[extropy-chat] The Trouble With Democracy

[Technotranscendence]

On Friday, December 05, 2003 10:34 AM Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
wrote:
>> 'Demokratie. Der Gott, Der Keiner Ist'
>> by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
>>
>> Translation of the preface to the just-published German edition
>> [Leipzig: Manuscriptum] of Democracy. The God That Failed.
>
> "and the American mistreatment of
> German prisoners of war,"
>
> I cannot speak for all POW camps here
> in the US, but can speak of one, located
> in Stark, NH, an area with terrain very
>similar to southern Germany. Prisoners
> spent the war logging, and were able to
> get to know local residents well, so much
> so that after the war there were several
> marriages between former prisoners
> and local girls. Former prisoners still
> travel to NH from Germany to visit and
> have reunions, and a few have immigrated
> to live in this area. I know of no similar
> experiences by Americans held prisoner
> by Germans.

While I'm unfamiliar with this example, I do know of a few others who
had pretty good POW experiences, including the economist Hans Sennholz.
IIRC, Sennholz was a German fighter pilot and he was captured and
eventually came to see the US as perhaps the greatest country on the
planet because of its freedom.

I'm not so sure what Hoppe is getting at, though his preceding and
following statements in that paragraph ring true to me.

> I also know that prisoners travelling by train
> were greeted at trainstops across the US
> with lunches and refreshments made by
> locals, while Americans held prisoner were
> starved as cattle by their German captors,
> and only treated decently when the Red
> Cross showed up.

I don't think he mentioned anything about the German treatment of Allied
POWs.  I would suspect that Western Allied prisoner were treated much
better than those taken from the Soviets.

> If all of Hans-Herman's writing is as inaccurate
> as this, then it is no wonder that those who
> know the truth have little tolerance for him.

This is the usual tack you've taken with writings you disagree with.
(Not an insult but an observation.  You did the same with the article I
sent on privatizing fire departments.  You dismissed it because of one
thing you disagreed with in the abstract.  If I did likewise, my reading
list would be narrowed to nothing.:)  It might be better to read his
whole book -- which I have -- and see if any of it makes sense to you.
I've read it.  I don't agree with all of what he says and he does strike
me as a cultural conservative though a strict political anarchist and
also as a person who looks for shocking things to say.

> He is nothing but a neo-nazi revisionist, IMHO.

I disagree.  At least from what I've read of his work -- his book on
democracy and many published articles -- he's not pro-Nazi or neo-Nazi.
If anything, he's anti-Nazi.  He is, after all, anarcho-capitalist.
Though he only mentions Naziism one sentence of the English language
version of his book, he does not praise it.  (He blames WW1 and
democratization of Germany for putting the Nazis in power.)

Regards,

Dan
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