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Interesting. I would like to add that there is even documented evidence that Lincoln wrote of abolishing slavery to deport them back to Africa; he saw their existence in the US as a blight. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/29.1/magness.html

The version of history we believe about what Lincoln's real motives were seems to be far from the truth.

WWII wasn't worth it, you see, because a genocidal madman taking over half the world and executing everyone he thought of as subhuman is a better outcome.

The European part of WWII would never have happened if it wasn't for the aftermath of WWI. (The Pacific war was a straight-up conflict between two imperialist powers, though U.S. imperialism was somewhat less brutal -- but by no means benign.) WWI was a pointless exercise in militarism and imperialism. If the "violence is bad" meme were more wide-spread, WWI would not have happened, and Hitler would not have been able to come to power.

(If other nations had acted more quickly to put sanctions and a blockade on Hitler, if the U.S. had not allowed American companies to help build the German war machine, Hitler could have been contained. But again, that would require the "violence is bad" meme to be much more powerful, stronger than the "let's make some money and damn the consequences!" or the "dem dang Commie Russians must be stopped!" meme.)

"X is necessary, because without X, you couldn't clean up the mess that X causes" is a rather sad argument, don't you think?

Ending slavery in the United States was bad, too, because things were better off for the slaves.

Of course, if the "violence is bad" meme were more wide-spread, the U.S. would not have accepted slavery in the first place. Again, "we need violence to mop up the results of our past use of violence!"

I'm not 100% opposed to the use of force in 100% of cases; hell, I teach people how to maim and kill in self-defense, if necessary. If violence is the best option, somebody somewhere has fucked up very very badly -- but sometimes the person who has to deal with the situation is not the one who fucked up.

But "just war" theory is a shallow justification that ignores the way that violence almost always begets violence. Only when one can use force while at the same time loving the "enemy" can force work for peace -- a hell of a dilemma to swallow, and one completely incompatible with all forms of militarism.

"Probably I'll get modded troll or off-topic by some of the short-sighted with accounts here."

Probably because the 1421 book's author has some pretty weak evidence.

Just a few points of criticism here, here, and here.

Among North American slaves, births greatly exceeded deaths, so that the slave population expanded rapidly. In sharp contrast, across the slave societies of the Caribbean and Latin America, the persistent experience was one not of natural increase but of dramatic natural decrease. Indeed, the North American pattern was probably, with a few local and sometimes short-term exceptions, unique in the history of slavery. As C. Vann Woodward wrote: "So far as history reveals, no other slave society, whether of antiquity or modern times, has so much as sustained, much less greatly multiplied, its slave population by relying on natural increase."1 Why, then, did North American slaves experience such rapid natural increase (excess of births over deaths), and why did slaves in the rest of the Americas fail to increase naturally? 1
          The contrast between North America and the rest of the Americas is a fundamental one. For example, over the many years of the African slave trade, Jamaica imported some 750,000 slaves, but at the time of emancipation in 1838 its black population numbered only just over 300,000: North America, in contrast, imported only about 427,000 Africans, but at the time of emancipation in 1865 the U.S. black population had grown to more than ten times that number.2 In the antebellum period, U.S. slaves showed a natural population growth of some 25 percent per decade (and indeed, North American slaves had established a pattern of natural growth by about 1710). In sharp contrast, Caribbean and Brazilian slaves commonly suffered rates of natural decrease of 20 percent per decade.

And having it passed in Michigan makes it somehow better?

Dueling (you know, with swords, or guns, twelve paces, shoot, etc) was legal in my country until 1992*, does that mean the US should have passed a dueling law?

While it's clear that this is a very specific circumstance, I don't think this law should be passed, and I agree with other posters that while sad, blind people should understand that there are things they cannot do. There's only a slight benefit to this bill (some blind hunter who will be able to mix in with his friends), and serious, though unlikely, drawbacks (the blind guy hurting or killing someone by accident).

*http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/19 .2/parker.html

Here's the basic idea: http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/107 .2/ah0202000351.html

You have an economic collapse and no food. People start dying. The ones who've got the genetic advantages to survive famine (the types who'd have a slow metabolism and pack on the calories while there was food) are more likely to survive. They'll be skinny, but alive.

The skinny types, who can't pack on weight, will just die. The fat ones, realizing there won't be any food for a long time, try to leave. Some of them got to America.

That's the argument for how America wound up with people who tend to get disgustingly fat.

I'm not sure I buy it.

Here's the relevant quote from the link above with my comments in braces:

"Observers invoked such descriptions of Nelly's birthplace even before 1845, when a mysterious potato blight began to wreak havoc on the meager food supply. By late 1846, Kenmare residents began to succumb to starvation and malnutrition-related diseases. [THAT' THE SKINNY ONES DYING] As conditions continued to deteriorate in early 1847, the death toll multiplied... Tens of thousands fled Ireland in 1847 [TO PLACES LIKE AMERICA] ..."

I called the realization that nobody wants to read really long assignments online a "blinding flash of the obvious" that lots of online education boosters don't seem to get.

I was always partial to the idea that George Washington's tactic of provoking Redcoat punitive attacks was instrumental to swaying public opinion. (Can't find a source for this, so maybe I have some other general in mind.)

The British press had a high opinion of Washington, and according to this account it seems that the British public was not pleased with the slaughter of colonists. Viewed as propaganda, the Revolutionaries' strategy of guerrilla warfare was tremendously successful, quite out of proportion to the physical damage inflicted upon the Redcoats or to the material assets of the Crown.

In the long run PR fiasco's like the school audits will cost Microsoft dearly.