Summer 2008 War on Iran/Syria/Hizballah

[Amianthus]

The Germans were among the most innovative people on this planet before WW2 and they had never had a democratic government.

The Reichstag?

[Plane]

Blah, blah, blah. You brough General Sherman into this conversation my friend, not me. I'm just telling you what he'd think of someone like you pandering for war. He made some of his harshest remarks for those who did exactly that. Don't jump on me and get defensive if you dislike it. I am just telling you what Sherman thought of those who talked up warfare and you'd be a prime example as with the posts I've read from you on this board.

As long as it wasn't me that brought it up.

In our Country... one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.
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He belonged to that army known as invincible in peace, invisible in war.
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I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.


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I intend to make Georgia howl.

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I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy.

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My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.

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If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.
William Tecumseh Sherman

And on another subject...

There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them.

William Tecumseh Sherman


I think the quote most apt to this discussion is this one...

War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say give them all they want.

  I choose this as apt bcause we can't quit while our opponents aren't yet quit.

[_JS]

The Germans were among the most innovative people on this planet before WW2 and they had never had a democratic government.

The Reichstag?

Do you really want to make the argument that the Weimar Republic was a bastion of freedom? I suppose it technically fits the definition of "democratic" but the junkers still retained much of the power and when they did not, it was largely ineffective.

Besides, the great scientists that the Soviets and Americans grabbed up after the war mostly matured during Nazism. The gasoline powered car was invented under the first Reich. Microphone, cathode ray tube, diesel engine, sypillis treatment, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Aspirin, Anthrax, DDT (threw that one in for Prince), four stroke engine, Decaf coffee, Zeppelin, Syphillis test, pregnancy test, the first programmable computer - all invented under non-democratic German regimes.

I'm not hyping the Germans as most cultures have impressive lists of inventions and such lists are not the be all and end all of any cultural achievement anyway.

My point is that freedom = innovation is often claimed, but is it historical fact? Or just accepted because we want to believe it to be so?

[Xavier_Onassis]

My point is that freedom = innovation is often claimed, but is it historical fact? Or just accepted because we want to believe it to be so?

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People were certainly free to innovate.  The main reason why Germans excelled in this period was that German education was a meritocracy. He who did not learn was not given a degree.

The US did not have a very good educational system, particularly in the sciences where these innovations took place, until after Carnegie contributed money and a drive to excel in education, folowing the German , NOT the British model. Carnegie was a genius who was a Scot and a commoner, and he despised the Brits for their elitism, and rightfully so.

The British had an educational system where rich twits abounded, were granted "gentlemen's C" diplomas, and went into business by hiring poorer, but smarter and better educated classmates.


The more elite US universities still have "legacy" students who can graduate and remain as ignorant as they had been previously in high school. They have to know more than the nothing required at Oxford and Cambridge in the  times of Queen Victoria and King Edward, but they are not much more useful.