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 a lunatic in a mental hospital tells us that a voice in his head, or from the ceiling fan, or from a pigeon at his window tells him to cut off the other patients’ heads, we place him under close surveillance and label him a menace to the rest of the hospital. We would do this long before he commits any act to prove his willingness to submit to the imaginary voice. If a man says God told him he would be Chief Justice, or that he thinks God approves of him taking that office, we consider it perfectly socially acceptable – because firstly, many other people labour under similar delusions and secondly because it doesn’t include any promise to do harm. Is there much difference though? Surely a delusion is still a delusion, even if many millions believe it? – Garreth Cliff, writing about Mogoeng Mogoeng’s claim that he received a sign from God to become Chief Justice over at the Daily Maverick
