From: Stirling Westrup (sti@cam.org)
Date: Tue Feb 22 2000 - 08:42:08 MST
Billy Brown wrote:
> Stirling Westrup wrote:
> > 3) An enemy is someone you don't understand. Once you know an "enemy's"
> > motivations, their loves, their hates, their demons and their hopes,
> > they are an ally. You may not like them, and they may be trying to harm
> > you, but once you understand them, you can turn their ill will to your
> > own benefit. You may even discover that you can help them, and turn an
> > enemy into a friend.
>
> If I'm a Jew in Nazi Germany, the Nazis are my enemies. No amount of
> tolerance or understanding on my part will change the fact that they want
> to kill me, and nothing I do is going to magically turn their genocide into
> a good thing.
You deserve a carefully thought out answer to your question, but I'm
afraid that I am not in any emotional state to debate it at the moment.
I'll simply point out that waiting until the 10 km asteroid is entering
the atmosphere has left it a bit late to worry about deflecting it. By the
same token, trying to make friends with the gun-toting man on your
doorstep is unlikely to work. The trick is to have moved to disarm the
situation before it ever got that far. Unfortunately, no one in Nazi
Germany did.
--
Stirling Westrup | Use of the Internet by this poster
sti@cam.org | is not to be construed as a tacit
| endorsement of Western Technological
| Civilization or its appurtenances.
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