OK, both of you STOP IT NOW.
This forum is for discussion and debate, not for name-calling. John K, you certainly know better than to call someone an “idiot” or “mindless zombie” in this forum. mystic, ditto “sycophantic sheep.”
Play nice, or play elsewhere.
mystic. You probably have picked up on the fact that I don’t respect your posts. You appear to be a “one-trick pony” who is basing his/her posts on a single source(Higham), a book which is rather poorly written by scholarly standards. That means we can’t seem to truly examine the conclusions based on his/her information. He appears to be one of those writers who can’t be bothered to give cites, possibly/probably because the info is based on less than scholarly standards.
A quote, such as from you last post,
would indicate that you believe a source which is suspect. You conclude that the info is true, down to the last detail(Actually, I give you more credit than that.)
But, when the info is suspect, devoid of legitimate original cites, misinterpreted, or slanted to suit the author’s purpose, then a thinking person would step back and examine it with new eyes.
While YOU may be having a good time here, I doubt that many others are. We/they are taking this seriously. If you’re right in your assertions, then I, for one, would be HAPPY to learn the true info. But that just ain’t gonna be the case. I wish it were. But you have to produce credible info for that to happen. And you don’t.
You don’t respect my posts? Gee I never noticed.
I am not a one trick pony at all. I have tons of other material and sources about other aspects of this debate. I quoted Russ Bellant’s book, “Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party,” about GHW Bush’s links to Nazis. But you failed to see the historical continuity and told me to take a hike, for which you were chastised by the administrator. You are being disingenuous to say that I have only one source and then to try to give me the boot when I quote another source. So I am damned if I do and damned if I don’t. You are exhibiting intellectual dishonesty or hypocrisy, I am not sure which. I really don’t know what your problem is or why you have attacked me since I set foot in here.
Did you read Leggiere’s article that Cecil quoted above? It backs up everything I have been saying, with one difference. Leggiere states that the Bush-Nazi connection does not indicate any adherence to Nazi ideology, just a profit motive. In a moral sense, that is even more damning in my eyes. But in a legal sense, it clears them of the charge of treason, which requires adherence to the enemy, not just material aid and comfort.
Earlier, Justice Jackson had declared that this phase of treason consists of two elements: ‘‘adherence to the enemy; and rendering him aid and comfort.’’ A citizen, it was said,
may take actions ‘‘which do aid and comfort the enemy . . . but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason.’’ Id., 29, Justice Jackson states erroneously that the requirement of two witnesses to the same overt act was an original invention of the Convention of 1787. Actually it comes from the British Treason Trials Act of 1695. 7 Wm. III, c.3.
So Standard Oil would not be guilty of treason for fueling U-boats as long as they were in it for the money and did not actually adhere to Nazi ideology.
Trust me, I know that this happened. I guess I take this issue much more seriously than you do.
I knew it was true even before I read Higham’s book. I am more intellectually honest than you; I don’t try to cloak my denial with the respectability of skepticism.
Gyan9 said:
You stated there is no neutral stance. I disagree, there is a neutral stance. I fully concede that some people (hell, many people) fail to grasp the difference, and fail to remain open to new evidence. But the neutral stance does exist.
DRomm, see here.
Irishman
You quoted me out of context. I’m not talking about the technical existence of a neutral stance, but its existence in mass culture.
Why, pray tell, should we trust you? How do you know this happened. How did you know before reading Higham’s book? Explain, or you’ll just be assumed to be a total kook.
LC
Irishman: Well, I’ve dealt with your asinine right wing insults and gullibility in the other thread. (Moderators: Why was his post allowed to remain on the board?)
Cecil: I was kind of hoping to convince you that your answer was, at best, incomplete, that George Herbert Walker (who went to Germany to run the Union Bank Corporation that was specificially set up to funnel Harriman money to the Nazis) was as culpable as Prescott. But instead, you put words in my mouth to try to defend yourself. I never said that the UBC “automatically” dissolved at the death of Thyssen, merely that it did. (Iirc, the remaining board members voted it out of existence.) Perhaps this was a bureaucratic run-around to unfreeze the assets that worked. In any event, Bush seems to have made a great deal of money from his holdings in Nazi Germany that you claim were bombed out.
You seem to be saying that “realpolitic” (or in this case, “realbanking”) had less to do with ideology than business dealings, and I don’t entirely disagree. But that doesn’t excuse anyone. In roughly the same time period, people like Paul Robeson and Gene Kelly were being hounded out of the country for expressing themselves. They never financed the enemy. There’s more proof that George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush were Nazis than there is that Alger Hiss was a Communist, but guess who wound up in jail and who made a million and a half?
I’m still mad at Hitler, and want to shed light on his cronies and how he came to power and held it. Walker and Bush were part of that axis of evil.
Anyway, I’ve had my say as well. If you don’t feel like continuing this discussion, that’s too bad but I accept it. I feel confident that you (and the staffers) will continue to find The Straight Dope on other topics, and I’ll put this column in the minus side with the one on how many ways there were to get to first base.
I may be mistaken, but I think ‘kook’ is the only palindromic epithet in the English language. I prefer to be called a ‘kayak.’
Boob!
I stand corrected. I had thought of ‘poop’ before but did not think of it as an apropos epithet, leastwise not directed at a person but perhaps at his output.
This is disgraceful! :mad:
MODS?
New user on this forum. Hopefully this is NOT indictative of the calibre of disussions here…
Assuming, arguendo, that all of the allegations here are true, it still does not prove that GHW and PB were Nazis.
Of course it all depends on what your definiton of “Nazi” is. Personally, I would limit to one who affirmatively and actively supported the policies of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NASDP auf Deutch). To include people who aided Germany between 1933 and 1945 or who, through their actions, somehow brought a material benefit to Germany during this period is too broad a definition.
Prime Minister Chamberlain signed the Munich Peace Accords. That benefitted Germany, was he a Nazi? The Red Cross assisted victims of the German depression of the early 1930’s. Were they Nazis? American tourists went to the Berlin Olympics and spend money there. Were they Nazis?
One could use the same arguments that GHW and PB were Nazis to show the Bill Clinton was a Communist. Bill Clinton organized anti-war rallies while in England. These demorialzed America, thus weakening its resolve to fight Vietnam. This benefited “North Vietnam.” Vietnam was Communist. Bill’s Clinton’s actions benefited a Communist country. Therefore, Bill Clinton was a Communist. Spurious, eh?
Similarly, one needs to understand how totalatarian, one-party regimes work. There are the “true believers” who supports the ideals and central tenants of the Party and there are others who have to go along because of self-preservation or necessity. Any German who was an adult in the 1940s or a Russian who was an adult in the 1960s - 1980s will tell you how the Party pretty much controlled everything.
it is most definitely not our usual calibre, & I don’t know why it hasn’t been locked long ago.
Welcome to the Board, & try checking out some of the other Forums, like general Questions, or Great Debates.
Once again, welcome. 
I think that threads in this forum seldom, if ever, get locked. And I think, rightfully so.
While this current thread is an atypical example of dissent/debate about one of Cecil’s columns, it hasn’t gone over the edge yet, not like some of the GD threads.
The possiblity that there will still be factual evidence presented would justify keeping it open. The OP was a good comment and deserves to be left open for additional, informed comments.
BJB: Well, Cecil did more research (or at least posted more cites) to answer the questions raised in the two Message Board threads than he did in his original column. If he’d been that thorough in the first place I wouldn’t have been this disappointed.
And your talk of comparisons is kind funny. Did you notice that two people who supported Lyndon LaRouche are “LaRouchian” but two people who supported Adolph Hitler are not “Nazis”. Oh, the irony.
And the “everybody does it” defense of the Bushes just doesn’t wash and doesn’t remove culpability. “I was only following orders” was specifically disallowed as a defense for Nazi war crimes. Walker and Bush knew they were aiding and abeting some very evil people; if they didn’t, they should have. Having NO morals may be better than being evil, but not by much (see the movie Shoah for how the Nazis used indifference as support of their hate.) Walker and Bush may indeed be merely money grubbing capitalists, but they must be held accountable. They knew who they were dealing with, and did it over a long period of time, even when we were at war. To quote an earlier post of mine, “it does mean that they placed their economic interests above the interests of US national security”. And this is the DEFENSE for two slimey guys.
Without George Herbert Walker and other friends of Hitler in America, the Nazis wouldn’t have risen to power quite so quickly. Without Prescott Bush and friends like “Hitler’s Angel” Thyssen, the Nazis wouldn’t have been able to build and maintain their death camps as easily, and the Germans wouldn’t have been able to wage war on America and much of the rest of the world quite so easily. Please don’t give them a pass. The moral relativism of the Bush apologists leaves one with an oily feeling.
Cecil really dropped the ball on this one. While he was correct in stating that Higham’s book is poorly sourced, what he failed to mention is that there are a number of other books which are richly sourced which cover pretty much the same topic (and this is just from spending half an hour in the UH library):
Trading with the Enemy in World War II by Martin Domke
The Sovereign State of ITT by Anthony Sampson
The Legal Aspects of War by McNair and Watts
Power Inc. by Morton Mintz and Jerry Cohen
Transnational Economic Cooperation and the Nation State by Gerhard Kummel
The last-named one is amazing and has a huge bibiliography. A brief perusal of these books confirms that the truth is somewhere between my hysterical ravings of corporate treason and the shallow denials of others in this thread that the US corporations had no control over their plants in Nazi Germany. There is a lot of overlap with incidents discussed by Higham, so I think anyone who dismisses his book out of hand is not intellectually honest. I think if this list was really committed to dispelling ignorance, it would spend more time researching and discussing ideas and less time sniping at those who deviate from the dominant ideology (which is pretty darn ignorant).
But thanks–you guys inspired me to research this topic so I will take my leave now. Maybe I will start my own column called The Twisted Dope, because the real world is too complicated for the straight dopes to figure out.
When do we get to the part where the government has been infiltrated by shape-shifting lizard people?
I wouldn’t know about that. Perhaps you can elucidate it for us after you put your tinfoil hat back on. Did you forget to take your thorazine today? What are you smoking, crack or banana peels? Hey, I am finally getting the hang of what passes for rational debate on the SDMB…
DAMMIT, mystic, this is the second warning in one thread. Name calling is NOT permitted in this forum.
Cervaise’s comment is clearly a joke. Jokes are permitted. Your comments are clearly personal insults. Personal insults are NOT permitted.
I’m being extremely generous, but that’s two strikes. Third strike, you’re history. You want to toss around insults like that, go to the BBQ Pit.
Whoa! Talk about double standards! His comments are an insult disguised as a joke. My response is a joke disguised as an insult. Can’t you see the difference?
But, I will take your advice. The BBQ pit is nice and toasty and suitable for my creative impulses.
Ps. I thought swearing was not allowed either? Are moderators above the law?