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"One of President Kennedy's favorite quotations was based upon an interpretation of Dante's Inferno. As Robert Kennedy explained in 1964, "President Kennedy's

by jf___ 2y ago

"One of President Kennedy's favorite quotations was based upon an interpretation of Dante's Inferno. As Robert Kennedy explained in 1964, "President Kennedy's favorite quote was really from Dante: 'The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality" [1] https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/life-of-john-f-kennedy/fast-facts-john-f-kennedy/john-f-kennedys-favorite-quotations-dantes-inferno https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/life-of-john-f-ke...

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deleted 2y ago
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RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
> 'The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality" I think with a hindsight of history, my view is different: 'The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who push people into active enmity claiming a moral crisis' The Thirty Years War was a result of this and never needed to have happened. More recently, and dealing with Kennedy, the Vietnam War was result of this kind of thinking. (Domino theory and that unless we opposed every single advance of communism the entire world would fall and be plunged into darkness). The Cultural Revolution was another manifestation of this kind of thinking. Someone, much wiser than both Dante and Kennedy once said: "Blessed are the peacemakers". EDIT: And even prior to Dante's time, there were the Crusades, where in the name of a "moral crisis", people were mobilized, and great atrocities were committed and much death and destruction resulted.
- Aerbil313 2y ago
  > The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who push people into active enmity claiming a moral crisis This statement usually implies that people who act according to a moral framework that isn’t “Live with the minimum amount of intrusion to other people’s lives” are doing wrong. I personally don’t buy that. When they are told, “Do not spread corruption in the land,” they reply, “We are only peace-makers!” Indeed, it is they who are the corruptors, but they fail to perceive it. - The Holy Qur’an (2:11)
- ant6n 2y ago
  How will the war in Ukraine be viewed from this perspective in the far future?
  - michaelmrose 2y ago
    It appears that only Russia could prevent or end the conflict. On the territory that Russia controls they have build concentration camps to torture and murder the insufficiently loyal as they set about grinding their cities to dust their people to gore and erasing a culture and a people. It seems like ceding any territory now would lead to further conflict soon both in Ukraine and elsewhere based on both recent history and Russias statements. Furthermore it would abandon those in these territories to privation and mass murder same as the soviets perpetrated against them in the past.
    - StefanBatory 2y ago
      And yet your comment is downvoted.. I feel utterly appealed at the HN users who support Russian genocidal state.
  - rqtwteye 2y ago
    I think there is some moral clarity in the Ukraine situation. There was simply no good reason to attack Ukraine. I understand that the Russians may be worried about the NATO expansion but that doesn’t justify to lead such a war.
    - tejohnso 2y ago
      There was also concern about ethnic and cultural genocide of ethnic Russians in the eastern Ukraine regions. Promises broken.
      - immibis 2y ago
        Russian history will view it that way and Western history will view it this way.
- wredcoll 2y ago
  The sheer irony of you citing the vietnam war, which for the americans, was literally defending a nation against an unprovoked invasion, hurts my brain.
  - manquer 2y ago
    I did not follow ,Which nation were the Americans defending an unprovoked attack on ? are you referring the French ?
    - wredcoll 2y ago
      The Vietnam war, or at least the fighting that us Americans refer to by that name, was started by the sovereign state of North Vietnam invading the sovereign state of South Vietnam and ended when America (and allies) stopped defending the state of South Vietnam and North Vietnam conquered it. You can make all sorts of arguments as to whether or not it was moral to partition the original state of Vietnam into two separate states or whether it was moral for America to be involved at any point, but I'd make the general argument that the state starting a war with a literal invasion is rarely the moral party in such situations.
      - alephknoll 2y ago
        Thats some deranged historical revisionism. The vietnamese won their war of independence against france ( aka first indochina war). Then the US stepped in to protect 'european colonial interests' gave the southern half of vietnam to france with the promise that the vietnamese people will have a vote. When polls showed southern vietnamese were overwhelming for reunification with the north, we renegged on our promise and did not allow a vote. And hence the 2nd indochina war happened. > The Vietnam war, or at least the fighting that us Americans refer to by that name, was started by the sovereign state of North Vietnam invading the sovereign state of South Vietnam The vietnam war was the US fighting the Viet Cong. Do you know who the viet cong was? They were SOUTH vietnamese. The vietnam war wasn't the US fighting north vietnam. It was the US fighting south vietnamese freedom fighters.
- xboxnolifes 2y ago
  Charitably, one could also read the quote as saying people should be actively opposing these atrocities, instead of staying neutral during them.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    That isn't how that sort of thinking is ever used in politics. If politicians start using language of "you've got to pick a side on this one!" it usually hints they're about to do something stupid. Occasionally evil. The world is just too large and complicated for anything to ever boil down to just two sides. We can pretend it does for rhetorical purposes because otherwise political conversation gets hard; but it is important to leave space for the large group of neutrals who in all honesty probably have accurate interpretations of any given issue.
    - immibis 2y ago
      The truth is often close to one side or the other. Believing that is never the case is radical centrism, and leads to the absurdity where one can't decide between siding with the Jews or with the Nazis. I'd hope everyone sides with the Jews in that particular conflict, which isn't the same as saying they have to agree with every single thing every Jewish person ever does.
- rqtwteye 2y ago
  The US parties love this: “vote for us or the country as you know it won’t exist anymore”. Much easier than actually solving real problems.
  - immibis 2y ago
    They're right.
  - michaelmrose 2y ago
    One side can honestly claim that because they other side said they would replace the entire government with stooges who could be "informed" what the constitution means by a man who doesn't even read briefs whose stooges would refuse to accept any vote that didn't affirm his parties control. It also doesn't hurt that he said he would send red state militias into blue states to collect millions of migrants to be herded into concentration camps. They have been running on destroying America while calling it saving it for 8 years. Meanwhile in their I know you are but what am I press strategy they are claiming that the other side is somehow destroying America despite all evidence to the contrary despite the only existential threat presented by business as usual being the widening gulf between their deranged super fans and the normals.
- petsfed 2y ago
  I think on one extreme you have the failures of neutrality that contributed to WW2, and on the other you have trumped up "moral crises" that characterized much of the Cold War. Arguably, the reason the Nazis came to power was that a great many right-leaning German voters looked at their options and thought "this Hitler guy seems pretty crazy, but that'll probably cook off, so long as he helps us beat the communists", which is a special kind of neutrality that people can never seem to shake free of. I get what Kennedy was responding to, his sin was in failing to understand (just like the German right) that "leftist" != Stalinist/Maoist, and that a communist takeover need not look like the October Revolution, and the regime need not look like Russia ca. 1935, nor China ca. 1960.
  - soperj 2y ago
    > I think on one extreme you have the failures of neutrality that contributed to WW2, and on the other you have trumped up "moral crises" that characterized much of the Cold War. I don't know that I would characterize giving pieces of another country to the Germans as "neutrality".
    - petsfed 2y ago
      As much heat as Neville gets for his policy of appeasement (deserved or otherwise), I'm not sure Britain was in a position to stop Germany by force anyway. American neutrality is certainly open to criticism, and I think America's performative neutrality is why American companies like IBM ended up in such pivotal roles during the Holocaust. That said, I am referring specifically to the "this Hitler guy probably isn't so bad" phenomenon that happened inside Germany and Austria. It was a dramatic failure to take a stand against Nazism, by middle class people whose neutrality on the persecution of untermenschen was motivated by a fear of losing their economic position (and the perceived economic opportunity of seizing the persecuted's assets. That is where the "socialism" in national socialism comes from, by the way), which overrode their ability to see all the violence and hatred that the Nazis wore on their sleeves. Its very similar to the neutrality of the Swiss during the same period of time.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
tptacek 2y ago
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/01/14/hottest/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/01/14/hottest/
keybored 2y ago
I can imagine George Bush Jr. saying something similar.
- duxup 2y ago
  Amusing as a big part of his platform when running for president was “no nation building”. Things change quickly.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    It's not like NATO did any major nation building in Afghanistan or Iraq, at least nowhere near close to post-WW2 Germany... so in that point he did keep his promise. The entire world lost out as a result of that - there is a direct link from the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq to the Russian invasion into Ukraine.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      There's a whole lot more direct link between the appeasement of Russia at the 2008 NATO summit to the invasions of Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014), but I suppose Iraq and Afghanistan are distantly relevant.
      - mschuster91 2y ago
        I'd argue for the following chain: the failure of NATO in Afghanistan and US+allies in Iraq to (re)build a democratic nation led to a rise of radical Islamism. That in turn led to the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war, causing not just a truckload of effort for Europe to deal with the refugees on top of those we already had from Afghanistan, but especially Assad was left free to ignore any and all "red lines", especially the 2012 warning of Obama against chemical weapons usage [1], and Russia itself was allowed to act with impunity as well. Then came the 2014 invasion of Russia in Crimea - IMHO a direct "test bed" to see if the Western nations were willing to step up this time, and they didn't despite Russia literally shooting a passenger plane out of the sky. Syria completely exploded, and Russia slowly kept increasing the pressure on Ukraine. Had covid not happened, Russia would have invaded some time in 2020 to take over Ukraine, but the pandemic derailed their plans. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_the_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_the_Government_of_Syria_to_Respond_to_Use_of_Chemical_Weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_the_Use_of_M...
nickpsecurity 2y ago
[flagged]
cherryteastain 2y ago
Ironic, considering the last circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno is actually a frozen wasteland with Satan encased in ice in the middle up to his waist.
- alephknoll 2y ago
  You forgot the best part. Satan has 3 faces and each face has a mouth. One mouth is continuously chewing judas, another mouth is chewing brutus and the third is chewing cassius. For eternity. It's a great book, but it really shows how christianity ( or religion in general ) is glorified fan fiction.
  - mminer237 2y ago
    I don't think Dante's inferno is actually part of anyone's religious beliefs. Everyone does and always has regarded it as a work of fiction. It's not a reflection on Christianity.
  - bart_spoon 2y ago
    Are you under the impression that Dante’s Inferno is canon in Christianity?
alephknoll 2y ago
> The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality This is not true. The 'neutrals' were not even granted the honor of a place in one of the circles of hell. 'These souls are forever unclassified; they are neither in Hell nor out of it, but reside on the shores of the Acheron. Naked and futile, they race around through the mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner (symbolic of their pursuit of ever-shifting self-interest) while relentlessly chased by swarms of wasps and hornets, who continually sting them' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante) And they certainly weren't anywhere near the hottest places in hell. If we are to assume the lowest circles to be the hottest then it would be the lowest part of the 8th circle which housed the falsiers and counterfeiters. The 9th circle, which housed satan, was actually a frozen lake. While we think satan is burning in hell, he's actually freezing in hell according to dante.

by jf___ 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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deleted 2y ago

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RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago

> 'The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality" I think with a hindsight of history, my view is different: 'The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who push people into active enmity claiming a moral crisis' The Thirty Years War was a result of this and never needed to have happened. More recently, and dealing with Kennedy, the Vietnam War was result of this kind of thinking. (Domino theory and that unless we opposed every single advance of communism the entire world would fall and be plunged into darkness). The Cultural Revolution was another manifestation of this kind of thinking. Someone, much wiser than both Dante and Kennedy once said: "Blessed are the peacemakers". EDIT: And even prior to Dante's time, there were the Crusades, where in the name of a "moral crisis", people were mobilized, and great atrocities were committed and much death and destruction resulted.

Aerbil313 2y ago
> The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who push people into active enmity claiming a moral crisis This statement usually implies that people who act according to a moral framework that isn’t “Live with the minimum amount of intrusion to other people’s lives” are doing wrong. I personally don’t buy that. When they are told, “Do not spread corruption in the land,” they reply, “We are only peace-makers!” Indeed, it is they who are the corruptors, but they fail to perceive it. - The Holy Qur’an (2:11)
ant6n 2y ago
How will the war in Ukraine be viewed from this perspective in the far future?
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  It appears that only Russia could prevent or end the conflict. On the territory that Russia controls they have build concentration camps to torture and murder the insufficiently loyal as they set about grinding their cities to dust their people to gore and erasing a culture and a people. It seems like ceding any territory now would lead to further conflict soon both in Ukraine and elsewhere based on both recent history and Russias statements. Furthermore it would abandon those in these territories to privation and mass murder same as the soviets perpetrated against them in the past.
  - StefanBatory 2y ago
    And yet your comment is downvoted.. I feel utterly appealed at the HN users who support Russian genocidal state.
- rqtwteye 2y ago
  I think there is some moral clarity in the Ukraine situation. There was simply no good reason to attack Ukraine. I understand that the Russians may be worried about the NATO expansion but that doesn’t justify to lead such a war.
  - tejohnso 2y ago
    There was also concern about ethnic and cultural genocide of ethnic Russians in the eastern Ukraine regions. Promises broken.
    - immibis 2y ago
      Russian history will view it that way and Western history will view it this way.
wredcoll 2y ago
The sheer irony of you citing the vietnam war, which for the americans, was literally defending a nation against an unprovoked invasion, hurts my brain.
- manquer 2y ago
  I did not follow ,Which nation were the Americans defending an unprovoked attack on ? are you referring the French ?
  - wredcoll 2y ago
    The Vietnam war, or at least the fighting that us Americans refer to by that name, was started by the sovereign state of North Vietnam invading the sovereign state of South Vietnam and ended when America (and allies) stopped defending the state of South Vietnam and North Vietnam conquered it. You can make all sorts of arguments as to whether or not it was moral to partition the original state of Vietnam into two separate states or whether it was moral for America to be involved at any point, but I'd make the general argument that the state starting a war with a literal invasion is rarely the moral party in such situations.
    - alephknoll 2y ago
      Thats some deranged historical revisionism. The vietnamese won their war of independence against france ( aka first indochina war). Then the US stepped in to protect 'european colonial interests' gave the southern half of vietnam to france with the promise that the vietnamese people will have a vote. When polls showed southern vietnamese were overwhelming for reunification with the north, we renegged on our promise and did not allow a vote. And hence the 2nd indochina war happened. > The Vietnam war, or at least the fighting that us Americans refer to by that name, was started by the sovereign state of North Vietnam invading the sovereign state of South Vietnam The vietnam war was the US fighting the Viet Cong. Do you know who the viet cong was? They were SOUTH vietnamese. The vietnam war wasn't the US fighting north vietnam. It was the US fighting south vietnamese freedom fighters.
xboxnolifes 2y ago
Charitably, one could also read the quote as saying people should be actively opposing these atrocities, instead of staying neutral during them.
- roenxi 2y ago
  That isn't how that sort of thinking is ever used in politics. If politicians start using language of "you've got to pick a side on this one!" it usually hints they're about to do something stupid. Occasionally evil. The world is just too large and complicated for anything to ever boil down to just two sides. We can pretend it does for rhetorical purposes because otherwise political conversation gets hard; but it is important to leave space for the large group of neutrals who in all honesty probably have accurate interpretations of any given issue.
  - immibis 2y ago
    The truth is often close to one side or the other. Believing that is never the case is radical centrism, and leads to the absurdity where one can't decide between siding with the Jews or with the Nazis. I'd hope everyone sides with the Jews in that particular conflict, which isn't the same as saying they have to agree with every single thing every Jewish person ever does.
rqtwteye 2y ago
The US parties love this: “vote for us or the country as you know it won’t exist anymore”. Much easier than actually solving real problems.
- immibis 2y ago
  They're right.
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  One side can honestly claim that because they other side said they would replace the entire government with stooges who could be "informed" what the constitution means by a man who doesn't even read briefs whose stooges would refuse to accept any vote that didn't affirm his parties control. It also doesn't hurt that he said he would send red state militias into blue states to collect millions of migrants to be herded into concentration camps. They have been running on destroying America while calling it saving it for 8 years. Meanwhile in their I know you are but what am I press strategy they are claiming that the other side is somehow destroying America despite all evidence to the contrary despite the only existential threat presented by business as usual being the widening gulf between their deranged super fans and the normals.
petsfed 2y ago
I think on one extreme you have the failures of neutrality that contributed to WW2, and on the other you have trumped up "moral crises" that characterized much of the Cold War. Arguably, the reason the Nazis came to power was that a great many right-leaning German voters looked at their options and thought "this Hitler guy seems pretty crazy, but that'll probably cook off, so long as he helps us beat the communists", which is a special kind of neutrality that people can never seem to shake free of. I get what Kennedy was responding to, his sin was in failing to understand (just like the German right) that "leftist" != Stalinist/Maoist, and that a communist takeover need not look like the October Revolution, and the regime need not look like Russia ca. 1935, nor China ca. 1960.
- soperj 2y ago
  > I think on one extreme you have the failures of neutrality that contributed to WW2, and on the other you have trumped up "moral crises" that characterized much of the Cold War. I don't know that I would characterize giving pieces of another country to the Germans as "neutrality".
  - petsfed 2y ago
    As much heat as Neville gets for his policy of appeasement (deserved or otherwise), I'm not sure Britain was in a position to stop Germany by force anyway. American neutrality is certainly open to criticism, and I think America's performative neutrality is why American companies like IBM ended up in such pivotal roles during the Holocaust. That said, I am referring specifically to the "this Hitler guy probably isn't so bad" phenomenon that happened inside Germany and Austria. It was a dramatic failure to take a stand against Nazism, by middle class people whose neutrality on the persecution of untermenschen was motivated by a fear of losing their economic position (and the perceived economic opportunity of seizing the persecuted's assets. That is where the "socialism" in national socialism comes from, by the way), which overrode their ability to see all the violence and hatred that the Nazis wore on their sleeves. Its very similar to the neutrality of the Swiss during the same period of time.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago

tptacek 2y ago

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/01/14/hottest/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/01/14/hottest/

keybored 2y ago

I can imagine George Bush Jr. saying something similar.

duxup 2y ago
Amusing as a big part of his platform when running for president was “no nation building”. Things change quickly.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  It's not like NATO did any major nation building in Afghanistan or Iraq, at least nowhere near close to post-WW2 Germany... so in that point he did keep his promise. The entire world lost out as a result of that - there is a direct link from the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq to the Russian invasion into Ukraine.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    There's a whole lot more direct link between the appeasement of Russia at the 2008 NATO summit to the invasions of Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014), but I suppose Iraq and Afghanistan are distantly relevant.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      I'd argue for the following chain: the failure of NATO in Afghanistan and US+allies in Iraq to (re)build a democratic nation led to a rise of radical Islamism. That in turn led to the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war, causing not just a truckload of effort for Europe to deal with the refugees on top of those we already had from Afghanistan, but especially Assad was left free to ignore any and all "red lines", especially the 2012 warning of Obama against chemical weapons usage [1], and Russia itself was allowed to act with impunity as well. Then came the 2014 invasion of Russia in Crimea - IMHO a direct "test bed" to see if the Western nations were willing to step up this time, and they didn't despite Russia literally shooting a passenger plane out of the sky. Syria completely exploded, and Russia slowly kept increasing the pressure on Ukraine. Had covid not happened, Russia would have invaded some time in 2020 to take over Ukraine, but the pandemic derailed their plans. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_the_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_the_Government_of_Syria_to_Respond_to_Use_of_Chemical_Weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_the_Use_of_M...

nickpsecurity 2y ago

[flagged]

cherryteastain 2y ago

Ironic, considering the last circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno is actually a frozen wasteland with Satan encased in ice in the middle up to his waist.

alephknoll 2y ago
You forgot the best part. Satan has 3 faces and each face has a mouth. One mouth is continuously chewing judas, another mouth is chewing brutus and the third is chewing cassius. For eternity. It's a great book, but it really shows how christianity ( or religion in general ) is glorified fan fiction.
- mminer237 2y ago
  I don't think Dante's inferno is actually part of anyone's religious beliefs. Everyone does and always has regarded it as a work of fiction. It's not a reflection on Christianity.
- bart_spoon 2y ago
  Are you under the impression that Dante’s Inferno is canon in Christianity?

alephknoll 2y ago

> The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality This is not true. The 'neutrals' were not even granted the honor of a place in one of the circles of hell. 'These souls are forever unclassified; they are neither in Hell nor out of it, but reside on the shores of the Acheron. Naked and futile, they race around through the mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner (symbolic of their pursuit of ever-shifting self-interest) while relentlessly chased by swarms of wasps and hornets, who continually sting them' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante) And they certainly weren't anywhere near the hottest places in hell. If we are to assume the lowest circles to be the hottest then it would be the lowest part of the 8th circle which housed the falsiers and counterfeiters. The 9th circle, which housed satan, was actually a frozen lake. While we think satan is burning in hell, he's actually freezing in hell according to dante.