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[David R.Matusiak <dave AT matusiak.org>]

Rebecca --

On Mar 5, 2004, at 3:16 PM, Rebecca O'Connell wrote:

> On 3/5/04 2:43 PM, "David R.Matusiak" <dave AT matusiak.org> wrote:
>
> > On Mar 5, 2004, at 2:29 PM, Tony Spencer wrote:
> >
> > > ok, i get what you are saying.  don't agree.
> >
> > the only thing i can extrapolate from this is that you are the type of
> > person who wants things to remain exactly as they are.  i.e. "things
> > are fine right now, it ain't broke, so don't go a fixin' it."
>
> It isn't about keeping things exactly the way they are, it's about not
> repeating history unless you *want* to repeat it.  World War II was 
> the last
> war of that large a scale that we were involved in and saying it is 
> useless
> to look at how we handled it is like saying that you can't learn 
> anything
> from experience.

Well, we were talking about the appropriateness of using others' 
tragedy as your cornerstone for political campaigning, so I can't see 
how WWII got involved.  This was not a discussion of war, strategies, 
and tactics associated with war.  It may be now, but initially it was 
about applying 50 year old thinking to current day problems.

> If that were true, we'd be babies our entire lives. It
> doesn't mean we have to endorse everything that was done, but we do 
> have to
> recognize that it happened, especially since the events of WWII had 
> such a
> direct effect on the current world order.

I'm not trying to say that this stuff never happened.  I just don't 
think we can necessarily make our decision based upon what they did two 
generations ago.  what was considered acceptable then is no longer 
considered appropriate (in certain circumstances).

> > > i'm not referencing an example such as helms voting against civil
> > > rights.  its perfectly logical to compare the two campaigns.
> >
> > so, if a candidate had their competition "eliminated" sometime in the
> > past 100 years, it would be "okay" for one to do it present day?
>
> No, but the background information helps us to understand *why* people 
> are
> whacking their competition. You could look at that information and ask
> "Well, what made this person think he could get away with this? Could 
> he
> still (presuming he did)? If he could, shouldn't we maybe do something 
> about
> that before someone does whack another candidate?"

what good is knowing "Why?" if no one is ever going to do anything 
about it?  there are lots of statistics and encyclopedias in the world 
but i'm much less interested in cataloguing the tragedies of the past 
2,000 years than i am in improving the global situation in the next 
50-200 years.