How quickly he forgets.
Posted on 11/09/2015 1:09:16 PM PST by jimbo123
So this is the world we live in now. Asked by the Huffington Post whether he would go back in time and kill baby Hitler, Jeb Bush said, "Hell yeah, I would! You gotta step up, man."
But do you? Should you?
Given certain assumptions, killing baby Hitler isn't a hard question. Assume that going back in time merely eliminates Hitler, and that the sole effect of that is that the Nazi Party lacks a charismatic leader and never takes power in Germany, and World War II and the Holocaust are averted, and nothing worse than World War II transpires in this alternate reality, and there are no unintended negative consequences of time travel. Then the question is reduced to, "Is it ethical to kill one person to save 40-plus million people?" That's pretty easy. You don't have to be a die-hard utilitarian to think one baby is an acceptable price to pay to save tens of millions of lives.
But, of course, those assumptions are strong. Too strong. Here are just a few of the issues you'd need to sort out before even starting to intelligently consider whether killing baby Hitler would be wise.
Can time travel actually change history?
The first question here is whether backward time travel is actually functionally possible. This is a different question from whether it's technically possible. It seems quite plausible that backward time travel could exist but that it would be impossible to actually change the course of history using it. This is how time travel is depicted in movies like 12 Monkeys or The Terminator, where, in my colleague Matt Yglesias's words, "temporal jumping simply turns out to be a feature of a universe that is nonetheless an unchanging four-dimensional block."
(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...
This could be the big debate question tomorrow. Would you go back in time and kill baby Adolf? If all of you were in a lifeboat and could only survive by throwing one over, who would it be? Turn to that person and tell them why they deserve to be fish food.
OK, let’s say we kill baby Hitler. So when the SHTF in the early 30s in Germany, the only alternative to Hindenburg is Ernst Thalmann, the head of the communists, and he becomes the ruler of Germany. He makes a pact with Stalin which sticks, because they’re both commies, and they split central and eastern Europe between them. WWII is Stalin, Mao, and Thalmann against Churchill, FDR, and Hirohito, with the Anglo-American alliance with Hirohito as tenuous as the actual alliance with Stalin was in the actual WWII—but when we beat back communism, we’re then stuck with a Cold War between Europe/America and the Japanese Empire, and the “Japs” are just as murderously destructive as the Nazis would have been if we hadn’t killed baby Hitler, and as the European empires collapse, the Japanese constantly try to infiltrate Latin America, Africa, and Asia—forcing us to make alliances with the Muslims against them...
Um, no. In actuality his great grand-daddy helped hide gold for Hitler. Magicians call this misdirecting the audience.
Baby killing, a long Bush tradition: “Prescott Bush was politically active on social issues. He was involved with the American Birth Control League as early as 1942, and served as the treasurer of the first national capital campaign of Planned Parenthood in 1947”. - Wiki’pedia’
This makes my head hurt:)
Misdirecting, the audience? C’mon, that’s just how, big gov’t business works. Right? How could we possibly understand the greater good, these NWO mooks have done for US?
No. That might be true if you killed adult Hitler and removed him from the picture. But if there was no adult Hitler there would almost certainly have been a nationalist or right-totalitarian alternative to Thaelmann and the Communists.
It might have been Hugenberg or Roehm or somebody we've never heard of. What you say implies that only Hitler could save Germany from Communism, and that's giving him far too much credit. The forces and appeals that brought Hitler to power would most likely have worked for somebody else if he hadn't existed.
He makes a pact with Stalin which sticks, because they're both commies, and they split central and eastern Europe between them.
Like Stalin and Tito or Khruschev and Mao or Mao and Ho? Your scenario is possible, I guess, but it's not the only one.
WWII is Stalin, Mao, and Thalmann against Churchill, FDR, and Hirohito, with the Anglo-American alliance with Hirohito as tenuous as the actual alliance with Stalin ...
Or maybe there wouldn't be a war. A German-Soviet bloc controlling everything from the Rhein to the Pacific might be able to pressure the French into concessions without war. It's unlikely that it would be as bent on repeating the First World War as Hitler was.
we're then stuck with a Cold War between Europe/America and the Japanese Empire, and the "Japs" are just as murderously destructive as the Nazis would have been if we hadn't killed baby Hitler, and as the European empires collapse, the Japanese constantly try to infiltrate Latin America, Africa, and Asia—forcing us to make alliances with the Muslims against them...
But China's in the picture as well. Maybe, as happened in our history, Japan would be more interested in conquering China and the European colonies of the Far East than in fighting the Germano-Russian colossus. If Japan did fight Russia, maybe China might get its act together eventually and exert itself on the world stage. Would the Japanese really have the strength to play as powerful a role as Germany or the USSR did? Would anything they did really arouse the kind of horror as what the Nazis managed to do?
Anyway, congratulations for having such a potent imagination.
Couldn’t we just teach Richard Simmons German and send him back to Austria in the 30’s?
Why are they stupid enough to answer these inane questions?! OMG! I am literally stunned and dumbfounded by the utter lack of savvy on the part of Jeb.
What an idiot what a cretin what a retard! Dude, don't answer the stupid questions of meaningless journalists. Use your time with the press to proclaim your grand vision for America.
Good Lord! Almost, but not quite as bad as the “tippy toe moment.” That still stands alone as a colossal howler of an embarrassment.
This is more in line with he better put on his “Big Boy Pants.” (I can't type that without laughing.)
Yea,just keep him away from me.
I agree.I’d also take a little side trip on the way back and settle accounts with the Castro brothers.
Would the Japanese really have the strength to play as powerful a role as Germany or the USSR did? Would anything they did really arouse the kind of horror as what the Nazis managed to do?
Yes, and yes, as long as they had access to natural resources; the Japanese treated their conquered subjects much worse than the Nazis did, and killed as many people as the Nazis did, and probably would have kept killing. And I say that as someone who has spent his life involved in Japanese culture, as my "nickname" indicates.
You'd have to be absolutely certain,which would be difficult at best.But *if* you could? Yup...absolutely! Baby Hitler,Baby Stalin,Baby Mao,Baby Ho Chi Minh,Baby Kim Il Sung,Baby Che Guevera...and maybe a baby or two who are,sadly,still alive.
How quickly he forgets.
His family might be poor if he did that. His granddaddy found Adolph to be good business.
How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
Bet yet—Don’t get him kicked out of Art School—Germany would get one more artist-—but, what if Stalin took over Germany? What if all Europe when Commie?
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