Every Jew is secretly a little bit in love

[PrinceMyshkin]

[QUOTE=AuntShecky;747626]

When I read this I thought of something I read years ago -(-where? Maybe in Gibbon ) in which he says one of the failings of the post-Christian, all-inclusive Roman Empire was that it "suffered from an excess of open-mindedness."

QUOTE]

Actually, it was C.S. Lewis. Sounds more like him, right?
sorry.

Yes, it does. And then there's this quotation from him:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Which seems to me as much an indictment of his Christocentric point of view as it is a proud assertion of it. That is, every sighted person can see that the sun has risen and can see by it but only those who are already wearing Christian spectacles can see the truth of Christianity.

[PrinceMyshkin]

it is another perspective. one could see hitler as being one of the greatest socialist as socialism is about the people and his plan was to restore the glory of germany. obviously this is not my viewpoint as the means does not justify the end but if one was to take it as a perspective (the method aside) and see a man who promises to find work for his people, to restore the glory of a country then is that not socialism?

It has taken me a while to calm down enough to attempt an answer to this and I don't think I'm quite there yet. The best I can do is say that if you could ignore the sickly-sweet smell of burning flesh from the smokestacks of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz &c. &c., you might be able to note and praise the fine new Autobahns built during Hitler's time, the rebirth of Germany's armament factories and so on, but for how long could you go on ignoring that smell?

Wave your hand once
or twice in the air
to dismiss, with each wave,
a million or so brutally murdered Jews,
and again for the Poles (those untermenschen!)
and for the homosexuals,
the gypsies, the Catholics
who stood against Hitler,
the “mentally defective”
who might otherwise have polluted
the pure Aryan gene pool.

And if you’re not too tired
after all that waving, if you’ve cleared the table
of all that dust of the dead,
then we can begin, like the disinterested
scholars we claim to be, we can begin
to discuss the socialist achievements
of Herr Hitler...