The ghost of Christmases past
The Pax Europea, according to Wikipedia, “is the period of relative peace experienced by Northern and Western Europe (including Greece and Turkey) in the period following World War II—often associated above all with the creation of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors. After the Cold War this peace was extended to most of Central and Eastern Europe, with the major exception of the former Yugoslavia (1990s). … The EU now comprises 27 countries and has most of Eastern Europe seeking membership (ten eastern European countries joined during the 2000s). Further, most countries in Western Europe which remain outside are tied to the EU by economic agreements and treaties such as the European Economic Area. Within the zone of integration, there has been no conflict since 1945, making it the longest period of peace on the western European mainland since Pax Romana.”
Only one thing has been forgotten.
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Yes, but this peace wasn’t gained by their own merit. It was gained under the aegis of the United States hegemony, and wouldn’t have been possible without a massive US military presence. It’s well and good to applaud their lengthy period of peace, but w/o our military there…Europe would have been quickly annexed into the Soviet camp.
Europeans would rather forget that the US bailed them out twice in the last century and then by maintaining a continued presence allowed them their Pax Europea…
Pax Americana
Like the hobbits in The Shire or Butterbur in Bree they were sheltered and had ceased to remember it. Gratitude is the least sincere human emotion. For what they are about to receive Oh Lord may they be truly thankful. The worst thing is that the Europeans frittered away this opportunity. The United States gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of security for over half a century. This allowed the old wounds and grievances to heal and an economic miracle occurred. Instead of strengthening the roots of their civilization they spent the resultant capital as foolishly as any profligate.
What is amazing about the American military is how truly decent they are. Never in history has there been another comparable force that engaged in either combat or occupation duties and behaved so decently. They really will fight like lions in the morning and then volunteer to go paint an orphanage. The Marines say, “No better friend, no worse enemy.”
Wikipedia continues to implode. They seem determined to in a small way prove the need for a knowledgeable elite by discrediting the wisdom of the crowd that an open source editing model depends on. The problem is that the verifiers of the elites in the institutions are now corrupt. We must fight the Gresham’s Law phenomenon in which a small group of ideologues get to hijack a theoretically open intellectual marketplace like the wiki.
When my father was in Italy in WW-II Jascha Heifetz jumped into his foxhole when the Germans started shelling. We were all in it together. The Left hated and demonized Bob Hope and the decent performers who worked with him. They hate the common soldier.
It would be funny except that this idiocy is setting everyone up for a very hard fall.
Reminiscent of Obama in Berlin saying how the fall ofthe Wall shows what the people of the world can do when they’re united in purpose. Like, Martians built it.
Idiocy, and there’s always a price.
LOTM @ 3–
Of course they frittered it away, people never appreciate what is given as much as what is earned. They just figure it’s theirs by right and enjoy it.
Also why the welfare state doesn’t work. The concept is quite scalable.
Woah, difficult to forget how great you are !
though you should land before it’s too late, Dday glory is a prison for your minds, it keeps you above the clouds
re: Marie @ 5
Marie,
I generally enjoy reading your comments, and take delight in watching you proudly come to France’s aid (as a Frenchwoman should) when some cast aspersions on her.
However, this time, regardless of the “smiley” you used to soften your words, you really might want to consider adding something to them.
Perhaps something like: “All to true, and thank you.”
Marie Claude, please repeat that in German. Or Japanese. Or Russian perhaps just to give yourself the feeling of what it looks like.
‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’
Ashen, I’ll make it like our Cassandra does:
من الصعب أن ينسى كيف أنت عظيم!
وإن كان يجب أن الأرض قبل فوات الأوان ، Dday المجد هو السجن لعقلك ، وتبقي لكم فوق الغيوم
cooldog, why should I say thank you to you ?
Jesus said “give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar”
and in the occurence, Caesar is your fathers
what have you done especially for me, that I am not aware of?
As a young child in the early 1970′s I lived in France as an American ex-pat. My parents sent me to a French public school before I learned to speak a word of French. I was dropped in the soup to sink or swim. My teacher was very nice and introduced me to the class that first day and tried very hard in her virtually non-existent English to communicate with me. I was snubbed by the French children as an outsider at the outset. My only friend was a diminuitive Vietnamese boy named Etienne, who had somehow escaped the war torn country with his family and emigrated to France. He too was an outcast in the class. He spoke a small amount of English and tried hard to teach me some French, which he spoke fluently.
That first couple of weeks, we played marbles together in the courtyard during breaks, while the other kids played their games. They were not content enough to leave us alone. They would throw things at us, step on our marbles or kick them out of the circle. We abided their abuse for days, afraid and intimidated. One day that second week, after the loudest of the French boys kicked me in the back, I stood up and punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground. Everything stopped in the school yard. He ran to the schoolmaster and complained. They were all well aware of the abuses that Etienne and I had been suffering, but did nothing. There was some kind of investigation to see if I should be removed from the school. I wasn’t.
The bully, Michel, apologized. He made an effort to include me in activities and sat with me at lunch. I don’t know if he was told to do this, or if it was human nature. Nonetheless, Etienne and I were treated much better after that incident. I experienced two other incidents like that during my two years in France. The lesson I learned (and I don’t think it applies only to the French) is that people are cruel and animalistic until someone lays down the law, something which most everyone (including those in authority) will attempt to avoid.
Throughout its history, Europe has been a densely populated place in which people have had to contend for scarce resources. It is a history of conflict. It is a history of humanity. Nowhere is the world that I have visited has learned the civility necessary to live well in large cities as the Europeans (except perhaps the Japanese). Yet, I know that the layer of civility is very thin and could erupt into a state of nature at any moment.
We Americans, like the Romans before us, have been the force that laid down the law to greater Europe and created the conditions for prosperity. Look what became of Europe after the Roman Empire. I suspect that should America decamp, willingly or not, from Europe that you will experience another Dark Age. Europe has already lost its moral bearings and embraced the new religion of EnviroGlobalism. The Russians and the Arabs are positioning themselves to rip the meat off the carcass of Europe soon after America leaves. You should be kinder to us. We are irrational enough to welcome your people to our shores when your nation collapses, no matter how rudely you insult us in the interim.
novanglus, your play-ground experience isn’t an exception, when you’re different, you have to make your way to be accepted, so am I on this play-ground board !
The Marines say, “No better friend, no worse enemy.”
Thank you Lifeofthemind, I had forgotten that one!
Lifeofthemind #3
“What is amazing about the American military is how truly decent they are.”
This brings to mind a striking quote, from an article in the 90’s, the author of which I have forgotten:
“In 1945 over much of the world the most horrifying thing imaginable was for the people of a village to observe a group of heavily armed teen-agers entering their town. Unless they were Americans.”
Another quote, from the LA Times in 2003, from an Iranian woman, “I wish they would finish this discussion on invading Iraq and just get it over with so that they could get on with invading us.”
A story from the Stephen Ambrose book “Citizen Soldiers.” A US Army company arrives on the outskirts of a village in WWII and the commander decides to let his new 2nd Lt. get some experience. He tells the Lt. to check out a small house on the edge of town and see if there are any Germans in it.
The normal procedure would have been to kick open the door, toss in a grenade, and go in shooting. Instead, the commander is stunned to see the Lt. step up on the porch and knock on the door. The door opens and a half-dressed German Army NCO steps out, yawning. There is a short conversation and the German starts yelling. Two German soldiers in a nearby hidden machine gun nest stand up. The NCO continues on through the town, yelling for his troops to come out. Finally, the still armed Germans and the Americans are mixing freely in the town, milling about. Disgusted, the enraged German NCO starts yelling again, forms his troops up, and formally surrenders them.
Unfortunately, what was said on the porch was not recorded for history. But the uniform the naïve young 2nd Lt. was wearing probably spoke volumes by itself.
By the way, while this was all happening, hundreds of miles to the west the French were still fighting holdout German forces in their own country. Why? Because they had no naïve young American 2nd Lt’s.
Joyeux Noël anyway
Oh the cross you bare Marie, the cross you bare.
Only because, for a short period of no particular note, it was a given that at some point I would be hurriedly and without fan-fare plucked from civilian life to find myself within hours somewhere in the black forest, ass to the setting sun, a smouldering cigarette in each nostril thinking…no problem…this’ll be swell.
http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/explore/military-history/dispatches/canada-and-nato
http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/defence/topics/1552/
By my read, what with the British Airways hosties’ strike, EuroStar’s problems, Madrid’s, Rome’s and Marseilles’ vulnerability to nuclear blackmail, and Copenhagen’s abject follies, “Europe” might want to wait another couple of decades before celebrating. All is not well in Euroland.
One question that’s been troubling me lately is, if Germany or Spain won’t send significant troops to help NATO’s missions in Afghanistan, then how many men will they muster to police a bombed-out and radioactive Madrid? Or Baden Baden? Or Sofia? Or Geneva?
So much of what is published in Europe about European policy conveniently ducks questions like this, usually preferring to focus its rhetorical efforts on the global “hegemon,” America. This begs the question: What isn’t being told to Europe’s citizens?
What don’t they know about their histories? What do they know about recent history, besides that “Bush Lied?” When it comes to reconciling, say, France’s historic military record in the Levant with her modern costume, feigned pacifism, is the average citizen helped or hindered in this by her national media?
If we Americans are worried about the effects of state-owned, collusive media on our own country, then we only need to look across the pond to Old Europe for operable examples of the future we face.
Novanglus @#10,
That was an excellent read. Thanks for that!
Would someone explain to me again why we don’t pack up all our people and gear, come home, and leave these ingrates to sort themselves out however they see fit?
steveaz:
I am sure you hold all what you know about us and our histories from your teacher
Ashen, I don’t understand what you mean
I tried google translator
it’s even more ununderstandable
“Oh la croix tu as nue Marie, la Croix-vous à nu.”
RE “What did America liberate in WWII?”: looks like in 2009 some are still trying to figure out the answer to that question.
It turns out Sarkozy has initiated a national discussion on France’s identity.
I’ll be following the discussion very carefully.
The first quote, about the heavily armed teenagers, is also from Ambrose.
Unlike in most places, the civilians of Holland did not displace to avoid the oncoming Allies in the summer and fall of 1944. Probably the Germans prevented it.
I recall hearing that workers got something like 600 calories in rations. Others, of course, less.
There were ad hoc truces in which trucks and bombers dropped food behind the German lines, on the condition that the officers who agreed to the truce would get a better deal in post-war cleaning up.
When my father’s platoon encountered the Dutch civilians, they would hand over all their rations, including the Ks and Ds. That’s hard on grunts operating in cold weather with uncertain supply arrangements.
steve@20:
You’re very welcome. I was stirred by Marie’s discounting of America’s contribution to France’s freedoms. It saddens me that after only 3-4 generations, that such banality has arisen. As an American traveling to Europe, I am always awestruck by the embedded history of the places, whether in an old Roman checkpoint in the mountains/hills of Germany, or in a restaurant that continuously operated in Madrid for the past 300 years, or standing in the Forum in Rome. It never crossed my mind to ask “what have you done for me lately”. That they recorded a history of which I can partake is enough for me. A smart man learns from his mistakes, a genius learns from the mistakes of others. By that standard, I am more often than not a smart man – but it takes long hours and humility to strive to be a genius.
Bill@21:
That day is coming upon us (and them) with great speed. Once the health care bill passes and cap and trade passes, America will have no choice but to enter a new era of isolationism. Sooner, more likely than later, we will face a new world war. And with technology making this a smaller world than it was in 1945, it will visit upon our homeland. It’s never too early to prepare – the wolves are among us even now. The sheep are unaware, but the sheepdogs must be ready.
Marie – If someone has a cross to bear, they have a heavy burden of responsibility or a problem that they alone must cope with. I know that Christianity is forbidden in France now, but it is derived from Christ’s burden of dragging his cross to the site of his crucifixion. We all appreciate the heavy demands that defending your ill conceived positions amongst the commentariat place on you. I’m sure he was offering you compassion. Of course, he may have just been sarcastic. In the Christmas season, I wouldn’t want to assume the latter
novanglus, then I understand why you have problems in the play-ground, that you need an intermediary
you wanted to profess the America’s cult from a podium
novanglus, olright, I understand your position
LOTM 3 Great post; most humans can’t stand prosperity
Ah, Marie Claude, as the son of a still living 90 year old WWII vet who helped liberate your country, I should sic my wife on you…but in the spirit of the season, I’ll forgo that catfight…c’est dommage. She hails from Lorraine and is the most conservative French citizen I know…and more conservative than most posters on this thread. I suppose growing up on ravaged terrain between the Ligne Maginot and the Westwall can give you some such perspective, but what do I know? Anyway, it’s not just memories of D-Day that keep us above the clouds, it’s the thousand other battles that marked our way thru your countryside as we pushed out your occupiers. Have you ever been to St. Avold? Ten thousand headstones make for a somber experience and the good French people I’ve encountered there paying their respects to the fallen serve to remind me that some of your countrymen have not forgotten…albeit, they are mostly vieux and not long for this world – when they are gone, who will attest to the sacrifice of so many young soldiers? Enjoy your égalité and your fraternité, because your liberté is due to us. Joyeux Noël indeed.
Marie,
“Jesus said “give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar”
and in the occurence, Caesar is your fathers
what have you done especially for me, that I am not aware of?”
What do you think kept the Soviets out of Western Europe?
Ammo Guy:
“Enjoy your égalité and your fraternité, because your liberté is due to us.”
did I ever say anything else, but it’s just boring to be repeated the same ol litany, until when ?
Now I never heard some gratful thanks for what our soldiers made in your independance war !
I don’t mind, we should go until Guillaume the conquistador that brought vocabulary and culture to the anglo-Saxons
exhelodrvr:
“What do you think kept the Soviets out of Western Europe?”
yeah, that’s a good argument !
Yes, W I did say:
“However the world is headed toward not a global warming but an economic worldwide depression brought on by obama.”
And you are correct in pointing out that other bubbles have been developing over the last several years , however, the US’s GDP during that time totally dwarfed the entire worlds. We were the reserve currency; we were the worlds safe monetary haven, bar none. Now?
Not so. Why?
When you have a leader who is at minimum a dedicated socialist , if not a true communist such as obama, willing and with the aid of a rogue FED and treasury printing money at the rate they are, running deficits at the a rate that exceeds that of the Weimar Republic then you have a most likely candidate for “tipping point” tipper …. My nominee is our POS obama and his totally inept minions.
They have cajoled, falsely created and then artfully manipulated during the early days of their popularity “crisis” that are not, situations that are not, and in doing so created a world that when they came into power was in the vertical, NOW headed for the horizontal. Few economists disagree.
No W, obama tipped the tower of power, abusing his power (GM) and pushing socialism as hard as he could.
You and I both know that the only reason Europe was able to be more socialist than capitalist is that since WWII we provided them with military cover, which saved them trillions and trillions of dollars thanks to the taxpaying US population.
No sir, this is obama’s “change” and it will ruin the lives of several generations to come. It came to the Brits after WWI after controlling 1/5 of the globe they went bankrupt, lost am empire and are now only seated where they are because we prop them up and they have a nuclear submarine fleet.
We have no empire to protect but we did have a worlds grudging respect for our productivity, ingenuity, and abilities. The “tipper” could have made changes to strengthen those attributes but instead followed Marx and Alinsky. We are now a joke in many of the world’s capitals.
Obama is a full blown case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder……..and those who may have chuckled over my often repeated warning that he is a clear and present danger to the US……look at his actions in Copenhagen with the Chinese leadership.
3. Lifeofthemind
Merry Christmas you ole Devil Dog !
Habu
Marie Claude,
Au contraire, mon cher compatriote (a little Chirac lingo there – I always enjoyed his New Year address to the country…but not much else…pardon moi, I digress), the valiant contributions of your countrymen to our Revolution do not go unappreciated. Mon fils (a proud French citoyen BTW) attends college in Williamsburg, right down the road from the battlefield at Yorktown where the sacrifices of France are celebrated daily…I never grow “bored” of hearing such praise. And, as I gaze out my office window at the headstones in Arlington I hope (and pray) that patriots everywhere never grow “bored” of the “same old litany” for young men who never got a chance to grow old. Vive Lafayette! Vive François-Joseph Paul, marquis de Grasse Tilly, comte de Grasse!
Marie Claude,
Speaking for myself only, it’s not that I expect constant thank-yous for our sacrifices in WWII. I do wish, however, that Europeans would give up the illusion that their diplomatic efforts alone brought about a Pax Europa. To denigrate the “warlike” Americans who have covered your backs for over 60 years is simply not honorable. I think a lot of ordinary Europeans are aware of this, but the intellectuals are largely preening pompous a**es. Stand up to them.
. Ammo Guy:
Thank you for that, it isn’t different here, see how the US cemetaries are well maintained.
vb, it’s “de bonne guerre” that we can kid each others from each part of the pond
except, indeed, that we easily forget what was our life just a few years ago, this character feature,lightness, became necessary, otherwise, since the kingdom of franks exists, our memory would be jammed, and we wouldn’t be able to enjoy each day delight, something that made our fame
Marie @#33,
“We should go until Guillaume the conquistador that brought vocabulary and culture to the anglo-Saxons”
Our histories are intertwined, Marie – France’s with America’s, mine with yours, Troy’s with Paris’, dollars’ with Francs’ – we even, almost, speak the same language. We are, in effect, siblings in the same family – and yes, occasionally we get in little family squabbles.
Which is why, back in the early nineties when the EU booster-ism kicked into high gear and it took a decidedly anti-American turn in its advertising I immediately suspected the motives of those seeking to divide European nations from her sister nation, America (I suspected that this fear of the American “other” was supposed to “engineer” French and Danish citizens into voting for “integration”)
Something was clearly afoot – the “EU-as-Counterweight-to-US” propaganda was obviously artificial, orchestrated, and focused narrowly on a select target. Also it emitted from select European campuses (like its capitol cities and universities and media corps), and the ‘history’ that it relied on was as flippantly incomplete as the worst wikipedia entry.
Having watched French politics since the seventies, this orchestrated campaign all seemed like a natural progression from her chauvinistic rejection of English words in her “official” vocabulary (going so far as to “scrub” dictionaries of words like “jumbojet“) and her official alliance with French film-studios and actors unions to counteract America’s cultural inroads (American auto workers destroyed Toyotas in the seventies, the French “cultural community” bashed American media-products.) Who can forget? And, much of what passes for France’s “American Policy” today is an ever-more expansive continuation of that same antagonistic history.
Maybe Climate Gate, by helping Europe’s citizens to grade their own media products, may nudge them to start a search for their real history, not the “modeled” one that has been substituted for it. When subsidized outfits like the APF or the BBC or the AP pour so much gravy on a distinct, traceable anti-American narrative like Anthropogenic Global Warming, they blow their cover. This should assist all the remaining Helenic citizens in Europe to gauge the credibility of the “taste-makers” they’ve allowed to drive their social, military and foreign policies since the seventies.
Which will be a good thing. Better late than never, I say!
10. novanglus:
You should be kinder to us. We are irrational enough to welcome your people to our shores when your nation collapses, no matter how rudely you insult us in the interim.
………..
This is not the way the worm turns.
When the refugees start to pour out of Europe again they will be moslem.
You must pray to the living God that those Moslems do not come to American shores.Rather that they return to North Africa and the middle east and south asia.
Gloucester Cathedral Choir – In the Bleak Midwinter
It may well be that even the blazing deserts of the sahara will be well watered by then.
Having watched French politics since the seventies, this orchestrated campaign all seemed like a natural progression from her chauvinistic rejection of English words in her “official” vocabulary (going so far as to “scrub” dictionaries of words like “jumbojet“) and her official alliance with French film-studios and actors unions to counteract America’s cultural inroads (American auto workers destroyed Toyotas in the seventies, the French “cultural community” bashed American media-products.) Who can forget? And, much of what passes for France’s “American Policy” today is an ever-more expansive continuation of that same antagonistic history.
That are the ol academicians, but who listen to t’em ? surbubs languages is replacing academician language, it’s a mixture of all the new words that appear in the medias, it’s how our language was forged, through popular expression, the language we had in middle age was different from our classical’s, which is also different from our modern language, and now our contemporan language, but the later is not yet recorded in academias
uh for the cultural prestations, I heard that your unions imposed that american musicians or whatever technicians are preferred to ours when performances occur on American soil, idem our movies are mostly remakes, no many original versions (with undertitles)can bee seen, only in a few universities
Anthropogenic Global Warming,
escuse me, but Al Gore isn’t our citizen !
As a young child in the early 1970’s I lived in France as an American ex-pat. My parents sent me to a French public school before I learned to speak a word of French. I was dropped in the soup to sink or swim. My teacher was very nice and introduced me to the class that first day and tried very hard in her virtually non-existent English to communicate with me. I was snubbed by the French children as an outsider at the outset. My only friend was a diminuitive Vietnamese boy named Etienne, who had somehow escaped the war torn country with his family and emigrated to France. He too was an outcast in the class. He spoke a small amount of English and tried hard to teach me some French, which he spoke fluently.
#10 Novanglus:
I had almost exactly the same experience as a child, but almost two decades earlier and in Italy. My experience was not so turbulent. It was 1950s Italy, digging out from the war, and Americans were regarded as saviours (except by the local Communists). If anything, my classmates were sometimes overdefferential, and I had to disabuse them of that.
“is the period of relative peace experienced by Northern and Western Europe (including Greece and Turkey) in the period following World War II—often associated above all with the creation of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors.
How dopey and self-serving is this? Greece, too? What, no brutal Communist civil war put down with the aid of the Truman Doctrine? As the webmaster of a vetted academic site, I’ve had my own run-ins with Wikipedia gatekeepers. Snotty little jerks.
Had a fraternity brother whose father commanded a Thor base in Italy.
The Italian kids would throw rocks at the American kids and then run.
But they’d get caught.
The Italian kids were born at about the same time the American kids were, but that had been during and just after the war. The American kids had had better pre-and-post natal nutrition and were considerably bigger.
You’d wonder what the problem was in the first place and why they didn’t quit after having been thumped several times.
Charles
you advocate to be a good christian, but aren’t some good wishes for our best that perspire from your post ?
Marie Claude:
As the webmaster of an academic site I get unusual requests from time to time. A few years ago it was a request from a lady in France who belonged to a Franco-American friendship society. She wanted to be pointed to the musical score for the American National Anthem, the Star-Spangle Banner. She wanted the score more than the lyrics because a French teenager was going to play the anthem at a gala gathering of Americans and French in southern France somewhere on the American Memorial Day. I was glad to oblige. Those memories of Franco-American ties are not lost.
Speaking of memories that stretch way back: When Count-General Rochembeau landed in Rhode Island with the French expeditionary force to help our forebears defeat the British, he and his troops were greeted with hostility and suspicion, and the Rhodies began gouging them right and left in their stores and shops. Despite the fact that the British were the enemy, the colonists (at least in RI) felt a greater cultural affinity for the enemy then their new-found French friends!
When the French and Continental troops stormed the inadequate British fortifications at Yorktown, the battle cry was “Rochembeau! Rochembeau!” the Continental troops didn’t get it quite right, they thought it was “Rush On Boys! Rush On Boys!” (from the diary of Joseph Plum Martin, 1781, serving in the Continental Army of the United States).
46. Richard Aubrey:
Had a fraternity brother whose father commanded a Thor base in Italy.
The Italian kids would throw rocks at the American kids and then run.
I got some of that too, but it doesn’t conflict with my sunnier description above in reply to Novanglus. What you are witnessing in each of these cases are primitive cultural clashes between children, and not necessarily a reflection of the attitudes of the adults. I struck many an Italian or Croatian boy in the head with rocks and sticks, and got some of the same back. It was 1950′s Italy, and Trieste bordered on Communist Yugoslavia. More to the point, childhood was more rough & tumble back then and back there.
Marie Claude:
“Merci Beaucoup” not only for the vital assistance of Admiral DeGrasse, the French Fleet, and the Marquis de Lafayette during the American Revolution, but also more than I can express for Charles Martel, the Frankish “Hammer” who stopped Islamic / Moorish raiders at Battle of Tours on 10 October 732 [also called the Battle of Poitiers] If not for his army, Islam might have spread across Medieval Europe almost as quickly as it did across The greater Middle East and North Africa. After all, it took the Spanish another 700 years to dislodge them from “Al-Andalus.” For that Frankish courage under fearsome odds, I am grateful!
Marie Claude,
With regards to your 1066 comment, though a bit off topic here, I once read an interesting take on a side effect of the Norman Conquest – the legal language we inherited from our colonial masters reflects both English and French considerations…hence, expressions such as “to have and hold”, “cease and desist”, “assault and battery” consist of one word of French derivation and one word of English derivation. Now I do not claim to be expert in such matters, but I thought such research and conclusion was interessant, n’est-ce pas? We are not so different après tout?
Don Rodrigo
I have already read this anecdote on this site, may be it was from you, or had you another Nic ?
!I know a JFM who can quote each details for the French involved into fights on american soil, are you the same person ?
“Dday glory is a prison for your minds…”
Funny — the video Wretchard includes spans over 5 decades. It shows a global commitment by Yanks, to pay and serve and die for a cause which salvaged many cowardly nations from oblivion, at the top of the list: France. Marie Claude asks: “what have you done especially for me, that I am not aware of?” That sums ingratitude up nicely, doesn’t it?
France has a population of between 65-70 million. That’s nearly 1/4 of America’s population. But France only expends a mere $40 billion on her own military defense annually. America is only 4.3 times larger than France per population, but spends a staggering 14.7 times as much on defense… Americans each shoulder nearly 3.5 times as much of the financial burden as the French, per capita. THAT’S what we’ve done for you lately.
Forget D-Day for a moment… For over 6 decades America pledged her very existence to guarantee Europe’s security in the cold war. In addition to our millions sacrificed salvaging the ungrateful Whore of Babylon in two world wars, this generation paid the bill to shield Europe from the Soviet menace, Marie Claude. This sacrifice is most often met with your species of derision and smiley-faced sarcasm. Wallow in it, it’s par for the course from Eurotrash. Wallow in your vaunted 30 hour work weeks. Wallow in your two months paid vacations and your Eurabian utopia! Keep those smiley faces coming, it feels great to see what all of our global efforts have wrought.
heyyoukids @ 18: please, what is the source of that wonderful sentence?
oldsj
Ammo Guy:
no we aren’t different, that’s what I wrote on a german site, where the european and american relations were questionned
I wrote “we are the same world, we have the same DNA”
Morton Doodslag:
ol right, we are coward, blah blah blah
and you want us to prostern under your statue ?
Typical. I’ve heard it’s impossible to domesticate Hyenas too. Cheers! and Merry Christmas BCers!
Morton is a label for “saucisson” and Doochbag is their envelop, is there any correlation ?
Merry Christmas el Rambo
Thanks for showing your true face. Not so smiley, huh?
“I wrote “we are the same world, we have the same DNA””
Those GI’s sure got around IYKWIM, AITTYD.
no, no smiley needed you’re the smiley on your own, and I can valuate the mercherdise with it
wws, soon the trivial pursuit ! of course they are recorded, some weren’t of free will though, (ie Robert Lilly’s book)
you forgot that your fathers didn’t came from the moon ?
OT where do these people come from? I guess the best solution would be just for all the people, pet and animals to just die. Sure would save a lot of time and money to reduce our carbon foot print!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091220/sc_afp/lifestyleclimatewarminganimalsfood
47. Marie Claude:
Charles
you advocate to be a good christian, but aren’t some good wishes for our best that perspire from your post ?
……
I would love to debate you but usually I cannot figure out what you are saying.
I can tell that imho the glory days of atheism have passed. that christianity will return big time to Europe. it may not seem so now because the spiritual ground in europe is cold and frozen. but nature abhors a vacume. the enviro greens are trying hard to reintroduce a religion from prehistory. but I think they will fail.
when christianity returns to Europe — there will be political consequences. In this I’m only making a historical analogy to the consequences of Luther’s visit to the cathedral Worms in 1519. but of course it took time.
an acquaintance of mine recently visited there and heard a serman that could easily sat well with the participants at Copenhagen.
“and you want us to prostern under your statue?”
I’d be content if you’d stop pissing on the statue.
OT: I heard a few minutes of Rush this morning, and he is predicting or calling for insurrection, revolution, civil disobedience, or something – or at least that will be the headline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intolerable_Acts
Morton’s analysis is a bit weak for the reason that the US is mostly safe from invasion… and that it shoulders a great deal of burden on protecting other countries. Maybe a more accurate comparison would be with a country that focuses only on its own defense, like my own country of Singapore.
Singapore with a citizen population of about 3.5 million will spend abt 11 billion USD in 2009 for defense. Our defense is predicated on the assumption that when it comes to a fight, we cannot rely on anybody, only ourselves. Not the US, not China, not Japan. How I wish we could rely on China… nobody dares mess with them, not even the Islamists, since they’ve yet to be infected with PC.
Scaling it to France which has 20 times more people (and much more territory), that would mean France should be spending the equivalent of 200 billion dollars JUST TO DEFEND ITSELF. This admittedly simplistic scaling should indicate the level of defense subsidy France is receiving from the United States. On the order of 160 billion dollars.
All Morton and gang want is for the Europeans to acknowledge that their prosperity and their very way of life is indebted to this heavy defense subsidy by the US… and if I’m reading the whole tone of this thread right, a tacit admission that the US may not be able to shoulder this burden for much longer, nor would it (or its people) want to even if it was able to.
In which case, Marie Claude, you are screwed. Say buh bye to your cushy socialist systems, insane working hours, and heavy level of social security.
pst314:
“I’d be content if you’d stop pissing on the statue.”
hmm, that one of “saucisson” ?
Charles @64,
There’s something rushing into the vacuum created by atheism. It’s called Islam.
As an atheist myself, I find myself conflicted on the big picture aspects of religion, including Christianity. On one hand, I deplore them for the sheer level of illogic and superstition it contains.
But on the other hand, I’ve also come to the realization that religions are generally too useful a cultural tool for imparting critical values and mindsets to large parts of the population without having to resort to heavy doses of intense philosophy and ethical study for which most people have neither the time, aptitude, or interest. And we need those values for any functioning civilization.
64. Charles:
yes a religion is important, but also republican values, and ours are still strong for imposing our laws on people that want replace them by their owns, all our political partis agreed on the veil law, as they will for banning burkas
The Wobbly Guy:
don’t worry for us, we can still manage our self defense, and a Nazy Germany isn’t a threat anymore, in the whole EU we may be the lonely country where there isn’t a policy based on communauties but of nationality
Ahh, leave it to Barry to bring true Christmas cheer to the White House, where the tree now sports ornaments featuring Mao, a transvestite and Obama on Mt. Rushmore.
A barf alert at this link is only polite.
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/22/transvestites-mao-and-obama-decorate-white-house-christmas-tree/#more-50890
to may it concerns, at the moment there is a report on TV France 4 on french pilots that are training with the US Navy, and you wouldn’t believe it, the American Commandant said that he had never had such a good pilots
http://www.france4.fr/bandesannonces/index.php?id_ba=630
“don’t worry for us, we can still manage our self defense, and a Nazy Germany isn’t a threat anymore, in the whole EU we may be the lonely country where there isn’t a policy based on communauties but of nationality”
Utter typical leftoid non-comprehension. Did you not understand what I was saying? You would need to spend 200 billion USD on defense for self-defense alone! Where is the money going to come from? Drop out of the sky?
Nazi Germany may be gone, the UK may be a joke at the moment, Spain, Italy, and the rest of the region may be good quiet neighbours, but what if we look at the region, the EU, as a WHOLE? Are you so daft as to think that whatever threatens, say, Poland, would not possibly threaten France?
And if we calculate the defense subsidy/shortfall the US is providing for the entire EU, I think you may be in a rude shock. Again, where is the money going to come from?
We do not live in the world we wish for. We live in a world where we have to keep choosing the lesser evils.
@74,
Anecdotal stuff. And of course the Commandant is going to praise them. It’s good PR to stroke egos. I would never read much into these public relations displays.
@ 72 peterike
Wow… one wonders what sort of paper art the First Lady created with the kids… probably not the typical paper dolls linked together hand-in-hand… those poor children…
Let’s hope that by the time the election of 2010 comes around we still have a republic to save… if the (remember this term?) broken-glass republicans (and more than a few broken-glass moderates) don’t vote against democrats in overwhelming numbers, the sheer anger I’m hearing may start manifesting itself in a different sort of broken glass…
What I’m reading and hearing these days borders on astonishing… I don’t recall ever feeling this uncertain about the future.
Triton
Everybody, the conversation with Marie Claude seems to be foundering on one key point. Each side is speaking from a totally different cultural frame of reference and some key words and concepts do not mean the same to each other. Add to that, the difficulties of translation, and probably this is not going to achieve a meeting of minds.
Sitting back and watching this exchange, and I admit that I may be mistaken; but it seems that the basis for the French argument is essentially aristocratic in origin. It is blood, ancestry, origins, and ancient deeds that count for all. I am reminded of the gulf between the old “Nobility of the Sword” [those descended from ancient feudal retainers] and the “Nobility of the Robe” [those ennobled for more recent non-military services to the Crown in the Ancien Regime; armies composed solely of feudal levies being obsolete in warfare from about the late 1500's]. Europe, and even France, has never really gotten over the whole blood-line thing to determine worth. Witness the Revolution of 1789 being followed by the Empire with its new nobility a mere 15 years later, that followed by the Bourbons again, then the Empire again for 100 days, then the Bourbons, then the Second Empire that only ended when the Prussians occupied Versailles. That colors their version of who owes what.
The debt that the English owe the French for the French having the good grace of conquering them and making them submit to the Normans, passed on in the bloodline to the Americans since the country was founded by the English, reinforced by French aid in overthrowing the English; is in their judgment eternal, infinite, and incapable of being repaid by Americans or Brits. The fact that, from our point of view, we were subjected to an unprovoked attack by the French Directory just a few years after the Constitution was ratified; or that the treaty ending the war specifically renounced any claims of alliance or friendship is to them a mere trifle. As is considered the rescue of France in WW-I, or WW-II. More Americans were killed or wounded defending France’s soil in WW-I than there were French deployed to America during our Revolution, and American ships delivered both munitions and food to keep France alive and fighting in WW-I far in excess [on a either a percentage or an absolute basis] than any French supplies to us in the 1700′s. And just as it was the French navy that checked the British off of Yorktown; it was our [and the British] navy that kept the sea lanes open to France in WW-I. This does not even mention WW-II, and the squadmates of our fathers who died fighting to liberate France, nor does it mention both the strategic and the tactical defense umbrella furnished to all of Western Europe for a half century. But there is no point in mentioning them, because to Europeans, our debt is in our blood, a kind of bill of attainder that can never be expiated.
Americans, and to a lesser degree the Brits, tend to have a more mercantilist concept of quid pro quo, thinking in shorter time spans. We tend to discount things that happened two generations ago as being ancient history and not pertinent to current affairs. They still are dealing with 1066.
We are talking past each other and are not going to achieve a meeting of minds.
In a way, the discussion was made moot on December 1. With the coming into force of the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty there is a very strong case that none of the member countries of the EU are sovereign states any longer as defined under the Treaty of Westphalia that underlays all modern international relations. With the loss of sovereignty, goes the validity of any treaties between our countries. We have two precedents.
Up to the moment of ratification of our own Constitution, the several states were totally sovereign. Article II of the Articles of Confederation specifically said so. A number of them had commercial treaties and other relations with European powers. Every one of those treaties became instantly null and void at the moment that sovereignty was transferred to the new Federal government.
A similar occurence took place with the declaration of the German Empire in the 1870′s. Prior to that, we had various treaties with the 35 states and principalities that became the Empire. They were void from the moment that King Wilhelm I of Prussia became Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany.
All moral debts and treaty obligations to the former nation states of Europe are cancelled, because they no longer are sovereign states. We have not yet made commitments to the new EU government, nor they to us … yet. We have a blank slate to work from, if we so desire.
This is the short form. I did about 7,000 words on the subject which I published in my own email newsletter early this month.[*] In any case, it is quite possible that in the near future we will withdraw from Europe; driven by international affairs and by our own domestic difficulties. I just hope that we bring not only our troops, but all of our equipment with us as #21 Bill McNutt writes. And I would be willing to spend the money necessary to repatriate the bodies of our dead, to prevent future desecration. That might not be possible, however. I am less sure about any European refugees as noted above, unless we can be real picky in the process.
[*]-not available publicly online. Not link-whoring.
I have to note one thing. Marie Claude at # 9 replied in Arabic, and mentioned Cassandra. I do not read Arabic, so I have to wonder if it is prophecy as to Europe’s fate; intended or otherwise?
Subotai Bahadur
Wobbly, I believe the report, and I think the pilots performed admirably. That’s the genius of the American system; even the French can perform superbly as long as they are operating under American control!
The Wobbly Guy:
“Utter typical leftoid non-comprehension.”
utter typical godwin argument !
if you want to discuss our defense there are some documentations about our means, that I will not provide to you, as you are a biggest boy in the salon, and that I am not an expert of the afferent details, but I am sure that whatever our army budget is, it will not be convenient to your own evaluation
BTW, I was sure that you would still find a worm for my link.
Now, stay self content of your numerical superiority, that doesn’t make of you a fair man for so.
oldssj@54
That’s very kind of you, thanks.
That would be me, this morning, first thing.
I have just returned from town and was miffed on the drive there because the randomness of WordPress edit function left me no chance to add, subtract, multiply or divide.
Like you finger on an ouiji board, slide this around till it fits.
“contemplating the wisdom of trusting my immediate future to the odds of a Belgian factory worker being either OCD or closet alcoholic.”
Heyyoukids
Bahadur 77:
The Franco-Prussian War did not end when the Germans occupied Versailles. It took several more months before the Versailles government, under Thiers, crushed the Paris Commune, with somewhat passive German assistance. Tens of thousands of Frenchmen died at the hands of other French. I guess that’s the way the French always end wars, by killing each other wholesale! (ref. “The Sorrow and the Pity”)
The French showed up at Yorktown in the same manner the Soviets showed up in the Far east at WWII end: for the spoils and a better negotitating position.
Many times previous to Yorktown Geo. Washington entreated them for their aid but their fleet remain in the Carribean with hopes of capturing from the British a larger portion of the spice trade. They could have cared less for the American Revolution until it became apparent that we could win…Only then did they show up.
Don’t be fooled by any ideas they had of fraternal bonding. They performed then as they do now. If the cheese can be stolen, steal it, if it can be taken by force take it, but their focus is not toward humanity but toward themselves. French foreign aid is not measureable compared to the USA and never has been.
The French “Liberty, equality, fraternity” is as hollow and meaningless as any phrase ever uttered.
Unlike #6, I never enjoy reading Marie Claude’s consistently snarky comments.
Subotai
“Sitting back and watching this exchange, and I admit that I may be mistaken; but it seems that the basis for the French argument is essentially aristocratic in origin.”
hmm didn’t we cut our king’s head off ?
Subotai you possess a great knowledge, but unfortunately your readings are only from english sources that find your agreement, and I am sorry to tell you that in your great education, we are more likely under a bus, and thus, you portray us with your predetermined tools.
“The fact that, from our point of view, we were subjected to an unprovoked attack by the French Directory just a few years after the Constitution was ratified”
“The American minister, John Jay negotiated the ‘Jay Treaty’ with England in November 1794. It accommodated American policy to British interests, and permitted British seizure of French goods on American ships.
The French reaction was abrupt. France broke relations with US and the French began to harass US shipping in the West Indies.”
uh”. They still are dealing with 1066.” depends with whom, but we could go further too, until Vercingetorix
“All moral debts and treaty obligations to the former nation states of Europe are cancelled, because they no longer are sovereign states. “
except that those bloddy French that can’t disappear under the EU outfit, are still your anti-model and your scapegoats for what everything is seen aas a failure and or evil
Ubu,#82
http://xenophongroup.com/mcjoynt/alliance2.htm
The French showed up at Yorktown in the same manner the Soviets showed up in the Far east at WWII end: for the spoils and a better negotitating position.
“Si n’aviez-vous pas une dette sacrée à payer, n’aviez-vous pas l’honneur national à défendre ? Qui retenait vos forts, qui capturait vos vaisseaux? L’Angleterre. Qui voulut vous asservir? Qui vous suscita (sic) la guerre contre les Algériens et les Indiens? L’Angleterre. Qui vous défendit quand vous brisâtes vos chaînes? La France. Qui veut pour son intérêt que vous conserviez votre liberté? la France ”
Lucy,
nice to meet you
Robert the Perspicasse
I guess that’s the way the French always end wars, by killing each other wholesale!
I guess that in your civil war, only sheep were slaughtered
#81 Robert Speirs
The war definitely did not end at that occupation, but the Second Empire went Tango Uniform on September 2,1870 when Napoleon III was captured by the Prussians at Sedan. I was speaking somewhat rhetorically, as Versailles was taken on September 17, and that guaranteed that Paris and the interim government would be invested and eventually starved out with the result of the final defeat of France.
The siege of Paris ran from September 18,1870 to January 28,1871. The “Government of National Defense” which ended up being the first of the 3rd Republic was headed from September 4 by General Louis Jules Trochu who commanded the garrison of Paris during the siege.
Sorry if I was unclear, but then again events in France were not exactly going in a straight timeline.
#82 Habu
Word
Although I would place the phrase, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” in contention for the prize.
Subotai Bahadur
“Morton’s analysis is a bit weak for the reason that the US is mostly safe from invasion…”
If anything, this proves my point conclusively. If we’re safe from invasion, then how can Europeans so easily disparage our history of defending them (even to this day) with our blood and treasure? In that regard Marie Claude’s snideness is truly obscene.
After all, safe from invasion, America has nevertheless sent hundreds of thousand to die in the trenches defending other nations sovereignty and people from destruction by Nazi and fascist communist totalitarianism… We certainly could have sat back and watched any of the nightmares unfold in the 20th Century from the relatively safe distance in “Fortress America”, but we didn’t. This is simply a fact, and America’s sacrifices, past and current, do not deserve smug quips from European trash.
Of course our actions were not just altruism on our part, though we are an altruistic people. Of course our self interest was served in stopping 20th Century totalitarianism. but the snotty attitude of the Marie Claude’s of this world is odious beyond tolerating. Further strengthening my thesis: Our nation risked itself existentially to tie our fate to Europe’s in her defense against Soviet encroachment. The French cannot make any similar claim in exchange. France has never pledged herself existentially for another nation. I wrote my analysis in response to the noxious Marie Claude comments made above, and especially after said poster asked “what have you done for me personally?”. This poster’s poisonous mindset is all too emblematic of the arrogant, truculent and self-delusional attitude too often found among the flippant jackasses of Europe. They fantasize delusionally that their security somehow magically stems from their cultural wonderfulness, or from some worthless joke like their EU, and have the gall to stick their finger in our eye.
It occurred to me that the man who said “if you want a friend, buy a dog” was right. Nothing is more fleeting than memory. A generation did not even have to pass before people forgot the enormous price that was paid to rid the Philippines of Ferdinand Marcos. And the problem is universal over human history. No sooner had Israel been delivered from Egypt than they began to worship the Golden Calf. Things haven’t changed that much in the last four thousand or so years. To the question: who created the European peace? Why the EU of course.
But that is what each generations buys: the right of the next to screw up. Freedom is exactly that: a chance. The right to stand on third base and think you hit a triple. As a boy I grew up with the my parent’s memories of the Second World War. They never put the burden of preserving that birthright upon me. I was a free to do as I pleased. Only later did I realize that only I could lay the burden on myself.
Somtimes the generations intersected. I remember seeing Raul Manglapus getting off the tram in the Sunset District in San Francisco during the anti-Marcos days and couldn’t help noticing he wore a threadbare coat. Manglapus had consistently been described by the Left as a traitor in the pay of the CIA. But the down-at-heel, middle aged man before me was the very opposite of that. A lot of the stories the left spread around were the exact opposite of the truth.
I later learned (from others) that Manglapus had been a guerilla commander. They told me a funny story. He was part of the unit that took the mountain town of Tanay from the Japanese garrison. After temporarily taking the town he decided to memorialize the event by gathering up the town band. He produced a wax recorder which once belonged to a Jesuit college’s drama club and recorded his men and the band thumping out “Stout Hearted Men”. I thought I knew Raul, now dead these ten years, but there was more. Wikipedia has the entry:
Though I saw him off and on for years after that day in the Sunset District, I never knew this till now. Maybe we didn’t have to know. He did what he did and I did what little I did for the same reason. We wanted to.
69. The Wobbly Guy:
Charles @64,
There’s something rushing into the vacuum created by atheism. It’s called Islam.
……..
Also, a prechristian paganism/pantheism. Gaea the patron goddess of Copenhagen.
The Ganison of old nostalgic Rambos is under my back “A moi d’Artagnan !”
My dear Saucisson, you sort my sentences out of context, that you volontary interpret as if you were born by a primitive ethny, naturally in a hostile way !
# 84 Marie Claude
hmm didn’t we cut our king’s head off ?
Yes you did. And within 15 years you replaced him with an Emperor and a horde of new hereditary nobility that existed legally for 60 years and both the old and new nobilities still exist as social institutions that grant status and prestige based on lineage.
Subotai you possess a great knowledge, but unfortunately your readings are only from english sources that find your agreement
That would surprise my professors in the graduate level history courses covering the French Revolution and Napoleon which I weaseled my way into as an undergraduate. One was a French national, the other lived in France for over a decade; each had written one of the several textbooks we used, and they were English editions of the original French.
“The American minister, John Jay negotiated the ‘Jay Treaty’ with England in November 1794. It accommodated American policy to British interests, and permitted British seizure of French goods on American ships.
The French reaction was abrupt. France broke relations with US and the French began to harass US shipping in the West Indies.”
If you are at war, it is apparent that somewhere there are differences in the opinions between the nations. Our country had as its belief at the time [and somewhat later as it was a not insignificant part of the reason for the War of 1812 with Britain] that neutrals could freely trade with belligerents, so long as they were not carrying military contraband, and stay neutral. Although it is [as noted above] ancient history to us now; at no time did our then existing treaty of alliance yield our sovereignty to France or give it control of our trade policy. And indeed, that treaty of alliance was made with the House of Bourbon; not with any of the governments that came into being after the Oath of the Tennis Court. Our countries disagreed, went to war. We thumped on French privateers and Naval vessels wherever we ran into them [with one exception, I believe]. The war ended with a treaty that specifically abrogated any previously existing state of friendship or alliance.
uh”. They still are dealing with 1066.” depends with whom, but we could go further too, until Vercingetorix
UH, it was you in #33 above who made the claim of debt owed because of William the Conqueror.
q.v.:I don’t mind, we should go until Guillaume the conquistador that brought vocabulary and culture to the anglo-Saxons
If y’all want to claim that the Romans/modern Italians owe you because of Vercingetorix and Alesia, y’all go right ahead. The Brits of the time were, like Vercingetorix, Celts.
except that those bloddy French that can’t disappear under the EU outfit, are still your anti-model and your scapegoats for what everything is seen aas a failure and or evil
Not disappear, simply become irrelevant as a non-sovereign satrapy of the EU. History is the past, and cannot be changed. Each entity bears responsibility for what it did back then. As of December 1, I don’t blame France for anything in the future. The intent is simply to ignore it unless it proves a nuisance. France is as relevant to international affairs now, as a subsidiary of the EU, as the old Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Wessex is to formerly-Great and now Lesser Britain.
Subotai Bahadur
Hey Wretch,
Maybe you can do a follow on post on Franco-American relations so MC can finally blow herself out. I realize this post is peripherally about France, in the context of the EU, but it seems like the last several threads have been high jacked to appease the insouciant ramblings of MC, who, I fear, is a bit of a masochist. She enjoys negative attention enough to constantly seek it.
It might be wise to consider most of that info came from Loukas Tsoukalis an academic with not only very close ties to the EU and the European Council but has also served as a consulant to Borasso since 2005. Hardly anyone likely to mention that the sky has fallen.
People can remember, they can choose to remember. When I was a freshman in college I sat on a plane next to an old man who told me that when he was a young boy he had listened to the old men talk of when they were young boys gathered at the train depot and telegraph office with the adults to wait for the casualty lists from Gettysburg.
We are each a living link to deeds and generations that have meaning as long as we will them to. When people surrender to the anomie of the totalitarians they break the ties that bind them to the past and make them individuals in the present. When they reject all learning and experience that does not come down from above, as do Islam and the post-modern scientists of AGW, they are reduced to meaningless objects. In doing so they not only kill a part of their own humanity but they kill all those who went before. As long as I live the boys who waited for news from Gettysburg have a voice.
If you do not appreciate the past then you can not judge the present. Errors are to noted and corrected, in acknowledging them you gain both a normative improvement and establish credibility that increases the value of your future judgements. The Left always says that they criticize America to improve it but they lie because they rely on false data and false precepts in building their criticisms. Honest criticism should be welcomed.
Marie Claude spoke badly here in two ways. First she could have framed her argument in a less challenging manner. While this is not a Memorial Day observance the tenor of our hosts original post was about the need to appreciate unselfish sacrifice and the opportunities it offers to build a shared vision in liberty. Responding with a narrow partisan defense is as inappropriate as if an American was to show up at Bastille Day celebration at the French Embassy wearing shorts and a big hat and asking how much things are worth “in real money?” Second it would have aided the credibility of her argument in general if she had a more forthright attitude about what Europe’s real problems are and how she proposes to deal with them. Otherwise all issues are reduced to meaningless tactical ripostes.
اسف ى\’اذا ان قلت فى الحقيقة, وهى صعوبات فى رسالتكم تسعى الموضوعية. وهناك شيء فيها الفرنسية المعروف هو جاءت\’وهى اللغة الفرنسية, فقط فى فرنس
Habu
LOTM…wonderful writing
to the other.
Désolé si que j’ai dit était la vérité et il fait mal à votre fond tendre.
Une chose pour laquelle le Français est notoire est qu’ils sont pour le Français et seulement le Français.
Let me see if I read this correctly -
” Durka dirka durka derka durka….”
How’d I do?
#97 Habu
боже мой !
I yield. Homey don’t do Arabic.
Subotai Bahadur
Habu,
Thank you and a Merry Xmas to you and yours.
What is with the arabic? You are finally managing to frighten me.
# 98 Habu
Or Frankish.
Subotai Bahadur
I have three kids, and the eldest likes to tweak his younger counterparts. Often, due to their inexperience, they’ll spend the better part of fifteen minutes loudly demanding a retraction from him, working themselves into a lather.
The eldest keeps the gig going, and I’m not sure why. I think it has something to do with a teenage enjoyment of controlling the situation, no matter how pointless. (Hmmm, there’s material for a post there…)
Usually I’ll helpfully remind the younger children that if they simply let it go, stop the debate, the elder will tire of the game and we will enjoy “Peace in our time”. They are thunderstruck when they take my advice, and, like magic, peace does indeed follow, usually in a matter of seconds.
May I humbly beseach the esteemed posters on this thread to excercise selectivity in the thoughts to which they choose to reply? I am hoping that someone will get bored and go put a little of their hard-earned (cough) two-month vacation to use in other pursuits, rather than consuming another 1/3 of the bandwidth on this site (32+ posts out of a current 102).
Marie-Claude, Puis-je me permettre de vour remercier pour la generosite et la profondeur de vos remarques erudites? Vous avez largement merite le titre de La grande Prima Donna Cybernetique. Mes congratulations les plus sinceres.
Какой сюрприз! У нас есть Rусский язык здесь. Kонечно, я могут иметь больше шансов на практике это с нашим новым режимом!
Subotai
The war ended with a treaty that specifically abrogated any previously existing state of friendship or alliance.
1797
To resolve the situation, President John Adams, sent a US commission to France to negotiate a treaty of commerce and amity in 1797-1798.
The Directory refused to recognize them, but Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, delegated three agents to conduct negotiations unofficially. When French agents demanded a bribe, the US commission terminated the discussions and returned to the US. In April 1798, Congress distributed a report of the event, with the letters ‘X’, ‘Y’, and ‘Z’ substituted for the names of the French agents. From 1798 to 1800 an undeclared naval war between France and the US was waged in the Caribbean Sea. It is called The Quasi-War (1797-1801). This ‘war’ involved several naval actions and reflected considerable credit upon the fledgling US navy. It began and ended without formal recognition, though Washington was called back to command the army.
1798
In July 1798, the US Congress unilaterally abrogated the treaties of 1778. France refused to recognize the US annulment.
1799
Napoleon became First Consul in 1799, the same year he declared a day of national mourning upon the death of George Washington. Napoleon’s grand design for Europe wanted to remove distractions in the Western hemisphere, so he entered into negotiations with the US to resolve the status of the 1778 treaty.
1800
In return for some commercial concessions for the French, Napoleon officially accepted an end to the 1778 treaty at the Convention of Morfontaine (30 September 1800).
In summary, the Franco-American Alliance of the American Revolution lasted ‘technically’ from 1778 to 1800. As a treaty mutually supported by both consigning nations, it was effective only from 1778 to 1783.
“UH, it was you in #33 above who made the claim of debt ”
It wasn’t written as a claim, but as an exemple of our mutual history, and if we wanted to keep memory on all the events, it can go for days long of mourning.
simply become irrelevant as a non-sovereign satrapy of the EU.
well only in the papers, in reality our position is determinating for the EU policies, as Germany, and UK are too.
But I could return you the remark are California, Texas, Alabama or New York… not satrapies too.
The intent is simply to ignore it unless it proves a nuisance. France is as relevant to international affairs now, as a subsidiary of the EU, as the old Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Wessex is to formerly-Great and now Lesser Britain.
Idem as the afore mentionned US States are for the EU.
But you do take attention to France, otherwise some of your opinionists and papers would have nothing to put under their teeth.
It was remarquable how numerous the articles were in the past decade
Of course it’s ancient history for us now, as 1944 is for the new generations that weren’t born then, even that their parents weren’t born then.
America has nevertheless sent hundreds of thousand to die in the trenches defending other nations sovereignty and people from destruction by Nazi and fascist communist totalitarianism…
One of the things that makes it difficult to argue with Americans about the events of the 20th century is that they all seem to believe that their federal government goes to war for moralistic reasons. Sorry, but all that moralism is to con you into fighting wars abroad. The same conservative Americans who can see the threat of their own federal government at home shouldn’t suddenly claim altruism is behind that same federal government’s actions abroad.
Let’s assume that America will navel-gaze, and that vacuum will lead to world war.
Let’s also assume that our internal divisions get to the point of irreconcilable.
When the war happens, do we beg off and let our own internal battle (which may include violent exchange and retribution) consume us?
Or do we do what Czarist Russia did – fight in the international conflict, and, when it is over, settle the scores at home?
novanglus,
Gesundheit.
It’s Pandemonium:
Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, “biblical”?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
This thread has now officially crossed over into the silly zone.
UBU
tu n’as pas dit entièrement la vérité, mais seulement celle qui te convenait
94. Annoy Mouse:
doesn’t matter, being confronted to any antagonist doesn’t frighten me
LOTM
“Otherwise all issues are reduced to meaningless tactical ripostes.”
Have I had the opportunity to talk seriously on that post ?
104. Professor Guvinoff:
I hope you had a good time in appreciating my non-erudition
re: Marie @ 9
Marie,
Certainly not to me personally, as I am far too young to have been there.
But just as certainly, thanks are due from you to mine, to my country and my countrymen, who were there.
It would have been a graceful thing to have done.
But cheers and best wishes to you, regardless.
Paul
I fear we’re headed down the same socialist road as the Euroweenies because the American Right has morally collapsed, sucking on the sweet teat of the welfare mother pig with the same alacrity as the Left. Sure the GOP would talk a good game nationally, but locally they’d mouth all the New Deal palaver: every Congressional District promised its own Bridge to Nowhere. Newt Gingrich sucked up pork for his district and the class of ’94 and every other GOP Congress followed suit.
So too with even Tea Party stalwarts like Michelle Bachmann, a total welfare Queen on farm subsidies!!!
http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/michelle_bachman_welfare_queen_20091221/
Where do we turn when even the Tea Party movement is corrupted??
Habu, you lost me when you start talking about that meeting of the minds business. You overshot the LZ there Good Buddy.
What we have here is an altogether different problem, and it ain’t a failure to communicate.
As to the problem that you articulate, i believe you over intellectualize it a tad.
They are French; they have to find someway to live with it. If it were not for Napoleon we would just think of as a large Holland with better food and worse manners. The Normans? The Valois? The Capets? Medieval France is perhaps their finest hour, but overrated, all things considered. A proto-nomenklatura–though we did get some decent counterpoint out of it.. As to blood, you have it backwards: It was first the Adnecave Celts that enriched the blood of Anjou, not the other way around, and later Saxon and Celt blood perfected the Plantagenet line. The results are indisputable.
In any case, hardly the blood of the French for the last few hundred years.
It is a nation which never abandoned the notion of a central court; thus they does not believe is anything but surfaces and reflection–the essence is in the the surface and the superficial, all else is entirely base and repellent. In this they are the opposite of the Teutonic or the Anglo Saxon. Add to that the fact that they rather misunderstood Catholicism. The confession of sin is not license to commit more sin, which, of course is just restating the same confusion about essences in religious terms.
I have found that once you leave Paris, and leav behind the upper classes and their epigones, the French are much more bearable. When that are actually forced to so something useful they can actually be tolerable. Now as to their wives…
Cooldog:
for you,
I am disposed to rewrite for the X times that I thank your fathers for their sacrifice
Came late to the party.
LOTM, you do realize that you have perpetuated the image of those boys waiting at the telegraph office in everyone’s mind? I teach high school U.S. history and I shall pass the image on to other generations so neither they, nor the Gettysburg casualities, are ever forgotten. Merry Christmas to all…
Well, That is the best i can do at a MC parody tonight. Hope it is not so droll as to to be oblique.
LOFM, yes, but do not think that we do have the final fate of the dead in our hands. Their deeds, their meaning, their mark, their souls are quite outside of our power to fully understand or control.
Their time on this earth lives on in the world whether we we honor them or not.
and now we have the Tales by naughty mother Goose, but would you think she would tell nices stories ? her degree in tad knowledge doesn’t allow her that, and naturally she’s revisiting the old time as she was concepting a cassoulet
A case in point.
#108 no mo uro
Our ability to take part in a world conflict is going to be severely limited. We have destroyed our manufacturing base. We are working as hard as we can to destroy any ability to produce enough energy to even partially support a peacetime economy, let alone a wartime one. Our economy is being driven into the ground as fast as the government can arrange it. Terrorists are given civil rights, our allies [such few as we have] are spurned at every opportunity in preference to performing k’tou to our mortal enemies. When the bills come due for the massive deficit spending in progress now, the only thing that can be guaranteed to be cut will be our military.
We are going to be busy at home. For all their internal problems, Czarist Russia had what was considered to be a military worthy of a major power, and its adversaries were adjacent thus limiting the logistical requirements for power projection. It turned out that their command and their logistics were sub-par. But it was not unreasonable [other than the inherent lack of reason that triggered the war] for them to take part in what became WW II.
We are not going to be able to project power short of long range bombardment in any global or even regional conflict. There is one other factor to consider.
Prosecuting a war requires a level of will, concentration, purpose, and constancy that this regime has not shown any ability to muster. Every promise or commitment has an expiration date that is variable according to expediency. Further, one wonders which side in any conflict we would be forced to join. Iran has been protected by this regime. Israel has been thrown to the wolves. Eastern Europe and FSU states know that they have no friends in the US. This administration either fears or admires any potential adversary [or both].
Part of my earlier prediction of the possibility of our pulling out of Europe is that we are not going to stand against any Russian adventurism, nor defend Europe from Iranian missiles, nor are we going to get involved in dealing with any Jihadist uprisings/terrorism with the possible exception of protecting the Jihadis as part of some “Peacekeeping Force”. Europe got the American president that they lusted after, and now they will pay the price of standing alone, after refusing to maintain the ability to defend themselves.
Any threats in Asia for the foreseeable future are going to be either Russian, China, or a certain client state supported by both. This president will not stand up to them to defend any Asian states. This changed paradigm has been noted by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and I believe the Phillipines.
So our conflicts are going to be domestic.
“And the results are in the hands of the Great Blue Sky Tengri Nor.”
Subotai Bahadur
“Well, That is the best i can do atan MC parody tonight”
yeah, whatever, modesty doesn’t suffocate you
But I did appreciate your sense of humor
Great thread until it got Frenched.
Subotai, really you need to figure out a way to let some of us here in on your newsletter.
#122 Kirk Parker
It is entitled GLEANINGS and what was just friendly discussions turned into an email newsletter on 9/11. It goes out like a chain. I send it to what I call the Main Branches, they forward it to who they choose, ad infinitum [or nauseum depending on what you think of the content.] subject to some very limited rules. It was pretty much out every business day, but I put it on hiatus other than the odd edition last year in May. Which is why I come to BC and other places to blog and deal with my writing jones. I put it on hiatus because we are caring for an adult daughter who got necrotizing fasciitis. Things actually are starting to look up, and she is learning how to walk again; but it will be a while before I get back to regular production. I may set up a temporary email for anyone interested to make contact and subscribe [it is worth everything it costs, being free] after I do, but for now it is just not possible. Thanks for the compliment, though.
Subotai Bahadur
During Pax Americana Europe decided against Thomas Jefferson and for Jean Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. Nothing can help them now – they have made their choice; what worries me is that the American Democratic Party has made the same choice.
Forgetting old benefits is the flip side of forgetting old grievances, and nobody is going to remember the disasters that were prevented.
Of course, when ena-ites use anti-US rhetoric with old grievances and imaginary history, we’re entitled to a little grousing about hypocrisy.
Marie Claude: “Woah, difficult to forget how great you are! … Dday glory is a prison for your minds, it keeps you above the clouds”
Human liberty makes individuals great. Human liberty makes America great; frees our minds and our laboring hands, and it keeps us far above France and the rest of Marxist Europe.
If we don’t defeat the American Democratic (Marxist) Party, we will soon be sliding down to Marie Claude’s level – to the level of France and the EU.
America is great because America is good. America is good because America is free; and may America be free and good as long as the Earth exists.
* Full disclosure: I’m an Independent, not a Republican.
Storm rider, I used to like this mmusical comedy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QS7wWzwak4&translated=1
you are so misinformed about how our life is, we aren’t anymore suffuring of hunger, we can buy everything we want… and free to tell what we think to our politicians
LOTM@109:
One of the most entertaining movies. I recall when they were filming in the basement of Havemeyer Hall my freshman year. I had a 9AM chemistry lecture that I could not get out of, because the hall outside was packed with cameramen and curious students. Some classmates made it into a background scene outside as Venkman and Spengler were walking and talking. One Barack Obama was allegedly on campus at that time as well, but no one I know recalls seeing or knowing him. He was self reportedly living in a hovel apartment across town in East Harlem with his Pakistani brethren, getting high. Claire Shipman of ABC News was a classmate – would be nice if she could do a story on Obama’s years at Columbia, perhaps round up some alums who knew him back then. It will never happen, unless the White House issues a script.
Anyway – thanks for the laugh. Been a long time since I saw that one.
Subotai,
I’m with Kirk Parker – when you set-up that temporary email, please let me know.
I can be reached at tritonspolartiger (minus that pesky apostrophe) AT yahoo d0t com.
As I rarely get email at that addy, I rarely check it, but I do eventually get around to it… so response may be a bit long in coming.
Merry Christmas,
Triton
Marie Claude: “we should go until Guillaume the conquistador that brought vocabulary and culture to the anglo-Saxons”
William the Conqueror was not an ethnic Frenchman; he was a Norman – a “Norseman” – a descendant of the Vikings who conquered that portion of Northern France.
My wife and I visited Normandy summer before last and we enjoyed viewing The Bayeux Tapestry outlining William’s preparations for crossing the English Channel, and his victory in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings. The Bayeux Cathedral was magnificent. We then went on to Omaha Beach and paid our respects to the nearly 10,000 American soldiers buried there before returning to Paris.
You are not suffering from hunger because you were freed from National Socialist (Nazi) tyranny by American soldiers. Your freedom from hunger will not last long, unless of course you are part of the new EU Socialist (Marxist) ruling class.
Marie Claude:
Vis-a-vis Al Gore–touché.
Wretchard, Syd and others:
Thanks for the gentle reminders to play nice.
Wretchard, Subotai, and LotM:
Thanks for your consistently thoughtful and felicitiously expressed commentary.
“Now I never heard some gratful thanks for what our soldiers made in your independance war !”
FYI, nearly half, figuratively speaking, of Western Connecticut is covered with honorifics to Generals Lafayette and Rochambeau. Today, it is easier to find the path of General Rochambeau and the Expédition Particulière through this area than that of General Washington. In Hartford, insurance capitol of the World, there is a magnificent statue of General Lafayette on horseback in center of the square at the entrance to the Capitol Building grounds; the State Library and Supreme Court to his left and the Bushnell Theatre to his right; the spot may be the center of the city, literally.
When I was a child, and I will grant you that was a while ago, we were taught about Lafayette and Rochambeau and the importance of France to the young United States. We also learned about Samuel de Champlain, an early explorer of this area.
Subotai Bahadur, please let us know when you get that subscription e-mail set up. I am sure that I am not the only one interested in reading more of your writings. I will keep your daughter in my prayers. Spike, also.
Storm Rider
Glad you enjoyed your trip in Normandy
Bayeux tapestry is the first cartoon ever made
William the Conqueror was effectively of norman origin by his father and french by his mother (in reality he was a bastard)
Normandy lands were given to Rollon, a danish Viking, by the king of the Franks, for the reason that this act would calm down the viking piracies elsewhere in France, and that that would settle them, but in counterpart he had to be baptised catholic.
It did so well, that the Norman nobles spoke french too. (the administration was french and education was transmitted through french clerics and priests) and intermarried with other french Nobles.
This was a centenary before that William was born.
When he landed in to England he spoke only french, most of the Normans had forgotten their own language.
Though he wasn’t alone to get there, a few norman nobles accompanied him, and some other french nobles too!. This is why there still are english nobles with a french name.
uh, French do not suffer from hunger since the early fifties, but my parents were privilegied, they had lands in Brittany. The only thing they missed was coffee and soap.
I am not part of the EU socialists, and never was.
107. coisty: “they (Americans) all seem to believe that their federal government goes to war for moralistic reasons. Sorry, but all that moralism is to con you into fighting wars abroad. The same conservative Americans who can see the threat of their own federal government at home shouldn’t suddenly claim altruism is behind that same federal government’s actions abroad.”
Defeating the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II was an act of morality – just war in defense of liberty. Under the American Constitution our Federal Government does in fact have the power to wage just war.
As for American Federal Government becoming a force for tyranny against the American people themselves; yes, you have a good point to make. Our Federal Government has seized unjust and un-Constitutional power to engage in Marxist Class struggle – robbing property (excessive taxation) from the laboring, tax-paying middle class in order to self-servingly feather their own nests, and tossing out the leftovers to the proletariat class (non-disabled, tax-eating poor)in return for votes – and calling it “social justice.”
“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property… You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
3case, thank you
wow&flutter,
Marie Claude,
My surname is English but it derives from the French, so I probably have both English and Norman blood; and since my mother is Scotch-Irish I’m blended with Celtic blood as well – several redheads in the family. It is fascinating that recent research has revealed European ancestry for the Eastern American Indian tribes. It appears they arrived in North America via an ice bridge during the last ice age approx. 15,000 years ago; but you can still see their art work in French caves.
So, Anglo-Saxons conquered the Celts. Vikings conquered Normandy. Normans conquered the Britons (Anglo-Saxon/Celts) and became the English. England conquered the North American Indians who were themselves long lost Europeans. Think about this; since the Celts and other ancient European Cro-Magnons conquered and extinguished the pre-existing Neanderthals, why don’t we just genetically engineer some Neanderthals from bone fragments and give them back the whole World?
often associated above all with the creation …
Don’t you love the passive voice? This was written by an aspiring bureaucrat. Often associated by exactly whom?
OT, follow this; BHO is down to -21. http://tinyurl.com/preztrack. The Obamists want to control the conversation and keep everyone reacting in a panic. They issue messages that they are in charge and their enemies are in disarray. Do not believe them. The MSM gets everything wrong. They then get to cover a series of crisis and pretend that everyone was surprised. The Chinese also are far from invincible or rich or examples of successful central planning creating wealth out of air. They are teetering on the precipice of a collapse far harder than what hit the US 15 months ago. In China’s case the economic irrationalities are deeper while in America’s case to a considerable extent the crisis was artificially induced. Still given the sinking poll numbers and erratic performance of the client that they are deeply tied to they may be feeling like a someone tied to a drowning man. Remember if you owe the bank a million dollars the bank owns you but if you owe the bank a trillion dollars then you own the bank.
arkroyal,
Of course. I have taught HS History myself and used the story. Wish I could find a private school and get back to work.
Subotai Bahadur,
There is nothing worse that can ever happen to you in this world now. The pain and fear are already behind you. May that thought be of some comfort and may she recover to health and joy.
Regarding the status of the constituent states of the EU, I mentioned this at #48 of “The mystery of Yemen”.
Storm rider
Cro-Magnons conquered and extinguished the pre-existing Neanderthals, why don’t we just genetically engineer some Neanderthals from bone fragments and give them back the whole World?
There isn’t a proof about that, the archeologists, where I live (not far from a carved cavern by the Cromagnons), say that they cohabited in different caverns (remains, of bones and carved silex stones were found in them, and are specifically of Neanderthals’ tradition).
They say that they probabliy died because of starvation because of “a climate change”, they used to hunt big preys, and their morphology was adapted for that, strengh, speedness, and weren’t fond of smaller preys, neither fishes, nor birds nor fruits. When ice melted the big preys disappeared, only what we are used to hunt and eat today was the main food.
A teen skeleton of an interbred Neanderthal and Cromagnon was found in Spain. It is said that this new human race couldn’t reproduct, it was sterile like a “mule” the result of a horse and a donkey intercourse.
It appears they arrived in North America via an ice bridge during the last ice age approx. 15,000 years ago;
I have heard of that too, but this is still a supposition.
Subotai–your daughter will be in my prayers.
Just for myself, I (US citizen) don’t need to hear thanks from the French, that’s not really the point.
I offer the point is more how the EU has denied the historical fact that its peace and security were due in large part to a military power that protected it from the outside and prevented internal squabbles from escalating to warfare as had happened so many times before.
It was in Ameria’s interest to see to that; it was the moral thing to do, but hardly selfless.
But, to get a litle Biblical, we now have a generation in Europe and a Pharoah in Washington “who knew not Joseph.” They don’t understand that soft power is only power in the absence of hard power. I remember back in the 1990s, Simon Peres saying something to the effect that modern power is not measured in weaponry but in how many resort hotels you have. I thought, “well, sure, as long as there isn’t anyone with a gun who wants those hotels.” Stupid beyond words, and entirely typical of a very large and influential (now, dominant) mindset.
THAT is the kind of denial of reality with which all of us, France/EU and now America, must deal.
Solutreans
You may Bingle pages upon pages at your leisure.
Heyyoukids, that’s terrific, it shows the incredible resilience of American soldiers in a few words.
Merry Christmas, Wretchard, and thanks for another year of great discussions. Thanks and Merry Christmas to all the BC commenters. The American military is well-represented here, and special thanks to them.
Many of my friends were in Vietnam. For some reason, they never seem to resent the lucky lottery winners who stayed home. Kipling’s “Tommy” captures the stark injustice of it. The sheep can’t always tell the wolves from the dogs.
We had an undefeated football team in high school, and many from that team went to Vietnam, especially farm kids who’d hunted since they were eight years old, and endured two-a-day practices in August. Four were star soldiers: two Rangers, a Green Beret, a LRP who went on 300 ambushes. Three came back. Two were bronze-star winners, both sons of WWII bronze-star winners.
They’re still my best friends, and the older I get, the more apparent it becomes that they are in fact the best of us. It makes me suspect that the Army’s selection process was much better than it was reputed to be.
So thanks, fellows, for protecting us. Vietnam was a battle in the Cold War. Whatever the advisability of the battle, it’s a good beyond imagining that we won that war.
oldsj
Thanks to all for the prayers; we will gladly take all the help we can get.
# 138 LoTM
Not quite the worst. We lost an 11 year old son 26 years ago. There is something perverse and unnatural in burying your child, because by rights it should be the other way around. That sharpened the fear when this happened to my daughter. Still, and all; yes the worst was over when we beat the infection. Now it is a matter of recovery, and that is progressing.
Subotai Bahadur
“The theory that early humans (Cro-Magnons) violently replaced Neanderthals was first proposed by French palaeontologist Marcellin Boule (the first person to publish an analysis of a Neanderthal) in 1912. Another supporter of competitive replacement is Jared Diamond who points out in his book ‘The Third Chimpanzee’ that the genocidal replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans is similar to modern human patterns of behavior that occur whenever people with advanced technology invade the territory of less advanced people.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_extinction_hypotheses
“Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution spent years in Alaska and found no connection between Siberian artifacts and Clovis technology. His new theory is that Clovis people came not from Siberia, but from Europe. The Solutrean people of France and Spain were their predecessors, he says… A site in Virginia called Cactus Hill may hold some of the answers. Artifacts found there have been dated at 18,000 years-too early for Clovis, but just right for Solutrean. Stanford believes a fossil walrus jaw found in the nearby Chesapeake could suggest how the Solutreans made their way to North America. Ice-loving walrus could only have reached the Chesapeake during the height of the last Ice Age, around 15,000-20,000 years ago. Stanford says that’s when the Solutreans got here, and they did it by bringing their boats along the ice edge which stretched across the ocean at the time.”
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1406/segments/1406-4.htm
“The traditional theory of native American ancient migration was they crossed into North America from Asia via a land bridge at the Bering Strait. A new theory gaining acceptance, immigration from western Europe, is probably a more likely scenario. Early tools of Paleo-Indians resemble more closely that from Europe versus those used in Asia to hunt big game such as the Mammoth. It is also known that these early people would have known how to make boats which could have easily followed a coastline or edge of ice. Abundant food such as seals or fish would have been the lure for such an expedition. Curiously, the spear point of the Paleo-Indian, the Clovis point is found most abundantly in eastern north America (the Potomac area), which is the same latitude that one would expect if arriving by sea from Europe.”
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/native/am-indian.htm
Never mind.
It’s Christmas.
It was in the spirit.
I don’t have the heart to tell him.
#3 LOTM: i love your ideas. let me respond, briefly.
“This allowed the old wounds and grievances to heal and an economic miracle occurred. Instead of strengthening the roots of their civilization they spent the resultant capital as foolishly as any profligate.”
i would only say that i don’t think the old wounds and grievances healed. they were merely driven underground in the face of an extraordinary Mutually Assured Destruction threat. they are as no more peaceful and loving and hand holding de-ethnocentrics than your average tribal muslim. don’t buy into their myths of unity…it isn’t there…as much as the liberal elite want it to be there.
they had no reason to strengthen the roots of their civilization as long as we were there doing it for them. this is why i am in favor of a complete and total withdrawal of american bases and troops from the region. let them fight for their own civilization, now that the cold war is over. we’ve got enough troubles of our own.
“They really will fight like lions in the morning and then volunteer to go paint an orphanage.”
they shouldn’t be put in this situation. see thomas p.m. barnett.
“Wikipedia continues to implode.”
the fact that Wikipedia is implicit in the climate gate scandal speaks volumes…of wikipedia…and climategate!
“They hate the common soldier”
fortunately, they ultimately hate themselves and come undone. the question is always how much damage will they do in the insuing rampage.
cheers. and happy holidays!
Subotai Bahadur,
I will add your daughter to my growing prayer list. I always look forward to your posts here.
Ned
This comes under talking about your Christmases past, like 20,000 years before Christ?
Hey, I hadn’t heard the idea that the Americas were after all settled out of Europe not Asia … but does that account for the racial characteristics of pre-Columbian natives?
Earlier yet, I like to think that Neanderthals did interbreed with early (Cro-Magnon) humans. I’ve worked with some big-bodied individuals that look to me like they have way different genes than average, IOW could have some recognizable lineages clear through today. Genetics may tease out the facts, at least somewhat better, over the next decade or three, I doubt if archeology has much more to say.
–
Besides, once the apocalypse occurs and devolution starts in, what will it matter? We’re already into the Obamanation.
(top that for gloom)
144. Storm-Rider:
My understanding is that the world has been getting warmer since the end of the last great ice age about 19,000 years. However, this warming trend was punctuated by a period called the Younger Dryas of abrupt cooling 12,800 to 11,500 years ago. The evidence for an impact event includes a charred carbon-rich layer of soil that has been found at some 50 Clovis-age sites across the continent. Above the carbon layer… there are no clovis points — nor the bones of any of the megafauna. So its thought that perhaps the clovis people and the megafauna were wiped out by a comet… One that was larger than the one that hit Tunguska in 1908 or so.
Wobbly Guy,
You said, “As an atheist myself, I find myself conflicted on the big picture aspects of religion, including Christianity. On one hand, I deplore them for the sheer level of illogic and superstition it contains.
But on the other hand, I’ve also come to the realization that religions are generally too useful a cultural tool for imparting critical values and mindsets to large parts of the population without having to resort to heavy doses of intense philosophy and ethical study for which most people have neither the time, aptitude, or interest. And we need those values for any functioning civilization.”
Very cogent comments. When one follows that faith is more than religion, it is the personal relationship with the personal God, some of the attraction becomes clearer. When the personal Divine is truly good and loving and all-Powerful, then persons of faith are impelled to create and sustain civilizations of progress and morality. The truly personal expects morality and ethics. Ethics and morality as a philosophic structure, or even as a societal mandate will ultimately implode unless there is personal love, power and justice at the center. We are people who love more than people who reason.
Cheers far across the waters.
128. novanglus:
I was there in those years too. I’ve seen the threads at FR and elsewhere. No one at all– at any of the alumni events since recalls O. None. 0. Nada. Still,one of the few things that I believe about O is that he attended CU. Why? I have never been back to morningside heights since I left. However, I did look in the website of the church that O attended in Chicago. I didn’t see any theology. Rather there was a whole lot of politics. All of it would have fitted comfortably with the politics of Columbia during the 1980′s. And today as well.
The confusion about whether O attended CU or not stems from which undergraduate school he attended. The undergrads at the college were a relatively close knit lot. The undergrads at the School of General Studies were not. O’s MO fits that of a GS student.
I don’t think Obama attended the college.
Rather–like me– I think O attended the school of General Studies. I transferred to GS from American University in DC. That’s roughly the same as someone transferring to GS from Occidental in California–where O spent his first year or so.
Obama has not showed his birth certificate. Why not?
Subotai,
I hear you. We lost a twenty-seven year old son two years ago. It’s hard to bury a parent before his time, but nothing compared to burying the son that should bury you.
Ned
Although it is understandable that France would be annoyed that the United States signed a separate peace with the United Kingdom in 1783, one should consider that while the United States functioned effectively as a vassal state of France during the Revolutionary War (since, if I remember correctly, the alliance specifically prohibited the United States from making a separate peace), the United States is not a vassal state of France. It was folly for France to ever expect the United States to forever become France’s vassal state, never mind that the United States did have a long history of watching Paris for its fashion until the early twentieth century.
One century ago, Paris could have been legitimately regarded as the greatest seat of contemporary civilization, the antics of Joseph Pujol notwithstanding. Yet, France has declined since then. The question is why. My answer is that the French ideology of “integral nationalism” destroyed the self-confidence that French people had to absorb the best ideas of the outside world and make them French. By the 1930’s, French anti-Americanism took root in the salons of Parisian right-wing pseudo-intellectuals, with the effect that France became increasingly incapable of absorbing new ideas that could have benefited France. Action Française brutally attacked viewers at a movie theater watching an avant garde movie by Salvador Dali. One of the greatest American performers from the 1920’s was Josephine Baker, and she was in Paris. Would Paris be able to attract talent like hers now? I doubt it.
I see the French embrace of Communism on the Left and “integral nationalism” on the Right to be a symptom of France losing its sense of self-confidence. If French people were truly proud of their cultural superiority, they would have no psychological need to indulge in anti-Americanism. Were it not for Jewish refugees from Nazism, the United States would not have developed nuclear weapons during the 1940’s. Yet, while Nazi Germany impoverished itself while enriching the United States, Pierre Laval regarded Jewish refugees as an embarrassment to France.
Granted, the French military did not withstand the German offensive in 1940, and France endured an occupation that the continental United States did not. Although there were some American prisoners of war whose view of the war mirrors that of France, their experiences have not become part of the prevailing American historiography of World War II. Yet, France’s crisis of confidence dates earlier than World War I, and is at least as much the cause of France’s troubles as its effect. (One wonders how the French Army ever let itself listen to the loons from the School of the Attack!)
As for America’s involvement in World War I, the United States declared war on the wrong belligerents. The United States should have declared war on Turkey in 1915; if Germany and Austria-Hungary had declared war on the United States in response, they would have fought at a strong moral disadvantage.
The end of Europe as a vital civilization is marked by the ossuary at Verdun.
With the next fall of France will come a plum. The largest, most sophisticated nuclear engineering company in the world is owned by the French government. They can do it all – from ore body to reprocessed plutonium.
Will the new owners be a non-proliferation-oriented as current management?
“The same conservative Americans who can see the threat of their own federal government at home shouldn’t suddenly claim altruism is behind that same federal government’s actions abroad.” Here here to whoever said this on this too-long thread. There are some here who seem to see only a boundless altruism in American actions in the Middle East, Central Asia and the former Soviet states. In my mind, Korea was probably the last altruistic U.S. war. Vietnam was the start of a long slow degradation. Even liberals that glamorize Camelot and overlook the mob, bimbos and dirty union deals to rob Nixon are right to recognize that something very dark happened among U.S. elites beginning in the mid-60s.
The problem that I see, as the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia revealed, is that Washington is ready to resist “Russian adventurism” only to the last Georgian (and maybe Ukrainian). And if that is the case, then one wonders what was the point of creating an armed to the teeth client state led by Mr. Saakashvili in the first place from 2005 to 2008.
And while we’re on the subject of memory, Saako desecrating a Soviet-era memorial to Georgian soldiers who died fighting the Nazis and accidentally killing a woman and child while doing so is par for the course. If you respond that he needed to remove another symbol of Georgia’s occupation by Russia over centuries, need I remind you that Stalin and his top henchman/sadist Berea were both Georgians? The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post show their anti-Russian bias by simply not reporting that incident, it will be swept under the rug by them along with Saako’s preparations to attack South Ossetia months in advance announced by Congressman Dana Rohrbacher or other credible non-Russian sources. If I were a veteran of the Great Patriotic War from Georgia the Saako desecration would annoy me as surely as blowing up Combe Sur Mer in Normandy would piss off all commenters here at Belmont Club. Blowing the whole thing up with dynamite was way worse than the Estonians trying to move the unknown Red Army soldier statue. Being a Walter Russell Mead reading Jacksonian also means respecting other nations rights to be Jacksonian too.
I do not have a problem with pulling down statues of Lenin, Stalin (especially the one left standing in Gori, Georgia his hometown) or Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky in front of Lubyanka. They were evil leaders. But at a certain point trying to vaporize 70 years (or even centuries) of shared history might also speak to an authoritarian if not totalitarian impulse.
When John McCain announced in a bizzare sidenote to a campaign trail speech (no wonder Palin was more popular, she hadn’t drank the neocon koolaid yet) that it was America’s duty to “liberate” Ukraine and Georgia from “centuries” (not decades) of “Russian domination” he was projecting a Promethean view of the former Soviet space. One worlders like George Soros are fine with Georgian nationalism if it makes Georgians useful pawns against Russia’s national resurgence. But in the end, the Sorosian repeat of Polish Marshal Pidulski’s “Promethean strategy” to break up pre-Soviet(!) Russia along nationality lines is doomed to failure, despite McCain taking Soros’ cash for campaign finance and foreign policy lobbying adventures. Washington think tank wishful thinking aside, Russia is NOT dying off demographically, at least not as fast as Ukraine, Georgia and most of the Baltic states. Pidulski in any case, to burst the “Poland as Christ between two thieves” bubble, preferred to see a weak Russia under Bolshevik domination than strong one under the Whites.
By the same token though, Marie Claude is right to ask why France needs to spend the absurd sum of five times its present level on defense. Are the Chinese going to invade France? The Russians? Please. Elites in general do not invade countries where they own apartments or estates.
You cannot fight Islamists burning cars in banlieus or suicide bombers with nuclear missiles or satellite weapons. France needs a final nuclear deterrent, De Gaulle was right to develop that after the nightmare of being occupied in World War II. But beyond that, how large of a conventional force is necessary? Seriously, even if America pulls back from Europe completely (which still seems unlikely)?
49. Don Rodrigo:
46. Richard Aubrey
Curious memories. My dad was stationed in Germany 1957-60 at a small base west of the Rhine called Neubruke. I recall the american kids would have rock & ice fights with the local German kids along the boundaries of the post. It was part of the rough and tumble of life. They had some great sledding in the area and some caves where you could find crystals. At Christmas time we would give gifts to the locals. Here and there were reminders –like abandoned pill boxes–of the War that had barely been concluded a decade or so before. To a small boy’s imagination –they were places haunted by giants.
I think that it is as profitable to remind Marie Claude of our father’s wars — contribution to European peace/prosperity as it is for the Brits to remind US that the Monroe doctrine was enforced by the British Navy in its first decades.
Subotai,
You and your family and daughter have my prayers too.
And I would appreciate being on your newsletter email list. (You can email me from my blog. Just click on “GerryP” at the top.)
Like you, I also am writing less right now for reasons of physical rehabilitation, but for myself rather than for a family member. My family, like yours, is a huge help. Thank God for families!
The above was simply me reacting to the frequent theme from Subotai, Lifeofthemind and others that as soon as NATO falls apart from a global economic depression Russian tanks are going to pour like cockroaches into Talinn and Warsaw. Why? What would Russia with its demographically shrinking army gain from trying to occupy hostile territories? They didn’t occupy Georgia or drive on to Tblisi when the Georgian army fled, did they?
Given the demographic trends, Belarus, the Crimea and eastern Ukraine might end up in de facto union state with Russia with their people carrying Russian passports without a shot being fired. It makes zero sense, even less sense than the Chinese occupying frigid Siberia when the most likely place to send off their unemployed young men is east Africa.
Comment 158 [sic] should have been from Mr. X.
Anyway, Red Dawn 2 and French threads aside, Merry (Western calendar) Christmas to all! For me Christmas comes AFTER New Year’s.
Mr X:
I do not have a problem with pulling down statues of Lenin, Stalin (especially the one left standing in Gori, Georgia his hometown) or Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky in front of Lubyanka. They were evil leaders. But at a certain point trying to vaporize 70 years (or even centuries) of shared history might also speak to an authoritarian if not totalitarian impulse.
It is instructing that you know such things exist and such things have occurred, and know it with such specificity, but it is not surprising. The average American or European would not know such things, not at the level that you do, particularly those of the type you profess (pretend?) to be. Nor would they show such wistful nostalgia for the Soviet years or so smugly rationalize this nostalgia way. Nor would they employ such sophistry and casuistry to defend the disaster that was the USSR.
Your remarks about the effacement of Soviet monuments do not smack of acceptance but rather anger and resentment. Still it stabs even after all these years, eh tovarich?
Whatever the case, the current leaders of Russia and China are just as evil as their predictors, and just a ruthless and blood thirsty too.
Perhaps you need to head back to the Lubyanka and get some more training–the mask slips. They are still in business, you know-just different management and “methods”, but soon they will be back to the old ways, as so your postings atest.
It is curious that you urge complacency toward old, sworn enemies while at the same time e refuse to acknowledge those enemies’ flaws, immoralities and capabilities, and then attempt to paper over the dangers they pose.
What is particular irritating is you notion that you have some superior vantage in this or say something new, timely and insightful. In fact, you are regurgitation cant from some 70 years of Soviet propaganda.
(Little Georgia “armed to the teeth”? Really now.)
The notion that Russia has no hunger for Europe defies belief. Talk the the Eastern Europeans about that one.
The comments have been wonderful to read although it’s taken quite a while. Merry Christmas to all and an interesting New Year.
Don
Play the Bobby Darin song, aka, Le Mer, as performed by that notable French actor, Kevin Kline. The frog vs cowboy conflict can be tedious or fun, take your pick. On the other hand, we got the Cajuns, which means we won.
That video of Bob Hope, beautifully compiled, is the perfect way to make the point. It also took my breath away. The American soldier is a magnificent creature, and I am in awe. I never understood the phrase ‘he fought for his country’, but it makes complete sense to say ‘he fought for his country’s values’. They fight for freedom, all over the world. G-d bless each and every marvelous one of them.
Wretchard’s initial post brought this to mind:
‘Of all human vices, ingratitude is the ugliest’ (source not remembered).
Living in Japan, it’s a frequent thought: people enjoying the prosperity that freedom allows, few seem to seriously consider what provides for that freedom. Just for a point of argument, I’d like to know how many US serviceman have lost their lives in training exercises while stationed in this country. South Korea’s leftists also have a tradition of disparaging the presence of American military. Ingratitude is indeed ugly.
Perhaps it’s perfectly predictable. If you continually provide something to someone, after some time they take it for granted, and also resent your providing it. I don’t see what America’s other options were, however. We should work harder at teaching an accurate history to preserve memory, perhaps. Most of what I know seems to have come from personal reading after my ‘school’ education was finished.
Sabutai and Ned, I’m very sorry for your loss.
To all the BC community, Merry Christmas.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
Nagoya, Japan
Subotai, prayers and best wishes for your family sir, from friends you’ve yet to meet.
We’ll all greet each other when the trumpet calls some day, be it man’s or the Lord’s.
Merry Christmas.
Subotai, my thoughts for your daughter to
A rueful Christmas poem for these rueful times. Merry Christmas to all of you, my virtual circle of friends.
The Oxen by Thomas Hardy
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
Subotai: I too will keep your daughter in my prayers. Thanks to you, thanks to all here, for creating such a rich tapestry of ideas and such a warm company of friends. May 2010 bring better times.
Well, to further the discussion on the merits of Europe, remembering the past and what it bodes for the future, I forward this link.
What is a foreign law-enforcement organization that suborns a native law-enforcement agency called? “Sir”, maybe?
oldsj
Is it pronounced Lada or Lada?
Alexis
one should consider that while the United States functioned effectively as a vassal state of France during the Revolutionary War (since, if I remember correctly, the alliance specifically prohibited the United States from making a separate peace),
how comes that ? the treaty of Paris in 1763 removed French from the northern part of the US
It was you that didn’t respect the alliance, as soon as the war was won in Yorktown you started discussions with the English behind the curtains. Vergennes said ” that we can’t uselly expect gratitude from kings, but it is a certainty for a republic”
. The Treaty of Alliance contained the provisions the U.S. commissioners had originally requested, but also included a clause forbidding either country to make a separate peace with Britain, as well as a secret clause allowing for Spain, or other European powers, to enter into the alliance. Spain officially entered the war on June 21, 1779.
The question is why. My answer is that the French ideology of “integral nationalism” destroyed the self-confidence that French people had to absorb the best ideas of the outside world and make them French. By the 1930’s, French anti-Americanism took root in the salons of Parisian right-wing pseudo-intellectuals, with the effect that France became increasingly incapable of absorbing new ideas that could have benefited France. Action Française brutally attacked viewers at a movie theater watching an avant garde movie by Salvador Dali. One of the greatest American performers from the 1920’s was Josephine Baker, and she was in Paris. Would Paris be able to attract talent like hers now? I doubt it.
Well, that’s why some like to quote Julien Benda and “the trahison of the Clercs” that says precisely the contrary.
Well weren’t all the aesthetic and philosophy ideologies still not initiated from Paris ? such as cubism,(Picasso Braque…) surrealism, Duchamp,Dali Ernst…)existentialism (Sartre), structuralism,(Merlot-Ponty) psychology, Levi-Strauss…sciences… (atom from Joliot-Curie)
“Action Française” wasn’t significative when the socialists were the majority. Dali was a provocator that carricatured symboles of christianity, that is why “Action française”, which represented the traditionalist catholics, reacted.
As far as Josephine Baker, she wasn’t alone to cross the Atlantic, most of the black jazzmen did too, isn’t oddy that they found that Paris was more tolerant than the US for them.Not only musicians came over, writers, painters, films-makers… “An American in Paris” anyone ?
If French people were truly proud of their cultural superiority, they would have no psychological need to indulge in anti-Americanism.
Really ? you’re confounding the eras !
Anti-americanism surged after WWII, remember our communists slogan “US go home, US go Home… ”
Were it not for Jewish refugees from Nazism, the United States would not have developed nuclear weapons during the 1940’s
Really ? Roosevelt couldn’t care less of the Jews, it was because american ships were attacked by Ubots, even Churchill couldn’t decide Roosvelt for helping Europe before that event.
the French military did not withstand the German offensive in 1940, Neither did the Brits.
Alexis, I used to hold you as a educated and a fair man, now I realise how biased you are. But you aren’t an exception
Charles
I think that it is as profitable to remind Marie Claude of our father’s wars — contribution to European peace/prosperity
As annecdotes are on the board, I’m going to contribuate too :
My elder son while at the end of his university year was having some days off in La Rochelle with a few of his comrads. In the bars, they met an american skipper, and the group invited him to join them in their “trip”.
While in a Night club, a few hooligans from La Rochelle surburb started to anoy them, treating them “dirty sons of bourgeoises”, because they were trying to speak english with their “invited”.
This ended in the street, the hooligans punching the American, but my son, thinking that his dans in Karate were enough, entered into the fight too. But that wasn’t counting with the unfair skills of the attackers, they didn’t respect the rules of a combat, he got teeth broken, and the American got thrown into the La Rochelle harbour pool.
So forget of the “remembrance” as an official cult that we should always pray.
Acts are more talkative.
“The notion that Russia has no hunger for Europe defies belief. Talk the the Eastern Europeans about that one.”
I can not see this hunger anymore in anybody, including the most hidebound Stalinists. Even radical nationalists are on defensive mode, they fear Chinese or American intervention, but never European. Russia has not enough troops to occupy even herself, and all battle-ready divisions are deployed now at North Caucasia. There are big problems here, in Kabarda, Ingushetia and Dagestan, so it is ridiculous to contemplate any invasion beyond existing borders. The fact that Eastern Europe is paranoid about Russian intervention (Poland and Ukraine especially), is understandable, but has little connection to reality.
“Son with martial arts skills gets fanny whipped” ..headline news? Hardly when compared to the statement it purported to answer.
There was a WWII saying by American soldiers that the French fight with their feet and f**k with their face. Apropos.
C’mon everybody, like 1/3 of this post has been people shooting at MC and MC shooting back, about what, exactly? That France acted in France’s interest in 1778, that the US acted in its interest in 1785, that France acted in its interest in 1800, that each acted in its interest in 1803 and they did a real estate deal, the US acted in its interest in 1917-18 and again 1940-present.
Nothing wrong with self-interest, I trust someone like that much more than the one who shows up to “help” me out of the goodness of their hearts.
WTF? Stop trying to score moral one-upmanship points based on things our ancestors did, that were always self-interested but sometimes accomplished greater good.
France is a Western European country, the US is a North Amwerican country founded by Western European settlers. The relationship has always had its tensions but facing what we are now looking at, jihadism, resurgent Russia, growing China, we have more in common than not. The US and France do not in any significant way threaten each other (JJSS is 40+ years ago and was mostly wrong, anyway), but most of what really threatens one of us also threatens the other.
Yes, from the US point of view Francea nd NATO in general was something of a free rider during the Cold War, but we did what we did for our own good and sufficient reasons and we should place whatever resentment we still feel inproper perspective.
In 2002-3, Chirac and Villepin did a lot to sour US feelings toward France, and if their disagreement about Iraq had been more honest instead of corrupt maybe we could have had a useful debate on the subject, but Chirac is gone and we all need to recognize there are permanent interests we share (as well as lesser interests that can place us in opposition).
But a lot of time and effort has gone into a lot of these posts, some of which reflect impressive knowledge and exposition, but it’s (a) gotten tedious, and (b) all been said by now. Our (US) true enemies are not in the Quai d’Orsay.
#160 Mongoose
I also got a whiff of FSB. Good reply. Any tanks moving west into the former FSU states and former Warsaw Pact countries would be at the end of the process. As an example, the insistence of Western Europe on being dependent for heat on a natural gas pipeline whose valves are controlled by Putin; especially since there are multiple examples of cut-offs at the will of the Russians, shows how vulnerable they are.
#168 DanM
Hmm. Had not seen that. Can we now say that Interpol credentials are equivalent to say certain Blue Helmets on our territory?
#171 Marie Claude
I know I shouldn’t do this, but WW-II history is kind of a specialty area of study of mine.
Alexis said, and you quoted:
“the French military did not withstand the German offensive in 1940, Neither did the Brits.”
To which you replied:
“Alexis, I used to hold you as a educated and a fair man, now I realise how biased you are. But you aren’t an exception”.
Are you asserting that in fact the French and British did withstand the German offensive in 1940?
Subotai Bahadur
UBU
“Son with martial arts skills gets fanny whipped” ..headline news? Hardly when compared to the statement it purported to answer.
There was a WWII saying by American soldiers that the French fight with their feet and f**k with their face. Apropos.
yeah, you’re only good at inflating your nuts with viagra
but in close combat ? pfffttt ! only bombing from 10000 miles high !
uh, you did leave Vietnam before the Viets invade Saigon
and you will leave Irak and Afghanistan the same way
Subotai, what is Dunkeerke retreat for you ?
Marty, Kudos
Nobody could withstand German offensive in 1940: this was the first fully mobilised and rearmed army of this time. They have 7 years to prepare, when nobody took this preparation seriously enough, even Stalin. Everybody hoped this was a bluff. Never underestimate insane dictators, they mean what talk, even when their talk seems too crazy to believe.
Pax Europa.
There is a hidden question here and a standard statist European answer. They do not trust themselves.
History says Europe is convulsed by war every 2 or so generations. With the coming of Pax Americana this has not happened. And now we have the European Union with the same ‘peaceful’ goal. And surprise surprise the form this took was socialism with elites running an un-democratic over-government.
The hidden question is, with pax Americana, is this anti-democratic European union, guided by unelected bureaucrats, really necessary for peace.
To me, it is not at all clear that it is. But this is a tough judgment call. Ask Henry.
I would add that my history is Reagan’s. Of a country full of optimism and generosity; not the grinding internal conflict of old Europe.
I would say the battle of Falluja was as close combat as it comes. And the surge in Iraq, too.
What is this “France” anyway, that’s where the Coneheads are from, right? And they have this thing about napkins in French restaurants, like, they don’t use them, or rather you use them for signaling rather than cleanup. And, um, there’s some kind of bicycle race there.
And they had a revolution once, or twice, or three times, but they didn’t go so well.
And, it was once divided into three parts.
And they have French Fries, but are indignant about it.
And Jerry Lewis.
OK, have I missed anything?
There was a WWII saying by American soldiers that the French fight with their feet and f**k with their face. Apropos.
Yeah, you guys got the “money shot” facial just before abandoning Vietnam ….fits perfectly with the GI’s of WWII assessment of French fighting skills.
I would say the battle of Falluja was as close combat as it comes.
Yeah, and it should not have been.
We don’t bomb from 10,000 feet anymore, we bomb from 50,000 feet or over the horizon, and should have levelled Fallujah without warning or ceremony. Could have seriously reduced our inventory of old iron bombs there.
I read that Parameters paper on COIN, but this was not an appropriate setting for COIN, which was the kind of point that paper was making.
Close combat is about as good a doctrine today as marching around in red coats with matchlock rifles. In Afghanistan that was the Taliban’s first reaction to our attacks, “Come down here and fight like a man.” Nu-ah, Achmed, you grow wings and come up here and fight like a man instead of the parasitic worm that you are.
Yeah, sure, still need to train for it, builds character, hand to hand with nothing but a pocketknife, whatever, Graeco-Roman wrestling, sure, fine. Prefer swords myself. That’s where the whole COIN thing falls apart. And the battle itself is meaningless, COIN gets that right, but in a tribal society that means exactly the opposite, first wipe out the enemy combatants, then get down to COIN, but what that means is holding the entire tribe hostage to all members’ behaviors. That’s what NATIONS are about, that’s what WARS are about. Tribe is the *smallest* level of granularity you want to worry about, where that is the social structure.
We’re not talking law here, we’re talking anthropology, sociology, and war. We’re talking getting ‘er done.
#177 Marie Claude
My point exactly. Dunkirk was the end point of the defeat of the Brit armies in France, and the French armies in northern France [both had started by the low countries] who had been pushed back and defeated [for a number of reasons] by the Wehrmacht.]
I think I see the reason for the misunderstanding. In this usage, in English, “withstand” as used by Alexis and I would translate as something along the line of “successfully resist to the point of being able to defeat the offensive”. I think that you are translating “withstand” as being simply equivalent to “resist” as in “attempting to fight back”. They did not avoid defeat, although they fought back.
This may be one of the problems I mentioned about translation early in the thread. There is no intention, as far as I can see, to state that the French [or the Brits who were in the same sentence] did not fight back. The fact is, both fought back and got their butts kicked. No one is insulting the sacrifice made by the French forces, especially in holding the Dunkirk perimeter for the evacuation. The French forces lost more killed and wounded than the Brits [although perhaps not as a percentage of the relative forces, the BEF being actually relatively small compared to the total French forces; I would have to look that up.] The sacrifice was necessary for the overall war effort, because France was about out of the war as a major combatant, while it would be the Brits and allied forces, if anyone, who it was hoped would liberate France and defeat Germany.
Thus, in the spirit of the Season, allow me to say:
Pax Vobiscum
Subotai Bahadur
179. Sergey
No doubt you are right about 1940…..however 1940 did not have to be reached with the Germans in such a commanding position … it too the following.
In March 1936, in a challenge to the Versailles Settlement, Hitler sent German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. It was a gamble for Hitler and many of his advisers opposed it. German officers had orders to withdraw if they met French resistance, but there was none.
but there was none
but there was none
but there was none
In fact in 1940 The French Commanding General
Gamelin, although in charge of the defense of France, actually had no idea what his armies were up to. LIVING THE LIFE OF A MONK,HE HAD ALL BUT BECOME A HERMIT IN HIS HEADQUARTERS, 49 KILOMETERS FROM PARIS WHERE NO RADIO,NOT EVEN A TELEPHONE WAS PRESENT.. The senior French commanders knew this & took advantage of it. Gamelin had furthermore made the mistake of permitting Georges a freehand in his command due, not only to the hopeless state of communications, but because the two generals loathed each other & were not on speaking terms. Thus on 10 May it was Georges, & not Gamelin, who would fight the forthcoming battles.
And so instead of stepping up and fighting the French divided, surrendered, and left millions to fight and die, both military and civilian.
We don’t do close combat?
True, except for:
Normandy on 6 Jun 44.
The Bocage country. Admittedly, the carpet bombing was brought in to help the guys in close combat on the ground.
The Falaise Gap.
That is just a few examples, all of which
are in France.
Then there was the Ardennes. The Germans gave us a rude shock and we gave them one right back when we would not yield.
Bombing from 10,000 ft? Way too low. We liked 25,000. And besides, the USAAF did more “close combat” in Oct 1943 than the entire Armee De L’ Air has over the whole of its existence.
There are whole books on the close combat of the US Army in Europe; two on my bookshelf are “Against the Panzers” and “Closing With the Enemy.”
By the way, too bad about Brest. The Germans wanted us to do close combat their way and instead we did it our way. They never expected us to drive tanks through the sides of houses. True, it made a bit of a mess. Y’all get that cleaned up yet? Well, we did the same thing to Aachen, if that is any consulation.
UBU we have been beaten in Dien Dien Phu with honnor !
also in Dunkeerke !
our soldiers fought until the end, this is why elder Vietnameses still say when then invit our VietNam Vets to revisit Hanoi or Dien Dien Phu
the rest is mere sillyness that your MSM launched because we were not your infeodeds and you’re acting as a poor little boy in repeating them
When military power is projected abroad it is always done so to the benefit of the one projecting it (IMHO). Sure we liberated France but only because we wanted to stop Germany. Just as the French came to our aid during the American Revolution because they had interests on the continent, saw Britain as the only real power and could wait to take on the colonies later- after all, if they were so weak as to need help with the British they would fall easily to the French. Viet Nam? Our desire to slow or stop the spread of communism and the Soviet Union. Same with Korea. Iraq? The spread of extreme Islam. Afghanistan, the same. Anyone but me seeing apattern here? Isn’t this the one constant of all human history- to be the strongest tribe?
It is well that tartuffery, meaning hypocritical piety, is from a French play by Molière. It just fits the French so perfectly.
RWE:
this is why we are still reconnaissant to your fathers, but certainly not to nowadays mouthy Rambos
Speak easy that is what you’re were told by non “educated” persons in reality :
what motivated the French to be involved in a revolt of the American colonies from England.
The French interest came from many factors, which were not shared equally by all the French participants or decision-makers.
There was certainly a significant desire for ‘revenge’ — to see the British lose in North America, where the largest French real estate had been lost in recent war that ended in 1763.
There were broader French ‘policy goals’. One goal was to improve French world-wide economic advantages. More broadly framed, the goal was to weaken Britain [France's main rival] and redress ‘the balance of power’ which had shifted in Britain’s favor following the Seven Years’ War.
France sought to improve the security of her fishing areas off Newfoundland, and the lucrative trading islands in the West Indies.
Both were vulnerable to possible conquest by the North American colonists, assisted by the British navy.
Separating the colonists from Britain had a very distinct, defensive advantage for the French. Contrary to American perceptions at the time, and carelessly asserted in many history articles, the French foreign minister was not interested in regaining Canada.
This had been ‘written off’ French objectives when they transferred their Louisiana territory to Spain in 1762. The French did anticipate an opportunity to possibly acquire more islands in the West Indies, at the expense of the British.
Some sympathy for the American revolt was held by a few of the French intellectual elite [Philosophes] who idealistically favored the principles of democracy, and to a lesser degree of republicanism. Many envisioned a half-measure, with democracy applied under an enlightened monarchy being conceivable. Such feelings were also shared by a small group of English intellectuals. While the words of such intellectuals would often be quoted in association with the Franco-American Alliance, such individuals did not have the power to effect political or military actions.
There was a growing population of ‘unemployed’ military officers looking for employment. The French military reforms led to a reduction of active officer positions — at least in contrast to the prior war years. A ‘streamlining’ of the army units was concurrent with material improvements ['force modernization'] being undertaken with infantry muskets, artillery pieces, etc., as well as an expanding naval ship inventory.
There were some cautionary arguments against French involvement in a possible American rebellion. The French Controller General Turgot feared the financial strain of another war with England. Louis XVI was also not enthusiastic about supporting a rebellion against a monarch.
UBU
definitly you’re a bad propagandist :
“By the mid-1930s, events in Europe and Asia indicated that a new world war might soon erupt and the U.S. Congress took action to enforce U.S. neutrality. On August 31, 1935, Congress passed the first Neutrality Act prohibiting the export of “arms, ammunition, and implements of war” from the United States to foreign nations at war and requiring arms manufacturers in the United States to apply for an export license. American citizens traveling in war zones were also advised that they did so at their own risk. President Franklin D. Roosevelt originally opposed the legislation, but relented in the face of strong Congressional and public opinion. On February 29, 1936, Congress renewed the Act until May of 1937 and prohibited Americans from extending any loans to belligerent nations
The Neutrality Act of 1937 did contain one important concession to Roosevelt: belligerent nations were allowed, at the discretion of the President, to acquire any items except arms from the United States, so long as they immediately paid for such items and carried them on non-American shipsthe so-called “cash-and-carry” provision.”
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/id/99849.htm
and what I wrote about 1936 on PJM in another topic
now about 1936, one can argue indefinitly with “if”, the fact was that Germany debt was already paid since 1930, and as the Versailles treaty conditions were a bit severe, France felt that opposing Germany in 1936 would be too much to add into the bill, and only protested with UK, (also the non aggression alliance from the Poles and Germany of 1934, weakened their pression, seemed that Sudetednland was seen as an inner german “business” .
Besides, Leon Blum, our socialist prime minister was harvesting the benefits of the “front populaire” and had other things in mind, though he should have been worried as a Jew. None knew what was the real Hitler intentions, or just one, De Gaulle, he warned many times about what was going on in Germany, but unfortunately he wasn’t listened.
UBU, GB France US were the “big three” of Versailles treaty, I ask you where was the voice of America then ?
Besides if France had invade Germany as you are so easily lecturing us, she would have been considered as the “aggressor”, I bet that your country and UK would have been the firsts to protest against us !
for the “hypocrisy” , you must try again, do you homework, cust the lesser hypocrits of your “good” alliees were/are the French, we are the people who dare to call a spade a spade, when the others adopt a low profile and follow, with the hope to get some rewards. But have the US rewarded them ? Nope, all the marckets went to american benefits
Subotai
Merci
To All.
As a former US Marine (who happens to have a French sounding last name) I’d like to comment on the back and forth with Marie about “european snobs” and “red blooded Americans”.
Lets stop, especially today, trying to one up and belittle the other. Who among us “red blooded Americans” doesn’t cringe at the pervasive “me first” attitude of the typical American Teenager? Is that reflective of YOU, your beliefs, your values? Does 20-something pot smoking Obanite slacker with his Che’ t- shirt mean we are all shallow clueless, weak and self centered? The First Generation of American kids who grew up in the suburbs, watched cartoons instead of milked cows at dawn, and knew neither of war nor deprivation, got high and became hippies when the concepts of responsible adult behavior proved too much for them. Don’t give me the Nam Story…precious few of our eligible man-pool went (the real men) the rest just partied complained, and spat on the returning Heroes because they thought it would get them laid. Is THAT reflective of who we are as a nation?
That being said, Marie, I understand the trauma of bailed out over and over again has caused to the French psyche. Being (repeatedly) unable to stand up to the schoolyard bully, and needing to be walked all the way home (in perpetuity) is a very humiliating legacy to inherit. A lifetime of simultaneous thanks and apology must be quite draining, I’m sure. I expect you to become snotty and condescending, just to avoid the pain.
Now as I purposely insult both sides, I think I can say, correctly, (everyone together now…) that it is difficult to judge any individual by the perceived average of the group.
To my fellow Conservatives I thank you for defending the honor of my Brothers in Arms. However, please get used to the idea that D-Day is not THE central religious event in the soul of every Frenchman. I don’t expect Marie to Genuflect at American sacrifices any more than I expect American teenagers to know who the hell Audie Murphy was. They SHOULD, if the world was fair, but it aint.
To Marie, you have stated (several times) your appreciation for the sacrifice of American soldiers (my father, my uncles and both grandfathers) in both World Wars. The simple fact that you are aware of these, as true factual events in the history of the world, is enough for me, an American Veteran.
Merry Christmas to all.
“…and God so loved the world, he gave them his only son.. who they promptly beat up, and murdered… rotten bastards them humans!
The entire world knows the truth of the French.
“France felt that opposing Germany in 1936 would be too much to add into the bill”
So you chickened out, sided with the Germans and allowed the Allies to pick up the bill.
The French even attempted to F-up D-day.
Today they are, well, still cowards.
That being said, Marie, I understand the trauma of bailed out over and over again has caused to the French psyche. Being (repeatedly) unable to stand up to the schoolyard bully, and needing to be walked all the way home (in perpetuity) is a very humiliating legacy to inherit. A lifetime of simultaneous thanks and apology must be quite draining, I’m sure. I expect you to become snotty and condescending, just to avoid the pain.
I don’t have any trauma, I am not part of the elites that were in position for the two WW.
And believe me, in school yard I wasn’t hiding but in the middle of the fights in the defense of the weakests
UBU you’re a stubborn idiot and propagandist
195. The Root 83:
I would guess you are a younger man, perhaps with service in the mid east.
As a former U.S. Marine as my father and brother-in -law were and as a former CIA operative who knew William Colby (who parachuted into France {OSS} and set up the French resistence)when I left the Corps and went into the CIA, and as one who has fought in Rhodesia,Angola,Vietnam,Cambodia, Chile, and a few other spots let me say that the French are getting the beating here they have earned on these pages. I am happy beyond belief that I served prior to the PC invasion of our military.
Semper Fi
UBu yeah you’re like a soviet general that exhibit his many medals, hmm , deserved ?
but did you know that our foreign legion made quite a few secret paid missions in Viet Nam when you were the ocuping army there ?
Well our Legion etrangere does “special missions” for good clinging money !
A fench legionnaire told me that he went there to fetch US soldiers from the jungle, cuz your army heads thought it was too dangerous to expose more american soldiers in such missions.
but I have to beat my coulp for ignoring that 37 CIA pilots did help the French in Dien Dien Phu too, I thank them for what they did
http://www.air-america.org/newspaper_articles/france_honors_cat.shtml
Habu
in re: #200
I’m trying to be nice and not engage in fecal agitation; but it sure hurts to bite my tongue this much. Talk about leaving oneself wide open and undefended on several different levels.
*sigh*
Subotai Bahadur
Are we done beating up on the French? Can I come out of the trench now?
I’ve done the Francophobe thing, too, and it’s good fun, but there are limits considering the current circumstances. When France has a president who correctly pegs Obama as “unsubstantial,” I have to assume that there are a lot of grownups atill living in France.
Subotai, that are facts not related cuz they are ment to remain secret,and I am relating a true conversation with a former legionnaire that had at the moment a building enterprise when I met him for doing some works at my home
MC, my point still stands; France involved themselves in the war to further their own goals, varied as they may have been. It certainly was not because they wanted to “save” the American colonists, romantic as that would be. And the US did not involve itself in WWII to “save” France so much as to defeat Germany. I do not think we disagree much.
By the way, you say I am misled by my education yet you seem to quote some type of text without reference. Who is to say your information is superior? Just saying.
171. Marie Claude:
The saying in New York City is a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
175. Subotai – The issue is the easing of the Reagan restrictions with regard to transparency… And, oh yeah, their ties to the ICC… Andrew McCarthy has a decent write-up on it.
Charles I’am glad you recovered from it
Speakeasy, well the reference is in the above link on the revolution war that I brought.
anyway, like Subotai said it’s history, and we have new focuses to be worried about nowadays
#207 DanM – thank you for that link – very troubling!
For Subotai and all, you have my prayers as well. A toast: To (virtual) friends who become family and to family who become friends.
Merry Christmas and may the season bring a lightening to the heart.
Knight1
Beat up on France? Too easy. No sport in it.
Storm-Rider, interesting theory but the genetic trail of the American Indians leads elsewhere. It is beginning to look more and more than the initial landing was in South America, not Alaska. That is was the Polynesians that were here first. The groups that came over the Bering Strait came later. And yes there were some from Europe as well. Even some hints of African blood. Very possible that there were three or four migrations of distinct peoples into America. Sure that the genetic bloodhounds will have it all figured out in a couple of decades.
you wish
MC:
In spite of the heroic defense of France in 1914-1918…the second German assault was a disaster for France…1940. 1871 all over again….except who could raise the “Commune” to fight? No one of course…the Nazis were not the Prussians and times had of course changed. Times had changed of course because of Joffre’s and hence France’s brilliant play in 1914. We call it the “Battle of the Marne” Nice win…except for what followed…and that we call the “20th Century”.
UBU, nah, constated
d’percy:
That means Germany was more focused on military development, besides Bismark aimed to expand the new unified Germany as a nationalist hegemony over the german speaking populations. The conquest of Alsace Lorraine was in his logical agaenda, For him these provinces were naturally belonging to Germany, they were french since Louis XIII.
for WWII, I recomand you to read Marty’s posts (and Subotai’s above)
and our discussion there
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/12/17/pirates-of-the-airwaves/#comments
UBU, what do you think of the privatisation of the War ?
the use of foreign soldiers known as “mercenaries” up to the seventies, and now “privaters”
as you can read french there is an interesting article about this modern way of making war
http://www.strategicsinternational.com/9_Tekfa.pdf
COFRAS is the french organisation that sells “soldiers services”.
Incidently, I heard for Vietnam, but in Irak war, many foreign private soldiers have been hired through diverse organisations.
I didn’t investigate if french privaters were hired there, I guess most likely
I already had MC…and BTW,no one was more focused in military development prior to 1914 than France…period…end of sentence. They knew the game was up in terms of demography. Just skip over the “Commune” that built said German Empire…That France still exists is a complement to the resilience of “culture” and the United States of America. Our Debt is paid in full. Then again as of Dec 1, does France exist? or is it just the same as Virginia (a historically significant part of a much larger whole)? The Holy Roman Empire reborn…without the benefit of there being a single thing “holy” about it.
I liked that Bob Hope collage.
Four wars, thousands of guys, fifty years. They all looked like they were in my company.
Time to have a manhattan.
d’percy:
uh, Sarkozy isn’ a person that will stay behind a paper, he is an hyper-active man ! So expect some clashes with his comrads
Heh…maybe he’ll behave like the governor of Texas then MC? For my part, I like Sarko…he has a lot of “personality”. Carla Bruni doesn’t hurt him either…but how does that change what happened on 12/1/2009…the Lisbon Treaty being adopted and all? The way I read Lisbon, we should withdraw our ambassador and focus our efforts on Brussels…where am I wrong in that assumption?
UBU, Bingo !!!
« EARTHWIND HOLDING CORPORATION ». Première et unique société militaire privée francophone opérationnelle dans le monde, EARTHWIND Holding dispose de 30 à 40 anciens militaires et policiers français en Irak pour la sous-traitance des missions auparavant imparties aux officiers anglophones.
d’percy
I have no idea yet how this is going to fonction, at the moment we are all prepearing Christmas and New Year, and you know how the Brussels servants are “protective” when it comes to their privileges, so I expect they are all (or fast)off
uh, if you remove your embassador from the 26 left EU countries, then, you’ll get more unemployed (embassy staff, etc…)
MC…personally I think that would be perfect (the impact would be minimal in the percentages ehh?). But I have only one vote lol. Europe remains a great spot to vacation and study ruins…damned shame the focus has mved to places named Rawalpindi and Kandahar and not Calais or Tours?
Americans should understand that France is a Socialist country and because of that France will never be a true ally of the United States unless we submit to International Socialism under authority of the United Nations. The French Revolution was a counter-revolution to ours; a revolution of State power over the individual and his/her liberty and property, not the other way around. The French Revolution was the proximate basis and example for the Marxist Revolution. Marxism is based on an immensely powerful State which takes possession of property honestly created by entrepreneurs middle class individuals – property acquired through excessive taxation. The self-serving Marxist State then ensures their own wealth with the confiscated property, and only then toss out the leftovers to the proletarians – in return for votes. What is the justification for such immense State power? The stated purpose is “social justice” i.e.: unnatural and irrational equal economic outcome between the laboring, tax-paying middle class and the tax-eating proletariat class. What actually happens? The middle class becomes unnaturally and irrationally unequal before law in compared to the Marxist ruling class and the proletariat class; and surprise, surprise the middle class becomes “equalized” in serfdom with the proletarians – loomed over by a not-to-be-equalized Marxist ruling class of equalizers.
“We claim to live and die equal, the way we were born: we want this real equality or death; that’s what we need. And we’ll have this real equality, at whatever price. Unhappy will be those who stand between it and us!…We need not only that equality of rights written into the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen; we want it in our midst, under the roofs of our houses… The French Revolution was nothing but a precursor of another revolution, one that will be bigger, more solemn, and which will be the last.” Gracchus Babeuf
http://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/conspiracy-equals/1796/manifesto.htm
“But as the essence of the republic or of democracy is equality, it follows that the love of country necessarily includes the love of equality…. This great purity of the French revolution’s basis, the very sublimity of its objective, is precisely what causes both our strength and our weakness. Our strength, because it gives to us truth’s ascendancy over imposture, and the rights of the public interest over private interests…. We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with it; now in this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people’s enemies by terror…. Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.” Maximilien Robespierre
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Communism/ROBESPIERRE'S%20SPEECH.htm
uh, Storm rider, don’t be so pessimist
one vote ?
“damned shame the focus has mved to places named Rawalpindi and Kandahar and not Calais or Tours?”
may be not for long
But what would you do in Tours (apart visiting the wines terroirs ?
and Calais ? nothing left there apart the “illegals” that want to cross the channel !
Marie Claude,
I am currently somewhat pessimistic, but that goes against my optimistic nature. The combination of sacred individual human liberty and creativity (freedom to creatively pursue happiness through labor) is a powerful force; let’s hope more powerful than the principles of the French and Marxist Revolutions.
“All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” Thomas Jefferson
well, no government, nor regime can stop you from being creative and free, but depends if you hold the making of businesses as “creativity”.
If this is the case, you have to become “intelligent” and learn how to contourn the rules, how to use them… That is one of the french entreprenors skills.
It is said that “artists”, writers, are more inspired and creative under an “opressive” governation
Marie Claude,
Inequality before the law is tyranny (either Fascist or Marxist), not opportunity; tyranny is only opportunity for those few who make the law and are thereby above the law. One must be more than just intelligent to prosper under Fascist or Marxit tyranny; one must be connected to and favored by the Socialist government.
What good is one’s creativity when the fruits of individual creativity (middle class individuals) are confiscated by self-serving Marxist/Socialist government?”
Many Socialist (Marxist) governments can and do stop the middle class individual from being free and prosperous through excessive taxation; such government can also stop one from living.
Artists and writers (and other “intellectuals”) usually prosper under Socialism because the State is their sponsor and source of income – not the free market. But what about the quality of their art and their writing? The Marxist/Socialist State determines quality, not the free market of individuals.
Sorry, but despite your denials; your ideas are that of a French Socialist.
“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property”… meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow; and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc (Socialist Principles of Oceania), which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell, 1984
BTW, George Orwell considered Monarchy and its cousin Fascism to be “Capitalism,” and was in agreement with Karl Marx in this regard.
“The chief of all the Capitalists was called the King.” George Orwell, 1984
Well if we are going to fight for Tours Marie-Claude, then the game is over and the west has lost. I’d like to think western civ can win this this thing in Kandahar…but I doubt our heart (not the soldiers, but the politicos) Are we expected to fight for Tours…again? Y’all keep askin…maybe sometime, we won’t show up. After all isn’t that the Obama Doctrine? That we won’t show up?
Stormy, I explained you the way of surviving as an entreprenor, but artists and writers, I ment those that will remain in history of Arts and Litterature, see as exemple our production under Louis XIV, which wasn’t what we could call a tolerant monarque, see our production during Napoleon III regime… I don’t think about the shoes polishers under (soft)socialism, they will be forgotten like many in our history that have had their hours of glory, but that time has forgotten
D’percy, hmm think about St Barthelemy then, that will be more approriated, if the day comes when we can’t stand the new rules, it’s how we solve the problems
Stormy, I own my home and my business ! but still charges have to be paid for gaining money, of course I find it’s too much, but I don’t make much efforts to earn a lot more, just enough to live.
Other than that I am quite free to say, write, create whatever I want, I’m not the one that would ask for a subvention, bought my tools as a sculptor (former), my PC and graphic tablette… I am not making a discourse or a letter of intentions to exhibit my works,just that I am too lazy to look for customers for them, In fact I don’t care if I don’t sell my works, my kids will be happy to have an heritage
“Your remarks about the effacement of Soviet monuments do not smack of acceptance but rather anger and resentment. Still it stabs even after all these years, eh tovarich?”
Dude, Saakashvili just KILLED two people, a woman and child, by blowing up a memorial to GEORGIANS WHO DIED FIGHTING NAZIS. If people died when the Kremlin ordered a monument dynamited you and the Wall Street Journal/Washington Post (Pravda on the Hudson and Potomac respectively) would be SCREAMING about it. And you joke about Georgia being heavily armed, but they had one of the highest levels of defense spending on a per capita basis in the world, according to an indepedent Swedish think tank. You obviously have no interest in asking how a country where the average pension is $80 a month can afford to purchase $100 million worth of Patriot missile batteries without any significant exports or obvious sources of revenue whatsoever. Daddy Warbucks Soros has been busy in Eastern Europe…but even he seems to be dumping Saako and Yuschenko like losing horses.
“Whatever the case, the current leaders of Russia and China are just as evil as their predictors, and just a ruthless and blood thirsty too.”
Really? Hu Jintao is as evil as Chairman Mao who probably had a higher body count than Hitler and Stalin put together? Putin = Stalin? Even Khodorkovsky said from jail that Putin is more liberal than most of the Russian people. Posed this way everyone can see how idiotic these statements are. But who’s counting Chinese dead bodies anyway when European lives count for so much more?
“Perhaps you need to head back to the Lubyanka and get some more training–the mask slips. They are still in business, you know-just different management and “methods”, but soon they will be back to the old ways, as so your postings atest.”
Old ways? Giving people passports is old ways? In that case EU = USSR. Well wait, you already believe that.
I know for you and maybe Subotai and LOTM Russia will ALWAYS be the Evil Empire, but there’s no need to impose such outrageous old fart delusions on the younger generations. It’s as if we’re in the late sixties and you’re still warning we can’t trust those Krauts and Japs, they’ll re-fight us any day now…
And enough already with the tiresome French bashing. I admire Marie Claude for standing up to it. Again, being a Jacksonian and not liking it when people run down America and not just a particular U.S. politician or party also means accepting when others stick up for their nations.
I asked — why in the world would France spend five times as much as it does now on defence? Aside from war porn fantasies…
H.W. Briands was right — the world would be a much better place if honor, guilt and victimhood alike all stopped in each generation as opposed to the PC notion that they are inherited. Each generation must answer for its own and for you to impose on Russians alive today guilt over what their parents, grandparents or GREAT grandparents did or didn’t do is insane. Ditto for comparing gas cutoffs to Stalin’s foreign policy. Do you or do you not support free markets? If you do, then Ukrainians have to pay for gas and not get it at 40% of what Germans pay for the same fuel simply because well…they’re Ukrainians, they can try to claim historic victimhood versus Russia. I know many hardworking Ukrainians. But Ukraine is to Russia what Mexico is to the U.S…a country with a feckless political elite that constantly blames its big northern neighbor for its problems.
And snide insinuations aside, I’m not a Russian. I’m just a person who has noticed that no other country in the world is the subject of so much scurrilous, stereotypical and lazy journalism as Russia. Even the Chinese and Saudis seem to have better PR in Washington. Not a coincidence, considering who’s buying U.S. debt, though since Russia became one of the top ten creditors we’ve had the ‘reset’…follow the money and draw your own conclusions my fellow Americans…
The gas thing is going to take care of itself, what with the looming inability of perhaps even “rich” countries like Greece to pay for Russian gas deliveries. If EU countries will have trouble paying for their gas, what about Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus? It could get ugly fast in Peters’ 2010 scenario…but no doubt when the cutoff comes he’ll blame Moscow for refusing to give away gas for free (dad gum Russkies, they should never demand payment but should have stayed Communist!) and claim it’s using gas to conquer those countries when it just wants to get paid with something.
Thinking about France, and following MC’s posts reminds me of Victorian England’s attitudes towards the “continentals”.
In that time a sign at the ferry terminal at, I believe, Dover proclaimed, “The wogs begin at Calais”.
Merry Christmas, y’all (including MC, bless her) from darkest Oz.
Bob Murphy
Bob Murphy:
uh you don’t read UK’s scum papers about us, that have no counterpart on our side !
but the wogs do begin at Dover, no doubt about that
merry Cristmas too
Mr X,
I guess that we are more proxy with the Russian population than with the Anglo-Saxonnery !
at least, according to their criterium of evaluation, and the russian girls are still the most beautiful’s in the world !
Our friends would like us to forget who we are, it’s impossible, we have more than 2000 years of history, when on the other side, 1000 years for the Brits, and 200 years for the Americans
hmm Beowold was danish !
Quality of achievement is more valuable than quantity of time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODJfwa9XKZQ
BTW, modern humans arrived in the British Isles 35,000 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England
Stormy, Owned
http://www.lepoint.fr/sciences/2009-12-15/cocorico-les-premiers-vrais-francais-vivaient-voila-1-57-million-d-annees/2091/0/405204
Yea, there have been monkeys and Neanderthals in France for millions of years.
BTY; I don’t hate France per se: I just hate Marxism and Socialism which is tied to French history.
With the passage of Obamacare, it looks like my country is to become more like yours; more government control of the individual – less freedom for the individual. At least I grew up in a free country; my father and grandfathers lived and spoke as free men – afraid of no man. I would have liked my son to also live in a free country – he will not even own the carbon dioxide made by his own mitochondria.
Never forget what Marx and Rousseau have brought us: Equality! But some are more equal than others.
C’est la vie now seems more like C’est la mort.
Rousseau not, just the dream of the paradisz of the good “wild” human
communist was first attempted by Baboeuf, but the Revolutionnaires didn’t find that they were looking for hey, they were new rich bourgeoises, so they guillotined him.
His ideas reappeared in the second revolution 1848, when a new class pf proletarian workers was born becuz of the industriallisation of our country.
Marx is the one that had transcripted babouvism and other utopies into a well constructed manifest, that only inspired the socialist communist revolutions of the 20th century
Forget a bit your puritan Burke, he hasn’t catched what was and the happening of our Revolution.
He just had one more anglo-saxon contempted glance on us
The trouble with proletarian workers is that under Socialism (Marxism), with the lower part of human nature being what it is, they quickly become proletarian non-workers dependant on the self-serving Socialist (Marxist) State which robs the still working middle class on their behalf. Marx lied when he said “workers of the world unite;” it has turned out to be “non-workers of the world unite” – united under Socialist (Marxist) government which takes their side in “class struggle” for “social justice.”
I’m afraid most Americans don’t know what Socialism and Marxism really is; but they are about to find out. The American middle class is about to get screwed; they appear to have no idea that under Socialism (Marxism) the middle class eventually becomes exhausted under the burden of the tax-eating Socialist (Marxist) ruling class and the tax-eating, non-productive proletariat class. The American middle class is now the proto-proletariat class, and they don’t know it – many will never know what hit them or that it had something to do with breaching the firewalls of our Constitution. God help us.
I’ll have to side with Edmund Burke who said this about the French Revolution:
“Individuality is left out of their scheme of government. The state is all in all. Everything is referred to the production of force; afterwards, everything is trusted to the use of it. It is military in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in all its movements. The state has dominion and conquest for its sole objects—dominion over minds by proselytism, over bodies by arms.”
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