Archive for the 'WWII' Category

Ignoring History Leads to Ignorance

George Santayana is credited with saying “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This goes along the lines of the thinking that people learn from their mistakes. Unfortunately, there are segments of any society (and some individuals within) that would prefer to ignore the past, thus guaranteeing a repeat performance of [...]

The Few, The Good, The Christian

A new movie is out, documenting the horrific Rape of Nanking, when Japanese troops slaughtered about 200,000 Chinese people in a matter of weeks (and probably raped at least 20,000 women). The New York Times review discusses those few Westerners who stayed to help out, and saved thousands of people, but I wonder if the [...]

Pearl Harbor and the Death Penalty

“In my view…the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation rather than simply ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging the death penalty.”
– Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, commenting on the Atkins v. Virginia case
We got an awful lot of self-righteous people, usually [...]

Cosmic Ironies

Note: I originally posted this bit of family history in August 2006. I’m reposting it now, inspired by two things: Ken Burns’ excellent “The War” (I swear the man’s a conservative) and Ahmadinejad’s pretending that the Holocaust’s historical reality is open for some sort of debate. I think both — the one almost sublime, the [...]