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
You probably haven’t read them but there’s been a rash of articles in the papers arguing that we should stop being beastly to the bankers. All right, there are a few bad apples but they do vital work for the economy. If they relocated to the Cayman Islands, we’d all be living in penury. That’s the gist. It’s a fair point. And it also applies to another all too frequently vilified group: Britain’s criminals. It’s easy to let the unacceptable actions of a few – pulling out toenails to make people hand over pin numbers, gassing guards etc – colour our judgment. But in Britain we have the finest criminals in the world. By liberating vast sums of money that would otherwise lie fallow in banks or under old ladies’ mattresses, they increase demand and help kickstart the recovery. – Simon Hoggart in The Guardian
