Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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Sadly, I know about some of this
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a boy of twelve, joyfully exploring the mysteries of a foreign city, I blundered into the bombed-out sector of Pirmasens, Germany, which during the war had suffered the misfortune of remaining visible above low-lying cloud-layers on nights when other, larger German cities were too obscured to be bombed effectively. This misfortune was compounded after the war when Pirmasens found itself in the French Zone of Occupation at a time when the French were in no mood to allow les Boches to rebuild.
By the time I did my wandering, in 1955, the Wirtschaftswunder was already well underway in the rest of Germany, but only just beginning in Pirmasens. There were construction cranes almost everywhere, but none in this one small section of the town.
I had little real knowledge at the time about what had happened -- the war, the bombing, the allied victory, etc., yes -- but not the rest of it, not what had happened to those who onced lived and worked in what was now row upon row of broken walls, roofless partial buildings, three and four stories high, some of them, all surrounded by mounds of rubble covered with knee-high grasses. They seemed to me almost sepulchral, like a cemetary of giants, and muffled in a great sadness.
It was an hour out of my life, no more, and I was a kid, but needless to say, I never forgot it, and to this day I curse those who not only repeat this horror over and over again, but actually seem to enjoy doing it.
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@ Paul Rosenberg
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A shorter way of saying what you've said, without in any way disagreeing, is that authoritarians simply cannot embrace chaos. They cannot extrapolate, cannot generalize, cannot mutate; they are literalists, idolators. As it is written, so let it be done.
They forget about the moving finger, and twist shut the escape valve which sometimes saved earlier authoritarian systems, those which precisely because of their lack of total control over populations and events, could sometimes evolve into something more suitable to new conditions. Rome under Constantine was offered a new lease on life, Catholicism confronted by the Reformation was forced to search for new resources, and new definitions of itself in order to meet the challenge of an upstart populism.
Blood has always been the currency of change, and the invention of totalitarianism, which promised to stanch the flow, only delayed its release until it reached flood stage. The great challenge of our age, it seems to me, is to repudiate the totalitarian model, especially when it masquerades as traditionalism or conservatism, and replace it with something both more peaceful and more flexible.
A tall order, I realize, but not entirely out of our reach, if people can be taught to focus not on what they stand to lose, but on what they stand to gain. In the name of love, of course, which is as old as fear, and not yet vanquished by its opposite, no matter what the adherents of Realpolitik suppose.
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One is reluctantly forced to conclude
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Usmirf, I've done my best to follow the contretemps between you and DCLaw1 with an open mind, but at this juncture I have to ask, are you really an innocent, or are you just playing one here, and if so, to whose benefit?
The accusations Glenn makes against Charles Krauthammer, who is as pure a fascist apologist as the world has produced since the thirties, should be clear enough, particularly with Krauthammer's own testimony to guide you. And what is it, may I ask, which has convinced you of Jack's sincerity, while at the same time giving you license to decry Arne's tone, or Glenn's lack of persuasiveness?
Perhaps it's just misconceived priorities, or overly delicate sensibilities which have led you so far afield. Were I forced to come to a decision now, though, I'd have to say that DCLaw1 wasn't wrong about you after all. You have shown up at precisely the wrong place, at precisely the wrong time, with a version of what's at issue which seems strangely at variance with common sense. Perhaps there's an innocent explanation, perhaps not. Innocence, in any event, is one of those commodities which is rarely genuine when proffered with such carefully calculated pleading.
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An appeal to patriots
[Read the article: Right-wing blogs discover massive conspiracy to hide WMDs in Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If there's anyone out there who's still in touch with those rubbery/silvery liitle creatures with the really big eyes, now would be the time to give them a nudge. We haven't had any really juicy UFO sightings since that last flurry of hastily-compiled documentaries intended to save the History Channel from oblivion in the mid-nineties. (You remember, the ones sandwiched between the Civil War and Hitler.)
So please, if you've been abducted recently, please give the liitle guys a call back and ask them to hover a saucer or two over Area 51 next Tuesday, just for an hour or so. We'll chip in for the anti-matter necessary to make the trip, so the cost should be minimal.
Help us to put this WMD fervor behind us for another year or two, just long enough to get some reasonable folks into the White House. It's your patriotic duty, after all.