Let’s celebrate: Adolf Hitler has built a first-rate system of highways–the Autobahn
The ends do not justify the means.
Book News:
The Rape of American Democracy will be carried by Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, CA. It is also now available through Bookshop.org (which works with independent booksellers), through Powell’s Books, and through IngramSpark (by clicking a link below), as well as on Amazon.
Please send me your recommendations for bookstores in your area which I should pitch to get them to carry the book. Write me at jrowles93@gmail.com.
BACKGROUND
1) Camilla Tominey, “Let’s celebrate: Donald Trump is vaccinating the West against the woke mind virus; Whether it’s gender ideology or border control; The president has torn through years of bizarre, divisive groupthink in a matter of weeks,”:The Telegraph, February 7, 2025 (6:10 pm GMT);
How do we judge actions by Donald Trump which are aimed at goals we share, at least in part?
How do we judge the actions of a dictator or would-be dictator and goals accomplished by dictatorial means, even if we share the goals of the actions in whole or in part?
Unless we’ve lost our moral compass, we don’t celebrate the dictatorial actions of a tyrant, or goals achieved by dictatorial means.
Camilla Townley, in the article cited above, falls into the unpardonable trap of praising the acts of a dictator or would-be dictator.
That weakens the case against the dictator, opening the door to justifications for supporting a tyrannical regime. E.g.,”But…he has done good things…”
Like Adolf Hitler, who built the Autobahn in Germany.
One must always judge the achievement of goals by the means employed to secure them.
With Tominey, and many others, we need to go back to democratic basics, and remind them and everyone else of the core tenets of democracy and the rule of law.
Summarily dismissing DEI employees without due process of law is no way to proceed, however much we may disagree with DEI policies.
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James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.
At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recent Books by the Author
James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
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