Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
If moral outrage had a face, it would be that of Pierre de Vos. For many years now he has grown fat gnawing and chewing on the corpse of political correctness. Often, his outrage compromises his judgement, certainly his logic, as it has again done in this case. Relying on those poorly reported stories which suggested the DA’s decision was based on an isolated incident, he builds his entire case around the single Majavu story the DA took to the Press Ombudsman. Based on that story, he argues, the DA should have investigated the public representative implicated in it, rather than complain about the journalist. Its failure to do so reveals the party as hypocritical, he says. But does he apply that same logic to the DA’s complaint? Of course not. – Gareth van Onselen, the “DA’s executive director of special projects”, defending the action taken by the DA against Sowetan journalist Anna Majavu
