Thinking broadly

Appreciate viewers feed back on the following discussion

Please think a bit

Here is a letter published in The Star Ledger, New Jersey, issue dated 03/07/2007
“He, at least, has left us a legacy under which President were these major programs achieved? 1) Supplemental Safety and Security income; 2) Indexing of Social Security for inflation; 3) the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; 4) the Philadelphia Plan, the first significant affirmative action program; 5) the first large-scale racial integration of schools in the South; 6) the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; 7) the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Office of Minority Business Enterprise; 9) strategic arms limitation talks, which led to the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; 10) the Environmental Protection Agency? (The National Cancer Act—1971, The Endangered Species Act—1973 were also passed during his tenure---V.S.M.)

This man---a Republican--- rather than invade a huge, dangerous Communist adversary, in 1972 visited China and normalized relations. Today, China is an essential U.S. trade partner and buys up much of our federal debt; and the opening also led to thawing of relations with the equally dangerous Soviet Union.

The answer is Richard Nixon. Here was a man with enormous flaws that led to disgrace and resignation. Despite the negative aspects of Nixon’s public life, he left us an impressive legacy of achievements that endure to this day;. I wonder, after two terms, what the legacy of the

1. ---Kal Wagenheim, Milburn”

Richard Nixon is painted as the ugliest politician, and only that impression remains in the minds of people. Sure, his plot against the Democratic Party was a political thuggery. What is the State being accused of now-a days in the U.S.? Is it not that it is invading the privacy of all individuals and institutions in the country? On the background of this charge consider the charge against Nixon. He did not steal people’s money or hurt them in any way. Was it false that he established good relations with China and the Soviet Union? In both those countries he earned a lot of goodwill and he was treated there with great honor. Were all those achievements listed by the correspondent cited not true?

In The Economist dated March 27th, 2010 under the column---Economics focus –Tricky Dick and the dollar, with the sub-heading ---Does Nixon have anything to teach Barack Obama
about economic policy? the following is written

“:The “Nixon effect” is not given to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal, his bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war or his audacious visit to Communist China. It refers instead to a bundle of economic policies unveiled to an for 90 days to break inflation, ended the convertibility of dollars into gold, and slapped a “surcharge” or tariff of 10% on imports.

“Nixon is not usually a source of inspiration for left-leaning pundits such as Paul Krugman of the New York Times. But like 130 Congressmen, who this month signed a letter to Timothy
Geithner, American treasury secretary he is calling on the White House to emulate Nixon and impose a “surcharge” on imports from China. The tariff is supposed to force China to strengthen its currency, the yuan, against the dollar, just as Nixon’s surcharge prompted America’s trading partners to renegotiate their exchange rates four months later.”
All this is not to defend Nixon but only to point out that we should take a wider view without overlooking the dark spots in any way. (As an Indian I have little liking for him. His absurd prejudice against India was too obvious. His behavior during the Bangladesh War was atrocious)

Next we come to Mussolini. Here is an extract from an article published in Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad, in the issue dated October 4, 2003

“Truth about Mussolini

By PAOLO GUZZA

“History, after all, is written by the victors, and if such a thing as a victor existed in Italy in 1945, it was the Left. The official history obliges Italians to regard German National Socialism and Italian fascism as one and the same, so that all crimes committed by the Nazis were also committed by the Fascists, especially the biggest crime of all---the Holocaust. This is simply false. It is true that of all the crimes committed by the Fascists the passing of race
laws in 1938 was the filthiest. -----No Jews were deported to the Nazi death camps until after the fall of Mussolini in July 1943. The Jews deported thereafter –8,000out of a total of 50,000---were arrested on the orders of the Germans, not the Italians. In the Italian-occupied south-east of France, the Italians saved thousands of Jews from arrest and deportation by the all-too-willing French.
“Nor was the military alliance between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy the inevitable consequence of Mussolini’s political creed. Only last week an extraordinary document, discovered in Vatican archives, came to light. It reveals that in April 1938, one month after the Anchluss, which gave Germany a border with Italy, Mussolini urged the Pope to excommunicate Hitler. This suggests that Mussolini’s main motive for fighting on Germany’s
side was fear of Hitler than greed for territory. In two decades that Mussolini was in power before the Second World War, his regime condemned 42 people to death, of whom fewer than half were executed, and murdered perhaps half a dozen. So in fact what Berlusconi ( ex- Prime Minister of Italy---V.S.M.) said about Mussolini being a benign dictator is more or less correct, at least when compared with other dictators of the time.

“Berlusconi is not an apologist for Mussolini, any more than I am, and without a shadow of doubt he is anti-fascist, just as I am. He simply told the truth about Mussolini. But in Italy that is strictly forbidden---hence the howls of protest. For the truth contradicts the version of events still fed to the Italian people---a version that remains trapped in the ideological, quasi-religious straightjacket imposed at the end of the Second World War. In Italy, historical
truth---which elsewhere in the West is subject to continuous renewal and revision---remains embalmed like Lenin in his mausoleum. To preserve it requires that we say, we write and
we teach that Fascism and Mussolini were uniquely bloody and murderous. What is often forgotten is that, unlike Hitler, Mussolini was the leader of the revolutionary Left and Fascism was socialist and Jacobian in origin. Lenin considered Mussolini the only genuine revolutionary. The Fascist Party like the Communist Party----was born in Italy out of the numerous schisms within the Socialist party and the impotence of the democratic system.
(Spectator)”

Now let us turn left( i.e., to the Left) and think of the Communist dictators who were supposed to be quite opposite to their Fascist counterparts. But truth is sometimes too blunt
and glaring to be overlooked lightly. As I quoted from a premier daily of India, The Hindu, in my book, ‘Fight or Flight, that is the question,’ it was Stalin’s Russia that was said to be responsible for 62 million civilian deaths, followed by Mao’s China which claimed 35 million deaths. (According to another estimate, Mao’s China’s death count was equal to that of the Soviet Union.) Hitler’s Nazi Germany, contrary to popular belief, occupied only the third place with a death-count of 21 million.

But this is not the whole truth, While Stalin’s ruthless ways cannot be contradicted, there was also something to say in his favor. Neither Marx, nor Lenin gave any practical guidelines
for the building up of a socialist society. It was Stalin who planned and built the Soviet Union and made Russia a world power.

It was again Stalin’s Russia that put a brake to the juggernaut of Nazi war machine and dealt a blow that half incapacitated it. That was why the Western leaders, Churchill and Roosevelt
welcomed Stalin to join them in the fight against the common enemy.

As for Mao, it was he that forged China into a united and powerful nation. Sun Yet Sen was considered the father of the nation, but China was not yet sufficiently integrated and was still
too weak to resist foreign aggression. It was only under Mao Zedong that China became one powerful nation, but as soon as he assumed absolute power, Mao gave reign to his whimsical
ideas, and, as the dictum says, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”, he almost destroyed the very nation he had built up. with his crazy experiment, the Cultural Revolution

We have to certainly note the achievements of Stalin and Mao, but we have also to note, more particularly, that the crimes committed by them far outweigh their achievements. (Hitler had no achievements at all to be shown in his favor.) Here a shocking truth comes out. The Communists and other Leftists of that kind do not utter a single word about the gross crimes against humanity of these two. From their point of view, it is as if Mao and Stalin were the greatest benefactors of mankind. In China Mao is still worshipped as the ‘Father of Modern China’ (It is Deng Xiao Ping who deserves that title, not Mao.).Apart from America
and Western Europe people in the rest of the world =the vast majority do not know about the huge crimes committed by Marxists in power. So the Communists go on repeating their
slogans and claims.

Persons who think broadly have a balance in their attitudes, actions and speeches. We can distinguish not only between the good, the bad and the ugly but also between the degrees of goodness, badness and ugliness. It doesn’t mean that they shirk from action. They know what action is necessary. When there are several such people they add to the fund of sanity in society

 

However the context of the broad thinking is imperative - The means justifies the cause is a poor argument in any situation. For example, Mao did most of his killing during the great leap forward. This was not about taking China to a new level, this was about an aging man wanting to maintain power. In Stalin's care, some subversive elements needed to be removed, many of the deaths he signed of where based on spite and paranoia. Then the question becomes, are those deaths worth dragging an open sewer of a country into the space age in 40 years.

 

I too agree that the end should justify the means, not otherwise.
In the early beginning of the 19th century Germany was a highly advanced country educationally as well as technologically. There was a prejudice against the Jews There. The same was prevalent in the whole of Europe and still persists. Hitler excited that prejudice sky high. A few independent people flood to other countries. The world reaped the consequences. Ukraine has joined the western democratic countries. Democracy means that the Russian minorities too can enjoy it to freedom. But Putin is exciting them. In Russia supporting Putin is deemed considered a sign of patriotism. That’s why I say I feel there is need for broad minded people.