27 Jan 2007

An interesting quote...

Appropriate? I think so....


"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

--Hermann Goering, 1946

6 comments:

Cam-Fu said...

Yeah, good thing he was a leading member of the Nazi Party.

Carlos said...

Cam, you're missing the point entirely. The point is that he IS a member of the Nazi party. This is exactly what the Nazis did to convince the German people that it was right to invade Poland.

Cam-Fu said...

I totally understood what you were getting at and this is not the first time I've heard a liberal try to use this quote against us. In fact, I clearly remember that there is a line that has been taken out right in the middle of this quote. I will look this up.

Why not fill in the rest of Goering's quote, shall we: "There is one difference, in a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars." (Funny how whoever you got this from conveniently left this part out.) Do I need to remind you of all those who voted for the war? I doubt it because you've heard it a million times. Oh look, a couple of them are running for President for the democratic party right now. Hmmm...

But, I know what you are trying to get at. Stupid minds think alike, right? So, England and America are fighting for the same reason Nazi Germany did? Only a true spoken liberal can compare this war to the Holocaust. You were right, Iraq did not have WMDs. We were wrong about that and I'm pretty sure most of us have accepted that.

Alright, I'm going to go all Bill O'Reilly on you and give you the Final Word because you know how I hate arguing about this stuff. We'll never change each other's minds because we're both stubborn as mules.

Carlos said...

I know that many people voted for the war. I myself was for it in the beginning because I believed the President and his administration. I have never questioned or doubted the fact that Congress voted for the war. The point of this quote was to show that the administration fooled us, lied to us and scared us into voting for/going to war.

May I remind you that as well as those Democrats who voted for this war in the begining, there are many Republicans and, more importantly, both active duty and retired Generals, Colonels etc. who are now big enough to admit that they were wrong and have decried this President and this administration both on TV and in print.

I can hold my hands up and say I was FOR going to war but was wrong. Can you do the same?

Cam-Fu said...

Yes. I said in my last comment "We were wrong about that and I'm pretty sure most of us have accepted that."

Alright, you need to post something about movies, TV, or music next so we can stop going back and forth on this issue.

Carlos said...

Well, you said that you were wrong about there being WMDs (which is, frankly, undeniable), but not that the war is/was wrong. Still, I'm sure that's as close as I'll ever get to an admission!

I'll come off my soapbox now (that is until I find some other juicy tidbit about how left is best and right is wrong!!).