Those who may harbor some disbelief that anybody on a philosophy echo, of
all places, could resort to substituting direct calling of nasty names for
reasoned argument might want to ponder the information presented in a 
ecently
published book written by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen entitled _Hitler's Willing
Executioners, Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust_.  
   This was in no sense a condemnation of the German people as being more 
vil
than the rest of mankind but a warning of what can happen to ANY nation when
those who REALLY WISH TO COMMIT MURDER fall under the rule of ideologues who
utilize these dark dreams to portray murder and torture as normal measures to
take against those who do disagree with them.  
   It WAS in fact a German scholar who fled Austria to escape the Gestapo who
taught me the compelling principle that what philosophers think and say is of
life and death importance and that many who under ordinary circumstances 
ould
shrink from outright murder can be led to do it for FUN.  
   Those who want to be mealy-mouthed in the face of calling World War II
American veterans by the hated name "NAZI" are surely free to equivocate 
bout
it if they wish to do so but I shall refuse to join the crowd.  I KNOW what 
t
can mean.  
   In the great _Gorgias_ dialogue Plato, the magnificent artist, allows
Socrates to come face to face with his murderers in a conversation that has
resounded down through 2500 years and is still just as fresh, alive and
sharply demarking of the deeper issue as it was then.
   "Metastatic faith is one of the great sources of disorder, if not the
principal one, in the contemporary world; and it is a matter of life and 
eath
for all of us to understand the phenomenon and to find remedies against it
before it destroys us.  If today the state of science permits the critical
analysis of such phenomena, it is clearly a scholar's duty to undertake it 
or
his own sake as a man and to make the results accessible to his fellow
men...."
   "Ideology is existence in rebellion against God and man...."
   From Eric Voegelin's Preface to his _Order and History_, publishing of
which began in 1956.
Sincerely, 
                                     Frank
                                                                              
                                                       
 
--- PPoint 2.05
---------------