Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/05/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]In a message dated 5/20/97 3:40:22 PM, Marc wrote: <<The political topic DID touch me. I am of the heartfelt opinion that worldly success tempts us all and that the capers of such peripheral characters as Speer or Riefenstahl or Von Karajan are excusable however foul the regime they worked for. Of course, as a pure anarchist I find little moral distinction between any variant of Hegelian thought, be it our own system or the Canadian or a pure Marxist regime. Once one has conceded to the State the power to tax or to imprison or to kill, then one has conceded all. Thus, I don't find Riefenstahl's work any more reprehensible on a grand scheme than I do Carl Myrdan's. Art should be judged as art. We all have our price -- if I, as an anarchist, can have served successfully as an Army officer for twenty years, currently hold a license to practice law, and am active both in my local community and in politics, who am I to judge Riefenstahl or any other artist? --Marc>> Marc, I don't know whether this controversy belongs on LUG, but I know our colleagues have all wrestled with the problem of art as amoral. Americans have been tormented with the acts of Ezra Pound during WW II, and TS Eliot before WW II. Dostoyevsky was an avowed anti-semite. Yet he was one of the greatest writers of the 19th century, and dealt with the loss of values brought on by the Enlightenment. My take on this problem is to keep the record complete, and not separate the artist from his or her social and political crimes. They go together. We can censure, but we can't censor. So I always view Riefenstahl's films with censure and read Pound the same way. A Devil, like an asterisk, follows their names. And they will never be free of it. May the Lord protect me. That typographical Devil is a sign of someone who lost his or her soul. Leni is still with us, but I wonder whether her soul is. No one can hide from G-d -- or history -- in the long run. <<Once one has conceded to the State the power to tax or to imprison or to kill, then one has conceded all.>> In a democracy we don't concede anything permanently to the state. We are the state. I serve on juries, advise my political representatives, take part in political life. We control the extent of the state's intrusion into our lives. We concede the state nothing as a right. We keep all rights. The state is our creature, not the reverse. Therefore I don't agree with your contention that we have made a deal with the devil. The devil is us if the state victimizes us or our fellows. Dr. Goldhagen made that point clear in his recent book on Nazi Germany. If the majority of the people of Nazi Germany had wanted out, there would have been no Holocaust or Nazi Germany for long. Nazi Germany was not a democracy, but there is always a rough democracy underlying any human society. When the USSR collapsed it was because that rough democracy SAID NO MORE! That same rough democracy made the identical definitive statement to the Confederacy during our own Civil War. If we learned anything as children of the 20th century it is that we don't write blank checks on our souls to anyone or anything or any institution. If we teach that lesson to our children then the 21 century is one I'd like to live to see and photograph with my M3. Bob R