hey pretty boy

rick,n


what up with your new mouse without the cord. do you like it. or didnt you get one for chistmas as you thought. come clean and you will feel better.

ray,


Being a Yankee I looked up a bunch of product reviews and found that people complained about reliability in many models and battery life in the cordless models so I took it off the wish list until it becomes as proven a technology as microwaves are in the kitchen. Things that break drive me nuts and I hate changing and paying for batteries even more than cleaning my ball.


Santa did get me a big hard drive instead and I then made my old 20 meg drive a slave and use it exclusively to store MP3s converted from the best of my CD collection. Most of the little time I have at home is spent in front of the PC and the speakers I have (top of the line Cambridge Soundworks) really sound good without disturbing the neighbors since the tweeters are about two feet from my head.


I'm also getting into the first of the Civil War books that you 2+2 guys recommended and so far the one I'm reading is great although it took 200 pages before a shot was fired.


Anyway, Happy New Year!


Regards,


Rick "I ain't that pretty" Nebiolo

hey, a civil war is two or more factions fighting for control of one country... that was not the case in 1860's in north america, as one faction merely wanted to separate without controlling the other's land government and economy. while the northern aggressors violated states rights and viciously attacked the south, this was a war of one side controlling another, not a war of two sides competing for one centrally ruled country. i am especially peeved that john cole would go along with this obvious misuse of terminology.

Do you wear white sheets at night?

Scalf,


I won’t have the time (not do I have the expertise) to get into a long political discussion but it is pretty clear to my peanut brain that the only significant “issue” dividing the North and South was slavery and its expansion into the territories that were soon to become or had just become states (e.g., Kansas, New Mexico). So the war was fought to “preserve the union” (North) or “defend states rights” (South) but THE issue dividing North and South was the practice of slavery, which was unique to the South and a stain on our national honor.


BTW, on many present day issues I think the Federal Government has too much power relative to the States but Lincoln did the right thing in 1961 IMO.


Regards,


Rick

'but Lincoln did the right thing in 1961 IMO'


i see youre hedging your bets a little here. ha


brad

well, lets take another case. a homogenous ethnic population was split into 2 countries, and the US said that we had to fight to preserve the right of s.v. to be an independent country.


hmm. looks like USA batting 1000 here.


brad

Vietnam was never split into two countries. The United States invented the mythical country of South Vietnam, and invented the myth that we were fighting to preserve its independence from Northern aggression. The Northern involvement followed, rather than preceded, the U.S. involvement.

I saw pretty boy, and I thought. . .


Never mind.

and then got the deposed president a position as owner of a liquor store in southern cal...gl

scalf,


I might have said "Civil War" in a post at some time; however, I'm merely using the "customary" terminology. The "War of Northern Agression" is equally misleading. The events leading up to the war, including social, political, and economic, along with the obvious ideolgical differences, cannot easily be separated, nor can they be summed up through facile nomenclature.


John

Rick,


I remember reading somewhere that no more than a dozen slaves had been introduced into the newly opened "slave" territories, although I can't vouch for this since it was quite a long time ago.


Nevertheless, I agree--slavery was an important issue, if not "THE" issue.


John

Most wars, I think, are named by the winners. Some examples: the French and Indian War, King Phillip's War, and The Spanish-American War are all bad names, deliberately chosen to obfuscate the combatants and their genesis.


A civil war is generally understood to mean a war between inhabitants of the same country, as opposed to a war between two (or more) different countries.

John,


I'm speaking of both States and Territories. Places like the New Mexico Territory where never going to acquire significant numbers of slaves due to the lack of agriculture. But the new state of Kansas was a big political battleground with many slaves and disputes.


Regards,


Rick

I don't know one way or the other if the US "invented" South Vietnam...but I am reasonably sure that not only Vietnam but the whole world would have suffered a lot less if the free world had been willing and able to stamp out communism a lot earlier. The citizens of the few countries left under communist rule today still suffer greatly. I think the USSR, China and Vietnam should all have been "liberated" (actually, yes) from the tyranical rule of the communists, if at all possible. When we had complete nuclear superiority might have been the window of time for the free world to band together and take control, but as Cyrus points out, at the time the idea would not have been well-received. However, it would have saved much human misery if the communist ruling cliques had been deposed. Just my take on much of the 20th century.

The North did not want to try to "control" the South; it just wanted the Union to stand, according to my understanding. Not allowing slavery is not "controlling" the South; it's just insisting that the entire Union abide by its principles and/or law.


The South was wrong; the plantation owners weren't willing to give up what was coming to be recognized as a barbarous and backwards practice; the North wasn't willing to dissolve the Union, and the rest is history.

I agree with you that the Communists were bastards and that the old men who run the few remaining Communist countries today are incompetent bastards.


The problem was that we decided to "liberate" countries who were not ruled by Communist bastards. We defined them as Communist bastards and we then replaced them by people who were far worst bastards than even the Communists (in those countries) were.


We did try to "liberate" South Vietnam, at the cost of millions of lives. We were "successful" in "liberating", for example, Guatemala and Indonesia, and were very pleased when the "Communist's" succssors were cold-blooded murderers.


There was plenty of human misery in Russia and China and Vietnam before the Communists took over. I would be less pessimistic about liberation if the liberators really cared about the people they were liberating.


The Free World did band together when we had complete nuclear superiority and was very tough on the Unfree World, spending tons of money and committing men and that money, both overtly and covertly, all over the world.

Andy,


Which is exactly how I understand the term as well.


John

I used the word "liberate" almost as a parody of the communists party line, because that was part of their own propaganda.


Yes, when fighting with the devil, some of our own allies may turn out to be devils in their own right.