Posted on 11/10/2015 7:34:54 PM PST by jocon307
In an interview this week, Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush weighed in on one of the zeitgeist's silliest questions: If you could go back in time, would you kill a baby Adolf Hitler?
"Hell yeah, I would!" Bush told the Huffington Post when queried on the subject in New Hampshire. "You gotta step up, man."
-snip-
[The question raises] ethical dilemmas - could you murder an infant on the assumption it would save millions of lives? - and even prompt[s] overly elaborate discussions on the theoretical mechanics of time travel. It's not clear how much of these considerations Bush chewed over before making his rather emphatic declaration.
"It could have a dangerous effect on everything else, but I'd do it - I mean, Hitler," he acknowledged in his conversation with the Huffington Post.
-snip-
Perhaps this isn't as bizarre as it sounds. There are few alternative histories more pondered than those that have something to do with Hitler.
The shadow of the Nazi dictator looms over a rich field of speculative history. Amateurs and professionals have already asked (and attempted to answer) a spate of tough questions: What if Hitler had been accepted to art school in Vienna? What if he and his inner sanctum had escaped to Latin America in 1945? What if Hitler's armies had succeeded in capturing Moscow and breaking the Soviet Union?
The reverse is also the subject of fevered inquiry: What if there had been no Hitler?
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
How much any individual human being has on any of this is a central topic of debate between the Great Man theory of history's adherents and those concentrating more on broad social currents and trends. Neither of these has to be true exclusively. Do events make the man or do men make events? The answer in my opinion is Yes, both.
Clearly an infant who is yet to do any harm is not subject to preemptive punishment in most Western conceptions of justice, those being centered around a reaction to some sort of trespass, not to some sort of being. (Ironically, the Nazis felt otherwise with regard to the Jews: these were to be punished for group transgression, not any individual one. Most systems of collectivism, including Communism, suffer from this ethical defect.) And so unless one is fairly committed to a philosophical system of hard fatalism, one must withhold judgment and punishment at least until a crime is committed.
In fact, it would take the mind of God to grasp all of these variables and add free will to the mix. Slaying baby Hitler is in that sense not merely unjust, but blasphemous. Just my $0.02.
I remember a twilight zone where a woman travel back through time to kill baby Hitler and after killing him his parents adopted a new baby who actually was the real Hitler.
LOL, that’s perfect, I’m so glad I posted this just so I could read this comment. Amazing none of media chatterers could remind us of this!
I would have encouraged Hitler to keep painting, to push him in the artistic direction he wanted to go, then he wouldn’t have been a bitter, resentful, hateful being... maybe...
Islam is arguably the single worst thing in human history.
"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
“A moment of silence for Andrea Collins. She sacrificed her life for the good of mankind, but she also created the very monster she sought to destroy. History can never be changed. Not even in The Twilight Zone.”
Cradle of Darkness. TZ 2002.
“How much any individual human being has on any of this is a central topic of debate between the Great Man theory of history’s adherents and those concentrating more on broad social currents and trends. Neither of these has to be true exclusively. Do events make the man or do men make events? The answer in my opinion is Yes, both.”
Of course it’s impossible to see History without seeing the “great” “men”, but it is hard to see History without seeing the great men, including those who failed. Like, for example, Hitler, the French Revolution guys whose names I will not be bothered to google (losers!), and so, so many more.
So, I clearly think the great man theory holds water, but I still don’t think I could kill baby hitler. Teenage Hitler, now him I might be able to do in.
The “Fuhrer” would have been the Communist, Ernst Thalmann.
Yes, it is very bad, and on the path to get even worse. I think it might really be from the Devil.
My reply, If you have a real time machine let’s go and find out. If not don’t ask stupid questions.
I once watched the beginning of some silly movie, I know Angelina Jolie was in it, and one of those black actors that’s in everthing, Morgan Freeman or that other guy.
Anyway... they were all super assassins and as they were getting together they had an idle chat: if you could go back in time and assassinate anyone who would it be?
Well, I forget what they all said (pretty sure at least someone would have said Hitler) but I turned to hubby and I said: I know who I’d knock off - Jean Jacques Rousseau.
And hubby said: Who?!?!
“Would that be possible? “
I believe it would be, and I admire your comment that you couldn’t do it. I second that. A child is a child, and no child is beyond salvage.
Also, the Hitler’s of the world could never accomplish evil on the scale that some have, unless they had willing accomplices. I’m not indicted Germany or German people by saying that, but am instead saying that tragically it appears that throughout the world there seem to be those who become pawns of evil. Maybe they just don’t see it.
Yes, you are right in what you say. Hitler was one guy, and outside of his time in the army I don’t know that he killed anyone. So, yeah, he had a lot of help.
It raises no ethical dilemma at all. The base presumption is that you know what he did, and that you can travel back in time. Of course killing him is the only possible thing to do.
To make it into an ethical dilemma, you have to postulate that you can change the course of history without Killing or seriously damaging him. The suggestion that there is any other possibility, aside from killing him, has not been advanced.
Accepting the premise and the stark choices offered, there is no other reasonable course of action than killing baby Hitler.
This is supposed to be an actual photograph of him as a baby.
That is a fact not in evidence. For all we know, if Hitler had not risen to power and become a Tyrant, perhaps no one would have done so.
So you think the probabilities are pretty high that some other German leader would end up getting 50 million people killed? Really?
See, he’s pretty cute, looks a tad confused but it would be hard to kill that being, no matter what you knew. But, I take your point, as does Jeb (and I’m not making fun), the point would be: you gotta step up.
Luckily none of us will really be faced with this choice and I think it is a valid concept that despite all the evil he did, wiping out Hitler would not guarantee peace on earth.
So I think what? Draw your own conclusions and stop putting words into my mouth.
That is true, and it is why the whole discussion is really pointless. We don't get "do overs."
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