>>12333

I love Nixon. I find him infinitely interesting. He was pretty smart but definitely mentally ill.

Current event-wise, Operation Fast and Furious is far worse than watergate, but the media won't touch it because it hurts their boy Obama. It also hurts the image of our insane and inane War on Drugs, another thing the media loves.

>>12374
Hmm, yeah, about 1500 weapons into the handsof cartels is way worse than thousands and thousands of weapons into the hands of batshit-crazy zealots, and using the CIA as a drug-dealer and fueling the crack epidemic that killed countless urban poor. But yeah, obama's way worse. . . tard.

>>12377

The fuck? Did I say Obama was worse than someone in my post? Let's review:

>Operation Fast and Furious is far worse than watergate

Learn to read son.

It's actually quite hard to tell, but it may have begun in North Africa about 9 thousand years ago, before north africa became a desert due to a 10 or so degree shift in the earth's rotation. We now know that iron-work originated in west Africa and that written language developed in what is now Somalia and Ethiopia, but the oldest known ruins are probably Gobekli tepi in turkey, but they're pretty far from africa- though that doesn't mean a thing as the Pyrimids are pretty far from Gobekli tepi, and Stone-Henge is pretty far from The Pyramids.

>>12372

I love Common Sense so I'll have to give Paine's other works a go, also I've heard of "Lies My Teacher Told Me" so I'll check that out too.

You seem to have a lot of suggestions; lately I've been interested in texts that influenced the American Revolution/Constitution, so would you recommend anything by writers like Locke and Smith, etc?

>>12373
Oh yeah, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is a good enlightenment era piece, but didn't have an effect on the constitution, as it was published in 1776 and wasn't readily available to Americans for a few more years, but was very widely read by men like Paine and Jefferson who agreed with Smnith that the freedom of commerce was the instrument through-which men's freedom would be secured (however, I disagree, and apparently as did Jefferson in his later life, with his anti-capitalistic embargoes and inheritance-tax ideas) I'd recommend in that category Machiavelli's The Prince, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Treatises On Government, Rousseau's On The Social Contract and such. Rousseau is especially interesting as his idea of a virtuous republic inspired such diverse political thinkers are Robespierre, Jefferson and Mussolini. (to which he may be closer, sorry to say, to Mussolini- but not nearly as violent) But you can save a lot of reading and just read the works of Thomas Paine, as Paine read and absorbed so much enlightenment material that he ends up summarizing Voltaire, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and even pre-empts major critiques of The Bible (Age of Reason). Although it was probably best said by jefferson when he said that Paine "thought more than he read" and hadn't read David hume, the first major atheist Philosopher, (or at least Paine said he hadn'hume's new critiquesof miracles and the interruption of natural law. Paine also hadn't read Emmanuel Kant's complete destruction of the argument from design, but this is understandable because Kant's own german wouldn't be available in english for a decade after it's publishing, and unavailable in the U.S. for another 5 years, so Paine was dead in 1809 by the time Kant was available for a man who knew only (broken) french and English. Although off on a tagent, It's strange that Paine would be a deist until his dying breath, but Jefferson died arguable agnostic- having said he went to his death with neither hope for reward nor fear of punishment. But then again, although Jefferson questioned why the sea-shell fossils were so high up on the cliffs where no water could be, both he and Paine lived before darwin, and had no other explanations for the world than a creator. sorry if I'm spieling, but Jefferson and Paine are pretty much my heroes :D But yeah, Library of America has the complete works of Jeffersona d Paine for like 14 bucks a piece, so I'd grab that for reals.

>>12373
Oh yeah, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is a good enlightenment era piece, but didn't have an effect on the constitution, as it was published in 1776 and wasn't readily available to Americans for a few more years, but was very widely read by men like Paine and Jefferson who agreed with Smnith that the freedom of commerce was the instrument through-which men's freedom would be secured (however, I disagree, and apparently as did Jefferson in his later life, with his anti-capitalistic embargoes and inheritance-tax ideas) I'd recommend in that category Machiavelli's The Prince, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Treatises On Government, Rousseau's On The Social Contract and such. Rousseau is especially interesting as his idea of a virtuous republic inspired such diverse political thinkers are Robespierre, Jefferson and Mussolini. (to which he may be closer, sorry to say, to Mussolini- but not nearly as violent) But you can save a lot of reading and just read the works of Thomas Paine, as Paine read and absorbed so much enlightenment material that he ends up summarizing Voltaire, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and even pre-empts major critiques of The Bible (Age of Reason). Although it was probably best said by jefferson when he said that Paine "thought more than he read" and hadn't read David hume, the first major atheist Philosopher, (or at least Paine said he hadn'hume's new critiquesof miracles and the interruption of natural law. Paine also hadn't read Emmanuel Kant's complete destruction of the argument from design, but this is understandable because Kant's own german wouldn't be available in english for a decade after it's publishing, and unavailable in the U.S. for another 5 years, so Paine was dead in 1809 by the time Kant was available for a man who knew only (broken) french and English. Although off on a tagent, It's strange that Paine would be a deist until his dying breath, but Jefferson died arguable agnostic- having said he went to his death with neither hope for reward nor fear of punishment. But then again, although Jefferson questioned why the sea-shell fossils were so high up on the cliffs where no water could be, both he and Paine lived before Darwin, and had no other explanations for the world than a creator. sorry if I'm spieling, but Jefferson and Paine are pretty much my heroes :D But yeah, Library of America has the complete works of Jefferson and Paine for like 14 bucks a piece, so I'd grab that for reals.

Easy. Do something honorable on a national level to the unanimous benefit to all, and let your whole culture of slackjawed yokels take credit for it.

Build the "city of the future" in the US. No one else in this country has the balls to try it.

Exactly. Just build a Cajun science center, staff it with Cajun scientists, and cure cancer. Voila, respect.

>>12320
Get rid of that giant cajun ego and people might take you seriously. Stop calling the civil war the war of northern agression... no one likes a cry baby its not your right to own people btw.

>>12351
>implying Napoleon wasn't despotic

>>12353
It's nearly 5 decades in dog years.

Though to be fair, from the context, it was clear to me that he was lumping in time spent under monarchy rule, which was clearly despotic near the end.

>>12356
Napoleon was still more despotic than Louis XVI ever was.

File 133622269635.jpg - (756.70KB , 1857x2024 , ☭✡.jpg )

12317

I'm guessing you're mostly concerned about his anti-Semitism.
Well, Hitler didn't exactly flout "i'm going to kill lots of Jews" as his campaign promise. He did plenty of anti-Jewish agitation of course, but that actually made him more popular with many people, because the Jews had recently fallen into disfavor with much of the public. On the one hand, the leaders of the Communist movement that had established the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic and were said to have betrayed Germany at the end of WW1 were practically all Jews, as you can see on picrelated. On the other hand, due to their pre-eminent role in banking, Jews were blamed by many for the Great Depression, which had hit Germany especially hard due to being compounded with the harsh Treaty of Versailles.
While his favorite conspiracy theory that Communism is a Jewish plot to take over the world may seem outlandish to most people today, back then many other prominent politicians beside Hitler said the same thing, such as Winston Churchill:
http://www.youtu.be/Jg0DAvMNw6c
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zionism_versus_Bolshevism

He did quickly enact harsh anti-Semitic laws banning Jews from e.g. owning newspapers or from holding public offices, but the German people mostly perceived this as a defensive reaction to the trade boycotts staged by International Jewry starting March 1933, which is discussed here:
http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/jdecwar.html
His general policy towards the Jews was their expulsion from Germany. To achieve this goal, he even signed an agreement with the Zionists to help them create the state of Israel in Palestine:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Haavara_Agreement
Some Germans thought that sending the Jews packing was too harsh a move, while some Nazi hardliners were unhappy with Hitler helping the Jews to create their own country, but many perceived it as a sensible policy.

His anti-Communist stance made Hitler popular with the conservatives, while the many socialist points his party had in its program made him popular with the economically left-leaning population. The chief economist of the National Socialist party, Gottfried Feder, was highly critical of capitalism and called for an abolishment of the traditional banking system by outlawing the charging of interest:
Message too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>12324
I'm going to assume you weren't alive then and have absolutely no knowledge of the massive military expenditures during the 50s and 60s.

It took out-of-control inflation coupled with an energy crisis to put the brakes on military spending in the 70s, which Reagan & Bush promptly forgot about in their rush to repeat the mistakes of the past.

>>12326
Well, that was my original point. The overriding motivator for spending was the cold-war enemy, not the fighting of an insurgency.

>>12334
>overriding motivator for spending was the cold-war enemy, not the fighting of an insurgency.
But the cold-war enemy didn't disappear until the 90s. If the overriding motivator for spending was the cold-war enemy, Reagan/Bush wouldn't have needed to jack up spending to ridiculous levels in the 80s.

The end of the Vietnam war fueled the majority of military cost cutting in the 70s, as there were projects dedicated to the conflict that would not have applied to a cold war enemy, but never discount the sheer logistical cost of maintaining a war (a staggering number of B-52s were lost, which were replenished by purchases of new B-52s, and B-52s weren't cheap).

Also, Vietnam was a civil war, not an insurgency. The US's first involvement in the conflict was in the 50s, starting out with soldiers who signed up with the CIA in order to train SV soldiers. Yes, this means that when the real cold-war era proxy fight, Korea, was going on we were also in Vietnam, which wasn't a proxy fight.

>>12346
Why do you hate punctuation?

>>12349
He doesn't hate punctuation. He just hates periods.

He probably ate at the Y during red tide.

>>12343 here.

Apologies. Half a dozen of my close childhood friends were all poll-sci majors. None of them know the first fucking thing about any of topics they profess to be an expert on, and every time they get to talking it makes my skin crawl. I've asked them what it means to know something, what is knowledge, what is an informed decision worth vs... etc, and all I ever get is essentially "whatever popular opinion says". If I didn't hear the same shit out the mouths of every attorney and politician, I'd be more optimistic about where the US is heading, but..

I actually can imagine society without law, because law is essentially a few people deciding upon a rule of human behavior that's applied universally to the many, a construct built upon at least three seriously flawed premises with terrible track records of application. Society without law is exactly what we get when we amass 20 research scientists in a room. Their pursuit of knowledge trumps ill-fitting laws made by ignorant people for dubious and often nefarious purposes.

Much like religious zealots really only respect the severely nonsensical ancient laws of their gods, those who dedicate their lives to the scientific pursuit of knowledge must ignore arguments of authority and respect only the laws of nature. ...unless you're working on a US grant. Then you do what they say. ...otherwise, you go to a country that values your research. ...which is why we lost the particle physics game, the energy game, and are losing bio as well.

The US is strawberrying itself hard.

I am a very left-leaning man, but when I read this I puke and must admit: European culture and its offshoots are simply superior, and the sole reason for human advancement to the Space Age. Confucian cultures get an honorary mention, though. Others are inferior, and the people trapped in them were better of under colonialism.

Ahhh, lefties. Equally and oppositely retarded as righties.

personally I way prefer what we call modern civilization, which has many aspects that were *mostly* developed in the west, but is not so specific so that it has many other aspects that can exist as well

you have your chinese flavoured modernism, european flavoured modernism, beginning to get an eastern european/western asian modernism, and even african, and south american modernism

and let's not forget that north american and european modernism are different a reasonable amount too

note that just because the west pioneered modernism more or less it doesn't mean there haven't been vital contributions from other cultures

in fact, much of modernism that we take for granted has had a major amount of input and feedback from the other cultures to begin with, and the reason we were able to develop it at all is because we listened, even if we made our own decisions