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I believe 'Dead poets society' came before didnt it? (Another great movie)
“Good Morning Vietnam” 1987″Dead Poets Society” 1989
We would still be arguing over states' rights, much like today, but states may still be threatening to secede if they didn't get their way. The issue of whether the Union was indivisable was really all that was settled at the cost of millions of dead and wounded.
Good Morning Vietnam, if only for the fabulous sixties music
“Good Morning Vietnam” but not only for the music. It also was the debut of the serious actor in Robin Williams, at least as best as I recall.Of course “Apocalypse Now” was also a great movie. Wasn't it Robert Duvall who said “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”?.
Obviously, women in Islamic countries are treated quite differently from those in the U.S. or perhaps Europe; at least in one country in South America, women are treated with different expectations than in the West as well.
Which South American country is that?
I would disagree. Trends in public opinion do matter. What was considered “cruel and unusual” in 1790 is not necessarily the same as now, and that was the point of that decision. The framers left certain things intentionally vague and the amendment process so difficult that so that they intended for it to evolve over time ( (in my opinion). If they wanted it to be “set in stone” they would have made the amendment process a bit easier.
Most of my study and reading deals with things before 1900. Twentieth century is more of a minor intrest to me. But I have to say I never really thought in terms of how FDR's terms in office changed the federal government, but your right it did take on a different personality after FDR. Do you think it was his policys alone, or the depression and the war afterwards that caused the change?
It was a combination. The expansion of government was going to happen, it was a question of when. As people bought cars they were going to demand highways. As medicine got better and people lived longer, they were going to demand some kind of government pensions, and for the government to step in and pay for health care for the elderly (at least). On and on.Our willingness to get involved in overseas adventures clearly changed as a result of the war. We were now the most powerful nation on Earth and the only ones (at the time) to possess nuclear weapons. We had no choice. but to maintain that position, which called for always maintaining defense spending. Then, once you have a large military, using it is always an option.
I think “judicial activism” is a code word for “liberal judges” by anti-abortionists. Pretty much that's what it is.IMO a better way to describe federal judges is in how narrowly or widely they interpret the constitution and whether they are “strict constructionists” or believe in a “living, breathing” constitution.
This is a debate that rages on and on.In one sense it did because it emasculated Germany but it provided the German leadership with the “we were stabbed in the back by Jews and Communists” argument. At the end of World War I, the front was still more or less completely within France and Belgium (the war in the east was over). Ordinary Germans never saw their armies beaten on the ground as they did at the end of the second war. There were actually some small zones of occupation but most German's never saw a foreign soldier. Add to that the crippling reparations and the currency crisis and the country was primed to beleive what Hitler was saying.Some would argue that it was not harsh enough and Germany should have been subjected to prolonged foreign miltary occupation and pacification. Perhaps that would have convinced the ordinary German that they had actually lost the war. I don't subscribe to that theory, but it is out there.
Most historically significant battle: Stalingrad. It involved more troops than any other battle in history, had more casualties than any other battle in history, and it turned the tide of the Russo-German war. World War II was the dawn of the nuclear age. It's hard to argue that had it ended differently the world as we know it might not be the world as we know it.
he Iraq War is meant to bring stability and democracy to that country
I have to disagree. This war was to rid Iraq of WMD's which it did not possess and because Iraq was involved with Al Qaeda, which it also wasn't. And also don't forget, their oil revenues were going to pay the costs.Now that we are there, the mission has changed. Sadly however, this is not a “nation” but a geographical entity with three groups that do not like or trust each other. They are now fighting a civil war, and it will continue until at least one group is brutally supressed or the nation splits a la Yugoslavia, another geographical entity that had been held together by force.For those of you who will argue that we freed the Iraqi people from Sadam's tyranny and mass murder, I would ask how many Iraqis are dying today at Iraqi hands and are they safer than they were before the invasion?I agree that the comparisons with Vietnam are wrong however. In Vietnam we were supporting an unpopular government against a popular insurgency. In Iraq we are supporting an unpopular government against an unpopular insurgency. The one thing that is common is that we are not regarded as saviors but rather as unpopular foreign invaders in both situations.
Germany's first and foremost mistake even before the war began was Hitlers interference in the war planning. He thought he knew it all and was an arrogant egotist when he didn't know jack squat about war tactics.
This is true but technically not a “strategic blunder”. Had he not thought he “knew it all” he would have been smart enough to let his generals fight once the battle plans were approved. That's true.In my opinion, the greatest real strategic blunder was turning south toward Kiev in 1941 when the weather was still good, without advancing to Moscow. Hitler wanted to destroy the Red Army and that was the reason, and in some ways that was sound strategy. On the other hand, forcing the Soviet government to evacuate from Moscow and head east of the Urals may actually have ended the war in the favor of Germany.
The short answer is yes. Had we not, the Nazis might well have forced the Russians into a stalemate east of the Urals and the Brits likely could not have invaded the continent alone.This all might have proved disastrous, as Germany was well on its way to developing a nuclear program, and had the most advanced rocket scientists in the world at the time. In fact, most of the most prominent US rocket scientists from the 1950's and 1960's were Germans who had risked their lives to cross Germany in a commandeered train in order to surrender to US forces and avoid capture by the Soviets.The “cold war” may have been us against a Europe dominated by Nazi Germany. The difference was that the Nazi's ideoplogy was that they were “racially” superior and deserved to rule the world. The Soviets feared us more than we feared them. Nuclear war may well have resulted from such a situation.And while the Germans didn't have much of a Navy in 1941, imagine if they had pacified the Russians what they could have built, all the while the US remaining neutral and not gearing up for war. The US east coast has never been fortified and Hitler most certainly had plans for war with the US once he disposed of his other enemies.
