[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Halk

Interesting... I can now strongly agree and disagree with Moejoe!

While I heartily agree that blindly following what the 'nation' says is, indeed, not a good thing, I have to hope he's joking about not taking up arms.

People who refused to fight in WWII should have been rounded up and put on a boat headed for France. Fighting for your country is a very simple way of explaining what was actually happening.

Adolf Hitler had risen to power at the top of a wave of Populism and Nationalism. (Incidentally the very same type of populism that's going on against bankers, politicians in the UK and B.P. in the US.) It is very easy to select a group of people and blame them for the problems. However... had people not fought against Nazi Germany then they'd simply have been free to create the society they wanted to create. I personally don't think it's acceptable to stand by while my neighbours are dragged out of their houses and executed. Indeed it's fairly likely that my grandparents would have been killed since that generation of both sides of my family was quite involved in the Masons.

Having said all that, it does raise some rather large questions... just exactly is a cause worth dying for, and what isn't? Clearly Nazi Germany had to be stopped. I would hope that most people are sane enough to agree with that. What about removing the heads of oppressive regimes by invasion? A much more grey area. I think it's clear there's a lot of questions to be answered that couldn't possibly be covered in this thread, so I won't continue with that.

Going back to flags though, and Moejoe's gross oversimplification of saluting a flag... I'll attempt to explain it.

The flag is intended to represent the nation. The nation is the collection of people (or collection of families, of communities or collection of towns, cities, etc) who have joined together for a common purpose. There is nothing wrong with that at all. Joining together for a common purpose is exactly the cause of civilisation, and the reason we have language, literature, "extelligence" etc. It all becomes grey again when not everybody agrees on everything. We're straight back to the same issues as the paragraph above! But certainly it's nothing anywhere near as simple as Moejoe puts it.

Interesting that you bring up the (as far as I can see it) only war that has been a true war in modern history. And that was a war in which we were not the oppressors but were the oppressed (along with most of Europe). That was a war in many cases of defence and necessity, not a modern war in which we blindly storm into the countries of other people on the back of lies. Still, saying all that, if you don't want to kill other people, you shouldn't be forced to. There were plenty of conscientious objectors during WWII and those who did not take part (violence is not something that should be bullied into a person, no matter the reason). America itself waited and agonisingly long time and had to be attacked before it offered the citizens of Europe any help, despite the continual pleas of the British and French governments.

As a point of interest the soldiers in each progressive war from WWI onwards have been taught to kill more accurately and efficiently. In WWI the majority of soldiers would purposefully aim high, so as not to kill the enemy (killing is not natural to the human being, not as natural as the arms manufacturers want us to believe). In each successive war, Western training methods advanced to remove this human trait of not wanting to kill, until we come to today, where a modern soldier will in most cases fire on a 'combatant' without a second thought.


Also I sense a hint of that oft used stereotype of the French during WWII when you say 'put on a boat to France.' That stereotype that says the French surrendered without a fight, which is absolute nonsense if you read any history about the conflict and the part the French (as both an occupied territory, an ally and through Vichy as an enemy) played in WWII.

I'll play my simplification card now, if I may, and state my philosophy before bowing out of this thread. It is not a philosophy of country or nation, not of race, creed or religion, but of human beings in the struggle against the forces that would make them less than human beings. I do not salute my philosophy in the mornings and it does not ride at half mast during dark times. It is always there. Light in the darkness. Darkness when there is light. A simple statement by which I live and which allows others to live just as freely.

Always the oppressed, never the oppressor.

Whatever the fight may be, under whichever flag, upon whatever soil, my allegiance is always with those under the thumb, not those who press down from above.