Posted on 05/27/2019 3:20:24 PM PDT by MNDude
The Archduke Ferdinand
Julius Caesar
Alexnder the Great
(in reverse order)
Recent would have been
Col Hal Moore
Every member of Extortion 17
Every long gun expert who died (usually mysteriously) from 2008-2016.
Personal
Every one of my grandparents, almost all of whom I never knew
A fellow named Mike
A fellow named Alex
And certainly more alive than anyone who lived before us too.
I don't take the word of the Bolsheviks on that. The problem in WWI for the Russian Empire was, Germany had taken 20 years to redevelop and modernize its armed forces, because contingency planners had identified problems -- such as, if war were to break out, the country could very well be numerically outnumbered perhaps 4 to 1, and fighting on multiple fronts. Russia, by contrast, was a society medieval peasants and much less industry than the European norm. Would have been better to hold a big summit meeting to prevent the shooting war from starting, or just remain a noncombatant (that would probably have prevented the outbreak just as effectively).
Janice
Jimmy
Jim
I don’t take the Bolshevik’s word on it.
However Massie & Conquest do carry some weight and are not Bolshies! I’ve read all their works on the Imperial family & the Revolutionary period. (I’ve read others too!) Nicholas would have made a decent King of England - Constitutional monarch. He was outmatched and overwhelmed as an autocrat in the Russian system.
Now if Pyotr Stolypin has not been assassinated it might have been a different story!
He wasn't up for it, in retrospect, but this topic is a "what-if" kind of thing. If democratic forces in Russia (with the Czar as a figurehead, as in constitutional monarchies elsewhere) had prevailed over the Bolsheviks, the world would have been a much better place.
The Germans had everyone outgunned for much of the length of the war. The carnage for the Russian army must have been staggering, and when the Czar was deposed and Russia left the war, it freed up something like 70 divisions which the Germans could bring to bear against the western allies. Had the US not been entering the campaign, France and Britain would have been overwhelmed, and Italy and others would have likely just agreed to cessation of hostilities and concessions after their defeats.
Agree
Speaking of Yoko, maybe we can have a thread about people we wished had died sooner.
If Mozart had lived as long as Haydn, can you imagine the musical conversation he and Beethoven would have had? They would have had decades to influence one another.
Mark Twain
I put Mozart as my one nominee, because I missed #55. Papa Haydn preceded Mozart, yet outlived him.
I think the best was yet to come with Wolfgang . He discovered Johann Bach late, after being influenced by Carl Bach.
I saw Bob play from 30 feet away
Which is part of the reason that I wanted McKinley to live. Roosevelt was a progressive who saw government as the answer to everything. Taft was a more limited government kind of guy. Roosevelt didn't do too much damage, though. He created the national parks and got us the Philippines. WIthout Roosevelt, and splitting the ticket in 1912, we would not have had Wilson and all the bad things he established. Politics in the 1912-28 period was a lot like now. You had progressive Republicans and you had Republicans who we would call conservative in today's terms. When Republicans got the White House back, and especially under Coolidge, Cal had a tough time getting taxes lowered and dealing with foreign countries because the progressive wing of his party would side with the democrats. Just like today.
Yep, he still had many years of great influence left.
Oooo, nice. Where at?
I saw him play at the Santa Barbara County Bowl. I wasn't thirty feet away though. Best concert EVER.
I love telling my son's friends that one. They discovered Marley all of a sudden.
She wasn’t married to the guy and I think it was the guy who shot Reagan that was trying to get her attention.
“Why FDR? That is a worse suggestion than Sagan.”
Are you against Social Security? What about his leadership during WWll. Most of what he did has been accepted by almost everyone. The things that didn’t work out or were wrong for the times have largely been replaced. He was a very important historical figure in his own right. He died when he was only 62 so it would of been good to have him around longer.
Are you suggesting Truman was worse than FDR?
Once social security is in place, it is kind of hard to get out of place.
There is no nice way to take apart a developed Ponzi scheme. That is a large part of why what he did is accepted by everyone.
That said, it is better if society is structured in such a way that families take care of their own; when the family can’t do it, local folks step in as the next means of support; finally, if a particular locality is very impoverished, then richer areas may step in and supplement.
Those that wander from what, in Catholic Social Teaching, is termed the “principle of subsidiarity” (let the smallest capable unit handle what it is capable of) do so at their own peril.
Yeah his leadership in WWII. Go Yalta. There is a reason only you have mentioned FDR, but Patton (Jr.) has come up about a 100 times.
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