[extropy-chat] Re: The Force of Human Freedom

[Olga Bourlin]

From: "Greg Burch" <gregburch at gregburch.net>

> Yes, it's pretty bad when reliably anti-American PBS does a report like 
> this.  What if it's true?  > A kind-hearted person of good will, circa 
> 1933: "Won't those people just shut up with their negativity about Hitler 
> ...

Truth be told,  Americans were generally negative about *Jews*.  Taken from 
this perspective, negativity about Hitler didn't sound so bad to many 
Americans.  That's the sad part of this story, as well as events such as:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~froomkin/texts/m3.html

> ... and Hirohito?  How can they sleep at night or get out of bed in the 
> morning with all that fear-mongering?!?!"

As for WWII and Pearl Harbor, I am no expert, but I've read enough to know 
that "the facts" as were presented to us at school in the 1950s and 1960s 
left out controversies that are still igniting:

http://www.visualstatistics.net/web%20Visual%20Statistics%20Illustrated/Visual%20Statistics%20Illustrated/emperor%20hirohito.htm

"Had FDR met Prince Konoye, there might have been no Pearl Harbor, no 
Pacific war, no Hiroshima, no Nagasaki, no Korea, no Vietnam. How many of 
our fathers and uncles, brothers and friends, might still be alive?"

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25637

It happened before I was born, but my father's youngest brother was one of 
those casualties in WWII.

And whatever really happened with WWII and Hirohito, the USA wasn't exactly 
a model democratic country, with its segregated armies and imprisoned 
citizens of Japanese descent.

In any case, WWII was not a war fought pre-emptively, so one can hardly 
compare it to the situation in Iraq.

Olga