"Politically, the weakness of the argument [for lesser evils] has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil."
Hannah Arendt - dissentmagazine.org
Thanks to CB for the page link .... definitely a bingo quote, eh, however we must guard against forgetting that there is often precious bloody little from which to choose, other than degrees of evil ..... but it rings true, especially in re something Neo said about [among others] Nicaragua, where he seems to my taste a bit facil in accepting a particular shade of evil, and moreover misjudging its darkness ..... couldn't find what i was looking for in replying to it, came across this, though, it pretty much applies, coming as it does just as all things Geopolitik were being redefined as commie and anti-commie -
' Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
[...]
We should dispense with the aspiration to “be liked” or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and—for the Far East—unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.'
George F Kennan, 1948 - j-bradford-delong.net
Kennan was reviled as a floppy-wrist dove, btw -g-
Hi DJ, just back and lurking a bit here, notice a lot of folks not reading what others post, or at least not admitting they've read it, in replying to it .... place sort of deteriorated into one more string of partisan bickering, gets quite boring when it's like that ..... 'talking points', 'on-message', aargh, hand me another vomit bag ..... maybe you could liven things up, give us a change of pace, arrange for Slovenia to invade somewhere, maybe a ritzy part of Auckland, why not, it's cool there now, and we'd get great rants out of it |
