Comments on: Plenty Bad http://larison.org/2007/10/16/plenty-bad/ n. the principle of good order "Observe the strange inversion of all order and sense! Dignity debased; how vilely is the function of a consul prostituted!" ~The Craftsman Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:06:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: kranza http://larison.org/2007/10/16/plenty-bad/#comment-7854 Wed, 17 Oct 2007 04:19:05 +0000 http://larison.org/2007/10/16/plenty-bad/#comment-7854 One of the most galling arguments made my opponents of the resolution is that everyone already knows that some big bad thing happened to the Armenians. That's not even true in the sense that it is not particularly well known by people at large, but this column is an example of why it's an evasion even if we focus on people who do know about it. Some Armenians were engaged in guerilla activity? That's like saying some Jews in Europe were Communists. You don't refuse to call the Holocaust a "genocide" because of it do you? "If you use the word genocide, it suggests the Holocaust — and that is not what happened in the Ottoman Empire." It doesn't occur to him that the fault is then his for allowing the term "genocide" to, not just suggest, but be so *beholden* to the the Holocaust that it can't be used to describe another deliberate extermination of a racial group. One of the most galling arguments made my opponents of the resolution is that everyone already knows that some big bad thing happened to the Armenians. That’s not even true in the sense that it is not particularly well known by people at large, but this column is an example of why it’s an evasion even if we focus on people who do know about it. Some Armenians were engaged in guerilla activity? That’s like saying some Jews in Europe were Communists. You don’t refuse to call the Holocaust a “genocide” because of it do you?

“If you use the word genocide, it suggests the Holocaust — and that is not what happened in the Ottoman Empire.” It doesn’t occur to him that the fault is then his for allowing the term “genocide” to, not just suggest, but be so *beholden* to the the Holocaust that it can’t be used to describe another deliberate extermination of a racial group.

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