Here is a link to a transcript of Ayn Rand's HUAC testimony in which she discussed "Song of Russia":
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand%27s_testimony_before_the_House_ of_Representatives_Committee_on_Un-American_Activities
John Link
Very interesting. I guess I have to disagree with Rand. Romanticizing the Russian people is not the same thing as romanticizing the Soviet government. The Russian people did and do have a culture and people worth saving.
To me, the film dramatizes the horror of the Nazi invasion very well. To decide to destroy your own country rather than surrendering is something we have never had to face.
More selfishly, getting the American public's support for aid to the Soviet's fight against the Nazis was an essential part of our indirect war effort. The lend-lease aid to Russia, started long before we were actually directly fighting, probably helped the Soviets turn the tide in late 1941, when the Nazis were at the gates of Moscow. There is no question that supporting the Russians helped save American lives.
US aid helped the Soviet Union or USSR not Russia. This aid helped keep in power a mass murdering tyrant known as Joseph Stalin. The soviet communists were worse than the nazis - they were busy killing millions of people before Adolf Hitler came to power, millions more when he was in power and even millions more after the war. Propaganda rubbish like SONG OF RUSSIA deliberately ignores the fact that before the nazi-soviet war broke out the USSR invaded Poland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Romania in 1939-40. The Soviet Union was neither "peace loving" or "neutral".
http://www.holodomor.org.uk
http://www.katyn.org.au
Do you believe Hitler would have ceased his relentless murdering had he not have been defeated??
Stalin was a murderous tyrant, but so was Hitler.
Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people. Heinrich Heine
Agreed. And, while this hardly excuses Stalin's actions, his purges were mostly Russians, his own people. That is horrible enough, but Hitler went to the trouble of going to other countries to kill people or to import people into Poland and Germany and kill them there. While Stalin's motives seem more like paranoia and self-preservation, Hitler's ambitions were far more grandiose. He had to be stopped. Thank goodness he was not able to fulfill them.
shareHitler's ambitions were far more grandiose. Thank goodness he was not able to fulfill them.
Hilarious stuff. As the linked transcript attests, she absolutely hated the fact that Commies were shown smiling in this picture. The nerve of the filmmaker!
shareAyn Rand is an immature idiot and the fact that got her to view and analyze the picture shows how ridiculous HUAC is.
And regardless of what the USSR did or didn't do, this film was made to help the war effort against Nazism.
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Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
And I hate Pro-War propaganda, even when the enemy is Nazism.
"When the chips are down... these Civilized people... will Eat each Other"
When the enemy is Nazism or the Japanese empire, it is necessary. I do not mind wartime propaganda when it doesn't resort to racism as the US propaganda (especially regarding Japan) often did. It becomes ironic fighting against racist regimes when you practice racism.
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Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
I do not believe we should have been involved in that War either. It is well proven that FDR provoked the Japanese into attacking Pear Harbor.
"When the chips are down... these Civilized people... will Eat each Other"
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Please go off and enjoy some pictures of the Holocaust then...
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Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
I don't let people use that argument to Justify Iraq.
And I could say the same thing about picture of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sorry but your not gonna convince me the allies had any moral high ground, it was Truman not Hitler who committed twice the single greatest War Crime ever committed in human history.
I'm tired of Liberals who are rightfully morally outraged by Irag and Vietnam and Korea, but think WWII and the Civil War where completely acceptable.
The vast majority of War sin Human history have been unjust wars. There are in my view only ever 2 just reasons to go to War with a Foreign Country. Either their invading you, Not just one lucky attack they couldn't possibly repeat like Pearl Harbor, actually invading you. Or their holding Citizens of your country Hostage. The latter can still often be resolved Peacefully.
Besides that, a Rebellion against an oppressive Government is just, why I support the American Revolution.
"When the chips are down... these Civilized people... will Eat each Other"
''I don't let people use that argument to Justify Iraq.''
Iraq was a different situation because the ba'athist party of Iraq were not actually like the Nazi party of Germany, either. The nearest thing was the war with Kurdish rebels, which did lead to chemical warfare (common in the Middle-East at the time, unfortunately, hence the use in the Iran-Iraq war too) being used against the Kurds. However, this was not an act of racial genocide as some Kurds did hold seats in the Iraqi government.
''I'm tired of Liberals who are rightfully morally outraged by Irag and Vietnam and Korea, but think WWII and the Civil War where completely acceptable.''
Is this addressed to me? You should know by now that I am not a liberal. I am not a pacifist either. I think wars against fascism should be fought, which is why I believe a war with Franco's Spain should have occurred at some point (hard after the destruction of WWII). I think some wars just should be fought and have justifications; no real justifications could be found for Iraq, Korea and Vietnam. Afghanistan did have some justification.
The Civil War was a tragic loss of life, but the USA of the time couldn't really have let the slave states succeed from the Union. Blame for that war can easily be pushed onto the Confederacy and, of course, the Civil War did help end slavery. Or do you support slavery now?
''Besides that, a Rebellion against an oppressive Government is just, why I support the American Revolution.''
I'd agree with that, however, there is an irony in your views. It is OK for American Patriots to fight against the UK, but not against aggressive slave states. The UK had a monarchy and didn't give enough voting rights to the US colonies (though it didn't to Northern England either), but the UK was a lot freer than most countries of the era and ironically the freedoms in the UK inspired American and French revolutionaries struggles for more freedoms. There is a reason why France and America chose Red, White and Blue flag; it was already the colour of European liberalism due to much of the progressed that had already been achieved in the UK.
And, of course, the American revolutionaries, the Patriots, likewise influenced the Vietnamese struggle for freedom against France, Japan and the USA-backed South Vietnamese. Ho Chi Minh was a big fan of the American Revolutionaries, despite being a socialist, and he actually sought alliances with the USA before the Vietnamese war. The Vietnamese Declaration of Independence directly quotes the American declaration. The fact that the USA decided to support French imperialism and pro-French puppets, and also act against many revolutions around the world, is a sad point of US history and also an insult to the legacy of George Washington, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams etc. who I am sure we agree are great men for their times.
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Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Simple "Nazis are Evil" doesn't justify the war. The Allies where equally Evil, it was Truman not Hitler who Twice committed the single greatest War Crime in history.
They absolutely should have let them Succeed, and then offered Asylum to all runway slaves. If Lincoln really cared about Freeing Slaves that what he'd have done. Slavery was inevitably going to and anyway.
The slave states where not Aggressive, they had no intend to invading the North and forcing Slavery on us. They technically fired the first shot yes, because the north had a Base on their Territory.
The principles behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution include that a state's right to rule cam from the Consent of the Governed, if the Governed no longer consent they have the right to leave.
"When the chips are down... these Civilized people... will Eat each Other"
''Simple "Nazis are Evil" doesn't justify the war.''
Ignoring that the Nazis are evil (which I do not remember saying...though they are pretty much card-carrying evil), the fact still remains that whole ethnic groups were being exterminated in Germany and German occupied regions simply because they didn't really fit the Nazi's view of ethnic purity.
I have often attacked Truman and the bombings of Japan on these boards - and especially pointed out the hypocrisy of the US trying to stop other countries developing nuclear weapons - however, it is hard to say what was the ''single greatest War Crime in history'' because you can measure using different criteria. I agree that the bombings of Japan were the double greated war crimes in the war, but you also had the extermination order against Slavs (especially Russians), Jews of any ethnicity, Romani etc. and things like the Rape of Nanking, which involved atrocities like beheading contests and Japanese soldiers forcing Chinese peasants to commit rapes at gunpoint. You also had Nana-san-ichi butai (Unit 731) and their live vivisections, and Josef Menegele's torture of children for ''progression'' in the field of heredity research.
And if the Union did let them secede, you'd still have thousands of slaves that wouldn't have been able to escape. Offering asylum to any that did, doesn't change the fact that thousands of HUMAN BEINGS would be kept as little more than animals and bred by their masters to produce more slaves. There is nothing more evil than chattel slavery. And Lincoln did free the slaves, so your point is moot. He didn't as soon as one would have liked, but that was always his goal and one of the main reasons why many southern states decided to succeed.
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Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
There was systematic Eugenics in American and England to. The full blown Death Camp extermination didn't being until the War was effectively over. Pat Buchanan's book on WWII is a very interesting analysis, though I don't agree with Pat on everything.
Slavery was inevitably going to end, ending it a few decades sooner was not worth the Thousands who died and the growth of Federal Government power.
Ending Slavery was no the reason the War was Fought for the North. No, I'm not one of those people claiming it had nothing to do with Slavery, the South Seceded because they Paranoid and thought Lincoln was gonna do something he was never gonna do.
There where many types of Abolitionists the ones that had actual Political Power where the eons who wanted Blacks out of the Country all together.
"When the chips are down... these Civilized people... will Eat each Other"
Actually full scale eugenic projects never really took hold in the UK (which you mean as England had/has no local government), but it is true that the US and many countries did (in fact it was mostly a French invention) but none of these eugenics projects, vile as they are, matched those of Nazi Germany.
Yes, I'd agree with that. Slavery would have ended inevitably, but that doesn't mean that slaves should have had to suffer even a day longer due to the inaction of the Union. The Union was perfectly right to go to war with the slave states and their supporters.
Ending slavery was not the only reason, no. That we can agree on, but it was one of the reasons for the war and one of the reasons the slave states decided to secede. However, Lincoln was always going to end slavery and it is evidenced by notes in his diary letters and the fact that the first party he joined was an abolitionist party and abolition was often his platform in politics. Whatever one may think of him, it is unfair to claim that he was never going to end slavery when he clearly was going to.
I do not agree with given the slaves a country in Africa either - firstly the Liberian elites often acted much like the Southern elites and oppressed the natives of the area, thirdly the USA should have been for all colours and creeds. However, given them freedom to build a country in Africa is better than leaving them in slavery.
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Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
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