German politics and the debacle that Deutschland has become. We wondered why there were no great German champions of Democracy/natural rights. No Rousseau, no Locke.
I thought you were implying that the German politics had no German champions of Democracy/natural rights.
von Humboldt -- admittedly not the most major figure; I only know of him because I read a biography of his brother Alexander -- came well before the unification of Germany.
Henry:
Although not definitive and lacking empirical research, many people still refer to Einstein's understanding of insanity when determining whether to continue in a particular behavior.
YMMV
exiled: Guilt is corroding Western civilization and distorting our view of the past.
Guilt-tripping is a psychological weapon. It rarely has anything to do with the guilt-inducers concern for morality. It's a bludgeon with which to beat down your enemy.
The problem with the current progressives' use of the bludgeon is that they don't seem to understand the real political/historical environment they're wielding it in. They must be the most oblivious bludgeoners in the history of human conflict.
Exiled:
Jean-Jacques was perhaps too controversial...should I have said Descartes? (probably) or Duns Scotus. Voltair? Locke? I was just grabbing names from memory. I do this without a net.
Young:
I wasn't aware that I maintained that the process of American Democracy stopped at the founders. Synthesize much?
The Japanese still deny what they did in China and with Korean comfort women.
One of these is not like the other. (Personally, a principle I like to employ is to beware — at least at first — of lists of proffered issues, not really alike, but provided linked by a surreptitious ‘and’.)
Yes, the Japanese during World War II (and before! by the usual reckoning of that war) treated Asian peoples forcibly roped into their “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” abysmally. Even as late as the closing months of the war, Japanese forces in non home-Japanese war-theaters were slaughtering between 250,000 – 400,000 Asians (mostly Chinese) every month. (That continuing immense carnage is the most important factor, in my view, justifying the American nuclear bombings of two Japanese cities which brought the war abruptly to a halt in August, 1945.)
However, re Korean “comfort women”: no. The Korean peninsula had been annexed into the Japanese state in 1910. By the start of World War II (by any reckoning), Koreans had been full Japanese citizens for decades. Many Koreans served in Japanese forces, some rose to high ranks. The Japanese did not raid neighborhoods of their own integral home nation — which included Korea — for “comfort women” to force into prostitution to entertain the troops. Rather they employed real (that is, consensual) prostitutes — some of whom were Korean — for that essential (as they saw it) task.
So where did the spurious “Korean comfort women” issue with all its (fake!) heat originate? It appears to come from propaganda from North Korea and the (then) Soviet Bloc with the intent of dividing Korea from Japan and the West.
I’m no expert myself in these matter, mind you — but a (real!) journalist whom I immensely respect — Michael Yon — is quite knowledgeable in this regard, has personally investigated then written on the subject, in his blog and on his Facebook page. As he says (quoting…):
The Comfort Women issue, and why it is important to Americans
It may not seem important, but it is. The issue is manufactured and designed to target alliances between Japan, the USA, Korea, and more. So far I have researched this issue in nine countries.
Maybe 1% of the journalists who write about a clue about what really happened. Nearly everyone is just copy-pasting from other 'sources', who are not sources at all because they also are merely copy-pasting and making meta-stories.
(/unQuote)
Thus: Michael Yon. See, for instance, this posting from his site.
Most people probably don't know that Martin Luther King changed his name from Michael King after being inspired by what he learned of the great reformer during a visit to Germany.
@Birkel -- To respond to you seriously, people often hold and express extreme opinions that are divorced from their personal friendships. Sometimes not. But often, a good faith argument that appears to go nowhere has the simple benefit of giving one's friend the knowledge that someone that thinks differently than they do. Simply disagreeing without malice is a small crack in the wall of groupthink. I've had times that I've heard a wrongheaded opinion from someone I like and respect. Because I like them it's easier to avoid the trap of assuming false motives. Instead, I can think through why my friend holds that wrongheaded opinion and whether there's something about the topic I've failed to understand in formulating my own. And there is the fact that thinking through the wrongheaded opinion my make me adjust my own. And thinking is a lot more interesting than just asserting.
That’s pretty Germophobic, Althouse. Germany is a nation with a flag and they’ve done a great deal of good since WW2. It’s a shame that they aren’t more proud. I know national pride is a touchy subject among Germans in Germany, but that is their issue to sort out, not yours. I feel it’s wrong for an outsider like you to declare that pride in Germany a bad thing. When does Germany get to move past Nazi atrocities from seven plus decades ago?
BDNYC:
When does Germany get to move past Nazi atrocities from seven plus decades ago?
That question gets argued a lot in Germany. They call it their Geistigehypotheke - their spiritual mortgage - when does it get paid off?
My answer was that the minimum should be 'when no one alive ever lived through it' or three generations.
Having visited Dachau (I actually broke into it with a buddy), and Buchenwald, having seen the personal, private photographs taken by a US Soldier (101stAB) as he liberated a concentration camp (Landsberg, IIRC), photos that he kept in a sealed binder and that he would never, NEVER, let his two daughters see. And having a great friend in high school whose father bore the tattoo from Aushwitz, I feel I let them off lightly.
Oddly enough, most Germans I explained this to felt it seemed reasonable.
And having a great friend in high school whose father bore the tattoo from Aushwitz, I feel I let them off lightly.
How very generous of you.
You're entitled to your gut feeling on the matter, Althouse, but I am also curious what your answer would be to the question posed above regarding which other countries' citizens you feel are being tacky with any displays even faintly suggesting pride of country.
Where's Buwaya to talk about the behavior of the Japanese in the Philippines? And--I like Japan and the Japanese--but: they are still as a society unapologetically racist, xenophobic and chauvinistic, while Germany has spend decades atoning for its crimes to the point of cultural suicide. Why does Japan get a pass (evidently)?
Why does Japan get a pass (evidently)?
Because the Japanese don't give a shit about what a bunch of uncivilized barbarians (read everyone who isn't Japanese) thinks about them.
Most people probably don't know that Martin Luther King changed his name from Michael King after being inspired by what he learned of the great reformer during a visit to Germany.
True but a little misleading.
There was a minister named Michael King who had a son named Michael King Jr.. He did change his name to Martin Luther King, and his son's name to Martin Luther King Jr..
It wasn't the famous civil rights leader who changed his name, it was his father who changed both of their names.
Gahrie’s right.
Hitler was spectacularly evil, but I don't think he represents the true emanation of German character. The Germans produced only one Hitler. Russia and China produce leaders like Stalin and Mao with a fair amount of regularity. I just don't see the Germans as uniquely and especially evil.
2/23/18, 12:21 PM
I've pondered why there has been so much more attention paid to Hitler than to Stalin or Mao. Both of them beat Hitler as far as body counts go. The answer, I think, is because 1. Nazis were white and 2. Nazism was based on racism and there has been no sin worse than racism since the 1960's. Marxists can certainly be racist (Che was), but Marxism as an ideology - and basically a perversion of Christianity - has universalist aspirations. Ignorant people still believe that Marxism can work if only the right people are in charge (themselves), while nobody outside of a small group of losers still believes in the Nazis' racial delusions.
After the philosopher Turgidson: Weeeeeell, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole country because of a single slip up...
" And--I like Japan and the Japanese--but: they are still as a society unapologetically racist, xenophobic and chauvinistic, while Germany has spend decades atoning for its crimes to the point of cultural suicide. Why does Japan get a pass (evidently)?"
They're not white Westerners and we dropped the Bomb on them twice. It's astounding to me that every August we are treated to anguished debates on whether or not we were right to drop the Bomb on them. The hand-wringing over Hiroshima and Nagasaki has overshadowed the atrocities committed by the Japanese. They were not only brutal to the peoples they ruled over, their treatment of POWs was as bad as any torture meted out in Auschwitz. But, once again, Whitey is supposed to feel bad because it would have been so much more humane to sacrifice thousands and thousands of our troops (and many more of their civilians than were killed by the Bombs) in a hellish invasion of the Japanese home islands.
Gee mock, who pissed in your Wheaties, sweetie?
Am I not allowed to have my personal perspective on German guilt, or do I need to ask for your generous permission?
mockturtle said...
"Germany bad. Kaepernick good. We get it."
Tou-Fucking-Che!
exiled:
Whenever political discussions turned to the Holocaust and German guilt, I would inevitably have the atomic bombing of Japan thrown back in my face. I loved it! Talk about teeing one up! They had no response because no comparison between the two events allows them a reasonable response.
But the Germans do grab on to that as a way of saying 'what we did was no worse than what the Americans did'. I even has Germans wonder why, if we were so concerned about the Jews, then why didn't we bomb the camps? Really.
When the Abu Ghraib photos came out they were a huge hit in Germany...finally Americans caught doing something awful! Yay! Why, they might well as used Zyklon B on them!
I don't blame them...it's a defense mechanism. It only becomes a problem when you let them get away with it.
And, they knew what was going on. My ILs told me about the rumors...the places only alluded to via euphemism but never named out loud. Even the official Dorfkronik, the history of my wife's village dating back to about 750AD, writes of the unspoken disappearences and feared destinations of local inhabitants during the Third Reich.
"but don't express pride in Germany."
Strange thing is they make such bloody good cameras.
Perhaps strange thing is also that Amerindians are generally the group most proud to be Americans.
""What do you see when you look at the German flag from that skier's point of view?"
That's not really worth asking"
SeanF covered this, but it's still amazing. I knew there were issues with sex and feminism on this blog, but didn't realize Germany was an equally sensitive topic.
Of course, thinking about things from the point of view of others, truly recognizing that they have such a point of view, understanding it as such, is the key contribution of that great German humanist, Herder.
We are just about 18 months away from the 80th anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland. 78 and a half years. Time to grow up, live in the 21st century, and give it all a rest.
My God, these threads have a much fresher scent this past week or so.
I wonder why that is?
Livermoron: My answer was that the minimum should be 'when no one alive ever lived through it' or three generations. Having visited Dachau (I actually broke into it with a buddy), and Buchenwald, having seen the personal, private photographs taken by a US Soldier (101stAB) as he liberated a concentration camp (Landsberg, IIRC), photos that he kept in a sealed binder and that he would never, NEVER, let his two daughters see. And having a great friend in high school whose father bore the tattoo from Aushwitz, I feel I let them off lightly.
That's mighty white of you, Livermoron.
If only we could get the descendants of the perps of all the atrocities of the last century or so to be as susceptible to collective, multi-generational guilting as the Germans, instead of just telling the rest of the world to fuck off. What a better world it would be, eh?
Or maybe not. Doesn't really seem to have made the Germans into better people, at least by your description:
They took away the wrong lessons from WW2. Instead of learning that they need to stand up and actively fight against evil they simply fall back on a lazy and disingenuous pacifism and let others do the lifting.
Maybe a couple more generations of making German children feel the weight of their "spiritual mortgage" will snap them out of this moral fecklessness and moral duplicity?
Maybe it is because they don't trust themselves to do the right thing. They shouldn't.
But they're not really too energetic about producing future generations, are they? Well, then, the German problem will solve itself soon enough, won't it?
I would think that the Poles should have some say in that.
Livermoron:
Gee mock, who pissed in your Wheaties, sweetie?
Am I not allowed to have my personal perspective on German guilt, or do I need to ask for your generous permission?
Sure you are. And anybody else is allowed to add a personal perspective on your personal perspective.
Fail to see anything remotely approaching the arrogation of permission-granting in mock's comment.
The Germans aren't just an example to themselves, they are an example to the rest of humanity.
I didn't lay the mortgage on them Angel, they laid it on themselves. I told them, that as far as I am concerned, it is lifted when all participants are dead. I offered them my personal absolution...a lifting of the personal mortgage they felt they owed me.
'That's mighty white of you, Livermoron.'
Only other person ever said this to me was a cunt. Is that who you are. Why do you go to that place when you don't need to?
I said out loud: "I don't see how you can wave the German flag."
Sounds like a personal problem.
Today's Bundesrepublik has, er, nothing to do with Nazis.
Seriously.
Nothing.
People who were born the day Berlin fell to the Soviets are 72 years old; anyone who was an adult under the Nazis is no younger than 90.
They left no really lasting cultural legacy, other than that of shame for their actions.
As far as I know, the Israelis have nothing much against the Germany of 2018; why should anyone else?
Heritable Ethno-national guilt is ... well, literally close to Fascist thought patterns than that of a little-d democrat or a believer in old-school liberalism.
Livermoron: The Germans aren't just an example to themselves, they are an example to the rest of humanity.
Wut?
Which part of humanity doesn't qualify as an example to the rest of humanity?
I didn't lay the mortgage on them Angel, they laid it on themselves. I told them, that as far as I am concerned, it is lifted when all participants are dead. I offered them my personal absolution...a lifting of the personal mortgage they felt they owed me.
Veering off course and getting a bit mystical here, Liv. Did they really come asking for your personal absolution?
'That's mighty white of you, Livermoron.'
Only other person ever said this to me was a cunt. Is that who you are. Why do you go to that place when you don't need to?
Well, at least two readers felt the need to "go there" - respond sarcastically to the same comment of yours. Maybe we're both cunts, or maybe you should analyze why it provokes eye-rolling.
I don't blame them...it's a defense mechanism. It only becomes a problem when you let them get away with it.
Your landsman says 100 years, what say yee, 50, 100, millennium ? Whatever the period in purgatory ,as long as you keep your kids nose well attuned to that scent , you have done your job and your parents will say "well done my good and faithful son"
There was, of course, WWI and that whole Hohenzollern military monarchy thing, and the last of them:
"Kaiser Wilhelm II, imperious, impulsive, imbued with notions of the divine right of kings and of Germany’s God-given trajectory to greatness, while at the same time insecure and hypersensitive to slights to his imperial dignity or his dynastic mission, was arguably the very last person who should have been entrusted with the immense powers of the Hohenzollern military monarchy at such a critical juncture in Germany’s and Europe’s history. Nevertheless he stood at the apex of the Kaiserreich’s policy-making pyramid for thirty years, from his accession in June 1888 to his flight into exile in Holland in November 1918. All the generals and admirals, chancellors, ministers and ambassadors who served under him were appointed by him and dependent on his ‘All-Highest favour’. Wilhelm followed events at home and abroad with a nervous intensity which on occasions bordered on insanity, issuing orders and covering diplomatic dispatches with furious diatribes that have survived in their thousands in the archives. His own words and deeds mark him out as in many respects a forerunner of Adolf Hitler, not least in his vitriolic anti-semitism in exile. And it was of course he, Prussia’s Supreme War Lord, who, having on several occasions beforehand urged the Austrians to attack Serbia, gave the fateful order on 4 July 1914 that led to disaster.
Looking back at his own reign at the end of his life, the Kaiser in exile greeted Adolf Hitler’s conquest of Norway and Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France in 1940 as the fulfilment of his own supremacist ambitions. In jubilation he exclaimed to an American friend: ‘The brilliant leading Generals in this war came from My school, they fought under my command in the [First] Worlds War as lieutenants, captains and young majors. Educated by Schlieffen they put the plans he had worked out under me into practice along the same lines as we did in 1914.’ His words speak for themselves."
Bismarck's "Pus, blood, and iron" flag is not my favorite sight either, but it is their flag, and if it is appropriate for athletes of other nations to wave their flags at Olympic events (which I personally think is debatable), German medal winners are also entitled to do so.
Germany is the nation of Auschwitz. A stain that doesn't fade quickly (if ever).
After WWII there were those who wanted a total de-industrialization of Germany, so that it could never again wage an industrialized war.
But instead the Allies, and especially the USA, helped (West) Germany to become an economic and industrial powerhouse. Although Germans did not, after WWII, really do all that much to accept responsibility for what had happened. For even though it was all too obvious that the Nazis retained mass political support at least until it was obvious the War was lost, if you asked a German what they did during the war you'd find that practically everyone the Berlin subway or something, and (of course) no one knew much of anything about those death camps.
Nonetheless, by permitting Germany to rebuild after WWII, we made our choice. Our choice was not "Deutchland delenda est!" it was to rebuild Germany as a de-Nazified state that could and would join the community of nations.
And having made that choice, it seems not unreasonable that we should not complain if Germans choose to wave their flag.
In other words...you got nothing. You post more strawmen than a farmer with OCD
All I've done is relate my personal experiences living in Germany, as a German. Sitting in pubs discussing politics...which is a passion there.... as the Ami I get all the tough questions. I give my honest response.
You feel the Germans should forget their past? Fine, that's your choice. I think that is foolish. And no, that is not a straw man: How does one with a past like the Germans remember it without feeling guilt and shame? I'm none too happy about slavery being in our past, but hey, that's just silly me.
I haven't advocated active shaming or punishment. In fact, I haven't even opined on whether the flag was appropriate. It was and I am happy to see it. I am for Germans feeling proud about being German.
I also think back on meeting friend's Dad for the first time. He asked me about myself (I was 16). I mentioned living all over the world and especially loving Germany and the Germans. I asked him if he had ever been to Germany. That's when he showed me the tattoo. I cried.
It's good the Germans feel guilt. It makes them better people.
Now go scare some crows, angel
I guess that's your choice, Otto. Lieber zu frueh oder zu spaet?
Agree completely, Caligula.
"Agree completely, Caligula."
I just have to say it: before the Internet era, could you have ever imagined you'd be typing those words in that order?
I almost typed that in my original message, but I don't feel like being funny now.
If I ever did.
And Caligula wasn't allllll bad.
Caligula: Germany is the nation of Auschwitz. A stain that doesn't fade quickly (if ever).
Of course it will. All tyrants, all wars, all atrocities are absorbed into history. Even those that are remembered will not be felt as a "stain" by any living people. It isn't even true that most humans alive today think about Nazi Germany and Nazi atrocities as anything but an episode among other episodes in the long history of wars and atrocities. That idea that Nazi Germany was uniquely evil (and Germans the Worst Humans in History), is a western parochialism, and will in its turn fade even in the West within the next few generations.
"I am for Germans feeling proud about being German."
"It's good the Germans feel guilt. It makes them better people"
????????
In any case keep up the 24/7 sniffing for that scent but be clever and never overplay your hand.
Thanks for encapsulating my point, angel:
That idea that Nazi Germany was uniquely evil (and Germans the Worst Humans in History), is a western parochialism, and will in its turn fade even in the West within the next few generations.
Otto??? you are unfathomable. You are now scroll-over-country.
Tschuesi
Livermoron: You feel the Germans should forget their past? Fine, that's your choice. I think that is foolish. And no, that is not a straw man:
Yes, it is. Forgetting the past, any of it, is the last thing I want any people to do. Seems to me the Germans need to remember more of the past, their own and other nations', not less. But what's one straw man in the mass of incoherence that is your response to me?
I think you're projecting something that isn't there onto the responses of myself and a couple of others here, something that triggers you emotionally, and lashing out at that. Thus the incoherence. That, or you're not quite sober.
"That idea that Nazi Germany was uniquely evil (and Germans the Worst Humans in History), is a western parochialism, and will in its turn fade even in the West within the next few generations."
And that scares the shit out of you. What to do? Well keep sniffing and make sure "that they never get away with it" because that "will make them better people". Nice try, but remember be clever and never overplay your hand.
Which part of humanity doesn't qualify as an example to the rest of humanity?
----din-ding-ding------strawman alert-----strawman alert--------------
And that's just the first line of your post.
This totally misrepresents my point. I at no time deny that other people(s) can be examples, too.
Two things can be equally true. Do you deny that the History of Nazi Germany is an example to all of us? The History of American Slavery is not an example to all of us? To many people the relative immediacy and the still visible scars of former lend it, perhaps, more relevance.
So should the Germans forget about it or not angel. Perhaps my artless writing leads you to think that that I have been drinking...but your weaving all over the topic leads me to believe that your bitch pills and vodka are a baaaad combo.
Stay off the road.
Honestly, I don't get your anger. I think you've got something in your head that you think I said.
You've apologized to me before. Will you now? I know that you are big enough.
The Austrians get to skate on this, even though Hitler was from Linz. Czechs and Hungarians have told me that the Austrians are the Eddie Haskells of Central Europe, and that their biggest con was convincing the world that Hitler was German but Mozart was Austrian.
You can either be trapped by the past like, say, Ta-Neisi Coates, or the person tweeting about music in the Olympics, or you can acknowledge that the past is in the past.
Do you ever step up to the moral work of understanding how it looks from the position of someone who has a different opinion from yours?
Wearing socks to football practice depicting cops as pigs?
Yeah. I'm going to work on my moral understanding to make sure I don't think Kaepernick isn't being unfairly labeled as an asshole. Because opinions.
Is there a principled alignment?
Judge a person by the content of their character, not the "color of their skin". The progress of diversity doctrine, especially institutional racism, sexism, and congruence, has set back reconciliation and human relations.
Hitler was spectacularly evil, but I don't think he represents the true emanation of German character. The Germans produced only one Hitler.
And neither did Hitler invent the idea of racial superiority or the idea of treating members of some groups as subhuman or the idea of exterminating social undesirables or otherwise sterilizing them to prevent their reproducing.
The United States, on the other hand, had PLENTY of people adhering to these ideas and expanding upon them and promoting them -- well into the 20th century -- many of them Supreme Court justices. The great evils of Hitler were largely stolen from non-Germans. He only put them into practice.
And what is worse: Today there are plenty of people -- good progressive people -- who are re-implementing the horrors and evils that the Nazis were hanged for, including the extermination of social undesirables.
If there is anything that we can condemn in the German character, it is that they were and are all too human. Which means that too many of them were all too interested in saving their own sorry butts and not doing what was needed to stop the National Socialists. At least they had the excuse of being killed themselves if they opposed them. What is our excuse in the face of the evils that are happening here every day?
The present German flag has no shame attached to it. It was originally adopted by the Weimar Republic as a replacement for the flag of the Prussian empire. It symbolized a new era of liberal democracy. (There is some suggestion that its promoters were harking back to an anti-Napoleanic resistance, but this is unclear.) Its main contribution to the national shame of Nazism was that ... Hitler hated it. When the Nazis came to power the restored the old Prussian flag for a couple of years but eventually dropped that, too, in favor of the more well known swastika flag. When Nazi Germany was defeated after WWII, the Weimar flag was restored, again symbolizing a rejection of autocracy. For decades East Germany suffered a stain on its flag imposed by the communists, but this was finally corrected when the Wall fell and Germany was reunited. All in all, not a bad symbol and nothing anyone should be ashamed of.
Yeah. I'm going to work on my moral understanding to make sure I don't think Kaepernick isn't being unfairly labeled as an asshole.
The biggest reason Kaepernick is an asshole is because he's selfish. He put himself over the team, and ruined the team's season.
That's the real reason no team will hire him.
@Livermoron: "We wondered why there were no great German champions of Democracy/natural rights."
Would Konrad Adenauer qualify? Not influential on American development, as per your later clarifications, but according to your original complaint he seems to fit rather handsomely. Certainly influential in the shape of the modern world, and undeservedly obscure in my opinion.
During WWI, Germany was criticized for its barbaric occupation of Belgium. Such atrocities had never before been seen in the history of mankind, or so it was claimed. While it's true that the Germans did perpetuate some atrocities, their occupation of Belgium was nowhere near as brutal as Belgium's occupation of the Congo. That was the benchmark for brutal occupations at the time.........During WWII, Germany was quite as brutish as people liked to portray it during WWI. Self fulfilling propaganda? If you tell people that they're uniquely evil, there's a chance that they might become uniquely evil.....I have read Anne Applebaum's book "Gulag" and Orlando Figes "The Whisperers". Lenin and Stalin were not slouches when it came to committing mass murders. People like to distribute blame for Hitler on capitalism, the eugenics movement, Luther's antisemitism, and a number of other causes. They never mention the possibility that Lenin and Stalin might have offered him an example of how to handle dissent and restive populations.
The biggest reason Kaepernick is an asshole is because he's selfish. He put himself over the team, and ruined the team's season.
Kaepernick's contract wasn't going to be renewed and he knew it. The 'protest' was probably a ploy to get the 49ers to renew so they wouldn't appear to be punishing him for his 'strongly held beliefs'.
Herr Adenauer was very popular. He predates my years in Germany by quite a bit. He was clearly a father figure. A style of Mercedes is nicknamed after him. I have never thought of him as a philosopher. He certainly furthered democracy in challenging times. He gave the nation someone it was OK to look up to while maintaining German dignity when the controlling powers were clearly pulling all the levers.
He also gave the Allies confidence in his leadership which was a boon to the Germans. I still believe the Germans consider him their greatest Bundeskanzller. His international influence wasn't much. The development of the Bundeswehr was an important step that he husbanded.
That's all stream of conciousness.
Winning the World Cup in 1956 against the Hungarians was a huge boost to the German spirit. I know that from the stories the old folks would tell. My FIL was at the "Rain Game' against Poland in Frankfurt that led to Das Bundesteam qualifying for the final. It was a joy to hear him speak of that.
Michael McNeil said...
"Thus: Michael Yon. See, for instance, this posting from his site."
I have a good deal of respect for Michael Yon, but the posting in question appears to consist entirely of a letter from a Japanese person making some assertions. Among them, this one;
"The Japanese comfort women system was generally successful at achieving its designated goals. There were almost no rapes perpetrated by Japanese soldiers in occupied areas and few children of mixed nationality were left behind by the Japanese Army."
The name "Nanking" comes to mind. I read a book about it. There were pictures.
Jupiter: I appreciate your skepticism in this regard, but on the other hand I highly doubt that Michael Yon — in the nine countries where he personally has investigated the “comfort women” issue, not to speak of his general reading — has never encountered this term “Nanking” (in the Japanese World War II context) before.
Parting observation: I recently watched Babylon Berlin on Netflix. It's a detective noir series set in Berlin during the time of the Weimar Republic. The hero detective saves the Republic from a coup by a group of militarists. The series is pretty dark, but the actual events were much darker. It's hard to conceive of a man worse than Hitler actually taking power or a city more doomed than Berlin. You can't help but reflect that most of the men you see In the background scenes will die in the war and some of them will participate in horrible crimes. The women --those who survive the bombings--will all be raped and some of them gang raped by Russian soldiers. Most of the building will be destroyed......The Germans committed a Biblical crime and suffered a Biblical punishment.
The Niners were buggered when the owner fired Jim Harbaugh. Kaperdink is a one-dimensional QB and NFL defenses fingered out how to stop him. He did the team a favor by taking attention away from the incompetence of little Jed Dork who runs Mommy's football team.
@ William
The Bible teachings are much more than that: Justice is getting what you deserve, Mercy is not getting what you deserve and Grace is getting what you don't deserve.
Michael McNeil said...
"Jupiter: I appreciate your skepticism in this regard"
Not skepticism. I was just wondering why you chose a link that went nowhere for a topic that sounded interesting. Did I miss a further trail?
Not skepticism. I was just wondering why you chose a link that went nowhere for a topic that sounded interesting. Did I miss a further trail?
Well… mea culpa. I agree that link was deficient. (But “went nowhere”? It goes somewhere for me!) Now, I’d fondly imagined that I could slough off further study of the issue, pass along my knowledge of Michael Yon’s position and a brief few of his arguments, then ride off into the sunset.
Unfortunately, I decided at the last minute to include a link to Yon’s blog in my posting, whereupon I did a further search for “comfort women” on his site and — without spending much time looking over the possibilities distributed among all the hits — decided to include the link I proffered at the time.
In retrospect it really isn’t satisfactory — being a piece of argument in the form of a letter from Japanese historian Fujioka Nobukatsu about the wide-eyed acceptance of the invented Korean-comfort-women mythos by many hundreds of American historians, none of whom had personally investigated the issue.
But — who trusts the Japanese anyway about World War II, right? Whether they’re right or not…. So, standing alone, as the solitary target of that link, in retrospect it’s less than convincing.
What actually caught my eye about the letter was where the author notes (quoting…):
The [American] textbook [being critiqued] stated, “The Japanese army forcibly recruited, conscripted, and dragooned as many as two hundred thousand women,” but the only Japanese scholar who the nineteen American historians cited as endorsing their viewpoint was Yoshimi Yoshiaki, who stated on a Japanese TV talk show that, “There is no evidence for forced recruitment of comfort women on the Korean peninsula.” The nineteen American historians seemed not to be aware of this.
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Which really illustrates the nature of the problem.
But while the letter provides a piece of the puzzle of where the truth lies in the Korean comfort-women morass, it’s long and meandering and perhaps far from conclusive, thus in the end unhelpful. Let’s see if we can do better in presenting the matter.
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After looking and studying Michael Yon's site some more, I've found a posting where he explains his position in greater detail, to wit (quoting…):
Michael Yon
November 28, 2014
Japan-Korea: Were Korean Men Cowards during World War II?
A vexing question
There are growing, unsubstantiated questions about whether the Japanese Imperial Army kidnapped 200,000 sex-slaves (Comfort Women) in World War II. Mostly from Korea.
A $30 million US Government Study specifically searched for evidence on Comfort Women allegations.
After nearly seven years with many dozens of staff pouring through US archives -- and 30 million dollars down the drain -- we found a grand total of nothing.
The final IWG report to Congress was issued in 2007. (Linked below.)
Nobody should be writing about Comfort Women issues without reading this report cover to cover.
Many of the unsubstantiated claims are coming from Korea. Korean allegations have led to unexpected twists.
At the time, Korea was actually part of Japan — roughly in the way that Puerto Rico is part of the USA.
Many Koreans were members of the Japanese military. So any allegations that the Japanese military kidnapped 200,000 women implies that Koreans were involved in kidnapping Koreans. This is an uncomfortable reality. It gets even more uncomfortable.
So today, South Korean President Park Geun-hye constantly accuses Japan of kidnapping these shiploads of women.
Imagine how this boomerangs back. President Park is saying that Japan — and her daddy was an officer in the Japanese Army at the time — kidnapped uncounted tens of thousands of women from Korea as sex-slaves. Yet there is no evidence that Korean men fought back.
During the war, Korea had a population of about 23 million. Today, Texas has a population of about 26 million.
Imagine trying to kidnap 200,000 Texas women. There would be a bloodbath. The Army would lose thousands of soldiers, and thousands of civilians no doubt would have been slaughtered in return.
Evidence would be everywhere. Photos. Films. Battle sites. Texans would never allow 200,000 women to be stolen and raped without making a river of blood. So President Park is essentially saying Korean men during World War II were a bunch of cowards.
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Also imagine this from the perspective of a Japanese military General or Admiral. He is at war with the USA, Australia, Britain, China, and more. His hands are full. The USA in particular is on the march with our Navy and Marines, and we are smashing Japan anywhere we can find Japanese.
All generals always want more troops and supplies. That is a fact of life. Just ask any General. Ask any business leader what he or she needs to expand or defend against competition: They always want more resources.
What kind of fool General would dedicate the resources to kidnap, guard, transport, and feed 200,000 women, knowing that he is creating yet another war to fight?
The Japanese were highly advanced military thinkers. They made their own submarines, airplanes, and aircraft carriers. These were serious people, and super smart.
There is no way that Generals would dedicate those resources to kidnapping women when the US military and allies were marching down their throats. They had a war to fight — this was not Spring Break.
Any serious military or business person can see the folly in common sense of kidnapping 200,000 women. It does not make sense, and would have created a new war in Korea — which was a base for Japanese recruitment. Koreans were fighting Americans. Koreans were our enemy.
And back to Korean men. It would be horrific to see the US Army try to kidnap 200,000 Texas women — especially so considering that many US military members are Texans, just as many Koreans were Japanese Soldiers.
Texas would rise up and start smashing the Army. Bridges would blow up. Soldiers would be shot every day. Bases would burn. The Army would fight back and there would be total war.
So are we to believe that Korean men are such cowards that nobody lifted a hand to defend their women? Because if they allowed these many women to be kidnapped, they are cowards, and their sons today had cowards for fathers.
The reality is that we know that Koreans are no cowards. Koreans are a courageous people. So what really happened? It is clear from source documents, and the common sense that every water buffalo possesses, that there was no mass kidnapping.
It's all a lie, and no matter how much someone hates Japan, it will always be a lie.
Please read the IWG report that practically nobody seems to know exists. If you do not have time for the whole report, do a search inside the report for Comfort Women, and carefully read those parts:
http://www.archives.gov/iwg/reports/final-report-2007.pdf
source of the document
translated document by Mr. Kent Gilbert
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Thus: Michael Yon.
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