Posted on 04/17/2010 3:25:41 PM PDT by NYer
While I disagree with Williamson, he is entitled to his own opinion. We’re seeing strains of the thought police right here in the US.
What if we punished the people in the US that thought we never went to the MOON??
The German’s are desperately trying to prove to themselves that they aren’t Nazis. Unfortunately, their society is just as cruel, just as murderous, just as oppressive, and just as anti-Semitic as it was 70 years ago.
Germany is still the most liberal country in Europe. By “liberal” I mean it is filled with leftist fascists who hate life itself.
It is against the law n Germany to deny the holocaust.
It is their attempt to quell a new nazi party.
Do you suggest they check with us, US, before they enforce their own laws?
It is illegal to deny the holocaust or to display NAZI insignia, in not just Germany, but most of surrounding Europe as well.
The laws were enacted as part of the de-NAZIfication campaigns of European society after WW2, but the irony is rich.
Some laws are unjust. This is one of them. We have plenty of unjust laws of our own. Of course, each country is sovereignly responsible for its laws, good and bad.
Who really believes that Germany has changed in only 70 years? The people who participated in the third Reich had children and taught them absolute evil. Then those ones had children and brought SOME of the lessons with them. The members of the generation now running Germany were all taught from the moment of their birth to believe that human life has only relative value or no value, even if they weren’t taught the racial lessons. Not surprisingly, the great grandchildren of the third Reich are almost unanimously left wing freaks.
They banned the insignias and kept most of the doctrine. Rich...
do deny that qualifies one - to deny that qualifies one
It’s often unnoticed, but there is a real difference between European society and British- and British-derived societies.
To this day, the police forces in Germany, Italy and other places, are what most in the Anglosphere would term as authoritarian.
A society with a deep history of, and involvement with such authoritarianism, cannot be rectified over a few dozen generations.
The Holocaust and anyone of such prominence that expresses the denial of such mass killings of Jews and/or that it ever happened; and who also reaches a mass world audience of teachings in this denial of historical fact; is feeding into future Holocausts by present and future dictators and should be treated as the German law has written. A monetary fine is but a small slap on the wrist for the seed of terrorism it feeds into by this Bishop's denial.
Glad I don’t live in Germany.
But I will defend to the death his right to state his beliefs.
As a Catholic disgusted with certain actions of the Church, but one understanding of its role and true purpose, and as the grandson of a Catholic who was imprisoned and charged with capital crimes by the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NAZIS), I understand the prohibitions in the German Constitution.
As a US citizen by birth I understand exactly what the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in mean. They mean that I am not where my father and grandfather were: in a camp or prison with a good prospect of execution.
There remain certain prohibitions in Germany, for good reason. For example, I believe reruns of Hogan’s Heroes do not use words of the NAZI salute; instead, when the salute is made, the actors replace the words with “How High Does the Corn Grow?” Funny in a way, but for a reason.
If you want to visit Normandy’s graveyards you will not see the largest contingent of US dead there. You will find that in a graveyard for World War One soldiers. And then there is Dachau and Bergen Belsen and a host of others. And then you see why Eisenhower and the post-war leadership had the German constitution and its prohibitions as they are.
Funny you should mention Hogans Heroes- I thought the show was like it was because Hollywood had no idea what World War II POW camps were like. Actually, the Nazis were portrayed as idiots and dunces because the Germans who played them (Burkhalter, Schultz, Klink) were actual Jewish German refugees from Nazi Germany, and the show was their way of mocking them. LeBeau, the Frenchman, was a French Jew who survived Auschwitz.
I can understand a law that punishes incitement of violence, like the anti-Semitic rhetoric that led to the persecution of the Jews, or something similar expressed against any other social group, e.g. agaist the well-to-do farmers in Russia.
But I consider a law, that punishes a historical opinion of any kind, ridiculous and, of course, unjust.
Remember that Williamson never expressed any approval of the persecution of the Jews on any scale.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.