Post by Xpress Success on Jun 7, 2008 7:31:35 GMT -5
I considered posting this as a direct reply, but felt it would put a damper on the IN IT TO WIN IT thread. Hence I am going to simply post the quote, and my reply, in a separate thread. Here goes:
Nazis are my big rallying point against the Left.
AJ, the Nazis were actually quite a moderate setup when you look at the bigger picture. Nobody in their right mind could pass them off as a Leftist government, or a Far-Right one for that matter. They had policies which sat on both sides of the fence. If you want to look for someone to use as an object of Left-wing hatred, find someone else, someone who was/is actually a Lefty.
Yes, the Nazi economic policy borrowed from the socialist doctrine of mass politics, only they maintained complete state control over the collective. As I said earlier, they were champions of the Third Position. They had state control over assets and industry yet encouraged commerce, an enviable position really. Socially they were pretty conservative, with examples of their social policy being the 3 K's (which defined the woman's role in society) and attempts to have the German people revert back to a set of traditional Germanic values with greater appreciation of their history.
A facet of Hitler's Germany that people neglect to speak of is his party's stance on the environment and public health: on the first note, Nazi Germany was a world leader in animal welfare and environmental conservation. Archaic practices such as vivisection and kosher butchering were outlawed, and hunting & commercial animal trapping were heavily regulated. They also restricted deforestation, cleaned up water supplies (which also helped the people), annexed land for use as animal conservation zones and banned the use of certain poisons.
On public health, Nazi scientists were the ones who unearthed tobacco as a cause of lung cancer and asbestos as a cause of numerous ailments (lung cancer included) - other nations didn't cotton onto tobacco until the 1950's, and down the track American lawyers ended up using Nazi asbestos research to aid litigation years later. The Nazis also took lead & mercury out of consumer products (having identified the dangers both substances posed) and encouraged women to get regular breast cancer checks.
Besides the environment, you could maybe argue the the Nazis went Left in regards to the workplace. Using policies such as the introduction of Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy), they helped boost social cohesion and the minimum living standards of German people. Instead of having a social welfare state as many nations do now, they insisted on involving everybody in the process - have everyone working on projects for the nation's benefit, and in turn provide a more reasonable living and the means of engaging in commerce. This gave rise to such things as the mass production of the Volkswagen (People's Car) and the world's first freeway system, the Autobahn. And in addition to Germans now being able to make a reasonable living, the government were encouraging they had adequate leisure time and scope for vacations. Not only was it serving the personal interests of the worker, but it was bolstering the German tourism industry in the process of doing so. Sounds criminal, doesn't it? A nation looking out for its workforce, the lifeblood of its economy.
The point I'm trying to make is that people really need to read more into Hitler's Germany. Despite some of their blatantly discriminatory policy, there is a lot of good to be found in the way the Nazis governed their nation. Maybe one day people won't be scoffed at when they openly admit: "This policy was influenced by a successful policy the Nazis implemented." Because while it was a period of war, genocide and unease, it was also a period in which a great deal of innovation took place. Transitioning from the 1930's economic equivalent of Zimbabwe to a world superpower in less than a decade is an amazing feat. Such drastic change could never have materialised without at least some decent policy. That is why an objective observer would be urged to take a look at the bigger picture.
Nazi policies broke a lot of new ground, and so did German scientists as a result of generous funding and support. Not only did they pioneer in fields such as weapons and medical research, but also in other fields such as eugenics. You will be quite hard up to find a branch of scientific research or political policy that hasn't, in some capacity, been influenced by the Germans. Nowadays the dangers of cigarettes and asbestos are well documented, genetic (and skeletal) differences between people of different races have been found, etc. On the political side of things, most "social inclusion" policies I see in nations such as my own are merely bastardised and neutered interpretations of Kraft durch Freude... they won't go all the way because we have already gone down the route of capitalism past the point of no return.
OK, rant over. Objective discussion is welcome.
P.S - I'll offer up a facepalm in advance, in the case someone:
- Opens this thread.
- Fails to read the content.
- Construes this thread as advocating the Holocaust, etc.
- Offers a dim-witted riposte based on said notion.
- Leaves the thread, having failed to heed the content within.
AJ, the Nazis were actually quite a moderate setup when you look at the bigger picture. Nobody in their right mind could pass them off as a Leftist government, or a Far-Right one for that matter. They had policies which sat on both sides of the fence. If you want to look for someone to use as an object of Left-wing hatred, find someone else, someone who was/is actually a Lefty.
Yes, the Nazi economic policy borrowed from the socialist doctrine of mass politics, only they maintained complete state control over the collective. As I said earlier, they were champions of the Third Position. They had state control over assets and industry yet encouraged commerce, an enviable position really. Socially they were pretty conservative, with examples of their social policy being the 3 K's (which defined the woman's role in society) and attempts to have the German people revert back to a set of traditional Germanic values with greater appreciation of their history.
A facet of Hitler's Germany that people neglect to speak of is his party's stance on the environment and public health: on the first note, Nazi Germany was a world leader in animal welfare and environmental conservation. Archaic practices such as vivisection and kosher butchering were outlawed, and hunting & commercial animal trapping were heavily regulated. They also restricted deforestation, cleaned up water supplies (which also helped the people), annexed land for use as animal conservation zones and banned the use of certain poisons.
On public health, Nazi scientists were the ones who unearthed tobacco as a cause of lung cancer and asbestos as a cause of numerous ailments (lung cancer included) - other nations didn't cotton onto tobacco until the 1950's, and down the track American lawyers ended up using Nazi asbestos research to aid litigation years later. The Nazis also took lead & mercury out of consumer products (having identified the dangers both substances posed) and encouraged women to get regular breast cancer checks.
Besides the environment, you could maybe argue the the Nazis went Left in regards to the workplace. Using policies such as the introduction of Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy), they helped boost social cohesion and the minimum living standards of German people. Instead of having a social welfare state as many nations do now, they insisted on involving everybody in the process - have everyone working on projects for the nation's benefit, and in turn provide a more reasonable living and the means of engaging in commerce. This gave rise to such things as the mass production of the Volkswagen (People's Car) and the world's first freeway system, the Autobahn. And in addition to Germans now being able to make a reasonable living, the government were encouraging they had adequate leisure time and scope for vacations. Not only was it serving the personal interests of the worker, but it was bolstering the German tourism industry in the process of doing so. Sounds criminal, doesn't it? A nation looking out for its workforce, the lifeblood of its economy.
The point I'm trying to make is that people really need to read more into Hitler's Germany. Despite some of their blatantly discriminatory policy, there is a lot of good to be found in the way the Nazis governed their nation. Maybe one day people won't be scoffed at when they openly admit: "This policy was influenced by a successful policy the Nazis implemented." Because while it was a period of war, genocide and unease, it was also a period in which a great deal of innovation took place. Transitioning from the 1930's economic equivalent of Zimbabwe to a world superpower in less than a decade is an amazing feat. Such drastic change could never have materialised without at least some decent policy. That is why an objective observer would be urged to take a look at the bigger picture.
Nazi policies broke a lot of new ground, and so did German scientists as a result of generous funding and support. Not only did they pioneer in fields such as weapons and medical research, but also in other fields such as eugenics. You will be quite hard up to find a branch of scientific research or political policy that hasn't, in some capacity, been influenced by the Germans. Nowadays the dangers of cigarettes and asbestos are well documented, genetic (and skeletal) differences between people of different races have been found, etc. On the political side of things, most "social inclusion" policies I see in nations such as my own are merely bastardised and neutered interpretations of Kraft durch Freude... they won't go all the way because we have already gone down the route of capitalism past the point of no return.
OK, rant over. Objective discussion is welcome.
P.S - I'll offer up a facepalm in advance, in the case someone:
- Opens this thread.
- Fails to read the content.
- Construes this thread as advocating the Holocaust, etc.
- Offers a dim-witted riposte based on said notion.
- Leaves the thread, having failed to heed the content within.
