Wow - FT Hood

FT Hood and PC:

Mark Steyn has a remarkable piece outlining just how extremely open the FT Hood jihadist was about his intentions. As the cowboy Charlie Waite says in Open Range, a man will often tell you the evil he means to do. It's amazing to read just how often, and how loudly, this particular man said it -- in the US Army -- with no one to stop him.

Aside from that, though, there's another thing I hadn't known.

...an opposition MP mused on whether it wouldn’t have been better to prohibit the publication of Mein Kampf.

“That analysis sounds as if it ought to be right,” I replied. “But the problem with it is that the Weimar Republic—Germany for the 12 years before the Nazi party came to power—had its own version of Section 13 and equivalent laws. It was very much a kind of proto-Canada in its hate speech laws. The Nazi party had 200 prosecutions brought against it for anti-Semitic speech. At one point the state of Bavaria issued an order banning Hitler from giving public speeches.”

I had no idea that was the case. The history as I inherited it from various teachers was that the Nazis got away with it because people were angry, and looking for a scapegoat. That there was sustained opposition on the point, with the force of the law, was never related.

Of course the only effective opposition to the Nazis came not from the law; the law failed to bind them, but was ready enough to serve them when they became the ruling party. No, the opposition that stopped them came from men: Russians, Americans, and the Brits.

And on the subject of Brits who fought the Nazis, and have no use for political correctness, this piece:

Curious about his grandmother's generation and what they did in the war, he decided three years ago to send letters to local newspapers across the country asking for those who lived through the war to write to him with their experiences.

He rounded off his request with this question: 'Are you happy with how your country has turned out? What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st-century Britain?'

What is extraordinary about the 150 replies he received, which he has now published as a book, is their vehement insistence that those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war would now be turning in their graves.

There is the occasional bright spot - one veteran describes Britain as 'still the best country in the world' - but the overall tone is one of profound disillusionment.

'I sing no song for the once-proud country that spawned me,' wrote a sailor who fought the Japanese in the Far East, 'and I wonder why I ever tried.'

'My patriotism has gone out of the window,' said another ex-serviceman.

In the Mail this week, Gordon Brown wrote about 'our debt of dignity to the war generation'.

But the truth that emerges from these letters is that the survivors of that war generation have nothing but contempt for his government.

They feel, in a word that leaps out time and time again, 'betrayed'.

Mark that down, if you're keeping score.