21 March 2010

Don't let's be beastly

Have finished reading Emmanuel Faye's Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2009), complete with quotes by the slippery Hans-Georg Gadamer and unsurprisingly outrageous statements by Carl Schmitt, while listening to a defunct lounge lizard ...
Don't let's be beastly to the Germans
When our victory is ultimately won,
It was just those nasty Nazis who persuaded them to fight
And their Beethoven and Bach are really far worse than their bite
Let's be meek to them -
And turn the other cheek to them -
And try to bring out their latent sense of fun.
Let's give them full air parity -
And treat the rats with charity,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.
On to The Kercher Reports: Decisions of the NSW Superior Courts, 1788-1827 (Sydney: Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History 2009) edited by Bruce Kercher & Brent Salter. Murder, theft, forgery, defamation, rape, questions about rule of law and evidence, Governor Bligh, execution of a pig that was the object of a convict's amorous activity, detinue, highwaymen, an offender having his ears nailed to the pillory ... alas no cannibalism