To follow your tortured (no pun intended) analogy, as established at Nuremburg, those who actually formulate and issue the orders are usually held to a higher standard of culpability than the functionaries.
I did intend that sarcastically.
The analogy fails mainly in that Snow’s actions were voluntary and his support genuine, not excusable order-following.
I think it depends on your political orientation. I had no particular hate (or love) for the man, so I’d be inclined to come down on the “one dumb sumbitch” side of things.
Others, such as Dio, would obviously be far less charitable in their characterization of his motives, and would be inclined to put him in the “willfully and intentionally cooperating with very, very bad people” camp.
This is politics - there are very few absolutes.
Poorly worded, Elvish. I don’t think you mean to imply that order following precludes culpability, i.e., “excusable”.
Actually, if anything, being a free actor in a relatively open society makes him more morally responsible for his actions than those living under totalitarianism.
However, I still draw an ethical distinction between “order-giving” and “order-taking”.
Although we’ve often disagreed, I never really thought of you as a dumb fuck. Consider ignorance fought.
First, scale matters. Second, degree of evil matters. If you want to equate Goebbels with Snow, because of the post they held under someone else, you need to have equivalence between the people they served. So, here’s another shovel: are you trying to equate Bush with Hitler? if not then how does your analogy hold up. he scale is way off, the degree is off. And tell me, is every Press Secreatary for every President that had us involved in war then equally as culpable as Snow and Goebbels? Or only wars you disagree with?
Yes, it’s a matter of degree, but it was large enough a degree to produce Not Guilty verdicts at Nuremberg in cases that were even brought.
I really hope these threads are banned soon.
How do you define “this type”?
Celebrating death or gonna-die, ie. this one, or the Jesse Helms and Ted Kennedy threads.
One wonders how far down the chain the taint/responsability goes- does it incude Tony’s staff? the chef at the white house? those who voted for Bush? those who failed to vote? Barbara Bush who gave birth to him?
The cleaning lady? The people who sell the White House office supplies? His doctors for lengthening his life to the degree that they did? After all, they’re all aiding and abetting EEEVIIIIIILLL.
Good luck separating those from all other threads about assessing the life’s work and contributions of public persons at the time when their work is complete. That’s when it usually happens.
wring, in a democracy, the people are ultimately responsible for their government and its conduct. Responsibility for Bush’s actions, good or bad, does indeed ultimately fall on those who voted for him. No?
I pre-emptively demand a Cheney exception.
His opinion about the party’s base philosophy was completely different from Hitler’s. And he had enough influence and potential that Hitler felt it necessary to court him privately and personally to cut a deal.
Like others who were later prominent in the Third Reich, Goebbels came into contact with the Nazi Party in 1923, during the campaign of resistance to the French occupation of the Ruhr. Hitler’s imprisonment following the failed November 1923 “Beer Hall Putsch” left the party temporarily leaderless, and when the 27-year-old Goebbels joined the party in late 1924 the most important influence on his political development was Gregor Strasser, who became Nazi organiser in northern Germany in March 1924. Strasser (“the most able of the leading Nazis” of this period) took the “socialist” component of National Socialism far more seriously than did Hitler and other members of the Bavarian leadership of the party.
“National and socialist! What goes first, and what comes afterwards?” Goebbels asked rhetorically in a debate with Theodore Vahlen, Gauleiter (regional party head) of Pomerania, in the Rhineland party newspaper National-sozialistische Briefe (National-Socialist Letters), of which he was editor, in mid 1925. “With us in the west, there can be no doubt. First socialist redemption, then comes national liberation like a whirlwind… Hitler stands between both opinions, but he is on his way to coming over to us completely.” Goebbels, with his journalistic skills, thus soon became a key ally of Strasser in his struggle with the Bavarians over the party programme. The conflict was not, so they thought, with Hitler, but with his lieutenants, Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher and Hermann Esser, who, they said, were mismanaging the party in Hitler’s absence. In 1925, Goebbels published an open letter to “my friends of the left,” urging unity between socialists and Nazis against the capitalists. “You and I,” he wrote, “we are fighting one another although we are not really enemies.”
In February 1926, Hitler, having finished working on Mein Kampf, made a sudden return to party affairs and soon disabused the northerners of any illusions about where he stood. He summoned about sixty gauleiters and other activists, including Goebbels, to a meeting at Bamberg, in Streicher’s Gau of Franconia, where he gave a two-hour speech repudiating the political programme of the “socialist” wing of the party. For Hitler, the real enemy of the German people was always the Jews, not the capitalists. Goebbels was bitterly disillusioned. “I feel devastated,” he wrote. “What sort of Hitler? A reactionary?” He was horrified by Hitler’s characterisation of socialism as “a Jewish creation,” his declaration that the Soviet Union must be destroyed, and his assertion that private property would not be expropriated by a Nazi government. “I no longer fully believe in Hitler. That’s the terrible thing: my inner support has been taken away.”
Hitler, however, recognised Goebbels’s talents, and he was a shrewd judge of character; he knew that Goebbels craved recognition above all else. In April, he brought Goebbels to Munich, sending his own car to meet him at the railway station, and gave him a long private audience. Hitler berated Goebbels over his support for the “socialist” line, but offered to “wipe the slate clean” if Goebbels would now accept his leadership. Goebbels capitulated completely, offering Hitler his total loyalty — a pledge which was clearly sincere, and which he adhered to until the end of his life. “I love him… He has thought through everything,” Goebbels wrote. "Such a sparkling mind can be my leader. I bow to the greater one, the political genius. Later he wrote: "Adolf Hitler, I love you because you are both great and simple at the same time. What one calls a genius."Joseph Goebbels - Wikipedia
Neither Tony Snow’s career, nor his relations with Bushco, tracked anything like the above.
While Goebbels was organizing the Third Reich, Snow was working for small town newspapers. While Goebbels was negotiating with Hitler for party power, Snow was writing for syndication. While Goebbels was enjoying a seat in Hitler’s cabinet, Snow was a speechwriter for Bush, Sr. While Goebbels was organizing the Kristalnacht pogrom — a rampage of rioting aimed at Jews — that destroyed a thousand synagogues and sent 30,000 Jews off to concentration camps, Snow went back into broadcasting to host a show on Fox News. While Goebbels dedicated his final years to solving the Jewish problem with more and more efficient methods of extermination, Snow battled colon cancer and took a job as Bush Jr’s press secretary. While Goebbels died as the second Chancelor of the Third Reich, Snow died as the husband of Jill and the father of his three children.
So would you mind backing off from defending comparisons between Goebbels and Snow? Because frankly, it just makes you look stupid.
same level? what about those who voted for Nader? they certainly helped elect Bush.
and, no, imho, they don’t hold the same level of culpability as Rumsfield, Cheaney, Bush et al
First we were banned from calling people trolls so we had to be content with “bridge-dwellers”, now everybody who expresses any fringe opinion and their cousin is a troll and the word is completely meaningless.
We definitely need a new rule banning suggestions for bans.
Ohh sure, as soon as that happens Osama bin Laden’ll choke to death on a sheep’s eyeball at his retreat in the Seychelles.
Who said that?
Was that their intent, the way it was Bush voters’ intent to elect Bush? Please.
Come now, had there been a Fox News at the time, Goebbels would have been on it.
As for comparisons, would you believe Baghdad Bob? 