Saturday, February 02, 2019

Nazi "Ethics"

Nazi educators appropriated the Golden Rule to mean . . . love your ethnic comrades so deeply that you would willingly die for them. In a handbook for Nazi teachers, Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative - "Act only on that maxim which you would wish to become a universal law" - was described as "the only conceivable basis for collective life" because it praised "a spirit of mutual assistance" and condemned egotism. A slogan summed up Nazi morality: "Treat your comrade as you would like him to treat you." From there it was only a short step to the assumption that noncomrades were not human. A Nazi lecturer implicitly exempted Jews when he told pupils, "Treat your fellow humans the way you wish they would treat you."

- From The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Koonz

Execupundit note: Be very wary of any practice that implies a person is not really a person.

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