Only days ago, after asserting that “slavery was a necessary evil,” Tom Cotton was defending himself of against charges of being racist. Now, the Arkansas senator has found himself embroiled in yet another controversy after telling The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that “the Holocaust was also a necessary evil.” Appearing earlier today on the Fox New Channel’s morning show Fox and Friends, Cotton justified his remarks, arguing that “absent the Holocaust, Israel would not be a country today.”

27 thoughts on “Thanks, Hitler

  1. Some people’s inclination and ability to keep digging when they find themselves in a deep hole is, in a perverse way, impressive. The complete lack of self-awareness is astounding.

    1. Yeah even Stephen Miller figured out that no one wants to look at his face (and quit showing it in public).

  2. of course, Cotton still called slavery and the Holocaust evil. By definition, “necessary evil” is still evil. But that’s splitting hairs. Meanwhile, has anyone bothered to actually refute Cotton’s assertion?

    Slavery has existed in virtually every complex society in history, and the Western world’s contribution is to eradicate it, though it took longer than most preferred. Of course, slavery is still practiced in other parts of the world.

    As to the other issue, when Britain gained control over Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, one goal was to restore it as a Jewish state. Note that this was almost two decades before the Holocaust. I’m sure the facts are more complex than that, but I don’t see how Cotton is right on this point.

    I was also not aware that Tom Cotton was representative of all Republicans. Did I miss that memo?

    1. A) See what I meant about being au courant with modern conservative values? Thanks for proving my point, “no one”.

      B) So, how evil is a “necessary” evil? If you feel it was necessary, you feel it was a price well worth paying. For example, I feel Tom Cotton is evil, but he is worth it because he exposes the rottenness of the modern right. (As you do in your small way, “no one”!) So you feel the US continuing slavery long after the rest of the first world abandoned it and the Holocaust were, on the whole good things?

      C) Where are the Republicans who are denouncing Tom Cotton for what he said? You sure aren’t one of them. How many are there? If the number is negligible, than what he says apparently IS representative of Republicans.

      1. Amazing that people like “no one” exist in a supposedly civilized country…

        1. Oh, I think they exist in every country, Tanner. And they are riding high in many places now. Many people have found profit in fanning the flames of hate. Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and similar folk have been at it for 35 years or so. And this has led to many people like “no one”, who for some reason crave this stuff.

          I don’t really know why it has reached a crescendo now, any more than I know why revolutions broke out in many places in Europe in the same year, 1848. I blame a constant diet of lies, but what can be done about that? People like “no one” simply deny all truth they dislike, and believe the hate-filled lies they love.

      2. Either I wasn’t clear or Roger misread me. I’ll assume the former. Most of my previous post was my attempt to refute Tom Cotton’s statement. (“I don’t see how Cotton is right on this point” should have made that clear, but maybe only to me.)

        So to be clear, I believe Tom Cotton is wrong when he calls slavery and the Holocaust “necessary evils.” Specifically, I disagree with the first of those two words.

        1. The core hypocrisy of Cotton is that he can casually write off atrocities to others as “necessary evils” but would scream bloody murder at the slightest inconvenience to his “rights”.

        2. “no one”, you were talking about how no one (that is why I put your name in quotes) was actually refuting Tom Cotton’s assertions. You then went on to discuss his points as if they were reasonable debating points. They are not, on the face of them. They are justifications of slavery and the Holocaust. Those things were only justifiable if you were on the wrong side of history, or deeply committed to complete evil.

          Being reasonable regarding the falsehoods of people like Trump, Cotton, and Barr makes you what Stalin used to call “a useful idiot”. Is that what you want to be?

    2. 1.How does existence of slavery show that it was ‘necessary’? And specifically how does that show it in the context of Cotton’s comment?

      2.Britain made promises to the Jewish People after World War I with the Balfour Declaration (for a homeland in Palestine, but not necessarily a nation) but they also made promises to the Arabs in Palestine both before and after World War I.

      Hard to know what exactly Britain was up to but most likely they were trying to sew confusion because they wanted to keep Palestine and all their other territories in that area for themself.

      1. 1.There are problems of stepping on people’s toes on both ‘sides’ with regards to slavery. Those on the left decry slavery (obviously) but they also argue that it was economically successful (‘the U.S economy was built on the backs of slaves!’)

        Well, it really wasn’t. Slavery is a terrible for an economy: it allowed only for development of industries where slaves could be expected to work (labor intensive and less complicated jobs.) Very few white immigrants from Europe during the pre Civil War period located in the South (about 1/8 of European immigrants) because they generally felt they could not compete with slave labor.

        There were attempts at other industrial development like forestry using slaves, but they were very small attempts.

        This left the U.S South dependent on a handful of highly boom and bust agricultural commodities (by far the most important being just the single commodity of cotton.)

        The existence of slavery greatly slowed economic development in the slave states and almost certainly left the vast majority of Southerners much poorer than they would have been otherwise.

        My view, and their is considerable evidence to support this, is that the primary purpose of maintaining slavery for the handful of large plantation owners was it enabled them to hold and maintain power in the South. The difficulty of non Southerners moving in and setting up businesses through trying to hire non slave employees blocked counter powerful interests and the Southern nationalism developed around Slavery pre Civil War caused the poor White Southerners to identify with the large plantation owners, even though these large plantation owners were screwing them over.

        In that regards, it’s hard to see that much of anything has changed in the South.

        1. 2.The historical existence of slavery is a different matter. It’s the same reason why The Bible has a code for the proper treatment of slaves rather than simply calling for slavery to be banished: most slaves historically came from defeated armies. Today, those soldiers would probably be taken as prisoners of war, but, back then, the only practical choices were to ‘imprison’ them as slaves or to execute them.

          Putting the soldiers of defeated armies into prisons was cost prohibitive. It’s hardly inexpensive, but the United States has about 3 million prisoners at any time, and it’s generally affordable. For some context, a poor English-person right before the start of the Industrial Revolution, was likely as wealthy in real terms as a middle class Ancient Roman. Ancient Rome was dirt poor despite its military and engineering successes.

          People who generally argue that economic growth just allows people to ‘buy more stuff’ don’t seem to consider that greater wealth provides more options for society.

          When Martin Luther King Jr observed that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice’ I don’t think there is any question this is due to economic growth that has provided people collectively the opportunity to make more moral and ethical choices.

          There was no necessity, evil or otherwise, for the slave states to use slavery as their economic system. It was just pure evil.

          1. In regards to World War II and Hitler, in the immediate context following World War II, I don’t think anybody would argue that the shame of world leaders in not doing more to prevent or limit the Holocaust played a great role in the creation of the state of Israel.

            The problem with calling Hitler a ‘necessary evil’ for this is:

            1.It’s hindsight thinking. There would have been no Israel had the Nazis won World War II.

            2.Most Jews in Europe rejected any notion of the re-creation of an Israeli State for a long time. When Theodor Herzl (“Next year in Jerusalem”) proposed Jews leaving Europe en masse to relocate to Palestine, it was a last resort. Jews had homes in Europe, had communities in Europe and wanted to be considered as part of the Europeans nations they lived in. The same anti-Semitism that allowed for the Holocaust was the same Anti-Semitism that was the only reason European Jews started to move to Palestine in the first place.

          2. “‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice’ I don’t think there is any question this is due to economic growth” …uh, no. Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell. It’s what fueled the change in slavery from “you work without pay” to “you get treated like livestock, you work without pay, and we split up your family”.

          3. First, I’m so thankful it’s not The Moustache. I saw “Friedman” and threw up in my mouth a little. That said, he’s really all over the place, isn’t he? He thinks that somehow if both parents have to work to make the same living that one used to, that’s not regressive. And he thinks the dot-com boom was all titties and beer – so we should have made some really good choices then. Instead we got serious about warming the planet and really bore down on replacing pensions with IRAs. Yes, interesting, I will read the rest, but it doesn’t much support your argument

        2. Thank you, Adam. My attempt was refutation of Cotton was feeble at best, but it got the conversation going. Yours was eloquent and cogently argued. I couldn’t find anything to disagree with.

          I guess Roger would consider you and Scoopy “useful idiots” for wasting time discussing and refuting Cotton instead of merely dismissing him. It’s also possible that I completely missed Roger’s point, as he had missed mine (which I’ve already acknowledged was my fault).

          1. “no one” is right. I went off on his post too quickly. I thought he was attempting some sort of defense of Cotton’s remarks by pointing out that no one had refuted them. I should have read much more carefully than I did. I do not regret attacking Cotton’s remarks, but I do regret insulting “no one”. I do think he should get a new name, though.

      2. I don’t see how you can argue that the Shoah was “necessary” for anything, but I know what Cotton means about slavery.

        I know what he means, but it is an awkward position that ultimately leads to the conclusion that the creation of the United States was itself evil. In order to create a single United States from the 13 OC, it was necessary to incorporate an acceptance of slavery into the bargain. If slavery had been outlawed, there would have been no USA. Constant compromises accepting slavery were then repeatedly “necessary” to hold the union together in the four score and something years between 1776 and Fort Sumter.

        It is America’s original and mortal sin that such a fact is true, but in that sense Cotton has a point. It is fair to argue that the damned great compromise, an acceptance of slavery, was necessary to create the USA. In that sense, slavery was “necessary,” and we all agree it was evil, so …

        —-

        On the other hand …

        To argue that the Holocaust was necessary for the creation of Israel, you must be willing to concede that the existence of Israel (1) could not have happened without genocide and (2) is ultimately, somehow, clearly better than having all those millions of peaceful Jewish people simply living, woven peacefully through the fabric of the countries they had settled and created lives in.

        To make an inappropriate argument of my own, the Jews already had a promised land. It was called Poland. (Yeah, I know I’m being hyperbolic.)

        Moreover, we really don’t know whether Israel would eventually have emerged as a nation even without the Shoah.

        Nor is it reasonable to argue that the holocaust was the necessary solution to the pervasive anti-Semitism in Europe. It seems that it could have been worked out in time, through stops and starts, never really being eliminated, but contained. Even the USA, with all of its prejudices and ignorance, managed to weave Jewish people into the warp and woof of society. We still have plenty of anti-Semitism here, but it did not result in mass isolation or extermination. It created brush fires, not conflagration. It’s just another ongoing challenge. I think that countries like Germany, Poland and Hungary would be much stronger nations if they had followed that path. Especially Poland. And world Jewry would be stronger and better off as well. (And would include some tens of million more souls – originally some six million, times several generations of increases.)

        1. I don’t know about the first part. Northern states still had slavery at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. As far as I know, only Pennsylvania was seriously planning to plan to outlaw slavery in 1776/1777.

          Even at the time of the writing of the Constitution it took the French Revolution to spur sentiments of equality in New York and New Jersey to get them to agree to plan to plan to outlaw slavery.

          Of course, most slaves were in the South and the importation of slaves was outlawed, but most if not all of the original 13 states allowed slavery and it doesn’t seem to have been a big issue for the writing of the Articles of Confederation.

          1. I think Cotton is not unreasonable to argue that slavery was necessary. That’s not the same as arguing that it was good or somehow worthwhile.

            The unspoken question is “Necessary for WHAT?”

            I think the general assertion is true that if any founding documents had insisted on outlawing slavery, there would have been no USA to begin with. In that sense, slavery was necessary to create the country. And there’s no question it was evil, so Cotton is not off base in arguing it was a necessary evil.

            Sadly, that logic leads to the corollary conclusion that the very founding of the USA was, ipso facto, evil.

        2. I’m Jewish and I don’t believe Israel would exist without the holocaust. Just watch the film Exodus (vastly underrated). The British did not want to hand the land to the Jewish people. Thankfully Paul Newman felt differently.

  3. Strictly speaking, is Tom Cotton a necessary evil? Or could we do without him? I guess it is good he is making it clear just where the Republican Party stands these days, so maybe he is a good thing, in his own peculiar way. I hope the necessity for him ends soon, but that no one forgets it.

  4. Two-to-four million dead in the Middle Passage: “A necessary evil”.

    Six million dead in the Holocaust: “A necessary evil.”

    Wear a mask: “Tyranny! Resist the Deep State!”

    1. I am glad to see you are “au courant” with the precepts of modern day conservatism, fwald.

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