Posted on 04/26/2014 9:34:04 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
Norman Angell, the Paris editor of Britain’s Daily Mail, was a man who expected to be listened to. Yet even he was astonished by the success of his book “The Great Illusion,” in which he announced that war had put itself out of business. “The day for progress by force has passed,” he explained. From now on, “it will be progress by ideas or not at all.”
He wrote these words in 1910. One politician after another lined up to praise the book. Four years later, the same men started World War I. By 1918, they had killed 15 million people; by 1945, the death toll from two world wars had passed 100 million and a nuclear arms race had begun. In 1983, U.S. war games suggested that an all-out battle with the Soviet Union would kill a billion people — at the time, one human in five — in the first few weeks. And today, a century after the beginning of the Great War, civil war is raging in Syria, tanks are massing on Ukraine’s borders and a fight against terrorism seems to have no end.
So yes, war is hell — but have you considered the alternatives? When looking upon the long run of history, it becomes clear that through 10,000 years of conflict, humanity has created larger, more organized societies that have greatly reduced the risk that their members will die violently. These better organized societies also have created the conditions for higher living standards and economic growth. War has not only made us safer, but richer, too. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Ok. I’ll play your game. How did Oliver Cromwell ruin our lives?
“Option B was Lincoln’s alleged plans for ex-slave relocation.”
Music to my ears!
“Time to go...here’s a ticket for that boat headed East. Bye bye! GTFO!”
And I don’t care if they had little or nothing in common with “their bros” back where they came from. Just GTFO.
We’d have an exponentially better nation today; it’s not debatable. So, don’t bother attempting to debate it with me. I like who I like and don’t like who I don’t like. Interpret that as however you want.
OMG LOL!
The sad thing is it actually was that stupid.
The should have worked Mexico and the Zimmerman telegram in though.
Britain tells America that it overheard Germany encouraging Mexico to hit on America’s girlfriend.
Irish grudges.
How many English kings who kicked Irish ass. You wouldn’t kill them?
If Reconstruction had been harsher (or even maintained as it was), you would’ve had to fight another war and keep a perpetual occupying force in the South. There was no fire in the belly amongst Northerners to do that. The 1876 elections were demonstrative of that. If Hayes didn’t end it (as the “deal” for being awarded the election), President Tilden would’ve.
As was said many times, pro-abolitionist Northerners didn’t want freed Blacks flooding into their states. They were fine with dictating terms from far away upon the South, but had they been inundated with the people they freed, would’ve turned into the most rabid and violent racists.
That permanent enslavement was ever permitted on our soil was an abomination. Indentured servitude was something else entirely and served a positive purpose of training a particular individual in a trade and after working off the costs of their trans-Atlantic voyage, they’d be free to live their lives. White or Black, it should never have gone beyond that, and no one should’ve been forced against their will to come here. If Africans hadn’t sold their own into the trade, we’d have never been saddled with that madness on our shores (then again, we’d probably just have enslaved Native Indians instead for the cheap labor).
We’d be a vastly different country today, one we’d probably not recognize politically, especially culturally. Perhaps like a vanilla Canada, presuming we wouldn’t have been conquered by outside leftist elements (or inside). Just being “all White” is no guarantee of being “better” (look at the Scandinavian countries, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia). Look at Massachusetts and Vermont, for heaven’s sake. Overwhelmingly White and moonbat leftist.
I guess resettlement was the best plan then.
If not Liberia (few wanted to go there) or the Central America (Lincoln’s plan but Central America didn’t want them) than perhaps to the western plains states.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n5p-4_Morgan.html
I’m not too keen on indentured servitude, basically slavery lite.
The idea was for Kansas, but I doubt White Kansans would’ve supported the enormity of million of ex-slaves flooding into the state. No state wanted that, and you’d have had bedlam if it had been imposed.
Yes and no. You were repaying a debt and learning a trade and you weren’t held for life, but for a set period. Hell, that’s more than those living on welfare slavery get these days who don’t have ANY trade.
Which is why I was thinking Wyoming or something, hardly anyone there.
There was no easy answer. But I think what actually happened, leaving them in the South as second or third class citizens, was crappy.
Yeah but they treated like shite (corporal punishment, couldn’t marry without permission) and it was easy for the employer to abuse the terms. I hate to say it but something like that needs government oversight.
They were going to be second class citizens no matter where they went. The only group of folks in this country that ostensibly had it worse were Native Americans. There just wasn’t going to be room for both cultures.
Clearly delineated rights on the part of the person signing off on the contract, yes.
Not so much that Fairbanks would save us but that progressivism wouldn’t have established a foothold in the federal government., and Wilson would have been unable to win the White House. Heck, without a TR second term or Wilson’s two terms, the progressive Hoover never would have been elected president.
“I guess resettlement was the best plan then.”
No doubt about that. We wouldn’t have the unassimilated contraband, a.k.a. the “gibmedats” bitching and moaning.
“If Reconstruction had been harsher...”
Exactly, there wouldn’t be the divisions that exist (especially by a few Rebs on this site) between the North and the South.
“That permanent enslavement was ever permitted on our soil was an abomination.”
Yep. Idiotic Luddites that were too cheap and stupid to join the Industrial Revolution were behind it in this country.
As far as the actual topic goes, Wilson. If even the aftermath of WWI was handled better, there might not even have been a Hitler gaining power in Germany to begin with.
If we’d have demanded war reparations from Iraq our national debt would not be $17 Trillion and gas would not be $3.50 a gallon.
At some point on that arc, career Executive Branch employees reach sufficient numbers that their collective clout can protect them from attempts by Congress, the courts or the president to force reform. In the case of Obama the bureaucracies—whose ranks are filled with activist Democrats—have an ally bent on expanding government. The chief aim of ObamaCare, Dodd-Franks, Cap-and-Trade and much of the “Stimulus” is to create new bureaucracies staffed by card-carrying Democrats.
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