Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulS
You seem to miss the point of the use of Hitler/Trains and the plane ride. The following is from a Univ. of Oxford ethics professor:
Well, they say of Mussolini, at least he made the trains run on time.
Actually, that’s disputed, but that’s by-the-by. While watching the telly, I was struck by a remark of Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, on the resignation of the leader of Scotland’s Roman Catholic community, Cardinal Keith O’Brien following allegation of sexual misconduct. “It would be a great pity if a lifetime of positive work was lost from comment in the circumstances of his resignation”, said Salmond.
This was a few days ago, before O’Brien admitted to ‘misbehaviour’. Even so, it seemed to me to be a premature and injudicious remark. (And Salmond praised him in other comments too). We still don’t know much about the allegations against O’Brien, not do we know whether others will come forward with additional accusations. The scale of O’Brien’s ‘misbehaviour’ is, at the time of writing, unclear…he may well be guilty of not very much.
However, I would have thought we need such information before we can weigh it in the balance against his good deeds. No life is unrelentingly bad. Just as no life is incessantly good. All lives have at least some good and some bad. In some lives, the bad massively overshadows the good. In such circumstances, we tend – quite rightly in my view – to ignore the good. We do this on grounds of taste. We would object – again quite rightly, in my view – to a person who said “well yes, but putting aside the Jews and the gays, and the torture and the invasions and the war, Adolf did build some marvellous autobahns”. And similar comments would be misplaced even for criminals on a much smaller scale…“it would be a shame if in all the allegations of rape and assault we forgot Jimmy Savile’s tremendous contribution to popular television”.
As I say, we don’t know very much about the O’Brien case. But, sometimes it is not ‘a pity’ to disregard ‘positive work’. It’s the right thing to do.
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Is it the right thing to do in the Trump case? Is there anything he has done as President comparable to what Hitler or Mussolini did as the political leaders of their countries that outweigh the good he has done with his policies? Or are there rapes and assaults in his personal life that outweigh his contributions?
Failed businesses, extra-marital affairs, typical shady or unethical deals so common to big business and big and little politicians (including the one he ran against for President)--these are the things that outweigh his good? Do you honestly believe that if the FBI had wanted to go after Hillary for anything in her past, or even for her handling of her emails, with the same intensity and vigor as they are doing with Trump, that they couldn't have found things for which to prosecute and convict her (or just about any other powerful, successful person)? If Trump is the standard for bad rather than good or usual, then we might as well bring down the whole Washington and local government establishments. And most other highly successful and powerful people.