January 31, 2004

Appreciation and a Footnote
Everett

Araneldar, I'm glad you enjoyed my piece, and I'm going to show my appreciation by disagreeing with your assertion that Olorin returned to the Halls of Iluvatar. The reason, if my understanding of the situation is correct, that Olorin is able to return to Middle Earth with more power than when he was the Grey is because when the Istari are sent to Middle Earth, one of the restrictions placed upon them is that they cannot use their powers to dominate the peoples of Middle Earth. Thus, they have to mask their full powers. However, when Olorin is sent back to Middle Earth, he has proven faithful to his task and shown that he has no intention of dominting the affairs of Middle Earth, only aiding the free peoples in their struggle against Sauron. Therefore, he is permitted to return to Middle Earth and use the full scope of his powers, which are considerably more than what even Saruman is permitted to wield.

On a completely different note, in my previous post, I marked two places where I intended to insert footnotes. However, I forgot to put them in at the end of my piece. I've completely forgotten what the second one was, but the first was that the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union is what most likely a major cause of Nazis being identified as right wing. After all, the official name of the Nazi party is the National Socialist Workers Party, and unless I'm mistaken, socialism is not something generally associated with right wing causes. Certainly the Nazis racial beliefs are a cause of this too, but even those have some root in socialist ideology (A secret cabal of Jews are oppressing the German people for their own political and economic advancement.) The problem, as far as the Nazis were concerned, was not simply that the Jews were Jews, but that the Jews were seen (wrongly) as being an oppressive force in German society, and in order to create the perfect society, the oppressive Jews must be exterminated. This view was furthered by the fact that several German delegates to Versailles at the end of WWI were Jewish. Indeed, if I'm not mistaken (Somebody please correct me if I am.), the leaders of the delegation and ultimate signers of the Traty of Versailles were Jewish.