Seattle Times Editor: Hitler's Demands Were Not Unreasonable
By patriotroom Posted in Liberals — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
If there were ever evidence that the MSM will defend Obama to the death, you are looking at it. In the same breath they defend him and prove that Appeasement is alive and well on the left after nearly 70 years. From the Seattle Times via Ace and LGF.
Democrats are rebuking President Bush for saying in his speech to the Knesset, here, that to “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” is “appeasement.” The Democrats took it as a slap at Barack Obama. What bothers me is the continual reference to Hitler and his National Socialists, particularly the British and French accommodation at the Munich Conference of 1938.
The narrative we're given about Munich is entirely in hindsight. We know what kind of man Hitler was, and that he started World War II in Europe. From the view of 1938, what Hitler was demanding at Munich was not unreasonable, according to the prevailing idea of the nation-state. His claim was that the German-speaking areas of Europe--and ones that thought of themselves as German --be under German authority. He had just annexed Austria, which was German-speaking, without bloodshed. There were two more small pieces of Germanic territory: the free city of Danzig and the Sudetenland, a border area of what is now the Czech Republic.
We live in an era when you do not change national borders for these sorts of reasons. We have learned the hazards of it. But 1938 was only 19 years since Germany's borders had been redrawn, and not to its benefit. In the democracies there was some sense of guilt with how Germany had been treated after World War I.
With a few more friends like this, Obama won't have to worry about the Republicans in November.
Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room
The only reason they wrote it was to defend Obama on the appeasement charge. Hitler has not otherwise really been in the news lately.
Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room
Last time I checked, you don't a get a "do over" or "I changed my mind" in dealing with international treaties.
The other name for Danzig (German version) was and is Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity in the 80s. Gdansk was hardly a city limited to Germans. Not exactly reasonable to just hand over a bunch of Poles to the Germans.
While it is true that Germany could have requested or even demanded reprieve from the harsher provisions of Versailles, to threaten the use of force is hardly reasonable.
What if we decided that parts of Northern Mexico really should have been part of Texas after their war of independence? What happens if Mexico demands back the state of California.
This reasonable demand stuff is the wackiest thing I have heard in a long time.
It's in his book, dang it.
But everybody thought "He's not serious".
Hitler wrote a book...Obama wrote a book...coincidence?
He knew what words to use at any given time and probably had no trouble persuading people like Chamberlain whenever it suited his purposes.
As I understand it, the Nazi party began life as a small club of drunks, one of them homosexual, before they stumbled upon an articulate and charismatic young man who liked their ideas.
If you need to have to defend Hitler in order to buttress your argument, your opponents need to have to beat you with rotten fish until they feel better.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater
...viewing things in historical context is an excellent trait for historians. In fact, a historian who can't do it isn't worth a thing. However, when transplanting history into the present for a political argument, viewing history "in context" becomes a prelude to excusing anything. The Holocaust, slavery, the inquisition, etc. It's an absolutely worthless exercise, undertaken merely out of laziness and indiscipline.
The Seattle Times is, relatively speaking, the CONSERVATIVE paper in town. The Seattle Post Intelligencer is worse.
"I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and my friend the late William Rehnquist – jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference." - John McCain
mistakes of the past?
Germany's argument was a reasonable one in 1938?!?!
Ok, and the world appeased it paving the way for WWII.
But let's learn from other US history--Obama's presidence='s Carter redux.
Actually, I don't think the main point- "From the view of 1938, what Hitler was demanding at Munich was not unreasonable" is entirely an unreasonable one. If you consider President Wilson's preoccupation with self-determination (what he really meant by it, not the made-up anti-colonialism sentiment that liberals prefer to believe he meant) as well as the overly punitive punishments of the Versailles Treaty, then (putting aside, for the moment, what we now know) it doesn't seem all that much of a stretch.
Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us. -P.J. O'Rourke