Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/12/05

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Country of origin
From: Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 15:08:26 -0500

At 02:02 PM 12/5/2000 EST, Krechtz@aol.com wrote:
>    True, but even collectivism was a stated government economic policy 
>designed to further both the economic and political ends of the regime.  
>Although the validity of the policy and its underlying political philosophy 
>are certainly debatable, at least the policy itself arguably rises to the 
>level of rationality.  The ends, by Stalin's lights, justified the 
>cataclysmic and indefensible means.  
>    By way of contrast, Nazi genocide was considered an end in itself, the 
>product of a pseudo-scientific, pseudo-historical amalgam of mythology, 
>mysticism, proto-religious nonsense and megalomaniacal ethnocentrism rather 
>than a considered policy directed toward realization of clearly defined 
>economic or political ends. 

Hmm.  The elimination of Socialists and the like by the Nazis was certainly
in the political and not cultural ethos, and the elimination of Jews and
Cossacks by the Soviets would seem to be in the cultural and not the
political ethos.

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
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