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From: garys@bunkerb.UUCP (Gary M. Samuelson)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Forgiveness for Non-humans
Message-ID: <491@bunkerb.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-May-85 11:50:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: bunkerb.491
Posted: Tue May 14 11:50:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 16-May-85 07:29:21 EDT
References: <525@sftig.UUCP>
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Organization: Bunker Ramo, Trumbull Ct
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> >
> > And the Germans who *were* directly responsible for the holocaust,
> > even *they* should be forgiven, if they (sincerely) *ask* forgiveness.
> > (Determining such sincerity is a non-trivial problem, which I
> > am disinclined to address at the moment.)  Even the greatest
> > humanitarian can become a scoundrel; even the worst scoundrel can
> > become a humanitarian.
> > 
> > Gary Samuelson
> 
> I can appreciate where this is coming from.  However, I feel compelled
> to qualify that those responsible for such acts were not Germans, they
> were Nazis.  I feel that this sort of distinction is necessary in order
> to distinguish human from non-human.  The German people were and are
> human.  They were NOT directly responsible for the acts of the non-humans.
> The non-humans who were/are directly --> RESPONSIBLE <-- for such
> attrocities, should not be associated with any one nationality.
> Non-humans such as the Nazis, the Kmer-rouge, the Stalinists, the
> Mao-Tse Dungs, the Jim Jones' ("people's temple") commit acts of
> attrocity against humanity.

I have often heard it said that the Nazis "and the like" were not
"human."  'Tain't so.  They were very bad humans, and I wish they
had not been allowed to go as far as they did, but they were humans.
Calling them nonhuman is a bad idea for several reasons:

1.  It allows us to think that we are immune to the desire for power,
    or whatever it is that drives such people.  *Anyone* can succumb
    to the temptation to do evil -- don't think that you are exempt.

2.  It facilitates the very behaviour you wish to eliminate.  Once
    you start thinking about some group as nonhuman -- be they Nazis
    or be they Jews -- it isn't difficult to think about ridding the
    world of that group, all in the name of 'humanity,' of course.
    For every group of people, there is another group which would
    like to be able to define the other as nonhuman.

Gary Samuelson