If you held in your hand the baby Hitler.. what would you do..

[southernleftylady]

If you KNEW FOR 100% that the baby you held in your hands would grow up to kill millions of innocent people..even if you took it and raised it as your own... nothing would change the outcome... what would you do?
Could you kill one innocent baby... to save the lives of millions years later? Could you truly do that?
(saw this on an episode of the twilight zone ;) )

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Love him

Hitler had a miserable, abusive upbringing. Even a little bit of kindness could have turned him from his madness.

--p!

[xultar]

3. My response exactly. You beat me to it.

[w8liftinglady]

8. my son and I had this same discussion the other day...

If Hitler had been raised differently,there would have been no Holocaust.He was severely abused by his father.

[Ian David]

20. Maybe all he needed was art lessons. If he'd been a better painter... n/t

[baldguy]

40. Ever read "The Iron Dream" by Norman Spinrad?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_dream

[Ian David]

53. Never heard of it before, but it sounds interesting. n/t

[Iggo]

130. I read that book when I was a teenager.

My mom saw it on my desk and asked me what it was about. I couldn't explain it right and got in a shitload of trouble for being a "nazi apologist."

[Hamlette]

81. the number one predictor of child abuse is prior child abuse

among foster children. A stat that haunts me. They suspect its because the bar is lowered (it is NOT related to the behavior of the child) although no one is quite sure. If someone raised Hitler knowing what he might become or that his dad had abused him, would he be abused by the "foster parents"? Would make a great experiment.

[Echo In Light]

16. Yes. Monsters usually aren't born as such, but are created by environment

[RainDog]

44. jesus christ!

another bromide?? are you ignorant of the last fifty years of research into the causes of certain illnesses? if someone is schizophrenic, they are the victims of their chemical bonds, not their environments. Same with bipolar people -- families have histories of the illness even if they are raised in diff. environments. heredity is real. dna is real.

if someone is a sociopath, hmmm... that's because Hitler's mom didnt' potty train him correctly??

Bruno Bettelheim, a celebrated Freudian psy. explained autism as the result of a cold and uncaring mother. the environment, he said, was the cause. and of course mothers are the most imp. part of that environment. well, guess what? He was full of shit. And caused unknowable suffering in parents with autistic children.

I am sorry to jump in here, but I just saw the things you wrote in the thread about everything happening for a reason, and if you want to make these ridiculous claims, you can expect someone to call you on them.

your assumptions can cause a lot of harm.

[NashVegas]

48. Environmental Factors Can Affect Chemistry / Hormonal Imbalances

As in adolescent brain development.

[RainDog]

57. so where is your proof that this was the case with Hitler?

and you ignore the FACT that bettelheim was, most assuredly, full of shit.

no doubt environment plays a part in many issues. however, a catch-all explanation is stupid and wrong.

--where is your proof that this is the cause of every act of evil? because I CAN provide proof that such a statement is categorically wrong. therefore, the blanket claim that mental illness or this or that is caused by environment is thus already proven to be incorrect.

the bullshit that passes for truth in this forum is amazing. better to be in the lounge where they know the difference between a farce and false information.

[AlienGirl]

72. So just how much of criminality do you suppose is genetic, then?

What do you do with the genetically criminal, assuming you can determine that their criminality is, indeed, inherent and not the result of environment? Would they be put down at birth and the parents sterilized? The Euthanized in kindergarten lest they pass on their "genetic pollution"?

There may be physiologic factors that play a role in dausing sociopathy (high thresh-hold of arousal, for instance), but these factors can be mitigated by environment, and even maybe channeled into something appropriate--high thresh-hold of arousal can be useful for sky divers as much as for bank robbers--instead of into anti-social behavior.

Besides, Hitler was not a sociopath, he was a narcissist.

Tucker

[Fire Walk With Me]

104. The abused tend to wish to demonstrate what they've endured.

In outrage regarding actions against their integrity and the birthright of love and acceptance. It can be a cry for recognition in people who only know how to use negative attention-getting tactics.

He was harshly abused. Author Alice Miller does some interesting research into the pasts of several despots and finds familial abuse and abusive social mores in each case. The degree that this effected them may possibly be argued, but not it's existence. She says that Hitler's family also endured financial difficulty and social ostracizing; he may have obsessed upon "solving" that problem and transferred it upon his country.

Of course, some merely enjoy causing destruction, such as Bush. (Hitler is reported to have become ill upon witnessing the execution of a prisoner. Bush and friends take pictures and video of torture.) Their sadism and overall agenda of control and domination are slightly different than Hitler's vision of a grander nation. Bush doesn't want a grander nation at all. He merely wants.

[Echo In Light]

125. Calm down. You obviously hurried past my wording: "Usually," meaning, not always

[Name removed]

127. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[debbierlus]

35. Exactly. The original question makes no sense

Baby Hitler became what he did because of his experiences....

If that changed, he would have changed.

[gollygee]

37. I agree 100%

things could have been different. Babies aren't monsters and don't have to grow up to become monsters.

[helderheid]

50. Yes!

:yourock: :hug:

[TheWatcher]

116. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.

Well Done. :)

[lateo]

124. Indeed.

[lumberjack_jeff]

140. Exactly.

There is no such thing as an irrevocably and inherently evil baby.

[zabet]

2. There used to be a song

with this line...
"Slam the child on
the hard concrete.."
:crazy:

[Flatline]

6. My parents sung that song while holding me over concrete alot

and I turned out fine...turned out fine...turned out fine.....:+ :hippie: :crazy: :silly: :freak: :beer: :tinfoilhat: :banghead:

[southernleftylady]

11. lol ok that made me laugh out loud how funny! nt

[zabet]

24. Bwahahaha!!!

Are you related to me?

:silly:

:rofl:

[Flatline]

56. who knows =) n/t

[datasuspect]

9. please tell me what the song is

that line sounds so familiar

[zabet]

23. La dee Da dee

La dee da dee
we like to party
we don't cause trouble
we don't bother nobody

We're just some guys
that are on the mic
and when we rock the mic
we rock the mic rite

I think it is by Slick Rick

[Chovexani]

144. La dee da dee

We like to party. We don't cause trouble, we don't bother nobody.

(That brings back my childhood, man. Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick ftw)

[onehandle]

4. I'd give him back to Barbara Bush and say, "This must be yours." nt

[tom_paine]

7. LOL. Perfect riposte!

:rofl:

[Hatalles]

43. LOL!

:spray:

[CitizenLeft]

114. RRRRRRRRROTFL!

:rofl: :spray: :rofl:

thank you for that!

[Rex_Goodheart]

5. Questions such as that one are nonsensical and pointless

Nobody can see into the future.

[w8liftinglady]

10. I disagree.When I took medical ethics,we had many scenarios like this.

It WAS helpful to talk about these things.

[spoony]

122. There are more than enough realistic hypotheticals in medicine

to waste time on something so banal.

[truth2power]

28. It's not nonsensical. It's a thought experiment. Not meant

to be taken literally. :dilemma:

[southernleftylady]

33. exactly! nt

[alcibiades_mystery]

39. Correct...claims that this is a useful thought experiment are equally stupid

The question is a false problem, and literally makes no sense. Indeed, it makes us stupider, because it asks us to contemplate an absurdity as though it wasn't absurd.

QUESTION: If you saw a Martian flamingo scuba diving through a skyscraper, would you hand it a Canadian loony or sing your alma mater?

That's not a thought experiment. It's just an absurd question.

[John Gauger]

41. Exactly right.

That was very well put. This question is just inane.

[southernleftylady]

45. It was a twilight zone episode I saw and thought it would be an interesting question on here..

didn't know it would call all this "this is stupid" comments ... sorry (off to hide under rock again)

[lumberjack_jeff]

142. The answer strikes to the core of what it means to be a liberal.

Can we be naive? Yes.

Nevertheless, I would be surprised to meet anyone who comes by their liberalism naturally who would respond in any other way.

There are few who would take the abraham approach.

[readmoreoften]

90. To hell with the Canadian loony. I'd hand it a loony Canadian.

And I'd venture to say that anyone who didn't do the same would clearly reveal themselves to be a moral monster.

[Sabriel]

113. I'd keep the Loonie for myself. It's worth more than a $ now. n/t

[Jim__]

12. You can't assume that without Hitler there would not be WWII.

And just a bloody a WWII as there was. The Treaty of Versailles left Germany a mess. Hitler was just one of many Germans fighting against it at the time.

[southernleftylady]

13. I meant the jews nt

[NewJeffCT]

126. Agreed - the person that took Hitler's place could have been worse

for all we know. A few changes in German strategy in 1940 and '41 and the whole war could have gone far differently. Another person might have been slightly more rational and, you know, listened.

[cgrindley]

14. Start his art training early... then bribe his talentless ass into a good Viennese art school (nt)

[Ian David]

15. More imporatantly, would you kill Edith Keeler?

[JVS]

18. hell yeah!

[cgrindley]

27. Harlan Ellison's bizarre assassination of Jane Addams

it made no sense at the time and it makes no sense now.

[pitohui]

99. there's a certain kind of time travel story where if you change anything, you change everything

for some reason, in this genre of story, if you change something in the past, even for the better, then you have changed the entire stream of time and it's always a bad thing because, after all, we in the present are the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Teh Universe so if time and history is changed, and therefore our present is changed, then this can only be bad

it is not a storyline invented by harlan ellison, it's just a standard time travel story plotline you see over and over again when you read old time travel stories

in many ways the time travel story is a very conservative genre, as is the fairy tale, the moral of the story always seems to be, "if you try to fix it, you'll just fuck it up even worse"

a modern example which i actually greatly enjoyed (for that matter i greatly enjoyed the edith keeler tale on star trek) was "the butterfly effect" -- it was just classic, everything the poor feeb did to improve his life made it more and more fucked up

i suppose this sort of thing has its roots in the old greek tradition of fate -- you can run but you can't hide from fate

[misanthrope]

118. There's an innate paradox that makes it impossible**nm

**

[pitohui]

134. well supposedly, it all goes back to the ancient greek's belief in fate

we can't change anything, we can't do anything, we're helpless

time travel stories, while entertaining, if you think about them too hard, the message is quite nihilistic and conservative -- the moral always is, this is the best as it gets, there is nothing that can or should be done to change things

[misanthrope]

138. If you change the past...

...especially such a monumental thing as killing Hitler, you change the future so that you're no longer able to go back and kill him. It's not liberal or conservative, merely logical.

[Leopolds Ghost]

119. She was a peacenik in that Star Trek episode.

[MilesColtrane]

86. Kirk had to LIHOP.

Plus he couldn't be tied down to one woman, because the laydeez likey him. Oh yeah.

[JVS]

17. use a marker to draw a mustache on him

[rug]

19. I'd say, Nice poop, Hitler.

[JVS]

22. here, you might appreciate this GDP event

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4227841&mesg_id=4227880

[rug]

25. Well-done comrade!

:thumbsup:

[alphafemale]

21. Keep him away from the fucking paint. nt

[ngant17]

26. Hitler could have been contained and a war averted

but it's not as simple as killing the baby Hitler. Hitler's rise to power could have been reduced substantially over time, but on the far right of Britain's Tory (Conservative Party) class, there were those who willingly helped Hitler come to power, i.e., the Duke of Windsor, who would be on the General Staff of the British Expeditionary Force in France, in 1940, and he would provide all the information at his disposal to assist the Nazis. There were the French Hitlerites and all sorts of reactionary forces in Europe that were motivated to help the Nazis because they didn't want to see a Red Soviet Union anymore.

So concession after concession was given to Hitler; he was allowed to take country after country. In 1938, Chamberlain betrayed Czechoslovakia with whom Britain and France had a solemn collective security treaty. Both the British and the French ruling classes refused to do anything to marginalize Hitler.

So it's not about killing a baby, it's about the inability or refusal of societies to work collectively for the common good of humanity. This was what allowed monsters like Hitler to rise to power and bring death and destruction in the world.

[kineneb]

58. indeed-Hitler was a product of his environment

If he had been born and raised in a another time and place, the same set of DNA would have turned out completely differently.

Without his particular upbringing, effects of WWI, and much political support, he would have been just another WWI vet.

Mental illness usually needs a trigger or "kindling" event(s).

So the question is academic, but not realistic.

[Red Zelda]

29. Change history

I'd make sure he got into art school

[stillcool]

30. What goes in is what comes out.

Eliminate the cause, eliminate the result.

[eyesroll]

31. I wouldn't muck with history.

How would I know that if Hitler never came to power, someone worse wouldn't have taken his place? Or that someone who died in the concentration camp wouldn't have developed something that made a nuclear weapon look like a pellet gun?


I am Jewish, and some direct ancestors of mine died in the holocaust. Still. Wouldn't do it. Remember what happened when the time traveler stepped on a butterfly in the past--we ended up with Bush as president.

[TankLV]

102. That's the whole point, isn't it. Change something and you make it worse.

There was also a book about the opposite - if you could go back in time and save Kennedy.

All sorts of WORSE things happened, because it inadvertently let some monster eventually come to the fore...

It's a very interesting conundrum...

[seabeyond]

32. kill him. no. kill him for something that hasnt happened, no.

you could never be sure, 100% of what will be when it hasnt been. there would always be 100% "faith" that what will be, will. and to murder on faith? not thinking so.

[MediaBabe]

75. Kill to prevent the unimaginable?

Part of the reason for the holocaust was that no one could really imagine that it could happen. You can't kill an infant to prevent what you cannot even imagine.

[seabeyond]

82. no. you cannot say you know for a fact, regardless, this will happen

since it is still an unknown, it would still be killing in faith that it will happen...... even if it is imaginable. or not

[Horse with no Name]

34. A Skinner Box was made for this purpose. n/t

[MonkeyFunk]

36. Raise him Jewish

[MediaBabe]

76. That was my first thought - circumcise him.

[alcibiades_mystery]

38. No such thing

You can't know the future. It's like asking what we would do if we saw a Martian flamingo scuba diving through a skyscraper.

The words are all real, but they make no sense together.

False problem.

[southernleftylady]

47. oh forget it.. self edited

it was just an old twilight zone episode I saw and thought it would be an interesting question to pose on here.. nothing too serious since obvious ... it wont happen..

[The Straight Story]

52. I knew you would post that before you did

:rofl:

[alcibiades_mystery]

54. My fans know me well

;-)

[Bright Eyes]

42. twilight zone!

Didn't he end up killing the wrong baby?

[southernleftylady]

46. yup.. I didn't realize this "question" would cause such a mess on here nt

[BlooInBloo]

49. F -> T = T

[SalmonChantedEvening]

51. I'd say Nice Post n/t

[Feron]

55. Watch the movie "The Boys From Brazil"

It's about a Nazi that creates 95 Hitler clones in order to bring about another third reich. The movie is about the question of whether to kill the Hitler clones or to allow them to live.

Personally I wouldn't kill a baby Hitler because his death would not stop the history and attitudes that gave birth to the Nazis. Not to mention that the alternative could have been worse than Hitler himself.

[Swamp Rat]

59. I'd give him lots of love and kindness, and ...

make sure he never learns to speak German. :D

Ai! Meu coitado, meu bebê. :loveya:

[alfredo]

60. Have him circumcised.

[Hekate]

61. I would treat him as a helpless infant (which is what you said) in need of love & nurturance

No one knows all that makes a person what he is, but I don't believe in infant damnation. It's not part of my religion, ethics, or philosophy.

Hekate

[AlienGirl]

79. I think it's "nature, nurture, and what'ch brought wit'cher" myself. I reject infant damnation also.

[AngryAmish]

62. Same question was asked in the movie "The Dead Zone"

Answer was : shoot the bastard.

[TahitiNut]

63. Uh-huh. An IQ test for those who can't distinguish between 'belief' and 'knowledge,' huh?

How droll. :eyes:

[Orangepeel]

64. I wouldn't believe I couldn't change the outcome

So no.

[Hekate]

65. Southernleftylady, don't take the snarks to heart. Twilight Zone has come out of the TV Vault....

...and I'm sure it's due to the writers' strike.

I've caught several episodes recently, and have been intrigued by how much of an artifact of their time they are. When I catch myself thinking an episode's premise is sophomoric, I have to remind myself how different I am now than when I first viewed it.

Despite all that, Twilight Zone is often more intelligent than much of what passes for entertainment on TV now. Sometimes they go deep.

So thanks for trying to spark a conversation here on this rainy and windy Sunday.

Hekate

[southernleftylady]

68. thank you I am being hormonal lately dont know why...

just ask my hubby he has been yelled out for nothing lately ;) then i sob the next second.. but in NOT PMS'ing and I am NOT preggo

[Cleita]

66. It seems mama Hitler did have some blame in raising

Hitler to become what he became. Because although she was poor and living on a widow's pension for his formative teen and adult youth years, she funded him and persuaded relatives to fund him for his bohemian life style in those years instead of forcing him to either go to the university or get a job. It was in those years living in rat infested boarding houses in and sometimes on the streets of Vienna as a starving artist that he honed his skills in speechmaking and rhetoric and formulated his ideas of Aryan superiority, anti-semitism and political idealism. But getting a permanent job was not what he wanted to do. When the Austrian army came after him to draft him, he ran to Germany because he didn't want to serve in an army infested with slavs.

So it would seem it was not the baby who was the monster but the environment that shaped him and his prejudices and a family that enabled him to avoid his responsibilities to become the tyrant. Thereby it only took a few fortunate accidents of history to propel him into the position of one of the more evil leaders of the twentieth century.

[AlienGirl]

77. She also failed to protect him from his abusive dad...and the society failed to act

Hitler's dad beat him, repeatedly and mercilessly throughout his childhood, and beat his mother as well. The dad took this child and made him learn not to cry and to count the blows of the stick as it ripped the flesh of his seven-year-old back open. The mother believed she was was unable to leave the dad because of the socio-economic realities of the time and place. The society around them failed to intervene because it was believed to be a private matter, of no concern to anyone else, if a man beat his wife and children.

Tucker

[Cleita]

91. Not much has changed, maybe in Germany, but not here.

It still seems that family abuse is pretty much tolerated as a private matter here in the USA. How many abused children have been returned to the birth parents because they have more rights than anyone else? How many women still stay with abusive spouses for economic reasons.

[Blue-Jay]

67. .

[applegrove]

69. That is impossible. And sick. There is no way you could know

that any baby would become a Hitler. Absolutely impossible. Disgusting question. Cause it implies infanticide.

[LisaL]

83. Of course it is a disgusting question.

In fact how many people have actually killed their children and claimed either God or Devil told them to do it cause there was something wrong with the kid?
Why encourage insanity?

[applegrove]

87. Exactly. This mind twister is for the twisted.

[LostInAnomie]

70. That would be a pretty fatalistic world you envision.

Monsters aren't born, they are created.

[SoCalDem]

71. Get him art lessons and a good mentor

and raise him in Amish country?

[MediaBabe]

73. Have him circumcised

[TroglodyteScholar]

74. If the murderous future was 100% certain, you could not call it "one innocent baby"

So your question is flawed on its face.

[Leopolds Ghost]

120. If the murderous future was 100% certain, you would not be ABLE to kill the baby.

Because the presence of the observer (you) would have to have no
consequence on the observed outcome. Your very presence would
change the course of events.

So it is metaphysically impossible to kill "the" baby Hitler.

You would be killing "a" baby who was destined to do god-knows
what, because the ability of a time traveler to alter history
(and not inadvertently be a part of creating it) depends on
whether probabilistic actions create alternating realities.

If time is crystalline and moving towards a specific set of
outcomes defined by the (random or merely unpredictable) set
of outcomes that ACTUALLY OCCUR (tm) thus excluding non-reality
from the set of all events that occur, then your presence would
not alter history in our time-stream. Or would alter it so
greatly that it would be an alternate time-stream and the baby
you killed would not have been destined for anything.

If time is crystalline then going back in time either places
you in the existing course of events where you already were,
or projects you into an alternate timeline reality that has
no effect on our own.

Far more likely you would become part of the set of events
leading to Hitler's poor upbringing and inadvertently ensuring
the Holocaust by trying to kill the baby or warning somebody
about him (self-fulfilling prophecy).

[TroglodyteScholar]

136. Amen.

What a silly hypothetical indeed.

[AlienGirl]

78. Call the Assistant State Attorney, ask for legal sufficiency to remove, and write a shelter petition

I don't believe anyone is born pre-destined to kill.

Tucker

[krispos42]

80. Well, you'd have to do something

While World War Two is not the worst possible scenario, it's up there. Way up their.

If you're not going to kill the baby, you have to radically change his environment. Go become a sheep rancher in New Zealand with the kid. Become the best sheep rancher you can be and teach young Adolf there to carry on with the family ranch after you're gone.

Or go to Tibet and drop him off outside of a monastary or something.

[gatorboy]

84. ...

[DiamondJay]

85. one piece of trash as opposed to six million decent folks

if i were to say what I would do to a baby Adolf Hitler, I would probably be banned from this site (of course if I knew 100 percent he'd kill 6 million jews and many more people) haha

[hunter]

88. Things turn out much worse without Hitler.

Germany wins the race to develop the atomic weapons, and a few years later they develop hydrogen bombs and ICBMs.

Quite a few cities are destroyed during the 'fifties and 'sixties, and life is pretty much a downward spiral to extinction for anyone who isn't white, or anyone who rejects the official State religions.

Things are especially awful in the United States, which allies itself with Germany very soon after Moscow and Tokyo are nuked, and then embarks upon an orgiastic crusade of ethnic cleansing, mostly not by outright murder, but by an intense program of apartheid and mass relocations.

Blacks are relocated to reservations very similar to Indian Reservations, while first and even second generation Asians, Latin Americans, etc. are forcibly deported.

[readmoreoften]

89. Then I'd believe in predestination, which I don't.

If I knew for sure I was in an episode of the twilight zone, I'd kill it.
If I didn't (and how can you ever really be sure?) I'd just love it like any other baby. And the day he shaved that mustache into place, I'd chop off his head with an axe.

[Raine]

92. Love him, nurture him

and give him a conscience so he wouldn't turn into a monster. I honestly believe it would be possible.

[Jed Dilligan]

93. All babies are Hitler unless they are properly raised. nt

[alfredo]

94. I don't know, one neighbor's kid was more like Stalin.

[Jed Dilligan]

95. In strictly physical terms, they are more Mussolini. nt

[alfredo]

96. True.

[WheelWalker]

100. He was an altar boy and sang in the choir. Same as Stalin. nt

[Jed Dilligan]

105. And religion matters how?

[WheelWalker]

107. Thanks for engaging, Jed...

I'm not certain religion matters at all, frankly. I simply noted historical facts which were brought to mind by your reference to babies being "properly raised." I wasn't sure what constitutes "properly raised" in your view. Some people have held the opinion that a grounding in religious or spiritual values is a constituent of "proper raising." Personally, I think it's most likely adult choices rather than the instillation of values during childhood that explains adult behavior. Whether childhood shaping impacts adult choices has to be determined on a case by case examination of the facts. Perhaps my intention was to point out that what some might think of as "properly raised" children sometimes turn out to have quite improper adult behaviors. That having been said, my personal view is that an early spiritual grounding or religious training does not necessarily equate with being "properly raised," and that, in any case, it's largely adult choices that impact adult behaviors. There is more to say, of course, but I think this explains intention if referencing religious ritual. There is an excellent biography comparing the lives of the two figures mentioned in my post... "Hitler & Stalin: Parallel Lives" by Alan Bullock. http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Stalin-Parallel-Alan-Bullock/dp/0679729941 Thanks again for engaging.

[Jed Dilligan]

108. I think proper raising mostly means teaching empathy

I think every child without empathy has the potential to grow into a Hitler.

[WheelWalker]

109. Very well put...and very wise. Very wise, indeed. Thank you for sharing that.

[Thothmes]

128. Stalin was attended an Russian Orthodox Seminary for the priesthood

[WheelWalker]

97. Woo woo, Dr. Who! Now I'm a Time Lord, too!

[pitohui]

98. i saw that episode

it wasn't their strongest episode, it was one of those "what's the use, everything is fated to turn out a certain way anyway, so why bother" type morals

if i know FOR CERTAIN that someone is coming to kill even one other person, i haven't got a problem with stopping them cold, it's called justifiable homicide, yes, if i knew FOR CERTAIN that killing one monster baby would save millions of lives, where is there even a question of what to do? if you saw the monster coming at you guns blazing to kill just six people, you wouldn't bat an eye to shoot him down before he harms someone...you're not going to hold back if you know FOR CERTAIN that he's coming to take down six million

as others point out, we don't know anything in this life FOR CERTAIN, but to answer the question you asked...well...how is there even more than one answer to this question?

[Leopolds Ghost]

121. What would Jesus (or Gandhi) do?

[pitohui]

133. jesus let him murder the jews and gandhi said any enemy of england is fine by me

needless to say, these two men win no prizes from me, just as jesus was happy to sit on his hands and let new orleans drown, he was happy to sit on his hands and let the jews drown

i submit that any one of us could do better than he did, all it takes is a heart AND a brain


i blame gandhi less because he did not claim to be omnipotent god, but jesus did claim to be god, so there really isn't much excuse for him letting one man live so that he could murder many millions -- if you know FOR CERTAIN the end results of your inaction and you let millions die anyway, you are in fact evil and have some nerve telling anyone else how to live a moral life

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

101. Could I Kill A Baby To Save Millions? Absolutely.

I'm not going to go by the terms of your phrasing, since as many have pointed out it really becomes too unrealistic. Too many things could be done at any point to change the outcome, and under no theoretical circumstance could there ever truly be a 'no matter what you did' type concept, based on an event that already happened. But I think at the heart of this thread is a question that doesn't really need a specific example, person or event from the past. The question is merely could you kill a baby if by doing so meant saving millions? My answer is an absolute yes. For example, if there was a baby in one corner and a button to launch nukes in the other, and there was nothing I could do from stopping some madman from pushing the button and wiping out millions, and the only way he'd not push the button was if I took the babies life and that outcome WAS certain, then yes; I'd take the life of the baby.

I hope this accurately answers your question.

[MrScorpio]

103. You punish the crime, not the person

The answer is wait

[Leopolds Ghost]

123. Excellent. People forget Anglo-American legal theory is not preventative.

In fact, for the past 2000 years to today, the victim's family is expoected to bring a wrongful death suit against the murderer to ask for financial restitution. This was to put an end to the cycle of revenge killings and "pre-crime" vendettas of the "I know he's coming after me" sort, which afflicted many tribal communities in ancient times when the whole notion of "law" was first developed. It was considered LEGAL and SEMI-ETHICAL then to kill a baby back then if it was sickly, or diseased, or a financial burden. They were not considered moral agents with a future ahead of them until age 7 or 8. Before that their life was in the hands of their parents and luck.

[southernleftylady]

106. And here is the Twilight episode that caused all this fighting lol

http://www.twilightzonetv.com/guide/ep03_cradleNightroute.html
there you go.. check it out yourself... had NO CLUE it would cause all this to throw out a discussion like this for yall

[Zhade]

110. Since there's no such thing as predestination - teach him better than he was taught?

Your false dichotomy is silly.

[Zynx]

111. Make sure he had a loving, supportive family.

After that, help him achieve his artistic ambitions.

[JackRiddler]

112. How the hell would I know this?

If Baby was predestined to be Hitler no matter what, why would I be the only one to have free will in this matter? If I know his destiny and it's not to be altered, why wouldn't I already know what I was going to do? Some hypotheticals are interesting, but not those that mix up categories like this.

[Evoman]

115. The only sane action is cannibalism. Eat the baby Hitler, and inherit its Hitler powers.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[genie_weenie]

117. Fall into the predestination paradox...

[raccoon]

129. "Does history make great men, or do great men make history?"

That is the question.

I think it's history makes great men/women.

[hunter]

131. The devil picks the weak as his patsies.

Men like Hitler or Stalin (and to a lesser extent Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush) do not achieve high political positions by their strengths, but by their weaknesses, their flaws, and their insecurities.

[El Pinko]

132. You're contradicting yourself.

If "nothing could change the outcome", then the baby must be immortal, or another Hitler would take his place - so I'd raise the child as best as I could.

If the outcome could be changed, well, then I would have the baby lobotomized so as to prevent his ascent and tyranny.

Oh, wait - that didn't work with Bushy, did it...

[pitohui]

135. well that was the point of the twilight zone episode

nothing can be done, it's all hopeless, oh woe

pretty much the point of all time travel stories is that there is no free will and the thrust of time and history can't be changed, at least not in a positive direction

in some stories, such as the star trek episode cited above, time can be changed but only for the worse and not the better

it's a way of telling ourselves that we've done the best we could ever do, that no matter how bad it is, if we'd taken any other path it would have been even worse -- basically it's a throwback to a belief that what is fated will come to pass no matter our efforts

[Rex]

137. You could never know that for sure...

So you would be murdering a baby.

[CaptJasHook]

139. Teach him how to be a better painter. nt

[-..__...]

141. With the proper nurturing, guidance and tutoring....

He could grow up to be a gangsta rap star...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feLqz1udhtY&feature=related

[Ilsa]

143. An abused foster teen just died yesterday in a tragic accident.

She was 15 years old, and was working at a carnival ticket booth. (When they were tearing down the carnival, something fell on her and killed her.) Anyway, her aunt reported how horrible had life had been, with her mother inand out of prison, and her father losing his parental rights for abusing her. She was placed in foster care, but the foster parents lost her after allegations of sexual abuse arose.

Was she destined to be a mini-hitler? I can't accept that. She needed alot of love and understanding.