More important and germane to this I think is the changing nature of 'decline' and 'collapse'. Everybody tries to squeeze more blood out of the Roman stone, but anymore it's just an anachronism. The implosion of European nations as colonial powers and empires did not (in almost all cases) have long term debilitating aftermaths. Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, etc. did not become overrun by barbarians and sacked just because they didn't feel that Africa was worth the effort anymore. Even if/when the US is eclipsed by China and the EU, that doesn't mean sacking and mayhem any moreso. The 'decline' and 'collapse' of the US will probably be little different from that of the Dutch or the Portugese in that domestically it will be barely felt at all. The effects, just like with European colonialism, will be worst abroad, where the flow of 'aid' will finally trickle to a stop. (I can dream can't I?)
The American Revolution was conducted in a very honorable way, owing to the unyielding character of most of the senior commanders. There are numerous 'small' conflicts like The Norwegian-Swedish War of 1814 that were very civilized affairs as wars go.
What bothers me here is that I know you're not working from any kind of objective data. You're just speculating and presenting those speculations as fact. I'm speculating as well, but at least I admit the limits of my knowledge, and further at least I have more first hand experience.
I could see the co-op type homeschool programs existing in more affluent areas of larger cities, or suburbs of major metropolitan areas, but certainly not widespread enough to be a usual occurance.
Besides being stated with unsupported air of authority, this ignores the simple difference of population density intrinsic in this matter. More people live in denser areas (of course) and vice versa, so something that is common in the former and rare in the latter means that quantitatively the former condition will be more common.
I suppose I also left out parent's who think that their child is too good for standard schooling.
That reason is far more prevalent than you know (or are likely to admit, given the bias I'm observing). It was one of the most common I encountered, and was the primary motivation of my parents for my own homeschooling. It is the motivation I have myself for eventually homeschooling my daughter.
While there is an unavoidable selection bias (I was involved in both homeshool groups and extracurricular clubs, and how do you meet people that are inherently isolated?) and anecdotes are not authoritative, I would say that as a homeschooled person who has known many other homeschooled people, I am more qualified to estimate the scope of the 'norm' than you are.
This is true. Groups of kids do look at the rare kid with no TV as the odd one out because they are frequently clueless about the current cultural touchstones (such as they are) for their peer group.
Oh, and I was homeschooled, and your stereotypes about the socialization of homeschoolers are bullshit. While some homeschooling is done in an entirely isolated way, many others homeschool in co-operative groups, or encourage their kids to join extracurricular organizations.
But the fundamental truth is that when drugs are freely available, drugs usually win.
Cocaine used to be found in dozens of products in any given general store in the United States, including Coca-Cola. There was a time when there were no prohibited substances, and in fact the first prohibitions on things like cocaine were race-based (because whitey thought that black people were not 'controlled' enough to handle the substances as they were, look it up). There is a portion of society that will abuse substances. That portion doesn't really fluctuate all that much regardless of law (the 18th Amendment proved that).
Don't have a TV in your house. Don't play video games. Don't be a computer addict.
Without a TV I would be a more ignorant person, period. I absorbed metric tons of information from the Discovery Channel, History Channel, C-Span (yes, I actually watched C-Span regularly when I was an adolescent), news channels, etc. I read a lot of books too, but information is information there is no inherent conflict or exclusion, the vector is not important. My playing games and my computer 'addiction' gave me the skillset that paved the way for my current, fairly comfortable career. Without those I would be not only more ignorant again for not having, you know, a sizable chunk of all human knowledge available to me instantly, but also I would be more culturally one dimensional. It was through my computer that I discovered and was able to nurture diverse cultural interests.
I say from experience what you are advocating is a flatter, more one dimensional and ignorant existence. Just because some TV shows and games are mindless, you throw the baby out with the bathwater assuming that there is no redeeming value in those which are not. If I told you I didn't read books because some books are stupid, you'd rightly call me a fool. It's up to you to be discerning about the use of a medium, but to discount a medium entirely is just shutting the door on a sizable portion of human knowledge and culture, not to mention the important thing that proceeds from those: understanding.
If the Confederacy continued the same expansionist policies as the nation it had split from, then there would have been war in the West.
The British were expanding Canada, why was there no (large-scale, open) warfare between them and the US in the West? It's an oversimplification to say that if the Civil War didn't start in the East then it would have in the West. In fact both the 'Northern' and 'Southern' West were fairly sedate throughout the conflict.
But if the South had gone, where would they go?
One of the major factors that contributed to the downfall of the South was the Union blockade. If nobody was trading with the South wouldn't that have been redundant? The South may not have occupied any kind of economic catbird seat, but to make it sound like they would have dried up and blew away if left to their own devices I think is nothing short of fantasy.
How long do you suppose before the North's economic supremacy would have made its position untenable?
Once again, Canada. The US has been 'economically supreme' compared to Canada, that does not mean that Canada is a failure. Success is relative. If one country is industrial and the other agrarian, that doesn't mean that one is a better place to live than the other. Nebraska is not "inferior" to Michigan. I think a lot of these 'issues' are in your imagination.
And how would the Confederacy faired any better in ten or twenty years after secession than it did during the Civil War?
So basically you're asking whether I think somebody might be able to work more effectively when they aren't fighting for their lives? Why yes, I do think the Confederacy would have done a great deal better with no blockade to deal with, no Sherman burning every mill that looked at him wrong, and no huge war outlays overhead. The question is quite silly actually.
Oh, and while Britain was the most significant player on the stage at this point in history, they were not the only power in the world, nor was Europe a monolith, nor is it reasonable to assume that no nation would trade with the South.
I'm replying to myself to add some interesting notes. I asked my wife her opinion about the issue as she is uniquely qualified because not only is she descended from slaves, but her great-grandfather Greene Buster wrote an account of his grandfather's (Garrett Buster) stories about the transition from slavery to freedom entitled Brighter Sun. She said that given the choice between a slower but peaceful transition and a faster but bloody transition, she preferred the latter because it was cathartic. This was an aspect I had not previously considered, though I don't know that it adequately addresses the scenarios in other nations.
Does your code of ethics allows for the killing of others in the normal course of life?
Absolutely. I routinely carry a sidearm. If somebody threatens my life and I believe the person has both the motivation and the means to immediately follow through, I will drop him immediately, even reflexively. If I observe that somebody else, whether I know them or not, is being threatened with what I believe is the intent to kill I will do the same. In either case, if I have behaved rationally, the justice system will give me a pat on the back and everybody will move right along with their lives.
Defending against the initiation of force is one the most basic principles of human society. War is simply that idea writ large. (What follows is admittedly an oversimplification:) A nation that initiates force is wrong, a nation that reacts and defends against force with force is justified.
I find that laughable. Many Bronze Age societies were no more barbarians than people today -- barbarism still exists all over the world.
Let's reintroduce concubinage the way it was back then, then have the last thing you see before you're killed in a raid be the rape of every woman you know, and as the blood pours out of you you can reflect on how that will be their fate for the rest of their lives. Yeah, the Bronze Age was fun times. (Rape of course still happens in modern wars, but it's more marginalized and is not 'institutionalized' as it was in the Ancient period so that possession was not passing but permanent.)
I was referring to the current period. Not everything that applies today applied hundreds or thousands of years ago. We have common literacy and mass media, for starters. The second of those two is the most important, IMO -- it represents a sea change in how civilians experience war. Those who wage war are far more accountable for the visible results of their actions.
Gutenberg didn't change war, and honestly I think the influence of Walter Cronkite is overplayed. War has changed more the in last century on a tactical level than it has on a 'civilian experience' level. You'll find that sacking hordes were obsolete long before 'mass media'. 'Mass media' didn't stop any of the mass killings of the last century. Where was your popular support then? Social events under tyrannical regimes have proven that all you need is sustained fear, a well-balanced carrot/stick system that rewards collaboration and has everybody scared witless not to be the 'odd man out' of whatever the system says is right.
If you suspend ethics to win a war, why reinstate them afterward? This question has been answered over and over by tyrannical governments throughout history, and the answer is the death of millions outside the parameters of any 'war'.
The answer to your question is the history of the numerous powers that also ended the practice of slavery in the 19th century. The US was, so far as I can recall, the only country that ostensibly fought a war over it. It would have otherwise ended here the same way it ended everywhere else, abolitionist movements working to enact legislation slowly over time. Was that fair to the slaves in other countries? Was that better than bloody war between factions? The questions answer themselves. Slavery is intrinsically an unfair state of existence, but war *is* worse. A miserable life is in most cases still held in more esteem than death. In my estimation, sparing the war is reason enough to have continued to compromise on slavery, a less restrictive and centralized federal government would have just been a bonus.
I know the more sensitive will read this and think 'it's easy for some 21st century jackass to think that peace would justify slavery'. Slavery is an abstraction to all of us. We have only some written history to work from. I don't defend slavery at all, but I will value life over death.
Right vs. wrong are deeper concepts than victor vs. loser. By such a metric, freeing slaves itself was a 'failed idea' for centuries, after all, the Helots were put down, the Servile Wars were all won by the slave owners, etc. Hamiltonianism is not the 'right' model compared to Jeffersonianism just because the South lost the war. I'm too tired and pressed for time to make a long argument in defense of Jeffersonianism, but I can at least say that the Civil War proved nothing more than that a industrialized Hamiltonian state could overrun an agrarian Jeffersonian state (and I think almost any historian will say that the differences in industrialization were far more important to the outcome than the differences in politics).
I think intentionally destroying private property is a war crime except where doing otherwise would present an immediate risk of harm to occupying forces. (Sometimes you just have to bomb the house full of people in armed resistance.)
I cannot agree with the idea that wars effectively suspend ethics. The universal acceptance of such a principle would reduce humanity to a level of barbarism unseen since the end of the Bronze Age. (Implicit is the argument that the Homeric epics are some of the earliest accounts of war waged within certain 'honorable' parameters.) By this metric, the internment of Japanese and their dispossession was A-OK, the wholesale slaughter of ethnic Hans by the millions for reasons as petty as refusing to adopt the right hairstyle during/after the rise of the Manchus gets a pass, etc.
The whole concept encourages a sort of unity-at-any-cost 'tianxia' imperialism. Whoever was capable of the most ruthless depravity on and off the battlefield would emerge victorious (Mongols come to mind, their empire was larger than the Roman empire, and it fell because while intemperate recklessness can win territory, it cannot keep it and run it). I intimate from your argument that you think this is somehow tempered by the need for popular support, but this is not born out by the practices of sacking hordes from the Ancient and Medieval periods. The only reason such things are rare in the modern era is the strength of civil society and the way in which that civil society has been extended even onto the battlefield. The concepts of personal honor, national pride (as recent as that is, compared to ethnic identity), and moral authority have been the collars and leashes on the hounds of war for generations. Sometimes a hound slips the collar, and you get things like the Holocaust and the Queue Order.
People with a hard code of ethics don't make it to the top level.
I think when you look at the history of leadership you'll find three categories: those who come to power by merit (Cicero, George Washington, etc.); those who come to power by ruthlessness (Peisistratos, Stalin, etc.); and those who come to power by accident/stupidity/birth (which includes almost every last monarch of almost every line of kings/emperors).
And FWIW, while their remains a divide between the north and south, it's continually diminishing. Reconstruction had as much to do with mending the rift as carpetbagging.
I'm not sure why you reference continued mistreatment of the south by the north -- do you have any examples?
I think I phrased myself poorly, I did not mean to imply that there is any particular continuing emnity. And reconstruction was clearly a direct effort toward recovery and winning hearts and minds. What I'm saying is that carpetbagging with all its negative, dispossessing connotation, actually helped to re-homogenize the divided societies and that is frequently overlooked. It was effectively a kind of colonization.
I don't disagree with any of your very pithy analysis, but the sentiment of the following is dangerous:
You miss the purpose of his campaign. It was not for fun -- it was to demoralize the heart of the insurgency. And it worked, however nauseating it may be in hindsight.
This sort of ends-justify-the-means, history-is-written-by-the-victors mentality is insufficient justification for what should have been and should still be war crimes. I'm a very hawkish, unilateral guy, but in order to have moral authority it is necessary to be 'better' than your adversary. I agree that the South is not some saintly victim, they did their own evils not least of which was Andersonville. That is not justification for more evil. You can fight for the 'right' things the 'wrong' way, which includes the carpet bombing of Dresden and other German cities, the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, and the saturation bombing and other indiscriminant behavior in Vietnam.
It would have been better to draw out the conflict, even to a stalemate, than it is to have won by such efforts. It was a stained and sullied victory, which bred generations of continued emnity. If not for external forces (later wars) and homogenization driven in part by carpetbagging, there probably would have been another Civil War already, driven by the treatment of the South by the North (analogous in some way perhaps to the treatment of the Germans by the French after WWI being catalytic in priming German society to accept militarism and aggression leading to WW2).
Foreign nationals such as Dmitry Skylarof are usually classified 'high risk of flight' because they are expected to run back to their country if given half a chance, so, yeah, not out of the ordinary.
I am not familiar with SA law, but in US law this would be thrown out and she'd be in jail. (I personally think prostitution should be legalized, but that doesn't change how things would be handled right now.) This is like those idiots who go to the police and report that their cocaine has been stolen. No law enforcement organization is going to help somebody break the law, whether that's possession of a controlled substance (if it were returned, the 'victim' of theft would immediately be guilty of criminal possession) or prostitution (if she were reinstated she would immediately be guilty of continuing to practice prostitution). Further, while criminals maintain certain rights (no cruel or unusual punishment, etc.), they are different rights than those of non-criminals. Convicted felons are stripped of their right to vote, right to bear arms, and their right to move around unimpeded (imprisonment) etc. Such is life.
If you don't have an AP/router that can export configs or you just don't export those configs, it's your own fault, just like not backing up your hard drive.
Not that I'm trying to get you to switch banks or anything, but I just want to make sure you know that there are banks in AZ that are accommodating. I hear that TruWest Credit Union has a policy to not exceed state law. Other people in that thread have noted tolerance from Chase, Bank of America, and Hughes FCU.
I tend to 'recover my password' for my wireless APs with my little friend the paper clip. You're absolutely right that the more common use of something like this is going to be cracking.
I think there is a better-than-fair chance of incorporation by the current SCotUS in the Chicago case, to which I'm looking forward with much anticipation. Also, don't forget that almost all states (44 according to wikipedia already ref'ed by jdgeorge) have state constitutional provisions that approximate/mirror the federal constitution.
Federal property aside, I don't believe there is any part of Arizona carry law that specifically pertains to banks. Some banks may post that they prohibit carry and that posting has the effect of law (usually covered as 'trespassing'), but if a bank has no policy then there is no reason you couldn't carry there if you wanted.
I live in VA and during the summer I open carry, and I selected a bank that did not have any objections to my sidearm. It's best to look at the small, local banks (mine has three going on four branches total) because they don't have policy set by faceless functionaries at some huge out-of-state HQ.
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More important and germane to this I think is the changing nature of 'decline' and 'collapse'. Everybody tries to squeeze more blood out of the Roman stone, but anymore it's just an anachronism. The implosion of European nations as colonial powers and empires did not (in almost all cases) have long term debilitating aftermaths. Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, etc. did not become overrun by barbarians and sacked just because they didn't feel that Africa was worth the effort anymore. Even if/when the US is eclipsed by China and the EU, that doesn't mean sacking and mayhem any moreso. The 'decline' and 'collapse' of the US will probably be little different from that of the Dutch or the Portugese in that domestically it will be barely felt at all. The effects, just like with European colonialism, will be worst abroad, where the flow of 'aid' will finally trickle to a stop. (I can dream can't I?)
The American Revolution was conducted in a very honorable way, owing to the unyielding character of most of the senior commanders. There are numerous 'small' conflicts like The Norwegian-Swedish War of 1814 that were very civilized affairs as wars go.
I could see the co-op type homeschool programs existing in more affluent areas of larger cities, or suburbs of major metropolitan areas, but certainly not widespread enough to be a usual occurance.
Besides being stated with unsupported air of authority, this ignores the simple difference of population density intrinsic in this matter. More people live in denser areas (of course) and vice versa, so something that is common in the former and rare in the latter means that quantitatively the former condition will be more common.
I suppose I also left out parent's who think that their child is too good for standard schooling.
That reason is far more prevalent than you know (or are likely to admit, given the bias I'm observing). It was one of the most common I encountered, and was the primary motivation of my parents for my own homeschooling. It is the motivation I have myself for eventually homeschooling my daughter.
While there is an unavoidable selection bias (I was involved in both homeshool groups and extracurricular clubs, and how do you meet people that are inherently isolated?) and anecdotes are not authoritative, I would say that as a homeschooled person who has known many other homeschooled people, I am more qualified to estimate the scope of the 'norm' than you are.
This is true. Groups of kids do look at the rare kid with no TV as the odd one out because they are frequently clueless about the current cultural touchstones (such as they are) for their peer group.
Oh, and I was homeschooled, and your stereotypes about the socialization of homeschoolers are bullshit. While some homeschooling is done in an entirely isolated way, many others homeschool in co-operative groups, or encourage their kids to join extracurricular organizations.
How dost thou explain that?
Fixed that for thee.
But the fundamental truth is that when drugs are freely available, drugs usually win.
Cocaine used to be found in dozens of products in any given general store in the United States, including Coca-Cola. There was a time when there were no prohibited substances, and in fact the first prohibitions on things like cocaine were race-based (because whitey thought that black people were not 'controlled' enough to handle the substances as they were, look it up). There is a portion of society that will abuse substances. That portion doesn't really fluctuate all that much regardless of law (the 18th Amendment proved that).
Don't have a TV in your house. Don't play video games. Don't be a computer addict.
Without a TV I would be a more ignorant person, period. I absorbed metric tons of information from the Discovery Channel, History Channel, C-Span (yes, I actually watched C-Span regularly when I was an adolescent), news channels, etc. I read a lot of books too, but information is information there is no inherent conflict or exclusion, the vector is not important. My playing games and my computer 'addiction' gave me the skillset that paved the way for my current, fairly comfortable career. Without those I would be not only more ignorant again for not having, you know, a sizable chunk of all human knowledge available to me instantly, but also I would be more culturally one dimensional. It was through my computer that I discovered and was able to nurture diverse cultural interests.
I say from experience what you are advocating is a flatter, more one dimensional and ignorant existence. Just because some TV shows and games are mindless, you throw the baby out with the bathwater assuming that there is no redeeming value in those which are not. If I told you I didn't read books because some books are stupid, you'd rightly call me a fool. It's up to you to be discerning about the use of a medium, but to discount a medium entirely is just shutting the door on a sizable portion of human knowledge and culture, not to mention the important thing that proceeds from those: understanding.
If the Confederacy continued the same expansionist policies as the nation it had split from, then there would have been war in the West.
The British were expanding Canada, why was there no (large-scale, open) warfare between them and the US in the West? It's an oversimplification to say that if the Civil War didn't start in the East then it would have in the West. In fact both the 'Northern' and 'Southern' West were fairly sedate throughout the conflict.
But if the South had gone, where would they go?
One of the major factors that contributed to the downfall of the South was the Union blockade. If nobody was trading with the South wouldn't that have been redundant? The South may not have occupied any kind of economic catbird seat, but to make it sound like they would have dried up and blew away if left to their own devices I think is nothing short of fantasy.
How long do you suppose before the North's economic supremacy would have made its position untenable?
Once again, Canada. The US has been 'economically supreme' compared to Canada, that does not mean that Canada is a failure. Success is relative. If one country is industrial and the other agrarian, that doesn't mean that one is a better place to live than the other. Nebraska is not "inferior" to Michigan. I think a lot of these 'issues' are in your imagination.
And how would the Confederacy faired any better in ten or twenty years after secession than it did during the Civil War?
So basically you're asking whether I think somebody might be able to work more effectively when they aren't fighting for their lives? Why yes, I do think the Confederacy would have done a great deal better with no blockade to deal with, no Sherman burning every mill that looked at him wrong, and no huge war outlays overhead. The question is quite silly actually.
Oh, and while Britain was the most significant player on the stage at this point in history, they were not the only power in the world, nor was Europe a monolith, nor is it reasonable to assume that no nation would trade with the South.
I'm replying to myself to add some interesting notes. I asked my wife her opinion about the issue as she is uniquely qualified because not only is she descended from slaves, but her great-grandfather Greene Buster wrote an account of his grandfather's (Garrett Buster) stories about the transition from slavery to freedom entitled Brighter Sun. She said that given the choice between a slower but peaceful transition and a faster but bloody transition, she preferred the latter because it was cathartic. This was an aspect I had not previously considered, though I don't know that it adequately addresses the scenarios in other nations.
There are actually maps that breakdown likelihood of issue by county.
Does your code of ethics allows for the killing of others in the normal course of life?
Absolutely. I routinely carry a sidearm. If somebody threatens my life and I believe the person has both the motivation and the means to immediately follow through, I will drop him immediately, even reflexively. If I observe that somebody else, whether I know them or not, is being threatened with what I believe is the intent to kill I will do the same. In either case, if I have behaved rationally, the justice system will give me a pat on the back and everybody will move right along with their lives.
Defending against the initiation of force is one the most basic principles of human society. War is simply that idea writ large. (What follows is admittedly an oversimplification:) A nation that initiates force is wrong, a nation that reacts and defends against force with force is justified.
I find that laughable. Many Bronze Age societies were no more barbarians than people today -- barbarism still exists all over the world.
Let's reintroduce concubinage the way it was back then, then have the last thing you see before you're killed in a raid be the rape of every woman you know, and as the blood pours out of you you can reflect on how that will be their fate for the rest of their lives. Yeah, the Bronze Age was fun times. (Rape of course still happens in modern wars, but it's more marginalized and is not 'institutionalized' as it was in the Ancient period so that possession was not passing but permanent.)
I was referring to the current period. Not everything that applies today applied hundreds or thousands of years ago. We have common literacy and mass media, for starters. The second of those two is the most important, IMO -- it represents a sea change in how civilians experience war. Those who wage war are far more accountable for the visible results of their actions.
Gutenberg didn't change war, and honestly I think the influence of Walter Cronkite is overplayed. War has changed more the in last century on a tactical level than it has on a 'civilian experience' level. You'll find that sacking hordes were obsolete long before 'mass media'. 'Mass media' didn't stop any of the mass killings of the last century. Where was your popular support then? Social events under tyrannical regimes have proven that all you need is sustained fear, a well-balanced carrot/stick system that rewards collaboration and has everybody scared witless not to be the 'odd man out' of whatever the system says is right.
If you suspend ethics to win a war, why reinstate them afterward? This question has been answered over and over by tyrannical governments throughout history, and the answer is the death of millions outside the parameters of any 'war'.
The answer to your question is the history of the numerous powers that also ended the practice of slavery in the 19th century. The US was, so far as I can recall, the only country that ostensibly fought a war over it. It would have otherwise ended here the same way it ended everywhere else, abolitionist movements working to enact legislation slowly over time. Was that fair to the slaves in other countries? Was that better than bloody war between factions? The questions answer themselves. Slavery is intrinsically an unfair state of existence, but war *is* worse. A miserable life is in most cases still held in more esteem than death. In my estimation, sparing the war is reason enough to have continued to compromise on slavery, a less restrictive and centralized federal government would have just been a bonus.
I know the more sensitive will read this and think 'it's easy for some 21st century jackass to think that peace would justify slavery'. Slavery is an abstraction to all of us. We have only some written history to work from. I don't defend slavery at all, but I will value life over death.
Right vs. wrong are deeper concepts than victor vs. loser. By such a metric, freeing slaves itself was a 'failed idea' for centuries, after all, the Helots were put down, the Servile Wars were all won by the slave owners, etc. Hamiltonianism is not the 'right' model compared to Jeffersonianism just because the South lost the war. I'm too tired and pressed for time to make a long argument in defense of Jeffersonianism, but I can at least say that the Civil War proved nothing more than that a industrialized Hamiltonian state could overrun an agrarian Jeffersonian state (and I think almost any historian will say that the differences in industrialization were far more important to the outcome than the differences in politics).
I think intentionally destroying private property is a war crime except where doing otherwise would present an immediate risk of harm to occupying forces. (Sometimes you just have to bomb the house full of people in armed resistance.)
The whole concept encourages a sort of unity-at-any-cost 'tianxia' imperialism. Whoever was capable of the most ruthless depravity on and off the battlefield would emerge victorious (Mongols come to mind, their empire was larger than the Roman empire, and it fell because while intemperate recklessness can win territory, it cannot keep it and run it). I intimate from your argument that you think this is somehow tempered by the need for popular support, but this is not born out by the practices of sacking hordes from the Ancient and Medieval periods. The only reason such things are rare in the modern era is the strength of civil society and the way in which that civil society has been extended even onto the battlefield. The concepts of personal honor, national pride (as recent as that is, compared to ethnic identity), and moral authority have been the collars and leashes on the hounds of war for generations. Sometimes a hound slips the collar, and you get things like the Holocaust and the Queue Order.
People with a hard code of ethics don't make it to the top level.
I think when you look at the history of leadership you'll find three categories: those who come to power by merit (Cicero, George Washington, etc.); those who come to power by ruthlessness (Peisistratos, Stalin, etc.); and those who come to power by accident/stupidity/birth (which includes almost every last monarch of almost every line of kings/emperors).
And FWIW, while their remains a divide between the north and south, it's continually diminishing. Reconstruction had as much to do with mending the rift as carpetbagging. I'm not sure why you reference continued mistreatment of the south by the north -- do you have any examples?
I think I phrased myself poorly, I did not mean to imply that there is any particular continuing emnity. And reconstruction was clearly a direct effort toward recovery and winning hearts and minds. What I'm saying is that carpetbagging with all its negative, dispossessing connotation, actually helped to re-homogenize the divided societies and that is frequently overlooked. It was effectively a kind of colonization.
You miss the purpose of his campaign. It was not for fun -- it was to demoralize the heart of the insurgency. And it worked, however nauseating it may be in hindsight.
This sort of ends-justify-the-means, history-is-written-by-the-victors mentality is insufficient justification for what should have been and should still be war crimes. I'm a very hawkish, unilateral guy, but in order to have moral authority it is necessary to be 'better' than your adversary. I agree that the South is not some saintly victim, they did their own evils not least of which was Andersonville. That is not justification for more evil. You can fight for the 'right' things the 'wrong' way, which includes the carpet bombing of Dresden and other German cities, the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, and the saturation bombing and other indiscriminant behavior in Vietnam.
It would have been better to draw out the conflict, even to a stalemate, than it is to have won by such efforts. It was a stained and sullied victory, which bred generations of continued emnity. If not for external forces (later wars) and homogenization driven in part by carpetbagging, there probably would have been another Civil War already, driven by the treatment of the South by the North (analogous in some way perhaps to the treatment of the Germans by the French after WWI being catalytic in priming German society to accept militarism and aggression leading to WW2).
Foreign nationals such as Dmitry Skylarof are usually classified 'high risk of flight' because they are expected to run back to their country if given half a chance, so, yeah, not out of the ordinary.
I am not familiar with SA law, but in US law this would be thrown out and she'd be in jail. (I personally think prostitution should be legalized, but that doesn't change how things would be handled right now.) This is like those idiots who go to the police and report that their cocaine has been stolen. No law enforcement organization is going to help somebody break the law, whether that's possession of a controlled substance (if it were returned, the 'victim' of theft would immediately be guilty of criminal possession) or prostitution (if she were reinstated she would immediately be guilty of continuing to practice prostitution). Further, while criminals maintain certain rights (no cruel or unusual punishment, etc.), they are different rights than those of non-criminals. Convicted felons are stripped of their right to vote, right to bear arms, and their right to move around unimpeded (imprisonment) etc. Such is life.
If you don't have an AP/router that can export configs or you just don't export those configs, it's your own fault, just like not backing up your hard drive.
Not that I'm trying to get you to switch banks or anything, but I just want to make sure you know that there are banks in AZ that are accommodating. I hear that TruWest Credit Union has a policy to not exceed state law. Other people in that thread have noted tolerance from Chase, Bank of America, and Hughes FCU.
I tend to 'recover my password' for my wireless APs with my little friend the paper clip. You're absolutely right that the more common use of something like this is going to be cracking.
Being found not guilty does not mean he didn't spend time in jail. Not everybody is released on their own recognizance pending trials.
I think there is a better-than-fair chance of incorporation by the current SCotUS in the Chicago case, to which I'm looking forward with much anticipation. Also, don't forget that almost all states (44 according to wikipedia already ref'ed by jdgeorge) have state constitutional provisions that approximate/mirror the federal constitution.
My great-grandparents were, I'm just a responsible citizen.
Federal property aside, I don't believe there is any part of Arizona carry law that specifically pertains to banks. Some banks may post that they prohibit carry and that posting has the effect of law (usually covered as 'trespassing'), but if a bank has no policy then there is no reason you couldn't carry there if you wanted.
I live in VA and during the summer I open carry, and I selected a bank that did not have any objections to my sidearm. It's best to look at the small, local banks (mine has three going on four branches total) because they don't have policy set by faceless functionaries at some huge out-of-state HQ.