During the Nazi regime in Germany, lots of people were sentenced to death under a jurisdiction that today is considered inhumane and criminal (and was by other nations at the time, too). I'm not convinced by the whole "...but it was the law at that time!" rationale.
(That said, and before anyone unfairly cites Godwin's law, I'm of course not saying that the current British government compares in any way to the Nazi dictatorship.)
I think the point that the government is making here is not "...but it was the law at that time!" but rather "we will let our mistakes of the past stand, and rather than hide from them we will learn from them". There is perhaps the danger that by 'fixing' the past you can then forget about it.
They have already issued a full apology (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/gordon-brown/617011...) which contains the following - "While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time, and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly."
I must say that the leading "While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time" qualification leaves a particularly unpleasant taste in my mouth. I am forced to agree with bad_user in this case.
I think that qualification is actually important: it was the law that was unjust, not just society. A government apology should acknowledge that it was the government that caused the problem there, not some random vigilantes. The full problem was not just that he was treated horribly, but that his treatment was not only legal but also actively enforced by the law.
While I concede it is possible that was the intent of that line, I think there could have certainly been a better way of conveying that rather point. Particularly, they could have plainly stated "the law itself was unjust", and dropped that weird "While...".
Agreed. There's been many atrocious things done in the past by almost every country, and it would be very simple to whitewash everything out of existence with pardons, however it doesn't change what happened or what resulted from it.
It's better to stand by your mistakes than to pretend they never happened.
It would not be, in any sense, a "whitewash", actually the reverse. A whitewash covers up mistakes. This would be an acknowledgement that the laws of the time were injust.
We have had an unequivocal apology, made on national television by the Prime Minister himself, saying that the conviction was "horrifying" and "utterly unfair". I think that counts as "an acknowledgement that the laws of the time were injust".
A pardon is a separate and distinct legal action, which is unwarranted.
It is a whitewash. The treatment of the homosexual community at that time was horrendous. Pardoning his act because it's non-objectional today is stupid. Why not pardon all the Jews of the pogroms for having the wrong ethnicity.
It's whitewashing because the act of doing it is more offensive than simply leaving it as is. Pardoning Turing would be pardoning him for being gay and makes no correction for the horrendous treatment he received, which was the point of the apology.
An apology is what Turing deserved. A pardon is an insult to his memory.
I'm sorry, but you simply don't understand the meaning of the word "whitewash" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whitewash. You don't "whitewash" something by publicly apologizing for it or by pardoning someone who has been wronged. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the word "whitewash" actually means. When you "whitewash" something you DENY that it happened or try and BURY it.
During the Nazi regime in Germany, lots of people were sentenced to death under a jurisdiction that today is considered inhumane and criminal (and was by other nations at the time, too).
Same applies to many of those who have been prosecuted under Stalin's rule. Still, there was a process called "political rehabilitation", for lack of better term, which essentially means that their sentences were declared void and their rights were restored. For hundreds of thousands, of course, posthumously.
I'm of course not saying that the current British government compares in any way to the Nazi dictatorship.
Well, Godwin's law be damned, it compares in at least several ways. The Nazi dictatorship was just one of many unjust regimes in the past. No reason why we cannot compare it to others, past or present. They did kill millions of jews, communists, gypsies and gays in concentration camps, but lots of other regimes have killed millions of people too.
Now, as to how the British government compares to the Nazi dictatorship. Well, they have even worse mass surveillance program (CCTV) that the Nazi's had. And the British had invaded and enslaved more countries during their colonial era than Germany ever did. And they are responsible for lots of subsequent wars in their old colonies, since they used "divide and conquer" tactics (establishing artificial buffer states, playing parts of the population against the other, et al) to ensure continued dependance and instability after de-colonizing them (from India-Pakistan, to Israel-Palestine, to Ethiopia-Eritrea, to Cyprus-Turkey, the list goes on).
anyway, the whole concept of law today is based on that idea. law exists at a place, at a time. There are lots of cases that end up like that. "it was NOT a crime then, so even if it is a crime today, we can't do anything".
and on the other way around, by Ex post facto it would be pretty possible to aggravate some other charge based on old laws that applied at the time that today are considered crazy for some reason. It cannot be brought to prosecute gays today just because most countries limit ex post facto for 'rights' acquired later. but for anything else, it's fair game.
People misunderstand godwin's law. Godwin was right that the nazis would eventually come up- as they did.
But the people who say that "anyone who brings up the nazis is wrong" are people pushing a revisionist view of history that denies the holocaust-- because they assert that nazi germany was an aberration, that somehow, magically, has nothing to do with the rest of the world or history, and thus any reference to it is tantamount to simply calling someone a nazi.
As you showed in your post, it is quite possible to make a comparison to Nazi Germany without engaging in name calling, or being irrational.
Thus, Godwins actual law does apply -- you made the reference, and thus Godwin is satisfied (since the likelihood approaches one.)
But the fake "Godwin's law" that people cite is also disproven-- your reference is accurate and astute.
(That said, and before anyone unfairly cites Godwin's law, I'm of course not saying that the current British government compares in any way to the Nazi dictatorship.)