Machiavellian Evil
Mark Shea of Catholic and Enjoying It! provides a link to this National Review Online article, which he rightly describes as "evil":
I imagine this article was printed in response to the possible war crime which occured in Fallujah last week, although it is not mentioned. [See Arabs Enraged at U.S. Soldier Shooting Wounded Iraqi.]
The article relates the story of Henry Tandey, a British infantryman who spared the life of a wounded German corporal he found in a trench in WWI. The corporal was Adolf Hitler.
The author argues that Tandey would have been right to have killed Hilter. The author is wrong; it would have been murder. The Hitler in the trench that day in 1918 was not the Hitler with the blood of millions on his hands in 1944. To deny that fact would be to deny Hitler's Free Will, and ours.
The satirical film The Last Supper (1995) deals with this theme. In it, a group of liberal graduate students accidentally kill a right-wing dinner guest. They justify the killing ex post facto by saying they made the world a better place by eliminating a potential threat to humanity, arguing that if someone had killed Hitler when he had been an art student, the Holocaust and WWII could have been avoided.
So impressed are they by their idea, they proceed to invite several politically incorrect members of their community to dinner, only to serve them poisoned wine, hence the title of the film. Their victims include, among many others, a "homophobic" priest, a Nation of Islam type, and, finally, a highschool girl leading a campaign against sex education in her school.
"Progressives" like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao also eliminated their potential enemies before they became threats. It's sad to see an American "conservative" magazine like NRO advocating the same amoral reasoning. The secular Right is every bit as prone toward Evil as is the secular Left.
When in moral doubt, follow the Prince of Peace, not The Prince.
Mark Shea of Catholic and Enjoying It! provides a link to this National Review Online article, which he rightly describes as "evil":
I imagine this article was printed in response to the possible war crime which occured in Fallujah last week, although it is not mentioned. [See Arabs Enraged at U.S. Soldier Shooting Wounded Iraqi.]
The article relates the story of Henry Tandey, a British infantryman who spared the life of a wounded German corporal he found in a trench in WWI. The corporal was Adolf Hitler.
The author argues that Tandey would have been right to have killed Hilter. The author is wrong; it would have been murder. The Hitler in the trench that day in 1918 was not the Hitler with the blood of millions on his hands in 1944. To deny that fact would be to deny Hitler's Free Will, and ours.
The satirical film The Last Supper (1995) deals with this theme. In it, a group of liberal graduate students accidentally kill a right-wing dinner guest. They justify the killing ex post facto by saying they made the world a better place by eliminating a potential threat to humanity, arguing that if someone had killed Hitler when he had been an art student, the Holocaust and WWII could have been avoided.
So impressed are they by their idea, they proceed to invite several politically incorrect members of their community to dinner, only to serve them poisoned wine, hence the title of the film. Their victims include, among many others, a "homophobic" priest, a Nation of Islam type, and, finally, a highschool girl leading a campaign against sex education in her school.
"Progressives" like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao also eliminated their potential enemies before they became threats. It's sad to see an American "conservative" magazine like NRO advocating the same amoral reasoning. The secular Right is every bit as prone toward Evil as is the secular Left.
When in moral doubt, follow the Prince of Peace, not The Prince.
Redeemed by Our Savior, I work out my salvation with fear and trembling in Pohang, South Korea, where I live with my wife, daughter, and son and teach English at a science and technology university. Baptized a Methodist and raised a Missouri Synod Lutheran in Buffalo, NY, I spent six years as a guest of the Anglican Communion before being received by the Grace of God into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church on the Feast of Saint Andrew, my patron, anno domini 2002.
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