Come now. John Kennedy's father was a notorious rum runner. Under your criteria we would have bypassed a Presidential icon.
and tranny guiliani's father did prison time for armed robbery. but there is a big, big difference b/t rum running, armed robbery and being a nazi.
i never said it did - reading compression can be a good thing! this thread is reminding me of the dwi thread in the hangout - people say they dont like the police forcibly drawing blood on suspected drinkers and they get accused of being pro-drinking and driving. i say here that i dont want the son of a nazi being president and i get accused of calling arnold a nazi (which i never have).
am i being as un-nuanced as i can be. i dont want someone whose father was a nazi serving as president of my country. not to mention the fact that he wasnt even born in america, which by law automatically disqualifies him. im not dressing it up at all - this is what ive been saying and ive stated it as plainly as i can. arnolds father volunteered to join both the nazi party and the s.a. - he was not conscripted. not everyone was forced to join the nazi party. he was a military police officer - i suggest checking out a book called 'hitlers willing executioners' to get an idea of the role of nazi police officers during wwii. to act like he was in a little weekend club that got together and drank and played pool would be a gross underestimation. he joined the s.a. months after kristalnacht - he knew exactly what he was getting into. http://ww2.klup.info/?art=186 Schwarzenegger has donated nearly $750,000 (€460,000) to the Center, raised millons more and helped the organisation fight anti-semitism. Born two years after the Second World War ended, he long ago distanced himself from his father's views and in 1991 he received the Wiesenthal Center's Leadership Award. After a two-month investigation, in which Simon Wiesenthal was involved, the verdict was in: Gustav Schwarzenegger was indeed a member of the Nazi party; he voluntarily applied for membership in 1938. But there was no evidence that he was a war criminal. Nor had the Wiesenthal Center found any evidence that the senior Schwarzenegger belonged to any of Germany’s notorious paramilitary units, such as the Sturmabteilungen (SA) or the Schutzstaffel (55), which were populated by some of Adolf Hitler’s most ardent supporters. But documents in the Austrian State Archives in Vienna, reviewed by The Times, show that Gustav Schwarzenegger had a deeper involvement in Hitler’s regime than the Wiesenthal Center had uncovered. Hier said the documents were unavailable to the center’s researchers when they investigated the matter. The newly found information was apparantly not public at that time because of a 30-year rule restriction on the documents. Since Gustav died in 1972 the documents became available in 2002, from which time on the Wiesenthal Center is investigating Gustav's role in Wehrmacht unit 521. One document in particular shows that Gustav Schwarzenegger was indeed a member of the Sturmabteilungen, also known as the “storm troopers” or brownshirts.” He joined the SA on May 1, 1939 according to the entry in the archive file — about six months after the storm troopers helped launch Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, when Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were attacked across Germany and Austria and thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps. The records contain no other information about his activities with the SA. This information is 'negative' though membership of the SA is no crime in itself, as is membership of the Gestapo or the SS. Arnold is not proud of the fact that his father was a member of the SA. According to Hier, Arnold should not be held responsible for the acts of his father. It is not possible to draw conclusions about what Gustav Schwarzenegger did with the SA, said Ursula Schwarz, a researcher with the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance. At the same time she noted, one had to apply to join the SA, unlike, say, the German army, which Austrian males were required to join after their country was annexed in 1938. The Austrian documents also show that Gustav Schwarzenegger served with German Army units that saw some of the most brutal bloodshed of World War II, including the invasions of Poland and France and the German rampage through Russia and the siege of Leningrad. As a military policeman, he appears to have been in theaters of the war where atrocities were committed by the army. But there is no way to know from the documents whether he played a role. According to the records, Gustav Schwarzenegger received a great deal of medical attention, and may have been wounded. At some point he contracted malaria. He left the army in 1943. The Austrian archives also include the papers, part of a so-called de-Nazification process, that in 1947 determined he could work for the postwarstate because no specific war crimes had been attributed to him. He worked as a police officer in Austria until his death in 1972. For years, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been dogged by his father’s past. And critics have seized on Schwarzenegger’s public association with Kurt Waldheim, the former president of Austria and former secretary general of the United Nations. Waldheim was accused of having covered up his involvement in Nazi atrocities committed during World War II. Schwarzenegger invited Waldheim to his 1986 wedding to Maria Shriver, then anchorwoman of the ‘CBS Morning News” and a niece of President Kennedy. The wedding was in April, a month after Waldheim had been publicly accused of lying about his wartime past. Waldheim did not attend the wedding, but sent a gift, prompting an emotional toast by Schwarzenegger, who lauded Waldheim, according to a wedding guest.
Actually there are different styles of totenkopfs used by the Nazis: At any rate it was a questionable decision (with Arnold's family history) to sit with prominent Jewish man and wear something that could be viewed as a Nazi emblem for the world to view on a Time magazine cover. Smart political move state rights/ environment -- dumb political move skull and crossbones belt buckle.
I can't think of anything more silly than saying a person can't do something because of what their father may or may not have done. That is just plain dumb.
He was not a military police officer. He was a civil police officer. Perhaps you are confused because the police forces in continental Europe are organized in military fashion. But he was not a member of the Wehrmacht. He was a constabulary police officer in the First Austrian Republic under Dolfuss when being a Nazi was illegal. He continued afterwards as a police officer. I don't claim he is a good person or a saint, but he wasn't a member of the Geheime Staatspolizei and he wasn't a formulating philosophical force like Alfred Rosenberg. He was a garden variety bigot and thug and very typical of police officers the world over in that era. I would ask you to find a list of police officers after 1938 who were not members of Nazi organizations. To save you some time, I will tell you that the list will not have any names. Think of the Baath party in Iraq. You joined voluntarily, or you didn't work for the government. The fact is that anybody born in Germany or Austria has a pretty good chance of being related to someone who had some sort of tie to the Nazis. I have no desire to see Arnold become president and I have no wish to alter the rules for eligibility, but making the sins of the father into the sins of the son is very anti-American, anti-egalitarian, and anti-democratic. I'm guessing that, perhaps, you don't really know any people from Germany at all? All your sources are from American movies and books? The most important lesson of Nazi Germany is that you don't need some special kind of monster to do horrible things. All it takes is the right influence and very normal, imperfect human people do horrible things. Having a father in the SA is no different than having a father in the KKK. It happens. It isn't something to be proud of, but it does happen and shouldn't affect the family in future generations.
To me. . . He is NOT a Natural Born Citizen PERIOD He spent a significant part of his life as a foreign national I don't think it is unreasonable that one be a Native to be the leader of a country. Like I asked. . . and no one has answered Are there any other countries [that are not dictatorships] that allow foreign nationals to become the leader of the whole nation Rocket River
really? - you cant think of anything more silly than that? nothing? based on your posts i always thought you had a disdain for hyperbole? and i dont think it dumb to not want the son of a nazi to be president of my country. i know the bar has been set pretty low, but i think we should expect more of our leaders.
I most often don't agree with your viewpoints, but I rarely find them without any rational thought at all. There is a first time for everything I guess. A person has no control or influence on what their parents did or did not do ten + years before they were born. To punish someone for the asserted sins of the father IS just plain dumb and completely devoid of intelligent thought.
RR, you probably didn't get a response because most of the board seems to be in agreement that the Constitutional specification of "native born" should be upheld. Jo Mama is taking all the heat because he seems to believe that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon their sons.
just because you say he wasnt doesnt make it so. the article i posted described him as a military police officer. and if he wasnt one than what was he doing in poland and france w/ the german army? ill repost the relevant parts since you obviously missed them... "The Austrian documents also show that Gustav Schwarzenegger served with German Army units that saw some of the most brutal bloodshed of World War II, including the invasions of Poland and France and the German rampage through Russia and the siege of Leningrad. As a military policeman, he appears to have been in theaters of the war where atrocities were committed by the army. But there is no way to know from the documents whether he played a role." yeah, either that or im just going off of the article i posted which called him a "military police officer". there does appear to be some confusion, but i think if you read the article i posted it would clear some things up for you. never said he was. he just served in theatre with them. you would be very wrong - my great grandparents were german immigrants. my great-great uncle is actually a noteable german ace from wwi (i like my anonymity so im not mentioning his name). my grandpa served in wwii against the germans and later found out that he fought in battles against his own cousins in the german army. yes, i saw saving private ryan 8 times! well since you mentioned it, i wouldnt want the son of a klansman as president either.
this is probably as good a compliment as im getting in this thread, so thanks! i dont see how im punishing him by stating that i dont think he should be president b/c his father was a nazi. he has a right to live in this country and make all the money he wants - i just dont think it would look good to have the son of a nazi as our president.
exactly - i failed to state it as succinctly as you, but that was my point. if he wants to distance himself from his fathers past he shouldnt go around wearing stuff like this. plus, as governor of the 2nd largest state in the country, it just comes off a tad unbecoming to someone in his position.
I was with you till this post. I understood your point as that it would be bad for the country to have someone so closely related to nazis as president, no matter who it was. iow, it sounds like your position is more about the country than arnold. but this post makes it about arnold.
