Most people only know the first have of Lord Acton’s famous quote:
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority..."
I think that this bullet is one of the easiest to bite. If his experiments were useful, they are the primary inheritance. That's essentially Unit 731 situation.
I think obituaries should focus on the most significant things the subject did intentionally. Thus hypothetical Mengele's focuses on his medical crimes and not on the indirect benefits of his cancer cure.
Fritz Haber should be remembered largely for his work on ammonia for fertilizer and on poison gas as a weapon of war, because he intentionally did both of those things.
An obit of Deng that focuses on his time as the head of China is reasonable because that was the period when he did his most influential actions.
When he initiated DeStalinization Kruschev gave a speech that more or less said "we were all too cowardly to stop it at the time, but we've just got to acknowledge that and move on if we want to change things."
I think you've more or less got to accept that with a person like Deng. Put another way, would you prefer if he didn't attempt reform? If a Maoist hard liner had taken control over him? Could you imagine anyone like Bryan Caplan taking the helm of the party at that time?
This gets back to your obsession with Columbus, etc. Ayn Rand had the balls to admit it was a good thing we killed the natives, took their land, and made better use of it. She stated this unequivocally.
'Don't speak Ill of the dead' is a common aphorism today and has been common (or at least existed) for thousands of years.
I don't have much issue with it either way, but criticism of the living seems more pragmatic.
“Great men are almost always bad men.”
Most people only know the first have of Lord Acton’s famous quote:
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority..."
I think that this bullet is one of the easiest to bite. If his experiments were useful, they are the primary inheritance. That's essentially Unit 731 situation.
Silliness; you have nothing better to do with your time?
I think obituaries should focus on the most significant things the subject did intentionally. Thus hypothetical Mengele's focuses on his medical crimes and not on the indirect benefits of his cancer cure.
Fritz Haber should be remembered largely for his work on ammonia for fertilizer and on poison gas as a weapon of war, because he intentionally did both of those things.
An obit of Deng that focuses on his time as the head of China is reasonable because that was the period when he did his most influential actions.
When he initiated DeStalinization Kruschev gave a speech that more or less said "we were all too cowardly to stop it at the time, but we've just got to acknowledge that and move on if we want to change things."
I think you've more or less got to accept that with a person like Deng. Put another way, would you prefer if he didn't attempt reform? If a Maoist hard liner had taken control over him? Could you imagine anyone like Bryan Caplan taking the helm of the party at that time?
This gets back to your obsession with Columbus, etc. Ayn Rand had the balls to admit it was a good thing we killed the natives, took their land, and made better use of it. She stated this unequivocally.
Mengele's bad rep is ENTIRELY fabricated.
Mistaken tense in title. It should be "What If Mengele Had Cured Cancer."