Judgment at Nuremberg:
This film should have been essential viewing for anyone in US military charged with making tough decisions after 9/11.
But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs... The murder of children... How *easily* that can happen! There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the "protection" of the country. Of "survival". The answer to that is: *survival as what*? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. *It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult!* Before the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what *we* stand for: *justice, truth... and the value of a single human being!*I love it when the words of the past - even words uttered by fictional characters - can so utterly convict and expose the present.
This film should have been essential viewing for anyone in US military charged with making tough decisions after 9/11.
1 comment:
"Survival as what?" seems to be the biggest area of contention between the different poles of political opinion in the US.
The value of a single human being hardly seems to be worth much of anything, if the rhetoric and actions of some on the left and right are any indication.
Identifying people not as individuals but as merely members of groups whose grievances have not yet been pandered to is too common, and is not limited just to the fringes any more.
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