Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!actnyc!gcf
From: gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Curiosity
Message-ID: <858@actnyc.UUCP>
Date: 3 May 88 15:02:07 GMT
References: <598@mccc.UUCP> <2398@ttidca.TTI.COM> <603@mccc.UUCP> <857@actnyc.UUCP> <614@mccc.UUCP>
Reply-To: gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
Organization: InterACT Corporation
Lines: 22

In article <614@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes:
}In article <857@actnyc.UUCP> gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch) writes:
}...
}...There are, of course, no "barbarians" as such.  The word is a value
}...judgment on the behavior of individuals; so, by definition, barbarians
}...have bad manners.
}...
}...When the Romans burned cities and exterminated populations, they
}...called it "civilization."  When the German tribes began to give
}...the Romans a dose of their own medicine, the Romans borrowed the
}...Greek term for non-Greeks, and its deprecatory connotation, and
}...called the Germans names.
}
}
}Do I detect a pro-German/anti-Roman bias there, Fitch?  :-)  Seriously,
}don't the WWII Nazis qualify as barbarians under any definition?

The Nazis qualify as barbarians under the definition of "people who
behave badly" (to say the least.)  They certainly weren't tribal
people, which is the other sense of "barbarian."  At the time the
Nazis took Germany over, it was one of the most civilized and developed
states in the world.