Certainly not. But you wouldn’t rubber-stamp the Provos Evil, now would you?
Or the Brits.
People can do bad things, people can do good things.
That’s exactly what is dangerous about this whole Good vs Evil view of the world.
The mindset that we are the Good Guys (obviously), and therefore can’t do any evil. It’s what leads people to defend wars of agression and even torture.
“We are doing it, so it can’t be that bad.”
I’d certainly stamp some of the actions they took as evil, at what point do the methods used to achieve it outway the legitimacy of the cause?
But thats why I asked the question, because my mind isn’t made up on the subject.
At what point does a basically decent person slip over to The Dark Side in a situation like North Korea for example, by tacitally supporting it because they don’t actively oppose it? By actively working their way into the ranks and supporting it even though they do their best to ameliorate the worst impacts of certain policies while still carrying them out?
Going back to the Nazi’s I vaguely recalling reading a book some time ago in which a character, who I believe was based on a real person, joined the SS with the purpose of exposing its secrets, he had to carry out many horrific acts to preserve his cover but also did his best to record and disseminate information on what the organisation was doing.
Where does the moral compass fall for him? Difficult one that.
Praise Allah, for once we smite the infidels some of us may join you in Firdaus.
Why yes
Most of the CSA’s politicians, generals, and soldiers were not evil people but unintentionally supporting an evil cause. Meanwhile Germany had men of great morals and brilliant strategy like Rommel, von Manstein, and Guderian in World War II.
To give an example, much of the Prussian “warrior” class fought for Nazi Germany because they were German patriots who wished to reverse Versailles and anticommunists not because they were anti-Semites and wanted to exterminate “world Jewry”.
Yes (to the broader question). Not that Japan was a less-evil Axis member. Nanking? Bataan? These are not less-evil acts.
Maybe the Finns were a better less-evil example, although not Axis sensu strictu.
How were they doing so unintentionally?
Well, at that time they hadn’t been officialy declared Evil.
I would have a hard time saying that a German aviator in Dresden fighting to protect his home from Allied bombings was evil, but then again I can’t fault the English pilots doing the bombing either. Generally my view is that a person can’t be considered evil unless they realize that their actions are evil/selfish and do them anyway.
One of the best comments I ever read on this topic came from, of all places, a Dungeons & Dragons supplemental rulebook, Book of Exalted Deeds:
“Whether or not good ends can justify evil means, they certainly cannot make evil means any less evil.”
The party was a crazy Jew exterminating one from the beginning. Eliminating the Jews was pretty much the centerpiece of Hitler’s political thought.
But what does it mean to be on the right or wrong side of history? If the Axis had won, would they have been on the right side of history? Does might make right? Britain and the United States allied themselves with Stalin, who was at least as much of a monster as Hitler. Are they still on the right side of history, or were they just the winners in a life or death struggle?
The US and Britain in a life or death struggle???!!!
Hardly
The Soviet Union certainly was.
Hitler would have liked nothing better than a peace with Britain.
Well, people will twist their minds into all kinds of strange shapes when they want to avoid the plain and simple fact that what they are doing is morally. It’s easy to rationalize slavery when you’re making a fortune from it. It easy to tell yourself that a government program is badly needed when it is clearly counter productive and harmful if that program provides you with a nice, fact paycheck. And it’s pretty easy to tell yourself that you’re striving for the greater good when what you’re really after is power. If you’re saying that people have to be consciously aware that they’re doing evil before they can be pronounced evil, an awful lot of evil people are going to get off the hook very easily.
Whatever. Roosevelt and Churchill saw Hitler as an evil that had to be stopped at any price, and at least at the beginning of the war there was a sense of desperation; an awful lot of people had fallen for Nazi propaganda which protrayed the Nazis as invincible in battle and powerful almost beyond belief. In any case, your objection doesn’t invalidate the point of my post.
Whether or not the Axis had won the war, they would still have been on the wrong side of history. What does it mean to be on the right or wrong side of history? Obama is on the right side of history. Bush was on the wrong side of history. Yes, Churchill and the Roosevelt allied themselves with Stalin and yes, Stalin was just as much a monster as Hitler, but this resulted in the end of the Cold War. Eisenhower was on the right side of history and so was Clinton.
Not a life or death struggle, but a long twilight struggle.
Some men like Lee himself hated slavery and even secession and only fought for the Rebs because he loved his State too much.
How was Bush on the wrong side unless you’re saying Saddam Hussein was on the right side? Perhaps mistaken but not on the wrong side.
Well that’s not most of the politicians, generals etc. But anyway, how is that unintentional? Would it not have been likely that Lee knew that fighting for his state was fighting for the cause of slavery?
As I thought, “on the right side of history” is just an empty. noble sounding phrase. You think you know where history is going or ought to go. You don’t.
The war was not 100% about slavery, thus Lee was fighting for reasons other than slavery. And I don’t think he believed either way slavery would have been abolished (considering the Emancipation Proclamation did not come until well into 1862) and most Union soldiers were not fighting to “free the slaves” but to preserve the Union and most Southerners fought largely because they perceived they were being invaded-Virginia only seceded because Lincoln called for troops against the Deep South states.
