Maybe the only way to tell a "good" revolutionary from a "bad" one is
staying power. Quality will win out. Those revolutionaries that
improve things, their changes last. Those that don't - don't.
Maybe I'm being too simplistic?
Shalom
David Lind
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Platt Holden wrote:
> David B. and Group:
>
> David, Your post about �good revolutionaries� (Jesus, Ghandi, John Brown,
> etc.) was persuasive. The question boils down to, �How do you tell the good
> guys from the bad?� You wrote:
>
> DAVID B:
> He (Pirsig) says that the MOQ can do something that SOM couldn�t; tell the
> difference between criminals and revolutionaries.
>
> PLATT:
> We saw in the varied answers to Roger�s moral dilemmas that the group�s
> application of the MoQ to �real life� moral issues was uneven, to put it
kindly.
> (-: Now the challenge is to see if the MoQ can do better in identifying
good
> revolutionaries from bad.
>
> The following editorial appeared recently in the N.Y. Post. My question is,
> �What principles of the MoQ would you use to show that Fred Leuchter, Jr.
is
> one of the bad guys?� My point in asking is that if the MoQ (or other
method)
> cannot determine in advance the good contrarians from the bad, my paranoia
> about self-appointed champions of humanity may be justified.
>
> NYPOST
> The Holocaust, in which the most culturally and technologically advanced
> nation on earth systematically murdered a people in the name of an Idea, is
> the signal event of the 20th century. Stalin and Mao practiced variations
on
> the theme.
>
> How could such a thing happen? The peculiar case of a little man from
> Malden, Mass., named Fred Leuchter Jr. goes a long way toward explaining
> it.
>
> Leuchter is the title character of �Mr. Death,� another riveting nonfiction
> portrait of an eccentric personality by the great filmmaker Errol Morris.
>
> Morris� film is a tale of how a garrulous mild-mannered Everyman gave his
> mind over to pure evil. It offers nothing less than a moral history of
mankind
> in the 20th century. Leuchter, the son of a state prison official,
developed
> early on an obsession with death � specifically, prison executions. As an
> adult, the affable egghead taught himself enough engineering to become a
> much-sought-after expert on electric chairs, gas chambers and the like.
>
> In 1987, the neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel was put on trial in Canada for denying
the
> Holocaust, a crime there. He commissioned Leuchter to travel to Auschwitz
> to evaluate the ruins of the crematoria there. The result was �The Leuchter
> Report,� which concluded that no one could have been gassed at Auschwitz.
> The report was thrown out of court, but has had a galvanizing effect on the
> Holocaust-denial movement.
>
> �Mr. Death� makes it crystal clear that Leuchter�s analysis is hopelessly
> faulty, and that Holocaust denial is utter nonsense. And yet, Leuchter,
> consumed by vanity and pride, still believes he is correct.
>
> Morris, who is Jewish, doesn�t believe Leuchter is a Jew-hater. Leuchter
> sees himself as a Galileo figure, a courageous martyr for free speech and
> scientific inquiry.
>
> Here�s the rub: He thinks he�s a hero.
>
> This is what makes Leuchter so fascinating, and disturbing � and an
unlikely
> metaphor for us all in this century in which much evil has been committed
> and defended by PEOPLE WHO BELIEVED THEY WERE DOING GOOD.
> (Emphasis added.)
>
> Is amiable Fred Leuchter guilty of thoughtlessness, of leading an
> unexamined life?
>
> Yes, but Morris says this blindness comes not from neglecting to think; it
> comes from turning his mind�s eye away from reality to the �truth� one
would
> prefer to see.
>
> �That�s more disturbing, construing the world to suit your own purposes,
> despite evidence to the contrary,� he says.
>
> Morris wants audiences to come away from the film wondering about
> themselves. How do we know we�re not like good old Fred, who looks as
> about as dangerous as Don Knotts?
>
> We celebrate freedom of expression, for example, as a virtue. But will our
> descendants consider us criminally insane for creating a culture where
lurid
> sex and extreme violence were mainstays of popular entertainment?
>
> What about abortion, of the killing of 1.6 million unborn American children
> annually. Will people a hundred years from now think of us as we do about
> ordinary Germans of the Nazi era: as willing accomplices to mass murder?
>
> This next hundred years will tell much. The tragic rise and fall of Fred
> Leuchter is a timely warning that the unreflective egotism and hysterical
> optimism of modern man is a blind trap leading to what Robert Conquest, the
> great historian of Soviet terror, calls �mindslaughter.�
>
> The rest follows.
>
> PLATT:
> I�ve tried to apply MoQ principles to the Fred Leuchter case without much
> success, due no doubt to my inability to see the light. I hope David B. or
> anyone else who cares to tackle the problem can set me aright.
>
> If there are many truths, why isn�t Leuchter�s as good as anyone�s?
>
> Was the Canadian court, representing social values, acting morally when it
> threw out his report?
>
> How do MoQ principles prevent one from �turning his mind�s eye away from
> reality to the �truth� one would prefer to see?�
>
> Is the author correct in calling Leuchter a �metaphor for us all in this
century
> in which much evil has been committed and defended by people who
> believed they were doing good?�
>
> Platt
>
>
>
>
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