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7.20.2005
Orcinus: David Neiwert has this little quote up on his page. Read it and tell me if it sounds familiar. I'll provide some comparison for ya as well. "I know this is the melting pot of the world and all men are created equal and there must be no such thing as race or creed hatred, but do these things go when a country is fighting got its life? Not in my book. No country ever won a war because of courtesy and I trust and pray we won't be the first because of the lovely gracious spirit ... Compare with Diana West: I'm thinking about who we are as a society at this somewhat advanced stage of war. It is a strange, tentative civilization we have become, with leaders who strut their promises of "no surrender" even as they flinch at identifying the foe. hmmm, yes, same argument. It says that we should not let our own dedication to tolerance get in the way of killing our enemies. We're too nice. We should just let ourselves be mean and nasty for our own good. Right? Back to the original quote from Orcinus: I am for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. I don't mean a nice part of the interior, either. Herd 'em up, pack 'em off and give 'em the inside room of the badlands. Let 'em be pinched, hurt, hungry and dead up against it. ... Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them." That was conservative Henry McLemore on Jan. 30, 1942. Sometimes it feels as if history never happened, as if there are no patterns to human reactions. Its a good thing we killed off the Japanese race, since, in the words of Mississippi Congressman John Rankin in 1941, "Once a Jap always a Jap. You cannot change him." Fast forward 60 years and now we can safely shift our ire towards Islam, as no right minded person still argues that Japanese people represent a threat to "our way of life". Funny that? Our gut response to certain situations will always be similar. Even if a person is a completely blank slate, with no influence from their surrounding cultures, there will still be basic human emotions present to guide how we should respond. A primary instinct amongst all animals is the desire for self preservation. We intuitively understand how to identify a threat and how to respond to that threat. Human beings, so its been said, have the ability to learn from our past mistakes. We write them down, study how we've failed before and avoid making those mistakes again. Its what separates us from the mere animal that will always respond with its instincts. Its what makes us civilized. But that requires a certain self awareness that is often derided as self-hating these days. (Special thanks to David Neiwert) |
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