"I'm getting beaten up in this thread because I stated the same thing as you"
So I see, and I can't imagine why. We were told "you can buy it now"; we tried to find the offer; we couldn't. So we posted to warn others, and you get attacked for your post. It doesn't make much sense, but after all this is Slashdot.
You'll note my post is still sitting at 2, where it started. I would have thought it was informative, in that it pointed out that the base article was incorrect (in at least one respect).
Parent (and I, separately), carefully read the base article, and noted that it said specifically that:
"Dell announced that consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany can order an Inspiron 6400 notebook or an Inspiron 530N desktop with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed..."
Note that it says "customers... *can* order". Not "will soon be able to order". Not "will be able to order as soon as we get our Web site updated". And certainly not "will be able to order tomorrow, if they can guess that the URL is www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu".
For European customers, the fact that the URL is analogous to that on Dell's US Web site of of no possible interest or help. Because most European customers don't use Dell's US Web site.
"Dell announced that consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany can order an Inspiron 6400 notebook or an Inspiron 530N desktop with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed..."
Not as of today, they can't. I live in the UK, and I just went to dell.co.uk and started to customize an order for an Inspiron 6400. Guess what? The operating system options are Windows, Windows, or some other flavour of Windows. "Any OS you like, just as long as it's Windows".
Looks like the Dell marketroid who issued the statement was using the Microsoft present tense. As in "jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today". (Actually not yesterday, and probably not tomorrow either).
The manager actually has a valid point. There are these people called "economists", see, and their mission is to explain as much of the world as possible in terms of little robot humans who are wholly motivated by "rewards" and "punishments". Yes, that's right, they think of us all as lab rats.
In the economists' world, everything has a price. That's axiomatic, and if you take away that axiom their nice little artificial universe - which has paid off richly since it was invented - would collapse around their ears.
There's nothing much wrong with the economists' ideas, as long as you understand that they are just one of many ways of looking at reality. Some people choose to live by the economists' rules - by and large, that is the "business" community. For them, the idea that everything has its price is not so much an article of faith as a basic assumption - just as they know water runs downhill, they know that people only act in response to promised rewards or punishments. Tax people think that way too - you may have noticed how they automatically assume that if anyone does anything for another person, there has been a "transfer of value" of some such crap, which of course can be monetized and taxed.
I don't think there's any problem with engineering or engineers. It's a matter of allocating resources (i.e. tax money).
Henry Petroski dealt with this problem 15 years ago in his brilliant book "To Engineer is Human". Among other good points, he noted that each new engineering "technology" (such as building ships, aircraft, bridges, or cathedrals) goes through a predictable life-cycle.
1. Not well understood. Structures collapse unexpectedly (like the Tacoma Narrows bridge, the Comet IV airliner, or Beauvais Cathedral) because their builders simply do not know how to make them safe.
2. Well understood. Eventually, by various means, engineers develop reliable methods of building structures safely. In due course, they begin to build in substantial safety factors - often up to 100% or more - that make their products extremely reliable. (Ever hear one of those stories about a submarine rated to dive to, say, 250 metres, that actually survived on the seabed at 310 metres? Try reading Das Boot, or if you have less time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_depth).
3. Building the given structure becomes big business, and is done wholesale. Economics takes over, and safety factors come rattling down again until there are a few highly-publicized disasters. Uh-oh, profits go down. So the safety factor is edged up a smidgen until disasters don't happen often enough to threaten profits, and that is our long-term equilibrium.
"Get elected, then just try raising taxes to pay for something that might happen someday".
On the other hand, the war in Iraq is estimated to cost taxpayers nearly $5,000 every *second*, with a final total cost that may be well over $1 trillion. How many bridges would that repair? Hell, how many bridges would that build?
Don't worry about it any more than you can help, mate. I was 23 or so before I finally got laid, and it caused me to behave pretty hideously to some people who deserved a whole lot better. For instance, I alienated a really nice girl who could have been one of my best friends, because I wanted "all or nothing". (Guess which I wound up with!) The guy who said "relax and get all you can as young as you can" had a good point, because sexual deprivation or repression can seriously warp your personality. As in: you get just like Wile E Coyote, who can think of nothing but catching that tender little Road Runner, and suffers disaster after disaster trying.
It sounds convincing to me that more intelligent people spend longer as virgins. There's a whole slew of credible mechanisms, from preoccupation with ideas to over-intellectualization. But we shouldn't forget that some of the cleverest people are also incredibly food-looking, brilliant at sports, personable, and extroverted. Damn them!
Actually, it was originally the Australian media, reporting the findings of Professor Lidia Morawska from the Queensland University of Technology and her colleagues.
Don't be absurd. Selling goods to someone is trade, not help. By your reasoning, your neighbourhood grocery store "helps" you whenever you go there to buy food. The store's motivation is not to help you, but to make a profit. Likewise, the USA's motivation in providing Lend-Lease was to look after its own interests.
First, the USA sold war supplies to Britain - until Britain ran clean out of cash to pay for them. Then it accepted payment in property, and most of Britain's property holdings in the USA were liquidated. Then came the Destroyer deal, in which the USA lent Britain the use of 50 mothballed WW1 destroyers that it wouldn't let its own sailors go to sea in, and got 99-year leases on some valuable West Indian bases in return. Lend-Lease proper was passed by Congress in March 1941, and still required payment - if not then, later. If not in cash, something else - land, military secrets, technology, anything.
'"2. While neutral, the USA supplied food, weapons, and other goods to Britain..." and China, and France, and the Soviet Union.
I don't believe that any definition of "help" would exclude the lend-lease program, so you have contradicted yourself completely here'.
The full quotation, had you been honest enough to provide it, is "While neutral, the USA supplied food, weapons, and other goods to Britain. But every single item was paid for in full, then or later. (As a British taxpayer I know this only too well - we made the last repayment a year or two back). Many of the USA's far-flung military bases around the world were handed over by Britain in part payment for the supplies we needed to continue fighting".
Instead, you cut off my words immediately before the part that refutes your opinion. Ever considered going into politics?
What part of "when they were attacked by Nazi Germany" do you not understand?
I did not say that "The USA did not lift a finger to help Britain (or Poland, or France, or Denmark, or Holland, or Belgium, or Norway, or Yugoslavia, or Greece, or the USSR) years after they were attacked by Nazi Germany".
Obviously, bearing in mind the enormous power and invincibility of the USA, had it defended any of those nations *when* Germany attacked them, they would never have been conquered. Now would they?
'Like "The USA did not lift a finger to help Britain (or Poland, or France, or Denmark, or Holland, or Belgium, or Norway, or Yugoslavia, or Greece, or the USSR) when they were attacked by Nazi Germany. "?
That's downright untrue'.
Now please say what is untrue about it. Facts, please.
'The first part is also untrue -- war can end in a stalemate, with no clear winners or losers. The second is speculation; IMO, without the western front, the Nazis could have held against the Soviets and partitioned Europe between them'.
A very few wars may have petered out through mutual exhaustion or lack of will - like the Korean War, for instance. No war involving Nazis was ever likely to peter out, any more than a fight against a shark in an enclosed space.
Your opinion may be that the Nazis could have held out against the Soviets if no second front had been established. It's part of the charm of history that we can't do repeatable experiments. But I don't think anyone who knows the facts would agree with you. Immediately after D-Day, the Soviets launched Operation Bagration which, although unknown to most Westerners, was bigger and more successful in every way. Even if every single German soldier, tank, and aircraft deployed in the West had been on the Eastern front instead, nothing could have stopped immense attacks like Bagration and those that followed.
"Looks like anti-Americanism is still in fashion at slashdot".
And yet I'm not anti-American. On the contrary, I'm very much pro-American - you have no idea how much. I just won't let you get away with saying things that are downright untrue about the historical record. And the fact that A criticizes B does not mean that A hates B, or even dislikes them. One of the toughest tests of friendship is willingness to offer honest criticism, even if it is resented.
"Apparently US history classes AREN'T the worst in the world after all".
I have no opinion on that, although I do recall Ambrose Bierce's comment that, "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography". I have a degree in history from Cambridge University, and I have read a lot about this subject. Fear of Nazi nukes was of course not the only reason for US involvement in Africa and Europe: if you don't win a war, you will eventually lose it, so it was essential to attack Germany. By the time the US forces arrived, though, the Soviets had already strategically won the European war.
As another poster pointed out, you will not find any of my facts to be wrong. Ask any competent historian, or (if you prefer) consult a reliable history book.
"I seem to remember that when the brits first had the opportunity to fight the really vicious murderous dictator that was hitler, Chamberlain chose to just appease the sonofabitch".
That criticism is ironic, coming from a citizen of the USA - a nation that, at the the time, had turned its back on Europe through its policy of isolationism. If Nevile Chamberlain appeased Hitler, he was at least trying to do something about the problem. He could be compared to a neighbour who, seeing a house on fire, tries to cope with the problem by putting on a fire blanket, whereas in retrospect it would have been better to call the fire service. But the USA, in this analogy, was like a neighbour who closes the shutters, turns up the TV, and resolutely ignores the fire.
Chamberlain had lived through WW1, and like many of his generation found the idea of a repetition unspeakably ghastly. So he was inclined to go to great lengths to avoid war. As he said in 1938, "How horrible, fantastic it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. I am myself a man of peace from the depths of my soul".
A glance at the totals of killed and wounded sustained by the combatants in WW1, as a percentage of their total mobilised strengths, may help us to understand. Great Britain and the Empire, together, had 2.9 million casualties (so defined) out of 8.9 million (33%). The much-maligned French, nowadays despised by many Americans for their lack of fighting spirit, took 5.5 million casualties out of 8.4 million (65%). That's two thirds, and it's not a mistake. The Germans and Austrians, together, sustained 10.7 million casualties out of 18.8 million (57%). And the USA? The Americans took a grand total of 360,000 casualties out of 4.3 million (8%).
Now 8% is bad enough, although it's nowhere near the corresponding figure for American occupying army in Iraq, for instance. But Chamberlain had seen 2 million British and Empire servicemen, 4.2 million Frenchmen, and 7.8 million Germans and Austrians, killed in a war that achieved very little. Can you see that he might cling to peace more desperately than Americans who had seen 126,000 of their brave boys killed 20 years before?
Besides, at the time when Chamberlain appeased Hitler, it was not yet entirely obvious that Hitler was a "really vicious murderous dictator". That, at any rate, was not the view of IBM and many other US corporations, which enjoyed a brisk trade with Nazi Germany. Nor was it the view of Joseph Kennedy (father of Jack and Bobby), who was US ambassador to Great Britain in 1938-40. According to Wikipedia,
'Kennedy rejected the warnings of Winston Churchill that compromise with Nazi Germany was impossible; instead he supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement in order to stave off a second world war that would be a more horrible "armageddon" than the first. Throughout 1938, as the Nazi persecution of Jews intensified, Kennedy attempted to obtain an audience with Adolf Hitler. Shortly before the Nazi aerial bombing of British cities began in September 1940, Kennedy sought a personal meeting with Hitler, again without State Department approval, "to bring about a better understanding between the United States and Germany."'
In 1938, Hitler had reoccupied the Rhineland (which many people thought was only fair, as it was traditionally part of Germany); united Germany with Austria, without a shot being fired (in public, at least); and seized the border area of Czechoslovakia. True, the Nazi party and its thugs had started murdering Jews and others wholesale, but there were influential elements in the USA (as well as many other countries) who had no objection to this. The fact is that, when Chamberlain met Hitler and brought home his infamous "piece of paper", Hitler had not conquered any other country - nor was it at all obvious that he intended to. As soon as Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Chamberlain's attitude hardened as it became obvious that Hitler had cynically tricked him. And when Germany invaded Poland in September, Chamberlain unhesitatingly joined France in declaring war on Germany.
'It reminds me of the quote, "it only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea."'
Utterly brilliant! Thanks for sharing that thought, which encapsulates a lot of this (local) discussion within a single sentence. Please mod parent UP!
"Perhaps you don't realize the extent of liberalism in the way the American people embraced rushing to save the rest of the world in the 1940's. I'm not talking about the decisions made by our government or corporations, I'm talking about the way regular Americans rose to the challenge. That was a completely liberal act".
I never indulge in vulgar personal abuse, but those remarks strongly tempt me. Perhaps *you* don't realize that:
1. The USA did not lift a finger to help Britain (or Poland, or France, or Denmark, or Holland, or Belgium, or Norway, or Yugoslavia, or Greece, or the USSR) when they were attacked by Nazi Germany. The USA assiduously sat on its hands while France was conquered and Britain went through the near-death experiences of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. It did nothing to stop Hitler conquering all of Europe, and it was only by chance that it finally entered the war shortly after the Soviets decisively turned back the Wehrmacht at the very gates of Moscow. During all of this - the first 2 years, 3 months, and 10 days of the war (very nearly the first half) - the USA remained neutral.
2. While neutral, the USA supplied food, weapons, and other goods to Britain. But every single item was paid for in full, then or later. (As a British taxpayer I know this only too well - we made the last repayment a year or two back). Many of the USA's far-flung military bases around the world were handed over by Britain in part payment for the supplies we needed to continue fighting.
3. The USA entered the war only when Japan and, a week later, Germany, declared war on it. At that point, it became impossible to stay neutral. Congress even declared war on Germany, a redundant act since a state of war already existed after the German declaration. No doubt the Congresscritters already saw the value in future of being able to talk about "the day the USA declared war on Germany". All that "regular Americans" rose to was the challenge of defending their country against two Fascist dictatorships that had declared war on it - the very least they could do, if they didn't want to end up speaking German and being ruled from Berlin. They took the war to Europe because they had to - the Nazis already had detailed plans for nuclear weapons, and intercontinental delivery systems to hit American cities.
My father fought in WW2 (all of it) and my mother was ready to do her bit with a rifle in case of invasion, so I have a very personal interest in the facts. It is ironic that, the one time the USA had the chance to take down a really vicious, murderous dictator, it chose to remain neutral until he declared war on it. Moreover, directly contrary to what you say about "the people", historians agree that FDR would have liked to join the war against Hitler earlier - but he found it politically impossible, because the people were dead set against it.
So please, let's not have any more garbage about how America rushed to save the rest of the world in the 1940s, or any other time.
Depends how you look at it. The way I see things, Americans as a people have never been particularly liberal. There have been many outstanding liberal Americans, but mostly they were swimming against the tide.
240 years ago a bunch of (mostly) propertied, upper-class, far-liberal Americans got together and wrote the Constitution of the United States of America. Ever since, the majority of Americans have been simultaneously proud of this document (which allows them to feel better than everyone else), and dismissive of its actual ideas. Now, at last, a majority of them has elected a President who is prepared to put an end to quarter of a millennium of pretence. At last, Americans can relax and enjoy the authoritarian government that so many of them clearly prefer.
That's great news for Americans (except for the minority of troublemaking liberals), but rather queasy for the rest of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm getting beaten up in this thread because I stated the same thing as you"
So I see, and I can't imagine why. We were told "you can buy it now"; we tried to find the offer; we couldn't. So we posted to warn others, and you get attacked for your post. It doesn't make much sense, but after all this is Slashdot.
You'll note my post is still sitting at 2, where it started. I would have thought it was informative, in that it pointed out that the base article was incorrect (in at least one respect).
What on earth are you complaining about?
Parent (and I, separately), carefully read the base article, and noted that it said specifically that:
"Dell announced that consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany can order an Inspiron 6400 notebook or an Inspiron 530N desktop with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed..."
Note that it says "customers... *can* order". Not "will soon be able to order". Not "will be able to order as soon as we get our Web site updated". And certainly not "will be able to order tomorrow, if they can guess that the URL is www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu".
For European customers, the fact that the URL is analogous to that on Dell's US Web site of of no possible interest or help. Because most European customers don't use Dell's US Web site.
How did you find those pages? I can't see any obvious way to reach them from www.dell.co.uk, which is where I start shopping.
"Dell announced that consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany can order an Inspiron 6400 notebook or an Inspiron 530N desktop with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed..."
Not as of today, they can't. I live in the UK, and I just went to dell.co.uk and started to customize an order for an Inspiron 6400. Guess what? The operating system options are Windows, Windows, or some other flavour of Windows. "Any OS you like, just as long as it's Windows".
Looks like the Dell marketroid who issued the statement was using the Microsoft present tense. As in "jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today". (Actually not yesterday, and probably not tomorrow either).
Wake me up when Dell has actually done something.
The manager actually has a valid point. There are these people called "economists", see, and their mission is to explain as much of the world as possible in terms of little robot humans who are wholly motivated by "rewards" and "punishments". Yes, that's right, they think of us all as lab rats.
In the economists' world, everything has a price. That's axiomatic, and if you take away that axiom their nice little artificial universe - which has paid off richly since it was invented - would collapse around their ears.
There's nothing much wrong with the economists' ideas, as long as you understand that they are just one of many ways of looking at reality. Some people choose to live by the economists' rules - by and large, that is the "business" community. For them, the idea that everything has its price is not so much an article of faith as a basic assumption - just as they know water runs downhill, they know that people only act in response to promised rewards or punishments. Tax people think that way too - you may have noticed how they automatically assume that if anyone does anything for another person, there has been a "transfer of value" of some such crap, which of course can be monetized and taxed.
I guess it works for them.
I don't think there's any problem with engineering or engineers. It's a matter of allocating resources (i.e. tax money).
Henry Petroski dealt with this problem 15 years ago in his brilliant book "To Engineer is Human". Among other good points, he noted that each new engineering "technology" (such as building ships, aircraft, bridges, or cathedrals) goes through a predictable life-cycle.
1. Not well understood. Structures collapse unexpectedly (like the Tacoma Narrows bridge, the Comet IV airliner, or Beauvais Cathedral) because their builders simply do not know how to make them safe.
2. Well understood. Eventually, by various means, engineers develop reliable methods of building structures safely. In due course, they begin to build in substantial safety factors - often up to 100% or more - that make their products extremely reliable. (Ever hear one of those stories about a submarine rated to dive to, say, 250 metres, that actually survived on the seabed at 310 metres? Try reading Das Boot, or if you have less time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_depth).
3. Building the given structure becomes big business, and is done wholesale. Economics takes over, and safety factors come rattling down again until there are a few highly-publicized disasters. Uh-oh, profits go down. So the safety factor is edged up a smidgen until disasters don't happen often enough to threaten profits, and that is our long-term equilibrium.
Democracy and free enterprise - dontcha love it?
"Get elected, then just try raising taxes to pay for something that might happen someday".
i -iraq_digest01aug01,1,455675.story1 78240-663,00.html
On the other hand, the war in Iraq is estimated to cost taxpayers nearly $5,000 every *second*, with a final total cost that may be well over $1 trillion. How many bridges would that repair? Hell, how many bridges would that build?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ch
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22
Please note that both these stories cite US federal government sources.
"However, the DMCA does make creating, selling, distributing, and importing the tools to make backups illegal".
That would include all computers with permanent storage of any kind.
Don't worry about it any more than you can help, mate. I was 23 or so before I finally got laid, and it caused me to behave pretty hideously to some people who deserved a whole lot better. For instance, I alienated a really nice girl who could have been one of my best friends, because I wanted "all or nothing". (Guess which I wound up with!) The guy who said "relax and get all you can as young as you can" had a good point, because sexual deprivation or repression can seriously warp your personality. As in: you get just like Wile E Coyote, who can think of nothing but catching that tender little Road Runner, and suffers disaster after disaster trying.
It sounds convincing to me that more intelligent people spend longer as virgins. There's a whole slew of credible mechanisms, from preoccupation with ideas to over-intellectualization. But we shouldn't forget that some of the cleverest people are also incredibly food-looking, brilliant at sports, personable, and extroverted. Damn them!
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=41365
Actually, it was originally the Australian media, reporting the findings of Professor Lidia Morawska from the Queensland University of Technology and her colleagues.
"Could it be because you see I'm right and have no refutation?"
No. It's because I can see that arguing with you is pointless.
Don't be absurd. Selling goods to someone is trade, not help. By your reasoning, your neighbourhood grocery store "helps" you whenever you go there to buy food. The store's motivation is not to help you, but to make a profit. Likewise, the USA's motivation in providing Lend-Lease was to look after its own interests.
First, the USA sold war supplies to Britain - until Britain ran clean out of cash to pay for them. Then it accepted payment in property, and most of Britain's property holdings in the USA were liquidated. Then came the Destroyer deal, in which the USA lent Britain the use of 50 mothballed WW1 destroyers that it wouldn't let its own sailors go to sea in, and got 99-year leases on some valuable West Indian bases in return. Lend-Lease proper was passed by Congress in March 1941, and still required payment - if not then, later. If not in cash, something else - land, military secrets, technology, anything.
Check this out for *American* opinion on Lend-Lease:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/81508.htm
'"2. While neutral, the USA supplied food, weapons, and other goods to Britain..." and China, and France, and the Soviet Union.
I don't believe that any definition of "help" would exclude the lend-lease program, so you have contradicted yourself completely here'.
The full quotation, had you been honest enough to provide it, is "While neutral, the USA supplied food, weapons, and other goods to Britain. But every single item was paid for in full, then or later. (As a British taxpayer I know this only too well - we made the last repayment a year or two back). Many of the USA's far-flung military bases around the world were handed over by Britain in part payment for the supplies we needed to continue fighting".
Instead, you cut off my words immediately before the part that refutes your opinion. Ever considered going into politics?
What part of "when they were attacked by Nazi Germany" do you not understand?
I did not say that "The USA did not lift a finger to help Britain (or Poland, or France, or Denmark, or Holland, or Belgium, or Norway, or Yugoslavia, or Greece, or the USSR) years after they were attacked by Nazi Germany".
Obviously, bearing in mind the enormous power and invincibility of the USA, had it defended any of those nations *when* Germany attacked them, they would never have been conquered. Now would they?
re: "The idea is to make the shee--I mean, taxpayers--feel like they're getting something for their dollars".
"Be happy you don't get all the government you're paying for".
- Will Rogers
"...and the fact that he does have a grip on reality doesn't change that."
Seems to me that makes it a whole lot worse.
"Our only call to fame during the invasion was sinking Blücher outside of Oslo".
And a damn good show that was too! No one else had much luck sinking Hipper-class cruisers. Bravo Norway!
'Like "The USA did not lift a finger to help Britain (or Poland, or France, or Denmark, or Holland, or Belgium, or Norway, or Yugoslavia, or Greece, or the USSR) when they were attacked by Nazi Germany. "?
That's downright untrue'.
Now please say what is untrue about it. Facts, please.
'The first part is also untrue -- war can end in a stalemate, with no clear winners or losers. The second is speculation; IMO, without the western front, the Nazis could have held against the Soviets and partitioned Europe between them'.
A very few wars may have petered out through mutual exhaustion or lack of will - like the Korean War, for instance. No war involving Nazis was ever likely to peter out, any more than a fight against a shark in an enclosed space.
Your opinion may be that the Nazis could have held out against the Soviets if no second front had been established. It's part of the charm of history that we can't do repeatable experiments. But I don't think anyone who knows the facts would agree with you. Immediately after D-Day, the Soviets launched Operation Bagration which, although unknown to most Westerners, was bigger and more successful in every way. Even if every single German soldier, tank, and aircraft deployed in the West had been on the Eastern front instead, nothing could have stopped immense attacks like Bagration and those that followed.
It's a fair cop, guv! Elsewhere I said that no one could challenge any of my facts. Well, I was never any good at dates... (or arithmetic)!
8-)
Fwiw, I think I must have rounded up (to 240) instead of down (to 230).
Apologies to all.
"Looks like anti-Americanism is still in fashion at slashdot".
And yet I'm not anti-American. On the contrary, I'm very much pro-American - you have no idea how much. I just won't let you get away with saying things that are downright untrue about the historical record. And the fact that A criticizes B does not mean that A hates B, or even dislikes them. One of the toughest tests of friendship is willingness to offer honest criticism, even if it is resented.
"Apparently US history classes AREN'T the worst in the world after all".
I have no opinion on that, although I do recall Ambrose Bierce's comment that, "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography". I have a degree in history from Cambridge University, and I have read a lot about this subject. Fear of Nazi nukes was of course not the only reason for US involvement in Africa and Europe: if you don't win a war, you will eventually lose it, so it was essential to attack Germany. By the time the US forces arrived, though, the Soviets had already strategically won the European war.
As another poster pointed out, you will not find any of my facts to be wrong. Ask any competent historian, or (if you prefer) consult a reliable history book.
"I seem to remember that when the brits first had the opportunity to fight the really vicious murderous dictator that was hitler, Chamberlain chose to just appease the sonofabitch".
That criticism is ironic, coming from a citizen of the USA - a nation that, at the the time, had turned its back on Europe through its policy of isolationism. If Nevile Chamberlain appeased Hitler, he was at least trying to do something about the problem. He could be compared to a neighbour who, seeing a house on fire, tries to cope with the problem by putting on a fire blanket, whereas in retrospect it would have been better to call the fire service. But the USA, in this analogy, was like a neighbour who closes the shutters, turns up the TV, and resolutely ignores the fire.
Chamberlain had lived through WW1, and like many of his generation found the idea of a repetition unspeakably ghastly. So he was inclined to go to great lengths to avoid war. As he said in 1938, "How horrible, fantastic it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. I am myself a man of peace from the depths of my soul".
A glance at the totals of killed and wounded sustained by the combatants in WW1, as a percentage of their total mobilised strengths, may help us to understand. Great Britain and the Empire, together, had 2.9 million casualties (so defined) out of 8.9 million (33%). The much-maligned French, nowadays despised by many Americans for their lack of fighting spirit, took 5.5 million casualties out of 8.4 million (65%). That's two thirds, and it's not a mistake. The Germans and Austrians, together, sustained 10.7 million casualties out of 18.8 million (57%). And the USA? The Americans took a grand total of 360,000 casualties out of 4.3 million (8%).
Now 8% is bad enough, although it's nowhere near the corresponding figure for American occupying army in Iraq, for instance. But Chamberlain had seen 2 million British and Empire servicemen, 4.2 million Frenchmen, and 7.8 million Germans and Austrians, killed in a war that achieved very little. Can you see that he might cling to peace more desperately than Americans who had seen 126,000 of their brave boys killed 20 years before?
Besides, at the time when Chamberlain appeased Hitler, it was not yet entirely obvious that Hitler was a "really vicious murderous dictator". That, at any rate, was not the view of IBM and many other US corporations, which enjoyed a brisk trade with Nazi Germany. Nor was it the view of Joseph Kennedy (father of Jack and Bobby), who was US ambassador to Great Britain in 1938-40. According to Wikipedia,
'Kennedy rejected the warnings of Winston Churchill that compromise with Nazi Germany was impossible; instead he supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement in order to stave off a second world war that would be a more horrible "armageddon" than the first. Throughout 1938, as the Nazi persecution of Jews intensified, Kennedy attempted to obtain an audience with Adolf Hitler. Shortly before the Nazi aerial bombing of British cities began in September 1940, Kennedy sought a personal meeting with Hitler, again without State Department approval, "to bring about a better understanding between the United States and Germany."'
In 1938, Hitler had reoccupied the Rhineland (which many people thought was only fair, as it was traditionally part of Germany); united Germany with Austria, without a shot being fired (in public, at least); and seized the border area of Czechoslovakia. True, the Nazi party and its thugs had started murdering Jews and others wholesale, but there were influential elements in the USA (as well as many other countries) who had no objection to this. The fact is that, when Chamberlain met Hitler and brought home his infamous "piece of paper", Hitler had not conquered any other country - nor was it at all obvious that he intended to. As soon as Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Chamberlain's attitude hardened as it became obvious that Hitler had cynically tricked him. And when Germany invaded Poland in September, Chamberlain unhesitatingly joined France in declaring war on Germany.
What did the USA do at that time?
'It reminds me of the quote, "it only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea."'
Utterly brilliant! Thanks for sharing that thought, which encapsulates a lot of this (local) discussion within a single sentence. Please mod parent UP!
"Perhaps you don't realize the extent of liberalism in the way the American people embraced rushing to save the rest of the world in the 1940's. I'm not talking about the decisions made by our government or corporations, I'm talking about the way regular Americans rose to the challenge. That was a completely liberal act".
I never indulge in vulgar personal abuse, but those remarks strongly tempt me. Perhaps *you* don't realize that:
1. The USA did not lift a finger to help Britain (or Poland, or France, or Denmark, or Holland, or Belgium, or Norway, or Yugoslavia, or Greece, or the USSR) when they were attacked by Nazi Germany. The USA assiduously sat on its hands while France was conquered and Britain went through the near-death experiences of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. It did nothing to stop Hitler conquering all of Europe, and it was only by chance that it finally entered the war shortly after the Soviets decisively turned back the Wehrmacht at the very gates of Moscow. During all of this - the first 2 years, 3 months, and 10 days of the war (very nearly the first half) - the USA remained neutral.
2. While neutral, the USA supplied food, weapons, and other goods to Britain. But every single item was paid for in full, then or later. (As a British taxpayer I know this only too well - we made the last repayment a year or two back). Many of the USA's far-flung military bases around the world were handed over by Britain in part payment for the supplies we needed to continue fighting.
3. The USA entered the war only when Japan and, a week later, Germany, declared war on it. At that point, it became impossible to stay neutral. Congress even declared war on Germany, a redundant act since a state of war already existed after the German declaration. No doubt the Congresscritters already saw the value in future of being able to talk about "the day the USA declared war on Germany". All that "regular Americans" rose to was the challenge of defending their country against two Fascist dictatorships that had declared war on it - the very least they could do, if they didn't want to end up speaking German and being ruled from Berlin. They took the war to Europe because they had to - the Nazis already had detailed plans for nuclear weapons, and intercontinental delivery systems to hit American cities.
My father fought in WW2 (all of it) and my mother was ready to do her bit with a rifle in case of invasion, so I have a very personal interest in the facts. It is ironic that, the one time the USA had the chance to take down a really vicious, murderous dictator, it chose to remain neutral until he declared war on it. Moreover, directly contrary to what you say about "the people", historians agree that FDR would have liked to join the war against Hitler earlier - but he found it politically impossible, because the people were dead set against it.
So please, let's not have any more garbage about how America rushed to save the rest of the world in the 1940s, or any other time.
Depends how you look at it. The way I see things, Americans as a people have never been particularly liberal. There have been many outstanding liberal Americans, but mostly they were swimming against the tide.
240 years ago a bunch of (mostly) propertied, upper-class, far-liberal Americans got together and wrote the Constitution of the United States of America. Ever since, the majority of Americans have been simultaneously proud of this document (which allows them to feel better than everyone else), and dismissive of its actual ideas. Now, at last, a majority of them has elected a President who is prepared to put an end to quarter of a millennium of pretence. At last, Americans can relax and enjoy the authoritarian government that so many of them clearly prefer.
That's great news for Americans (except for the minority of troublemaking liberals), but rather queasy for the rest of the world.