You Can't Do It At Random
Commenter CJ Yetman had this to say in my post Paying For Social Security that discussed how Hitler Saved Social Security (for at least a year) by killing a lot of Jews. Actually he probably just moved some paper between file cabinets and spent the money on the war. Still the numbers were adjusted on paper at least. Oh. Yeah. CJ's comment.
So, it would have been completely rational if he had randomly selected a few million people to slaughter?CJ,
If I owed a bunch of money to a bunch of different people, would it be rational to murder all of them to relieve myself from the debt?
You can't pick them at random. That just gets people riled up.
You have to pick a group everyone hates. Dopers are the only group where the hate is sufficient but that is declining. Although the war on fat people and tobacco smokers is ramping up.
Second off I'm warning against it. Now it may be just a little paranoia on my part. But it goes with my territory. You see I'm Jewish and some of us get twitchy about these things.
Cross Posted at Classical Values
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3 comments:
Well, thanks for quoting me out of context. (sarcasm)
My "comments" were not a statement of opinion. They were questions that were directly related to your statement that immediately preceded them, which was "The only "irrational" thing was picking on the Jews." The questions were meant to instigate some retrospection on that statement.
You said the ONLY irrational thing was picking a specific group, and I was suggesting that you reconsider that by providing a different example in which it would seem to be irrational even if he had not selected jews specifically.
You, apparently, believe that it is rational to kill a bunch of people in order to pay your bills. I do not. That's the big difference.
You seem to think that murdering a bunch of people is a perfectly reasonable idea, as long as the process you use to select which people to kill meets whatever absurd criteria you feel is 'rational'. I disagree.
The irony is, you think that it's perfectly 'rational' to murder people in order to save enough money for the government to pay its bills, but you think it's 'irrational' to select Jews specifically, but then you think selecting people at random "just gets people riled up", so, which is it?
If the plan to kill people is a sound idea, and selecting people randomly to kill would just rile people up, then wouldn't the 'rational' thing to do be to select a specific population like the Jews, or in your case, 'dopers' to avoid getting people riled up and therefore being able to carry out your murder plans more effectively?
That sounds like what you're suggesting, but then you say it was 'irrational' to pick on the Jews, which is totally contradictory.
It is impossible to write in such a way that people intent on misunderstanding will fail to misunderstand.
So let me give it to you plain: rational is not moral.
It may very well be rational to do something and yet be quite immoral.
Obama Care's Death Panels may be rational from an accounting standpoint. It is not moral to kill people or let them die to save money.
When such atrocities are planned disfavored groups are picked. The disfavored groups will vary according to time and place.
exactly.... so why is it irrational to pick on Jews?
those were your words, that prompted my questions, which you quoted here.
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