Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Ron Kirkland, GOP Hopeful in TN, is Vile

Ron Kirkland, a hopeful GOP candidate for the US House of Representatives, is a vile man, because he is saying vile things.

Kirkland suggests that in Viet Nam--where he served--"gays were taken care of," and he didn't mean or insinuate in a good way.

This is a vile statement from a vile man.

From huffingtonpost.com:

Kirkland's candid remarks came at a Tea Party forum last week when the GOP hopeful criticized the Obama administration's support for overturning the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

Conservative House candidate Randy Smith offered a similar reaction to the measure at the event when he declared he "wouldn't want to share a shower with a homosexual."

In today's NYT.com, there is an essay by Roger Cohen about Nazi Germany, and a couple who sent postcards out to the world to let the world know about the vileness of the Nazis. The couple are soon caught and decapitated, but not before they let the world know what Hitler was doing.

I found Cohen incredibly insightful in this essay, writing about the vileness of Nazi Germany. At one point, the person who sent out the postcards, Otto Quangel, has been captured. What drives him? From the article:

Quangel tries to explain: “If one man sees he has no option but to fight, then he will fight, whether he has others on his side or not.”

Escherich (a Nazi guard), whose Gestapo boss likes to humiliate him, seems unmoved — until he sees the Obergruppenführer and other officers torturing Quangel by smashing their schnapps glasses on his head and something snaps. He puts a pistol to his head with the parting words: “I’m your only disciple, Otto Quangel.”

That may be literally so. The postcards were almost all handed in to the police by terrorized Berliners. But humanity is Quangel’s disciple. For the “preposterous comedy” continues here and there and terror still poses the existential dilemma: decency and its (mortal) dangers or conformity and its comforts?

Quoting Hannah Arendt, Cohen writes: As Hannah Arendt once observed: “Under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not. ... Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.”

One of the lessons of Nazi Germany is that there were too many people who were compliant with terror. That is still true today.

Click here for the essay.

I am a human being who is not being quiet about the vileness of Kirkland.

What Kirkland and others say is vile. It must stop. Now.

Pace!

B

2 comments:

manxxman said...

I find it interesting that the "Tea Party" wants government out of "it's business".....and yet they seem to want to have their proverbial "cake and eat it to"......pandering to wing nuts such as Kirkland and his kind......

Brett Webb-Mitchell said...

It takes courage to speak up against such vileness. And courage is not something learned necessarily from reading a book, but learning first hand, in the face of the one who is vile.

Thanks for pointing out what is going on within and among some Tea Party enthusiasts.
B