Monday, October 01, 2007
For what would you risk your life?
Whatever happened to principles important enough that you’d die for them?
It seems that our country has gone through a very interesting change. At one point, we had large portions of the population that were die hard individualists, and yet would risk their lives to stand up for principles in which they believed. What did the farmers of the Revolutionary Era have to gain by answering the call to arms? What did civilians of the Civil War era have to gain by volunteering? In World Wars I and II, men volunteered to fight and die even when our homeland wasn’t threatened, to preserve something as ethereal as Western Civilization.
Now, it seems we have a rather different situation. Principles are entirely subjective. Individualism has been recast - from self-reliance, it has morphed into self-worship. There is nothing worth dying for, because self-preservation, at any price, is the utmost goal.
I have never been in the military, and I have never been in a situation where I have put myself to the test. I am very honest about the fact that I don’t know how I’d react under pressure.
About six months ago, I chose to carry a firearm. Before taking that step, I went through a significant process of self-examination.
Could I shoot and kill someone that threatened my wife and kids?
Not having been formally and consciously in the protector role before, it took a minute, but the decision was unequivocally - yes, I could.
What would I do if someone threatened someone else’s wife and kids in my presence?
The moral answer is obvious. Of course you act to protect people. However, I felt that if I chose to carry, I was making myself obligated to intervene in any such situation, even if I risk my own life. How did I feel about that?
It took a couple days to come to terms with the implications, but the decision again was unequivocally - yes, I would intervene.
Then I took it a step further. Given the option to legally carry, given the ability to protect not only my family but also the people around me, could I in good conscience choose not exercise that ability?
A few more days of mulling it over resulted in the decision that carrying with the intention of intervening was not just an option, but an obligation. I know my conscience would never leave me alone if I found myself unable to act decisively, and someone, family or not, was injured or killed. I must be prepared to protect them, given the option.
I know very well that I am completely untested. I do my best to train and prepare, but it is very clear in my mind that if a situation actually were to erupt, I have no idea how I would react. I hope my instincts would be right. They always have been right in similar situations in the past, so I am hopeful. But I am not so arrogant as to make promises beforehand.
I was recently in a online discussion about this guy, an old man living in Atlanta who was recently uncovered as a former concentration camp guard. I am astounded, dismayed, and extremely angered by the response I’m seeing.
Excuses outnumber condemnations by about ten to one. He was brainwashed. He had to follow orders. I’m sure he didn’t actually hurt anyone, he was just a guard and dog trainer. If he were to question the system, he probably would have been killed. Can you blame him? You can’t possibly know what you would have done given those circumstances, so who are you to throw stones?
He was a concentration camp guard.
I am sickened at what our culture has become.
For me to suggest that sometimes it is necessary to risk one’s life to do the right thing gets me heaps of scorn. Principle is no longer a sufficient motivating force, self-preservation is all that matters.
Absolutely correct - I do not know what I would have done in the circumstances. The stress would be absolutely undeniable. But I’m damn sure I couldn’t stand by and watch the torture and cruelty or kill in cold blood . If I were told “shoot this lady in the head or die”, I couldn’t do it.
And yet.... I’m hearing nothing but excuses for a concentration camp guard.
I fear for the future.
Comments
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For me that Nazi prick is an easy call. I am not a big one on redemption. Turning dogs on people trying to escape going into ovens, now that’s just not very nice and sorry pops time for you to move on to the great beer hall in the sky. I could kill him with considerable less emotion than cutting down a really nice tree.
I think you need to draw a very clear line between what are you willing to kill for and what are you willing to risk your life for.
Kill for 1. My family 2. Some Friends 3. A lawful order from my commander in the military and 4. The “special ones” like nazi guards that turn dogs on little kids and women. Easy easy easy.
Die for? Just about everyone. A life not on the edge is not worth living. I don’t get a real detailed run down on whose house is on fire when I do the volunteer FF gig. Nor do I know what nasty ass disease the person that just got covered in their blood has. You take risks. But I know I would die if I did not take those risks. I jump out of planes for fun, not a big change to put my life on the line for something that matters, at least to me. It’s fun for me to put my life on the line. It is a job, like taking the trash, out to kill bad people, but it’s a job that needs doing.
BTW If I were told to shoot the old lady in the head or my kid died. Granny is gone.
Dbltap | 10/1/2007 08:13 PM CDT -
With rights come responsibility… that’s what is missing from the individualist’s screeds.
America was not a nation of individuals. It was the of the Social Compact.
Mrs. du Toit | 10/1/2007 10:16 PM CDT -
I guess i have a question for you regarding the former concentration camp guard. Knowing nbothing at all about him, I have to ask how different he was than the guards that ran the camps for captured Germans? OK, they were “POW” camps rather than “concentration” camps ... but how were the German guards any different than the US and French camps? As moral as we think our country is/was ... the treatment received by German POW’s - especially at the end of and after the war ... was often more brutal than any received by US, Canadian or British troops that were captured.
How do you think the average chain gang con down in the south feels/felt about the gaurds?
I’m making no excuses for the guy ... don’t know anything about it ... but it was a different time and place.
(My mother was praying that the Allied forces would reach the farm in her part of Germany before the Russians ... since the Allied invasion brought chocolate and nylons, whereas the Russian invasion brought rape, looting and murder. To my knowledge, no Russians were ever brought up on war crimes.)Now, back to “what really matters anymore.” I was in the military, albeit as a medic rather than an offensive trade. It may well be different today, but I think that we’re pretty well indoctrinated into the theory that life is sacred. Killing is different on the battlefield.
I’ve never bought into the screed that life is sacred.
There’s a whole lot of people in this world ... and strikingly few who aren’t out to make a living by taking what’s yours.
I would surely take care of my own. Very probably my neighbors and acquaintences. Likely defenceless strangers as well. While the former would be without hesitation, the latter two might take some thought. I have no fear of dying ... I do know what our juducial system does to people when it’s not defence of life and liberty ... and I am loathe to spend years of my life in a concrete box where I am not able to care for me and mine. In the end, however, given a Luby’s situation. Shooter would be non-shooter very quickly ... I have absolutely zero value for the life of thugs, thieves, and other criminals. 9(which is why I’ve always been a proponent of capital punishment - preventative medicine)pete in Midland | 10/2/2007 07:57 AM CDT -
“I have to ask how different he was than the guards that ran the camps for captured Germans?”
Ummm just off the top of my head it would be the OVENS that they STUFFED PEOPLE IN AFTER THEY GASEED THEM and then BURNED THEM. Yah, that would be one of the major differences, but I also think the food was worse and the basketball courts were in very poor repair so I guess your moral equivalence point does have at least a culinary and recreational leg to stand on.
Dbltap | 10/2/2007 10:05 AM CDT -
For what would I risk my life? My family, sure.
Would I put myself at a 50% risk of death to save a stranger? Don’t know. I figure my life is not exclusively my own to lay down because I have 4 children. So, I just don’t know. I think I owe it to my kids not to die. I’m not making a pronouncement that I should or shouldn’t risk my life for that stranger - I just don’t know, though I lean more toward owing my life to my kids more than the stranger. I need to think about it some more.
Western civilization? I feel a bit despondent about western civilization - I think most westerners have abandoned it for the self-preservation and self-serving you mentioned.
Principles? If I had to choose between killing an innocent or being killed, I’d try to kill the one forcing the choice understanding I might be killed.
This may sound odd at first, but bear with me. People risk their lives to preserve a necessary image of themselves. I don’t necessarily say they’re selfish, but that a certain idea of themselves is necessary to their continued bearable existence. Could I watch my kid run over by a bus when I could jump in front and push him out of the way? No. It would be necessary to die to be the right kind of father.
Principles form the image that people have of themselves. If you can determine their principles, you can get a pretty good picture of how they see themselves.
Weetabix | 10/2/2007 11:00 AM CDT -
I have to disagree with pete from Midland.......... I KNOW there was a world of difference between how German POWs were treated and how inmates at Dachau fared. I have both firsthand (three elderly gentlemen I met at Oktoberfest in Munchen in the early90’s) and secondhand (my Grandmother told of PW work details from the Atlanta, NE camp helping on her Dad’s farm) accounts of POW treatment by the US. I also read quite a bit about the Atlanta camp.
I have also been to Dachau. That place is CREEPY. Thousands of Russian POWs were shot there, simply to TEST TERMINAL BALLISTICS. Many thousands more Civilians were worked/starved to death or died of disease caused by the horrible living(?) conditions.
To say the US had POW camp guards, too, is moral relativistic BS, and is indefensible.
You might have a better case comparing the American internment camps for Japanese Americans with places like Dachau, but that would be like comparing a summer thunderstorm to Katrina.
jimbob86 | 10/2/2007 11:13 AM CDT -
“People risk their lives to preserve a necessary image of themselves”
Well put Mr. Bix!
Gonna steal that with no shame at all, now that I know you won’t kill me over it.
“I need to think about it some more.”
Right up there with “hold my beer and watch this” as a really bad thing to say, funny, but usually for others.
Dbltap | 10/2/2007 11:36 AM CDT -
Sorry, now that we’ve dealt with the Moral Equivalence BS, back to the original question: “What would I kill for?” In a word, Duty.
I am, first and foremost, a husband and a father. It is one of my primary responsibilities to protect my family. I, too wrestled with this question when I decided to Carry. That’s WHY I decided to carry- it doesn’t do your family any good at all if you have decided you must be willing to defend them if you do not have any effective means to do so.
I am quite sure I was involved in ending some lives as a Soldier in the first Gulf War. I did it because it was my job. I am absolutely certain I could kill someone (or several someones-Hell, I don’t even fear Sumdood in my own home, LOL)) that was threatening a family member, without batting an eye. It’s not that I’m heartless. I cried like a baby when I put down my mom’s blind, deaf, arthritic dog. I did that because I felt it was my duty, as the Eldest, to take care of mom’s affairs after she died.
I’m not sure I will continue to Carry after the kids all “get the pink slips on their lives.” Once I have done my job, I’ll re-evaluate the question.jimbob86 | 10/2/2007 11:46 AM CDT -
I think Pete was talking about a guard as a guard at a POW camp, not a concentration camp--two totally different animals.
Mrs. du Toit | 10/2/2007 12:22 PM CDT -
Mrs and Pete
“I guess i have a question for you regarding the former concentration camp guard. Knowing nbothing at all about him, I have to ask how different he was than the guards that ran the camps for captured Germans? OK, they were “POW” camps rather than “concentration” camps ... but how were the German guards any different than the US and French camps?”
That is ignorance of the worst kind. Not whoops I mispoke Hillary is not REALLY the Anti-Christ, but real honest to God STFU if you can’t answer that question by yourself stuff.
“I have to ask how different he was than the guards that ran the camps for captured Germans?”
That comment alone is evil. Dripping, nasty evil and vile.
Dbltap | 10/2/2007 01:10 PM CDT -
Has he admitted what he did was wrong? Is he sorry? If so, I say we forgive him, then hang him.
Cobar | 10/2/2007 01:43 PM CDT -
I think we have to decide to make some assumptions.
If he was the guard at a POW camp, there was nothing inherently evil about a POW camp guard. Keeping captured enemy troops in a POW camp is the civilizing of war--otherwise, you kill everyone. Civilized war has lawful combantants kept in POW camps until the war is over.
POW camps are a compromise, that all civilized societies understand is the outcome of surrender on the battlefield.
History has shown us that POWs are treated great to awful, depending on their captors.
If he was THAT kind of guard, then he wasn’t doing anything unusual/extraordinary just by being there. I don’t think the guards we had at German POW camps (or any other enemy nation’s troops) were doing anything wrong.
IF, however, we are talking about a guard at a concentration camp, then it is an entirely different matter. These weren’t POW camps. They were extermination camps, and all the guards knew that. The guards also knew that they would be killed if they lost the war, which is why they frequently fled from the camps before the allies got there, and/or killed on the remaining prisoners so they could never be identified.
If he was a concentration camp guard then he KNEW what he was doing wrong, and should have known (regardless) that murdering people is going to result in his own death.
Mrs. du Toit | 10/2/2007 02:42 PM CDT -
From the linked article:
The document says Henss admitted on March 13 that he served as an SS guard at Dachau and Buchenwald for two to three months each as a dog handler.
...
In early 1941, Henss volunteered to serve in the Waffen SS and became an SS dog handler in 1942 after serving in the elite Waffen SS combat unit “Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.”
He says he served as an SS guard at Dachau and Buchenwald. He volunteered to serve in the Waffen SS.
I think he convicts himself.
Weetabix | 10/2/2007 03:27 PM CDT -
“ Paul Henss, 85, served as a prison guard and attack dog handler at the notorious Dachau and Buchenwald Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany.”
From the piece. Those were NOT POW camps they were work and extermination camps. Wasting the money to ship him back to Austria is like pissing on the face of his victims.
The dirty little secret is that most Germans knew what was happening, and did nothing, I can cut them a bit of slack, the “Wow what is the bad smell every day” kind of slack, but not much.
If someone ran attack dogs in a death camp, or defends someone who did, they are below scum and deserve every horrible thing that ever happens in their miserable life.
Those are the folks that a certain USMC General said “Are really fun to kill”
Can’t even believe in 2007 that this discussion has to be had.
Dbltap | 10/2/2007 03:37 PM CDT -
methinks friend doubletap doesn’t like me much after jumping in him for other comments. Golly, how sad.
From what Weetabix opsted, it certainly appears as though he was not a good person at that time.
My knowledge is limited to that passed along by relatives that were on the opposing side in WWII and managed to survive. My grandfather’s experience is why we (eventally) all moved to Canada. When he was captured, he was sent to a POW camp in Nova Scotia and fell in love with Canada.To clarify my question ... that’s ruffled a few feathers. Please note that I was not educated in the country that won that war and managed to write the history books ... I was educated in Canada where we had Canadian, US and Eurpean history books .... so my perspective is somewhat different. For those who have a government school education, there were a great many POW camps in France (and Germany) where captured German military AND civilian people were incarcerated near the end, and after the end of the war. While not a lot of documentation has survived and few books managed to get published, it is known that the treatment of those inmates was marhinally better than that accorded to US servicemen by the Japanese.
That’s the context I asked the question with ... I’m not defending the former guard and frankly care less about him. My point is that brutality is brutality and the perception is going to be based on which side of the fence you happen to be on.Sometimes I throw out questions or comments just to see how rabid people can be and why. I especially enjoy so-called discussions about a war that ended some 63 years ago and has fostered so incredibly much misinformation.
Sort of reminds me of Uncle Joe McCarthy and what everyone “knows” about HUAC ....
And if I offended anyone with my comments or take on the topic ... I do apologize.
pete in Midland | 10/2/2007 04:16 PM CDT -
Pete refresh me when you jumped on me before? I don’t remember. I have a problem with folks that call a SS dog guard the equivalent of a US, French or UK POW camp guard. It’s not a question of what books you read or how broad your Canadian education is (?!) it is a question of right and wrong.
It is wrong to put people in ovens because you don’t like their religion, their race,their sexual interests or a myriad of other things that the Nazi’s liked to kill people for.
If someone participated in those acts then they are less than scum.
dbltap | 10/2/2007 04:31 PM CDT -
Dachau based SS? Hang him. If no one else wants to do it, I will volunteer.
Mrs. du Toit | 10/2/2007 05:28 PM CDT -
Oh, that’s right… You’ve been there.
It’s hard to imagine the effect such a place would have in person. Even harder to imagine being able to contribute to that effect as Mr. Henss seems to have done.
Weetabix | 10/2/2007 05:40 PM CDT -
Ich auch habe Dachau gesehen.
We visited on a beautiful spring day. At least it was beautiful everywhere else in Bavaria. Inside the wire there was a pall of sadness or dread you could FEEL. No birds sang there. It was the CREEPIEST place I have ever been.
As for the guard, if he had turned himself in,said he was sorry, and made some gesture of atonement, there might be some sympathy for him. Such is not the case. He hid and was going to live out his life as if he didn’t do anything wrong. He knows he did. I say deport him. To Israel.
jimbob86 | 10/2/2007 07:05 PM CDT -
“Dachau based SS? Hang him. If no one else wants to do it, I will volunteer.”
This was my thought EXACTLY.
I found I was the only one in the room that felt that way.
And I was disgusted with my fellow man.
American Farmer | 10/2/2007 08:36 PM CDT -
Jimbo they are all scary places. You can feel the evil seep into your pores. I have felt this same thing in Cambodia (thanks sooo much VN war protesters) and Rwanda. There is evil out there and it lingers like a bad smell.
Dbltap | 10/2/2007 11:37 PM CDT -
Can’t even believe in 2007 that this discussion has to be had.
Moral relativism, revisionist history, and feeeeeelings have wormed their way into the schools and the mainstream culture. What else can you expect?
Weetabix | 10/3/2007 08:22 AM CDT -
Goubletap ... you seem to have problems with a lot of people ... but I’ll just repsond that I didn’t make them equivalent. I asked a question about the dichotomy of attitudes as soon as the word “nazi” appears ...
I don’t see that attitude when it comes to the perps of the Cambodian killing fields (check out the numbers and methods used to conduct the killings); or the incredibly brutal Japanese before and during WWII (If you want to see how brutal humans can be, read “General Wainwrights Story.")
I find man’s inhumanity to man pretty ugly, and pretty pervasive. We still demonize anyone who might have been associated with the term “nazi” ... but seem to forget history when it comes to the Italians, Japanese, Russians, Viet Namese, Cambodians, Koreans and Chinese ... and many other nationalities. Much of the antipathy in the US seems to be because the whole situation was ignored until almost after the war ... guilt feelings? Dunno. Just somthing that I notice everytime the subject comes up.And this is not a defence of this guy, but a comment on the term “volunteer.” I did the math ... knowing that my father was in the German army during WWII and was badly injured on the Eastern Front. Until this article, it never occurred to me ... but, as I said, I did the math. Dad was born in 1925 ... so he was 14 years old when the war started in 1939. He, too, “volunteered” to join the army. As I understand it (he, like a great many on both sides, never talked about it, but suffered from the effects throughout his short life), those able-bodied not in the military ended up working in the same factories as those who became forced-labor slaves.
By the way, doubletap (a term used to indicate the method used by professional killers to ensure the victim is dead), the whole scapegoating of Jews was not because people didn’t like their religion, race or sexual interests ... it was scapegoating pure-and-simple. And it was explained to the citizens similar to the way our governments explain “eminent domain” ... property was being seized “for the “public good”. I know it’s a shocking thing to hear, but the “final solution” creeps didn’t actually send out leaflets explaining what they planned to do.
I pray that such a thing never happens again, but then I see how the muslims treat the Jews ... and the Christians, and I despair that we have learned nothing from the 20th century. We have the government of Burma executing monks. We still have Cuba. We have an Africa that is worse off than before the white man colonized it (and the brutality of those soldiers is unfathomable). With the exception of North America, we seem to be better at brutality than ever before.
Sighpete in Midland | 10/3/2007 10:06 AM CDT -
“doubletap (a term used to indicate the method used by professional killers to ensure the victim is dead)”
No, it isn’t. A doubletap is a self-defense shooting technique used to stop an attacker. Execution by handgun (as practised by, say, the Chinese) usually requires only one bullet.
(Mr.) Kim du Toit | 10/3/2007 10:48 AM CDT -
OK, I think I see the problem now.
The problem is in making a distinction between the SS and the regular army soldiers in Germany. Pete, you have a family to protect and are seeing it through those eyes.
The SS were not like the Japanese or the Cambodians or the Koreans.
They weren’t like the Vietnamese even, although I don’t want to discount the horrors those bastards perpetrated on our soldiers.
The SS were an entirely different animal--unlike anything the world had ever seen, or seen since.
The SS were a torture squad. They LEARNED that torture at Dachau. That was its purpose. The PURPOSE of Dachau was to turn human beings into animals, to learn the art of torture and to dehumanize it.
If you think of it as a training camp for psychopaths, you’ll BEGIN to get the idea of what went on there.
It wasn’t an extermination camp like Auschwitz. They had the process down to take care of the slave laborers (mostly Jews) but that came later. It was one of the first camps, and that wasn’t its primary purpose.
Dachau was divided into two parts. The Jewish extermination in Dachau did not start until later. That was the ultimate horror… the Room 101 of Germany’s madness.
Dachau was the learning laboratory. It is where they practiced. In every sense it is where the SS perfected all that came later. Dachau is where the SS would be sent if THEY broke the rules. It is where the Germans were sent if they were thought to be collaborators.
While it is true that there are horrors in the world, played out in various ways, the Germans brought something unique--something that made what they were able to do different.
They brought technology and efficiency to the process. That meant that you had to have people leading these efforts who saw it not as people being tortured and killed, but people who ENJOYED it. You had people who thought that torture and extermination were like bottling vinegar, or manufacturing a widget. They had been so brutally altered by their training at Dachau and witnessing what went on there, that any shred of humanity they may have possessed was completely removed from them.
Dachau and the entire episode with Germany was unique. It was unique BECAUSE this wasn’t an ignorant third-world people. It was because it wasn’t a country devoid of resources or an educated populace.
Germany is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It has everything: resources, highly educated people, efficiencies, supply chain management, roads, railways, etc.
They were also a Christian country, just like ours, part of the Great Enlightenment of The West. As a people they were no different from any other western nation. They are/were in every sense, JUST LIKE US.
This was the country who gave us BEETHOVEN.
How could the country who gave us Beethoven produce Himmler? How could you transform BEAUTIFUL intelligent and Christian men into animals, who would ENJOY torturing people?
It was at Dachau that they learned the art of doing that. And they did it with a level of cruelty and efficiency that you are forever scared just VISITING the place today.
When you walk through the cells where the SS tortured other SS, where they tortured ordinary German soldiers and political prisoners, you can still see the stains of sweat and blood on the walls. You can still see the chains they used to hold people while they perpetuated unspeakable horrors.
This person who was an SS guard at Dachau? When you think “guard” you are thinking about a guy who stands with a rifle at gates and opens and closes them.
That is not what a “guard” did at Dachau.
Dachau was Hell on earth and those who participated in what went on there the highly specialized and select few of the SS who were truly were akin to Satan’s minions. They were the SS cream of the crop or the scum that rises to the top. Take your pick.
Mrs. du Toit | 10/3/2007 10:50 AM CDT -
From the stories I’ve heard from friends of my grandfather, the Western POW camps were rough, there wasn’t enough food, clothing, etc—but, the regular German army had approximately the same conditions… (The Stalin v. Hitler front was another matter entirely, with evil reigning on both sides.)
The SS on the other hand were Satanic. It was brilliant, educated, logic applied to obtain a goal, regardless of consequences or methods. The really terrifying part of the philosophy is, aside from the insane JOOOS! delusion, how close it is to logical thought, and reasonable goals. NAZI philosophy is a brilliant sequence of suggestions, with a firm base in the pre-Christian aspects of Germanic culture.
As for when you risk death for a belief… IMO, it’s when you cannot handle life without having acted.
Aglifter | 10/3/2007 11:27 AM CDT -
Mrs. dT ... nothing to protect, actually ... my dad died a great many years ago, and I’ve never been a believer in the “sins of the father” stuff ... did my stint in the Canadian military, etc. I may have been born in Germany, but left at such a young age that I remember almost nothing (except the destruction) ... I’ve always considered myself a Canadian, although I’ve changed that to American over the past decade.
I’m a student ... life and attitudes and people ... and often throw out questions and opinions to establish the temperature. As I said, my ears perk up when the conversation strays to Nazi, Viet Kong, Kymer Rouge or Papa Doc or Rwanda.
I’ll still have to disagree with you regarding “not like the Japanese” ... those that lived through the experiences of being in a Japanese POW camp ... or being a civilian in the Japanese held areas of China would also disagree. Teh Viet Kong had absolutely nothing on the Japanese ... who had a very similar Master Race concept to justify their brutality.
Genocide appears to be a pretty pervasive attitude. SadlyAglifter ... one excellant narrative of the eastern front is “Enemy At The Gates” ... it’s stuck in my mind for more than 3 decades since I read it ... as has “General Wainwrights Story” about the Death Marches in Asia. After reading those books, I could sure see where the peace movements came from ... as unrealistic as most of those folks are.
pete in Midland | 10/3/2007 02:55 PM CDT -
I think it’s all about the social compact or contract mentioned earlier. And in a strange way, I think it’s all connected to an earlier posting from the Farmer, about the Value of Things. When you think about the folks who came before us--yes, they were rugged individualists, but they were also deeply interdependent, because no one person could do EVERYthing. I mean, yes, I suppose one person could, but it’s exhausting, and who wants it?
The difference between a bunch of people living in the same place and a complex community, I would argue, is that the members of the community develop interests and special talents, and offer those talents to their neighbors for a fair price. And when they do so, they know exactly how much something is worth, because they’re still intimiately connected with what it takes to make those things.
Our forefathers and mothers “signed” that social contract because they understood the value of it--what it brought them, each individually and all of them as a group--and what they were going to have to pay to have access to it. And this extended to the extremes of life or death, I think. They were willing to kill or die not for abstract principles, but for the things that undergirded their day to day life, as a complex--but comprehensible--community.
Now we’re even more complex, but utterly INcomprehensible. All those values are abstract to us now. We don’t understand the value of the pineapples we can buy in February. We don’t know where they come from, what it takes to get them to us, or who needs to be compensated for the service. It’s just a thing we can get for the asking. And if all of life is like that--reach up and pluck the grapes when you want them--then of course self-worship is going to be the result. Because the natural thing to think is: My GOD, what a fabulous and special being I must be, to be able to sit here and pluck grapes whenever I’m in the mood.
Andrew | 10/6/2007 08:18 PM CDT -
Would I risk my own life in defense of the innocent? Absolutely, without question, if it were necessary. I’ve done it on four occasions that I can remember.
Would I kill in defense of the innocent? Only if there were no other acceptable alternative. A criminal running away is an acceptable alternative...a crime continuing is not.
Does a concentration camp guard deserve forgiveness? I don’t know. Only God is privileged to know for certain the state of a man’s soul. But unless there’s some really powerful evidence of sincere and full repentance (and it doesn’t sound like there is) my money would be on “no”. One does not remediate evil merely by moving to America and living a quiet ordinary life without hurting anybody ELSE.
Matt | 10/10/2007 12:36 AM CDT -
Matt
I would suggest a one on one with God for the guard that way we can be sure as to the state of his soul. If it’s squared away I am sure He can return said guard to us.
Dbltap | 10/10/2007 07:30 AM CDT
