[jf___]

"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-ke...

[tptacek]

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

[keybored]

I can imagine George Bush Jr. saying something similar.

[duxup]

Amusing as a big part of his platform when running for president was “no nation building”. Things change quickly.

[alephknoll]

> 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)

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.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> '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.

[wredcoll]

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.

[rqtwteye]

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.

[petsfed]

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.

[xboxnolifes]

Charitably, one could also read the quote as saying people should be actively opposing these atrocities, instead of staying neutral during them.

[Aerbil313]

> 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]

How will the war in Ukraine be viewed from this perspective in the far future?

[cherryteastain]

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]

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.