Paramount Theatre
Seediness, Sleaze, Crackpots, and a Painfully Simplistic View of World War II – All Together Again!
RECEIVED Wed., June 8, 2005
Dear Editor,
My last letter concerning the world peace movement being a causal factor in World War II being such a bloodbath was labeled a "simplistic view of history," and whether wars can also have unintended consequences [“Postmarks Online,” June 6]. Wars certainly do. History is replete with them. But the effects of the peace movement of the 1930s has been well documented and commented upon by numerous serious historians. One of the most notable was the late Telford Taylor, who prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremburg, fought against the right-wing witch hunts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and wrote extensively about World War II and its causes. I would certainly place his opinions well above those of a crackpot editor of a weekly newspaper in Austin, Texas. Or is that also a simplistic view of things? I'm reminded once again that we no longer have any journalists in this country. All we have are reporters, with all the seediness and sleaze one normally associates with that word.
My last letter concerning the world peace movement being a causal factor in World War II being such a bloodbath was labeled a "simplistic view of history," and whether wars can also have unintended consequences [“Postmarks Online,” June 6]. Wars certainly do. History is replete with them. But the effects of the peace movement of the 1930s has been well documented and commented upon by numerous serious historians. One of the most notable was the late Telford Taylor, who prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremburg, fought against the right-wing witch hunts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and wrote extensively about World War II and its causes. I would certainly place his opinions well above those of a crackpot editor of a weekly newspaper in Austin, Texas. Or is that also a simplistic view of things? I'm reminded once again that we no longer have any journalists in this country. All we have are reporters, with all the seediness and sleaze one normally associates with that word.
Scott Sexton
[Crackpot editor responds: Thank You, I accept all compliments. I must point out that citing the Thirties peace movement as one of many, many factors that led to World War II and the holocaust, then privileging it over many others to make the disconnected point, "So the numbers in the peace movement will remain small right up until people forget what the last great peace movement brought us. War must always be the absolute last option. But taking that option completely off the table is naïveté run riot." Arguing that: a peace movement was wrong and therefore war is sometimes necessary is a triumph of the will over any logic. By the way, the last great peace movement was against the Vietnam War, and though the New Right is rhetorically refighting that war and finding it right, necessary, and just, it was none of those.]