CBS says it's OK to "punch a Nazi"

[Dill]

(04-18-2019, 12:37 AM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: So I have to share a little history with some folks on here. I thought it was common knowledge. But apparently not. This may shock some of you.

The ones we as Americans call the "greatest generation" actually killed nazis. Yep. Its true. True patriots. American heroes. I know this is probably stunning. But they took it even further than punching nazis in the face. They actually killed them. They knew dangerous dumb ass bullshit that wasn't right was horseshit and did what had to be done. They didn't patty cake around like little cowards. They fought evil. Like true righteous people do.

Yes, I have heard that the U.S. fought Nazis.  It was somewhere in Europe, and there is a movie all about it starring Tom Hanks.  While watching the movie I also noticed there were no black soldiers "fighting evil" in any of the units I saw.  Not like the Iraq War movies we see nowadays.

I saw lines of German prisoners in that Tom Hanks movie too. No one was killing them, even though many were Nazis.  I think it is because, by international law, it is permissible for U.S. soldiers to kill enemy soldiers who take up arms against them in a declared war, Nazis or not. But once they surrender, their universal human rights kick back in and they are not to be killed, tortured, starved or otherwise mistreated, Nazis or not. Even in movies--if you want to present the U.S. as a model of international law.

There may be disagreement over why that big war against the Nazis was actually fought.  Some Americans before the war, who coined the slogan "Make America Great Again," wanted to fight on the German side.  Some thought Nazis and their allies left us no choice (I mean, they did declare war on us). We had to fight them there or here, regardless of their beliefs, so better there. Still others thought fascism represented a form of government quite at odds with American ideals of democracy and rule of law. By 1942 at least, that "rule of law" part meant not killing, arresting, or otherwise harming people whose whose publicly affirmed beliefs the majority found odious--even if they were intentionally directing offensive speech towards others.   Nowadays people who aren't Nazis prefer to say the U.S. went to war to defeat fascism. And "Evil." Which was all over there and not in the segregated U.S.

So it is true that the "greatest generation" took it further than punching Nazis, but it is not clear at all that that WAR, which most of us know from movies and books, offers a good and clear precedent for randomly punching Nazis in the peaceful streets of America today.  Some part of the rationale FOR the war, which was offered AFTER the war in places like Nuremberg, may be gradually disappearing from public memory.