When was America Great?

[JMS]

There is so much disagreement as to how to proceed as a nation. What is sustainable and unsustainable. Who's political philosophy is best for the country. I'm just curious... When was America at it's best as a country? Which of our many accomplishments are you most proud off? What accomplishment, in your mind, said to the world, A great new country had arived?

[tshile]

Hah! Good luck.
I had a question along these lines on another forum and it turned into suggestions that I go live elsewhere.

People are overly defensive about this country, and (i believe) you'll never be able to get majority of people to actually discuss this. You either blindly repeat that america is great, or you should go live somewhere else.

But none the less, good luck. I'll watch from a far - maybe the problem was how I handled it, and maybe you'll do a much better job :)

[Thegiantduckman]

It will be interesting to see the different definitions of great. Personally I think the greatest accomplishment this country did was be a "safe"(there was a lot of discrimination in the past but it's gotten better) haven for all that needed it, for the impoverished, war refugees, or what have you

[Backpack3r]

We are still the greatest country in the world hands down, wouldnt even think of living anywhere else.

[Kilmer17]

I think we are still great.

But we were our greatest during WW2.

[Henry]

The 20th century was The American Century. In the 19th century we had some seriously divisive internal issues to settle out. So far this century we've been ... uninspiring.

[Corcaigh]

America is still great.

Don't confuse other countries becoming stronger with general American decline. This creates huge pressures on the middle class that we haven't adapted to. It's getting very tough for blue-collar and limited skill white collar to have the kind of long term job security and quality of life that they used to.

Growth in income inequality here is the greatest concern. It is tightly correlated with a whole range of bad outcomes for society, for both the haves and the have-nots.

[elkabong82]

We were great back when we could title a thread properly. :p


In all seriousness, we're still great. We have our share of problems, but every country does.

[dreamshatterer]

When a dime bag use to cost a dime.

Seriously though, has to be during WW2

[JMS]

People are overly defensive about this country, and (i believe) you'll never be able to get majority of people to actually discuss this. You either blindly repeat that america is great, or you should go live somewhere else.

I had a conversation along these lines on multi hour car ride over the weekend. It was late and we were trying to stay awake so we had this suido political conversation. I posed this question. It ended baddly. The person got rather insulted and refused to answer the question.

I kind of thought that was because it was late and we were both tired and dismissed it. I wonder if you are correct and that will be most folks reaction.

---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 12:27 PM ----------


We are still the greatest country in the world hands down, wouldnt even think of living anywhere else.

We have the greatest military, we have the largest most diverse economy, we have arguable the oldest republic, and we have the greatest history of scientific controbutions and advancement... So I don't disagree with you, but can you point to a point in history which you were exceptionally proud of the way the United States conducted itself?

[twa]

When Texas joined of course ;)

I would say the greatest was at our founding(in their vision),but our power and influence has grown while our greatness has struggled to keep up.

We continue to cherish and uphold the individual and to welcome all, continuing to put in place ideas first put forth in faith by the founders.

Love it or try to make it better.....or GTFO while we make some damn good sausage :cool:

[JMS]

The 20th century was The American Century. In the 19th century we had some seriously divisive internal issues to settle out. So far this century we've been ... uninspiring.

We were not a super power in the 1800's. We became an industrial super power in the late 1800's perhaps, early 1900's; and a military super power during WWII.

[Stadium-Armory]

7/4/1776 - 7/23/2012 (and onward). We're great because of what we stand for, not beacause of our economy or military (although, those our byproducts of what makes us great).

Clinton sums it up well in his '92 Democratic nomination speech:


As a teen-ager I heard John Kennedy's summons to citizenship. And then, as a student at Georgetown, I heard that call clarified by a professor named Carroll Quigley, who said to us that America was the greatest nation in history because our people have always believed in two things: that tomorrow can be better than today, and that every one of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so.

That, that kind of future entered my life the night our daughter Chelsea was born. As I stood in the delivery room, I was overcome with the thought that God had given me a blessing my own father never knew: the chance to hold my child in my arms.

Somewhere at this very moment, a child is being born in America. Let it be our cause to give that child a happy home, a healthy family and a hopeful future. Let it be our cause to see that that child has a chance to live to the fullest of her God-given capacities. Let it, let it be our cause to see that child grow up strong and secure, braced by her challenges, but never struggling alone; with family and friends and a faith that in America, no one is left out; no one is left behind.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/17/news/their-own-words-transcript-speech-clinton-accepting-democratic-nomination.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Long story short, I don't believe we're more or less great at any point in time, or because of any particular activity. WWII might be the closest 'event' which embodies the great ideals that we stand for (if I had to choose an event or time).

[RansomthePasserby]

We have the greatest military, we have the largest most diverse economy, we have arguable the oldest republic, and we have the greatest history of scientific controbutions and advancement... So I don't disagree with you, but can you point to a point in history which you were exceptionally proud of the way the United States conducted itself?

In no particular order:

- WWII when the entire country came together to basically fight two wars (Pacific and Euro theaters) at the same time.

- The the amount of effort it took to execute the Apollo program.

- The long, painful process from slavery to equal rights.

[Henry]

We were not a super power in the 1800's. We became an industrial super power in the late 1800's perhaps, early 1900's; and a military super power during WWII.

I'm a little confused. Are you arguing with me? Because I didn't say anything you didn't say.

[JMS]

- The long, painful process from slavery to equal rights.

When I first envisioned conducting this poll over the weekend I thought the civil war and the issue of slavery would be choices. In hind sight, I decided that since the United States was indeed one of the last countries to ban slavery it was more of a national embarressement than a sign of our greatness. Feel free to disagree. I'm personally torn on the issue.

---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 12:46 PM ----------


I'm a little confused. Are you arguing with me? Because I didn't say anything you didn't say.

No I wasn't arguing with you. I don't know if this is really a thread where argument is possible. Not sure if there is a right or wrong answer to this question. Different accomplishments are more important to different people. I don't disagree with what you said, although I would like to pick a specific example of something in history which you are most proud of.

You said the 20th century was the American Century.. I don't disagree with you. What were you most proud of amonst our many accomplishments in that century? I think the answers kind of illuminate something about us. What we value.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

I chose WWII. I wasn't alive, but it just seems to be a period of such romanticism and seems to have set the stage for the next several decades.

[Elessar78]

Spanish American War was the first time we locked horns with a European power?

Not to sound like a homer but all the options, aside from the Spanish American war, made America Great. I was reading a book on the industrialists and Europe just marveled at the efficiency and innovation of the United States at the turn of the last century. The industrial and geographical potential seemed boundless and Americans were seen as unencumbered by the "cubby hole" thinking that was pervasive in Europe at the time. WW2 and the moon landing were defining moments.

But all those achievements didn't come free. The industrialists ravaged the land for resources and broke the backs of many laborers who had no recourse. WW2 had it's own obvious costs.

America, back then, was young and hungry. Now it's like we've hit middle age and content with what we've accomplished. Which is a huge shame. I've lived and visited many other countries and wouldn't want to live any where else, really.

To draw a Redskins' reference, we're like how the franchise was a few years ago. Older, bloated with financial commitments to non-productive players. We need a youth infusion (at least a youthful mentality) and get rid of the overweight underachievers laying on the ground.

[elkabong82]

One could argue that being the first occupied territory to successfully revolt against it's occupier (the world power at the time), and setting up a Democracy, moving away from the old royalty/one ruler system, was America's first instance of being great.

[RansomthePasserby]

When I first envisioned conducting this poll over the weekend I thought the civil war and the issue of slavery would be choices. In hind sight, I decided that since the United States was indeed one of the last countries to ban slavery it was more of a national embarressement than a sign of our greatness. Feel free to disagree. I'm personally torn on the issue.

Yes, it's embarrassing we had slaves to begin with. However, we DID start officially abolishing slavery in 1777 (Constitution of Vermont), with other northern states following suit. The British Empire didn't pass the "Abolition of Slave Trade Act" until 1807.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline

Further, even though I don't agree with Obama on everything, I'm very proud that we've gone from inhumane slavery and segregation to someone of black descent being elected by the people to the highest office in the nation.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

Further, even though I don't agree with Obama on everything, I'm very proud that we've gone from inhumane slavery and segregation to someone of black descent being elected by the people to the highest office in the nation.

That's a great point. I don't really like Obama at all, but I do love the fact that our country elected him. Great post.

[pointyfootball]

http://www.interbasket.net/players/usa/1992_dream_team.jpg

[TD_washingtonredskins]

Dream Team picture

I notice you didn't add a picture of the 2012 Olympic team. :ols:

[JMS]

Spanish American War was the first time we locked horns with a European power?

Well on the polls you have to limit your descriptions to under 100 characters. But yes the Spanish American war was the first time since the revolution we had locked horns with a European Power and announced ourselves as a power to be reconned with. Second rate European power at that. ( Spain in 1898's.)



I was reading a book on the industrialists and Europe just marveled at the efficiency and innovation of the United States at the turn of the last century. The industrial and geographical potential seemed boundless and Americans were seen as unencumbered by the "cubby hole" thinking that was pervasive in Europe at the time. WW2 and the moon landing were defining moments.
....
America, back then, was young and hungry. Now it's like we've hit middle age and content with what we've accomplished. Which is a huge shame. I've lived and visited many other countries and wouldn't want to live any where else, really.


I think economically speaking countries are like people, they go through enfancy, adolescence, and mature in to adulthood. In an adolecent economy such as China is currently experienceing, such as Japan experienced in the 70's and 80's it's common to have 10-15% or more growth per year. I think the United State's economy is a mature economy and has been such for many decades... ( 1948 on) where we are fortunate to have 4% growth per year... All countries experience that cycle, I don't equate adolescent's with greatness necesarily, or maturity with slipping.

---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 01:29 PM ----------


Further, even though I don't agree with Obama on everything, I'm very proud that we've gone from inhumane slavery and segregation to someone of black descent being elected by the people to the highest office in the nation.

I personally can remember race riots in DC, race riots at the local HS, folks getting in fights and being beaten due to race, segregation, when Negos went to blacks, and then to African Americans. I can remember many race issues in the 60's and 70's.

Obama being elected was a monumentus accomplishment for our country. Agree with him or not, that is a sign of national pride for many.

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

Post World War Two until the mid 1970s.

[zoony]

I would like to vote for the 1950s, and share an excerpt from The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.


I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alivethan America in the 1950s. No country had ever known such propserity. When the war ended the US had $26 billion worth of factories that hadn't existed before the war, $140 billion in savings and war bonds just waiting to be spent, no bomb damage, and practically no competition. All that American companies had to do was stop making tanks and battleships and start making Buicks and Frigidaires-and boy did they.

By 1951, when I came sliding down the chute, almost 90 percent of American families had refrigerators, and nearly three-quarters had washing machines, telephones, vacum cleaners, and gas or electric stoves-things that most of the rest of the world could still only fantasize about. Americans owned 80 percent of the world's electrical goods, controlled two-thirds of the world's productive capacity, produced more than 40 percent of its electricity, 60 percent of its oil, and 66 percent of its steel. The 5 percent of people on Earth who were Americans had more wealth than the other 95% combined.

Remarkably, almost all this wealth was American made. Of the 7.5 million new cars sold in America in 1954, for instance, 99.93 percent were made in America by Americans. We became the richest country in the world without needing the rest of the world.

[elkabong82]

Though the 50's were a prosperous time zoony, the first sentence in that excerpt needs to be amended.

"I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive and a white male than America in the 1950s."

1950s were a great and prosperous time.... for some

[No_Pressure]

You cannot choose one of those answers without knowing what people define as great. The word itself could mean a lot of different things:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/great

-notably large in size
-of a kind characterized by relative largeness
-large in number or measure
-remarkable in magnitude, degree, or effectiveness
-full of emotion
-chief or preeminent over others
-long continued
-markedly superior in character or quality
-remarkably skilled

These are just a few of the possible definitions. It is extremely difficult to say that at one period of time any one country was overall as a whole "great". Greater than what? Great at what?

In the fall of 1942 Germany was great. Great in power, notably large in size after swallowing up most of Europe and bringing Russia almost to it's knees. Their nation's industry and war machine was remarkable in magnitude, degree, and effectiveness. Their struggle against the Soviets was a "great" struggle- full of emotion, long continued. The German scientists, engineers, and industrialists were "great" at their work- they were remarkably skilled and in some areas they were chief or preeminent over others.

If you asked the majority of the people on the planet today...or likely in 1942 for that matter...if the Germans were "great" they would likely say hell no. Why? Because many people equate great with good. The German nation as a whole was not markedly superior in character and quality during WW2. In fact, I'd say that invading half the countries in Europe and brutally subduing entire populations by some of the most disgusting methods possible doesn't qualify as being high in character and quality.

So the point is in 1942 Germany was great, and during the same exact time Germany was never great.

Applying this to America, in the academic sense of a great power, great economy, great advances in science and technology, being numerically or technologically superior to others, lasting a long (or long enough) time, etc. then sure, America has been great at multiple points in it's history. We were great in 1865 when we had the largest standing army on the planet and had finished a long struggle subduing a hostile nation. We were great in WW1 when we showed up in 1917 and 1918, perhaps swinging the outcome in favor of the entente powers, and then great during the roaring 20's when our economy was exploding and we looked like a true world power for the first time. Then we were great again during WW2, defeating the Japanese and helping Britain and the Soviets subdue the Germans. We came out of that war with the greatest power the world had ever seen and launched the entire planet into a new era. We were great while "fighting" the cold war. The space race and technological advancements which spun off of such competition were great. Our eventual triumph over the concept of communism (sort of, I guess) and all the nationalistic pride which went along with that, sure we were great for decades in many people's minds.

At the same time 1865 didn't end suffering for blacks in America by a long shot. The first KKK operated from 1865 through the 1870's and 1880's in many parts of the south, and picked back up during the "great" roaring 20's. Speaking of our nation in the WW1 time period, 1918 was a year in which the supreme court struck down our first attempt at child labor laws, which we wouldn't effectively limit until 1938. It took until 1919 for women to gain the right to vote. Many people romanticize the WW2 and Cold War eras. WW2 saw a segregated military and the continuation of the long standing Jim Crow laws in the south. While we were fighting the generally accepted bad policies of racism and prejudice overseas in Europe, we pretended it didn't exist at home. Sure, the 50's and 60's saw the Civil Rights movement, something which we see as great today- and it certainly was. That doesn't mean that those decades in our nation's history were great- they were terrible and extremely difficult depending on your point of view, just ask any black people who fought for civil rights. It wasn't fun and our country wasn't uniformly great (in moral character), and certainly didn't become great overnight as a result of the adoption of those laws. Racial tensions rose during the 70's, 80's and early 90's, and I think perhaps today we're finally recovering from our history. Hell that isn't even to mention our stalemate forgotten war in Korea in the 50's and our quagmire during the 60's and into the 70's in Vietnam. Sending Americans off to suffer and die on foreign soil for ideological communist containment policies wasn't great.

Were the 90's great? I think we can all remember a decent number of incidents where we weren't looking so hot. What about the 00's with an economic collapse, 30,000 casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan? Are we great now? Have we ever been?

The thing is, sure we've been great in a lot of different areas, especially in the past 100 years. We've had one of the greatest economies, made some of the greatest advancements in science and technology, we have some great people and some great ideas. I love this country in spite of its faults and less than stellar history, and many others would agree. I do not however agree with romanticizing entire periods in our history and calling our entire country collectively "great" in any of those periods. We've been great in specific areas and pathetic in others. There aren't any entire nations throughout human history that I can view as wholly great at any given time period. You can say great power, great economy, sure those are easy to recognize, but great overall nations? There are no such things. Romanticizing periods of time or nations throughout history is absurd.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

I would like to vote for the 1950s, and share an excerpt from The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

And we can do it again. All we need to do is utterly destroy the infrastructure of Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and North Africa.

I should run for president on that platform......

The number one "problem" facing the US is that the prosperity the Baby Boomers were born into and expected for themselves, children, and granchildren was mostly illusory. It existed because we were the only country capable of building anything so...we set the price.

The other thing no one understands is how long it really took the rest of the world to recover from WWII. Great Britain was never occupied and they only came off rationing last Tuesday.

I'm good friends with a British chef. I used to tease him about being the one person in England who knew how to cook. He's about 12 years older than I and explained that even when he was a kid, you had rationing. So, it's not that Brits couldn't cook, it's that they didn't have the ingredients to do it and just sort of forgot....

[zoony]

Though the 50's were a prosperous time zoony, the first sentence in that excerpt needs to be amended.

"I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive and a white male than America in the 1950s."

1950s were a great and prosperous time.... for some

I would agree, however you'd have to make that same amendment for every great civilization throughout history. Except those in the middle east and china of course ;)

[elkabong82]

I would agree, however you'd have to make that same amendment for every great civilization throughout history. Except those in the middle east and china of course ;)

oh that wacky humanity

[Henry]

You said the 20th century was the American Century.. I don't disagree with you. What were you most proud of amonst our many accomplishments in that century? I think the answers kind of illuminate something about us. What we value.

The Marshall Plan. The fact that a) during the second half of the 20th century we had an unprecedented amount of wealth and power and b) we gave some of it away to help other nations recover from the war and to stabilize the world and prevent another war like that from happening again.

Civil Rights. That we, of our own free will and accord, removed institutional racism from our society.

The Space Race. Landing on the Moon is simply awesome. Period.

Winning the Cold War. Taking down the USSR without fighting a war against them, just through sheer force of our economic will, is kind of a big deal. Never before in recorded history had the largest powers in the world been able to avoid full scale conflict for as long as the USA and the USSR did following WW2.

I still happen to think the US is a pretty special place. With the economic and military power we've had at our disposal we could have literally taken over the world, but we instead chose to just be a part of it. We chose to inject billions of our own money into the rest of the world in order to keep democracy alive, and sure we weren't perfect about it, but it worked. It has so far bought us 70 years of relative peace and prosperity, and I think that's pretty cool.

[da#1skinsfan]

We are great right now, this is the greatest country on the planet. If you haven't already, go spend a few weeks overseas going to different countries. Every place has it's strengths and weaknesses, certainly, but you'll likely develop an appreciation for the way of life we are able to maintain here that you never knew you had before going out and experiencing life elsewhere. It's certainly an opinion as to what is "the greatest" - but to say we aren't great right now is either naivete, negativity, or both.

[HeluCopter29]

Everytime, except the past 30 years.

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

I would like to vote for the 1950s, and share an excerpt from The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

it wasnt great for everyone in America.

[HogNose]

WWII

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/defeat/d-day-invasion-troops-land.jpg

[No_Pressure]

The Marshall Plan. The fact that a) during the second half of the 20th century we had an unprecedented amount of wealth and power and b) we gave some of it away to help other nations recover from the war and to stabilize the world and prevent another war like that from happening again.

Civil Rights. That we, of our own free will and accord, removed institutional racism from our society.

The Space Race. Landing on the Moon is simply awesome. Period.

Winning the Cold War. Taking down the USSR without fighting a war against them, just through sheer force of our economic will, is kind of a big deal. Never before in recorded history had the largest powers in the world been able to avoid full scale conflict for as long as the USA and the USSR did following WW2.

I still happen to think the US is a pretty special place. With the economic and military power we've had at our disposal we could have literally taken over the world, but we instead chose to just be a part of it. We chose to inject billions of our own money into the rest of the world in order to keep democracy alive, and sure we weren't perfect about it, but it worked. It has so far bought us 70 years of relative peace and prosperity, and I think that's pretty cool.

There are some who would view the Marshall plan in a less than loving light. Some Europeans view it as economic imperialism, and others view it as the seed for communist containment policies which influenced our participation in the Korean War and Vietnam.

The space race was fantastic and there isn't any good argument that could say otherwise. Not just the act of landing on the moon, but the advancements which went along with it out of a necessity to accomplish such a lofty goal- smaller computers, communication technology advancements, smoke detectors, scratch resistant plastic lenses for glasses, early robotics, protective paint, pacemakers, etc.

http://articles.cnn.com/2007-10-04/living/nasa.everyday_1_detectors-tires-nasa?_s=PM:LIVING

"Winning" the Cold War wasn't peaceful. We fought through proxies for years, and the only thing stopping our highly evolved military and that of the Soviet Union from killing one another was mutually assured destruction, not our own remarkable sensibilities.

[tshile]

I had a conversation along these lines on multi hour car ride over the weekend. It was late and we were trying to stay awake so we had this suido political conversation. I posed this question. It ended baddly. The person got rather insulted and refused to answer the question.

I kind of thought that was because it was late and we were both tired and dismissed it. I wonder if you are correct and that will be most folks reaction.

This is what caused me to spark the conversation:
warning: there are some cuss words in there, listen with care if you're around others/ at work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16K6m3Ua2nw


i think it's pretty spot on (depending on your source and your criteria you may find different numbers for specific things, but they're very close). the entire speech, not just the first half (which seems to be the only half people are capable of listening to. it's like the second half doesn't exist for some reason)

[China]

it wasnt great for everyone in America.

There's no time in history when life was great for everyone. But to your point, in th '50s we had this:

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2012/7/20/9/enhanced-buzz-19070-1342791271-4.jpg

which I can only assume is showing some boys heading to NAMBLA headquarters back in the '50s.

[SWFLSkins]

Though the 50's were a prosperous time zoony, the first sentence in that excerpt needs to be amended.

"I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive and a white male than America in the 1950s."

1950s were a great and prosperous time.... for some

That's a great point and really is that what would make America great, a society that favors just some? To me America is not done yet, we are slowly changing the world, that is how influential this country still is. We are a melting pot and equal rights for all men, women and all colors continues to develop. The present world has been largely influenced by American inventions, social foresight and entertainment.

[Sticksboi05]

Imagine today's society having to give up what those imn the 1940's had to for WWII...ha, everyone would act so entitled.

[Dan T.]

We were the world's Rookie of the Year right from the get-go. Our standard of living even in the late 1700s surpassed the world. Land was plentiful and dirt cheap, so anybody willing to work could make a good life for themself and their family. People flocked to this new nation to share in its unprecedented bounty. We've been on a roll ever since, given a few blips along the way.

[Sticksboi05]

But in a way, we are better now than ever. In 1955 it would've sucked to be non-white or a woman or someone with a disability etc. etc. etc.

[Dan T.]

I would like to vote for the 1950s, and share an excerpt from The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

Was that not one of the funnest books you've ever read? I have a nunch of relatives who grew up in Iowa I used to visit as a kid, so Bryson's musings really rang true on a number of levels.

[Jumbo]

When Texas joined of course ;)

I would say the greatest was at our founding(in their vision),but our power and influence has grown while our greatness has struggled to keep up.

We continue to cherish and uphold the individual and to welcome all, continuing to put in place ideas first put forth in faith by the founders.

Love it or try to make it better.....or GTFO while we make some damn good sausage :cool:

First. it's spelled A-L-A-S-K-A. We gave you guys size issues I know, so I understand the lapse. :pfft:

I like the "founding times" and the obvious (to me) parts of that visions they had, other than the whole "******s and women" thing, the upper-class favoritism (landowners etc) and the widespread notion of such related attitudes that enabled the near-genocide of the NA and a government that broke more treaties than those commie Rooskies ever dreamed of.

Per your last line, as any true patriot would say to any form of "love it or leave it", a) go **** yourself, and b) make me. :)

(with you, it's just playin', but you know that--but I do have that attitude for real :ols:)

I really liked the last part of your second sentence. But I think the premises we were founded under weren't "all good" anymore than the men were 'all good" (humans doncha know) and the template was formed right there for both the glorious and the inglorious that followed.

Now love it (this nation) I will, flaws and all, die for it I would, flaws and all, and work to fix it, I always have and always will.

As to garden variety "yee-haw" nationalism---not a fan (and I'm of Germanic heritage so go figure).

I save that level of response to cheering for my football team where I think the deliberate, even if just occasional, suspension of critical thinking in favor of emotionalism and sometimes-blind loyalties is better served. :pfft:

Pride in this nation's people and culture (otherwise we're talking about hunks of land and bodies of water) when merited, I absolutely have, and my gratitude for the bounty and opportunity of this nation is unending. And my admiration for all the good we strive to do at home and aorund the world runs deep. It's all there in good measure.

But so is seeing the other side, past and present. Violence, abuse, bigotry, greed, celebration of and focus on self, neglect of the homeless, the destitute, and the lost (especially so many children) are matters also bountiful in our nation and culture.

I love what we were in many ways in WWII, but also shudder at fire-bombing cities and dropping nuclear weapons on cities (of course, I know the reasoning, so do yourself a big favor and don't "explain" it to me--I likely would have given the order, too). But I am conflicted about such, and greatly so. I have always found collateral damage a very difficult matter to "get around" even with all the rationales so well used, but then maybe I'm just "pro-life." :)

There are beautiful places, wonderful people, and great societies and cultures all over the globe now, and have been throughout history. I would many of them "great" even though seriously flawed in other ways (just like us).

I guess you'd say I love the children I have helped raise "more" than other children (if you get me), but even there I don't think they're automatically "better" or "greater"children than all others (certainly than some :evilg: :D). They're just part of me, closer to me, than others.

In the end, are we a great nation? Can a human being be great and still seriously flawed? I say yes to both.

But IMO the seriously flawed human and seriously flawed nation should have enough humility in awareness of those flaws not not label themselves "great." I think it's better to simply allow others to do so should they feel so moved. Beyond that, if great they indeed are, it does not mean that some other human or nation, also seriously flawed, is necessarily "less great."

I like celebrating our independence, freedoms, and bounty on the 4th and never even think of crowing about "how much better we are than other countries/peoples."

Just some miscellaneous thoughts on the matter. And beyond other reasons I'd have, given what I know I have donated to both civilian (community) and military interests in significant amounts of time and money my entire life, I'll tell you straight up I don't take challenges to my "love of the U.S" or my patriotism well at all.

Criticizing my meandering and loopy thoughts or hippie/facist/wtf? positions is absolutely fine. You might want to allow for the fact I did grow up in the late sixties and I don't think all the chemicals settled in perfectly.

Oh yeah...much better than what I had to say...what Henry said. :ols:

[TD_washingtonredskins]

But in a way, we are better now than ever. In 1955 it would've sucked to be non-white or a woman or someone with a disability etc. etc. etc.

Now it just sucks to be any of those people plus a white male. :ols:

I'm completely kidding...I have everything I could ever ask for in life. I have the opportunity to do whatever I want to do and work as hard as I'm willing to work. My children have a great education system and all sorts of advantages in life. How can most people wake and sleep in this nation and not feel blessed and lucky?

[Backpack3r]

I had a conversation along these lines on multi hour car ride over the weekend. It was late and we were trying to stay awake so we had this suido political conversation. I posed this question. It ended baddly. The person got rather insulted and refused to answer the question.

I kind of thought that was because it was late and we were both tired and dismissed it. I wonder if you are correct and that will be most folks reaction.

---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 12:27 PM ----------



We have the greatest military, we have the largest most diverse economy, we have arguable the oldest republic, and we have the greatest history of scientific controbutions and advancement... So I don't disagree with you, but can you point to a point in history which you were exceptionally proud of the way the United States conducted itself?

Every single day im proud to be an American

[deejaydana]

This is a difficult question. How do you reconcile nominating a time, say the 19th century, that is conceptualized from what you've just studied and potentially idealized in your own mind and imaging? I DO know this country does individual freedom, even now, like no other. If I had to nominate a "golden era" I would say 60's and 70's. California was a great place to live back then (I can at least recall the 70's if not the 60's) and compared to today's version, well there's no doubt we've trended downward. I will always believe traveling outside of the country helps you better realize the great characteristics of our nation...as well as our shortcomings and the things we don't get right.

[Henry]

There are some who would view the Marshall plan in a less than loving light. Some Europeans view it as economic imperialism,

Of course. I disagree with those people. :)

If we really wanted to make Europe part of an empire we could have been a lot less subtle about it. We've certainly thrown our weight around since becoming a superpower. There's not denying that, but relative to how other world powers throughout history, who actually were empires, have treated smaller nations I think it's a stretch to call what we've done imperialism.


and others view it as the seed for communist containment policies which influenced our participation in the Korean War and Vietnam.

Our participation in regional conflicts, weighed against the prospect of either a collapsing Europe and/or Asia eating itself alive for the third time in less than a century, or full-scale geo-thermal nuclear war, I personally think our course of action was not only the correct call, but a brilliant one.


"Winning" the Cold War wasn't peaceful. We fought through proxies for years, and the only thing stopping our highly evolved military and that of the Soviet Union from killing one another was mutually assured destruction, not our own remarkable sensibilities.

So? The fact was that we were able to win conflicts through military or economic might, or a combination of the two as the situation arose.

[JMS]

Here is why I'm asking the question.... It's political....

As I've said before a none arbitrary definition of a conservative given in our dictionary, is someone who looks backwards for answers to problems. What has worked in the past? This approach generally yields reliable predictable outcomes. ( i.e. a conservative approach).

Liberals tend to look for new and ideally better solutions to problems. Their approach yields more risky outcomes and outright fail on a much more regular basis than do conservative approaches.. But on the other hand all social progress, and many great accomplishments have come in era's when liberals either Republicans ( like Lincoln) or Democrats( like the Roosevelt boys, Truman, or Johnson ) were in power....

Currently the tea party is an emerging political force in politics. Was watching HBO's Newsroom last night and they were making the case that the Tea party ( very influencial currently inside the Republican Party) backed by some very wealthy donors were seeking to recreate the Gilded Age ( post civil war to 1996 when the Progressive Era arrived). I've never personally considered the Gilded age as our greatest period... ( marked by, great economic expansion, huge corruption, trusts running large segments of the economy, massive foreign investment and dramatic economic declines)...

As someone who I think is on the fringe of the political spectrum on this board, I was wondering if most folks would say the period that Mark Twain first described as Gilded ( gold grafted on cheap medal ) represented their ideal or was it some other period?

[deejaydana]

I think you might run into trouble if you use the Newsroom as a viable source of unbiased information. They err, imho, when they conflate "Tea Partiers" with the Republican part en masse. Two weeks back they called Tea Partiers no better than registered sex offenders. I don't know how to take that seriously.

[JMS]

There are some who would view the Marshall plan in a less than loving light. Some Europeans view it as economic imperialism, and others view it as the seed for communist containment policies which influenced our participation in the Korean War and Vietnam.


How could it possible be considered "economic imperialism"? It was after all a voluntary program.

The Marshal Plan was indeed a communist containment policy. Truman noted that poor countries in despair were more likely to be susceptible to the promises of communism's message.
Prosperous countries were not.

I kind of agree with Henry on this one. It should have been on the list. It was a visionary program which lifted all of Europe out of poverty in a time when the United States under former President Hoover was feeding all of Europe. Sure it worked out pretty well for the United States too, but I don't detract that the Marshal Plan took vision, forward thinking, and was something entirely new to the world when Truman first got his secretary of State to propose it.

[endzone_dave]

This country has some serious issues to deal with:

- Health care costs continue to spiral out of control.
- People have to work 50 to 60 hours per week just to get a 2 - 3% raise while their CEO is making millions of dollars.
- Only 75% of kids graduate high school. The one who don't have skills that are worth only a few dollars an hour on the world market.
- Despite spending trillions of dollars, this country has no real growth. That type of spending will have to end, what happens then?
- A college education is getting so expensive that it may soon not be worth it to get one.

Other than that, things are cheery.

[JMS]

I think you might run into trouble if you use the Newsroom as a viable source of unbiased information. They err, imho, when they conflate "Tea Partiers" with the Republican part en masse. Two weeks back they called Tea Partiers no better than registered sex offenders. I don't know how to take that seriously.

Granted, Newsroom is well done fiction, but fiction none the less. Can't use it as a serious way to reason. granted.

However, they don't conflate "Tea Partiers" with the Republican Party. The guy doing the description the anchor is a self described Republican who is lamenting the radicalization of the Tea Party and talking about it's influence in the GOP.

I had never considered the Guilded Age as a model before I heard the argument though... It makes sense though when you think of it. It fits.

(1) It was our free'est version of capitalism, something the tea party and many conservatives seem like they are in favor of.
(2) It was a largely deregulated economy which is something we've been seemingly moving towards.
(3) Marked by huge economic growth.
(4) Concentration of wealth in the upper class ( see Bush Tax Cuts) who control the economy.
(5) Marked by Trusts controlling many production niche's.

I was just wondering if conservative/tea party folks really were looking to the gilded age as their model to be recreated.?



I don't remember them calling the tea party "no better than sex offenders".. refresh my memory on that will ya.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Imagine today's society having to give up what those imn the 1940's had to for WWII...ha, everyone would act so entitled.

What were people giving up? They were still broke from the 30s.

[deejaydana]

Well they certainly don't conflate "Tea Partiers" with the Republican Party. They guy doing the description the anchor is a self described republican who is lamenting the radicalization of the Tea Party and talking about it's influence in the GOP.

I don't remember them calling the tea party "no better than sex offenders".. refresh my memory on that will ya.

2 weeks ago the Jeff Daniels character stated that they needed to be cordoned off just like sex offenders. I find the show to be just more Hollywood propaganda. The fact that the guy on the show is a "republican' is essentially meaningless.

[gbear]

I think we as a country have been at our greatest only in moments. In recent times, I would list 9-12 and the day the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up. We are at our greatest when we have had to pull together, to marshal our strength once more after a national kick in the sack. The reason the Rocky movies always resonated with America is because we see ourselves as the country perpetually able to get up off the mat. Whether it is the day after Pearl Harbor, the day after 9-11, watching our auto industry almost whither away in the 80's or 2009, or watching Christa McAuliffe's ride on Challenger, the U.S. has always had it's greatest moments on the heels of disasters. It's not a coincidence these times seem to be the only times we put aside all our baggage of race and religion. Even politics backs off.

So many of these examples in the poll are examples of us winning when we should. We should beat the U.S.S.R. in an arms race or an economic competition. We were important in WWI and WWII, but we shouldn't pretend we did the heavy lifting. The wars cost millions of lives before we ever got involved. We were important, but ...at our greatest? No.

[GSF]

I would not be able to point out a single time when we were at our greatest. Americans seem to be at their best during times of tragedy. I think Americans showed great character and resiliency during the period right after 9/11.

[JMS]

2 weeks ago the Jeff Daniels character stated that they needed to be cordoned off just like sex offenders. I find the show to be just more Hollywood propaganda. The fact that the guy on the show is a "republican' is essentially meaningless.

Can you provide a link verifying that. I saw that show, and thought of the four shown so far it was the weakest, but don't remember that quote.

It said Michelle Bauchman was a "hairdoo". And play'ed a clip of Demint saying something stupid about gay folk. Don't remember them saying the Tea party were child molesters..

In general I like the show.. actually love it. It's smart and makes good points. It's also well researched, not like a good news program, but in an entertaining way like the Dan Brown book, or the Daily Show. Anyway be looking forward to your clip, I goggled it and couldn't find one.

[China]

What were people giving up? They were still broke from the 30s.

Lots of things were rationed during World Ward II (http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/events/rationing.htm): sugar, coffee, gasoline, meats, cheese, canned and processed food, rubber (in the form of both shoes and tires) and more (http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/ration_items.htm).

[Henry]

So many of these examples in the poll are examples of us winning when we should. We should beat the U.S.S.R. in an arms race or an economic competition. We were important in WWI and WWII, but we shouldn't pretend we did the heavy lifting. The wars cost millions of lives before we ever got involved. We were important, but ...at our greatest? No.

Eh. I think you are basing this a bit too much on hindsight. What seem like simple victories now were just not so at the time.

I personally didn't list WWII but we did play a rather significant role in winning a war we didn't want to fight. And while we didn't do the heavy lifting against Germany, we most certainly did against the Japanese ... while we were fighting Germany. I think you are selling us a little short there.

[Forehead]

Of what you have listed, I picked the Space Race. Wars and economy are all of this world, being able to be the first country to open minds to the possibility of expanding beyond Earth is just incredible. I'd hoped there would be more progress made so I can see something cool like a planet colony before my life ends. I had to pick the race.

Our current economic woes aside, there isn't much to hate about living here. I am concerned about how far behind our education system is falling behind other countries; there is no way U.S. students should be ranked in the 20's in anything given our resources. But I have faith that we'll right that ship eventually.

[zoony]

Was that not one of the funnest books you've ever read? I have a nunch of relatives who grew up in Iowa I used to visit as a kid, so Bryson's musings really rang true on a number of levels.

yes, outstanding read. I pretty much like all his stuff

[Elessar78]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI7Oq8y-jXA&feature=player_embedded

[DjTj]

And we can do it again. All we need to do is utterly destroy the infrastructure of Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and North Africa.

I should run for president on that platform......And really, the 90's were like that too. The USSR collapsed, giving us a brief stint as the undisputed kings of the world, the federal budget magically balanced itself, and we had free time to argue about blowjobs and who invented the internet before the bubble burst.

Maybe it's not so much about us being great and dominating the division from wire to wire, but just staying in the wild card race and getting hot at the right time. America has been pretty good at that for most of its history.

Europe is fading down the stretch right now. If we can just play .500 ball until one of the "developing" countries falls on its face, we'll probably find ourselves on top again soon enough.

[Sticksboi05]

What were people giving up? They were still broke from the 30s.

Giving up what little they had left.

[Corcaigh]

And really, the 90's were like that too. The USSR collapsed, giving us a brief stint as the undisputed kings of the world, the federal budget magically balanced itself, and we had free time to argue about blowjobs and who invented the internet before the bubble burst.

Maybe it's not so much about us being great and dominating the division from wire to wire, but just staying in the wild card race and getting hot at the right time. America has been pretty good at that for most of its history.

Europe is fading down the stretch right now. If we can just play .500 ball until one of the "developing" countries falls on its face, we'll probably find ourselves on top again soon enough.

It's not a message I'd share with my kids, but if they get a modest education, and then are prepared to show up on time and sober, they'll do OK in life.

[nonniey]

I had a conversation along these lines on multi hour car ride over the weekend. It was late and we were trying to stay awake so we had this suido political conversation. I posed this question. It ended baddly. The person got rather insulted and refused to answer the question.

I kind of thought that was because it was late and we were both tired and dismissed it. I wonder if you are correct and that will be most folks reaction.

---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 12:27 PM ----------

.



We have the greatest military, we have the largest most diverse economy, we have arguable the oldest republic, and we have the greatest history of scientific controbutions and advancement... So I don't disagree with you, but can you point to a point in history which you were exceptionally proud of the way the United States conducted itself?[/QUOTE

So your actual question is "When was America Greatest." You need to fix the thread title

---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 08:50 PM ----------

[QUOTE=elkabong82;9059251]One could argue that being the first occupied territory to successfully revolt against it's occupier (the world power at the time), and setting up a Democracy, moving away from the old royalty/one ruler system, was America's first instance of being great.

Wow what a wierd way to describe the situation at the time of the Revolution. Britain occupied us? Was it the American Indians that rose in revolt to throw the British out?

[Kosher Ham]

When a dime bag use to cost a dime.


A dime bag cost 10 bucks. A "dub" (as in double and twice a dime) was twenty.

Back to topic as great of a country as this is...it's not perfect. There was not time in history here that was perfect for everyone including around WW2.
Maybe one of these days we we all get over our nostalgia and at the same time ourselves and realize that where we are, and what we have become was not what this country was initially about.

Then it will be perfect, and truly as great as it was intended to be.
Proud to be an American and wouldn't trade it for anything.

[JMS]

Eh. I think you are basing this a bit too much on hindsight. What seem like simple victories now were just not so at the time.


I was going to say the same thing. Man I remember when Viktor Belenko defected in 1976 in his Mig 25. We thought that was the baadest plane ever. The Migs had consistantly been superior airplanes to our own fighters and the Mig 25 was their latest and greatest plane. For a decade it kept our airforce inteligence people up at night. The Mig 25 was one of the fastest most sophisticated fighter plane ever built at that time. We thought for nearly a decade, it was an agile fighter too and developed the F-15 to perform comparable to what our intelligence told us about the Mig 25... Only when the Pilot Belenko defected in 1976 flew his Mig 25 to Japan we learned while fast it was also heavy and our F-15 was better... But that came as news to us and was proable the first time during the cold war when our fighters were better than the Soviets. After the Mig 25 the soviets continued to build pretty good planes, but they could never really build them in enough numbers to challenge us...

Our pilots training were always better and that was the big difference maker in Korea and Vietnam, not our planes...

---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 07:19 PM ----------


Lots of things were rationed during World Ward II (http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/events/rationing.htm): sugar, coffee, gasoline, meats, cheese, canned and processed food, rubber (in the form of both shoes and tires) and more (http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/ration_items.htm).

Detroit didn't even make a new car for several years as it's production capabilities were used to build tanks and planes and trucks for the war effort.

There was some awsome statistic that before WWII in 1939 the United States was making like 2000 planes a year. three years after entering the war in 1944 we created like 100,0000. A year before the war we had a military about the size of Belgium. In 1945 when we won the war we had 18 million men under arms and over 100 aircraft cariers in our navy... Just awsome production.

[No_Pressure]

How could it possible be considered "economic imperialism"? It was after all a voluntary program.

The Marshal Plan was indeed a communist containment policy. Truman noted that poor countries in despair were more likely to be susceptible to the promises of communism's message.
Prosperous countries were not.

I kind of agree with Henry on this one. It should have been on the list. It was a visionary program which lifted all of Europe out of poverty in a time when the United States under former President Hoover was feeding all of Europe. Sure it worked out pretty well for the United States too, but I don't detract that the Marshal Plan took vision, forward thinking, and was something entirely new to the world when Truman first got his secretary of State to propose it.


Hoover was president in the 20's, don't you mean Truman since Hoover was serving in an advisory capacity by the late 40's, and the Marshall plan could be seen as economic imperialism since through the plan we were creating nations which were dependent on our money for their recovery and survival just as nations under Soviet influence had become. It is nice and rosy to view foreign aid programs such as the Marshall plan as altruistic endeavors but they were not. Aside from that it is well known that France and the Netherlands used much of the aid money given to them to fund their own imperialistic ventures overseas in Indochina and Indonesia.

I wouldn't say containment policies were necessary either. They were reactionary measures due to fear of communism. Everybody I have ever known who says it was a great idea to contain the spread of communism I have to ask them both why, and what business it was of ours. I'm usually confronted with a scenario where the Soviet Union was unopposed and managed to convert every nation on the planet to communism and the United States was the last bastion of great things and awesome uncle sam apple pie baseball dreams. The thing is in that scenario we still have a few thousand nuclear warheads, B-52's circling the globe 24/7, and nuclear submarines lurking in convenient enough locations to destroy the entire planet 20 times over if any effort were ever made to invade our nation. What exactly were we fighting for in places such as Vietnam, where we killed thousands of our people protecting a non-democratic regime in the south from the communist north and then once we left the communists took over anyway. I suppose it screwed up their nation forever, right? Well the fact that I have a hard time finding a shirt that wasn't made there indicates to me that they're over their little communism phase and have moved on, thus we lost all those lives for absolutely ****ing nothing.

Oh, but Korea was a worth endeavor surely, the North Koreans are crazy as **** and the south is awesome. Well perhaps the south is better off now, but there is no way of knowing how history would have played out, likely not too well for the South Koreans but what would the effect have been on the United States? Well, aside from having 120,000 fewer casualties I would be willing to bet "not much". It wouldn't have helped a nation like say the Soviet Union sustain itself long term. Two wars, lots of dead Americans, all the result of a containment doctrine which was invented by people who were terrified of communism. The exact same doctrine caused us to support the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, and years later they were turning weapons we gave them to fight the Russians on us when we decided to send our empire there to die like everyone else did.

But I digress, those decades weren't great for us regardless. We had national guard troops shooting protesting college students, civil rights laws didn't come about until 1964-65 and it isn't like somebody flipped on the lights and racism stopped right away. Look up Pruitt-Igoe from 54-70 and tell me what is great about a nation in which something like that happens. Anybody who says we're great in recent history- what have we really gotten right recently, whether in the Bush or Obama years? History will not look fondly upon this time period. We have a long way to go to be truly great, a lot of problems to overcome, and carrying a nationalist-like thought in one's head that we're Amurrricuh and we're number 1 (USA! USA! USA! USA!) is only going to hold us back from recognizing what is wrong with us and fixing it.

[Chachie]

I voted space race because the WWII generation made that and everything else happen for the USA. So we were greater in the 70s but it all started after we won the 2nd world war. That generation busted it's butt and made this nation powerful. The 80s began a still-running era of decadence and foolish spending.

[JMS]

Hoover was president in the 20's, don't you mean Truman since Hoover was serving in an advisory capacity by the late 40's,

No I mean Hoover. Hoover had a PHD in engineering and a reputation for getting thins done, he was famous for building humanitarian projects all over the world before WWI. He became known as the "great humanitarian" after WWI when President Wilson tapped him to feed Europe after the war devastated continent couldn't produce enough food on it's own... Harry Truman in 1945 called on Hoover again to accomplish the same feet. Which he did in spectacular fashion bringing the project in billions under budget. Hoover lived until 1964, Harry Hopkins a Roosevelt Advisor cursed Truman. He told Truman by giving the hated republican such an important job you have given him life for 20 more years, which was about right 19 years.

---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 08:57 PM ----------


the Marshall plan could be seen as economic imperialism since through the plan we were creating nations which were dependent on our money for their recovery and survival just as nations under Soviet influence had become..

That's pretty ridiculous, although that was the soviet propaganda at the time. Take Germany for instance, in 1945 when we won the war she was devastated, She could not feed herself, she had no money, no industry, no hope, likewise she had defaulted already on about 15 billion dollars worth of debt in the 1930's when Hitler came to power. The marshal plan committed 15 billion dollars of US money to get Europe including Germany back on it's feet. Also the debt she had already defaulted on was coupled with new loans which germany paid back at 50% of the cost. Germany has one of the strongest economies in the world today, they aren't economically dependent upon us.

Take the Soviet Union. the marshal plan was offered to them, but they turned it down and decided to go on their own. Some have predicted the economic weakness of the soviet union which ultimately resulted in their collapse was partially related to not allowing US aid to rebuild them.

It was a visionary plan, one in which the United States did very well. You see the grants we made allowed Europe to purchase the goods they need to rebuild; but they purchased them from us. This resulted in a huge economic boon for the United States. IT was a great great idea, which seems commonsensical today.. but the facts are it had never been done before and there were a lot of doubters, but the United Stated did big things back then, and this was certainly one.

[Henry]

Hoover was president in the 20's, don't you mean Truman since Hoover was serving in an advisory capacity by the late 40's, and the Marshall plan could be seen as economic imperialism since through the plan we were creating nations which were dependent on our money for their recovery and survival just as nations under Soviet influence had become. It is nice and rosy to view foreign aid programs such as the Marshall plan as altruistic endeavors but they were not. Aside from that it is well known that France and the Netherlands used much of the aid money given to them to fund their own imperialistic ventures overseas in Indochina and Indonesia.

Yeah. Still disagree.

We didn't create countries that were dependent on our money. World War II did that. We just had the money. And we gave it to them.

Did we do it because it was in our best interest? Of course we did. That doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea, or that there were a lot of other very bad ideas out there that we could have had. I think it's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that countries we were sending billions of dollars to were equivalent to Soviet satellite nations. All you have to do is look at East Germany and West Germany. Night and day.


I wouldn't say containment policies were necessary either. They were reactionary measures due to fear of communism. Everybody I have ever known who says it was a great idea to contain the spread of communism I have to ask them both why, and what business it was of ours. I'm usually confronted with a scenario where the Soviet Union was unopposed and managed to convert every nation on the planet to communism and the United States was the last bastion of great things and awesome uncle sam apple pie baseball dreams. The thing is in that scenario we still have a few thousand nuclear warheads, B-52's circling the globe 24/7, and nuclear submarines lurking in convenient enough locations to destroy the entire planet 20 times over if any effort were ever made to invade our nation.

It wasn't Communism we were worried about. It was the USSR. They were gobbling up countries after WW2 and turning them into the aforementioned East Germany. I find it hard to believe anyone would seriously suggest the world now would be a better place had we simply abandoned the rest of the world to a despotic superpower while we curled up in the fetal position and surrounded ourselves with our nukes and planes and subs while smearing our faces with apple pie. We had already tried ignoring the world's problems a few times over the previous 30 years and several times over that span some very very bad things happened which did, surprisingly, eventually back up on us. I think had we allowed that to happen a THIRD time ... well, that would have been idiotic.


But I digress, those decades weren't great for us regardless. We had national guard troops shooting protesting college students, civil rights laws didn't come about until 1964-65 and it isn't like somebody flipped on the lights and racism stopped right away. Look up Pruitt-Igoe from 54-70 and tell me what is great about a nation in which something like that happens. Anybody who says we're great in recent history- what have we really gotten right recently, whether in the Bush or Obama years? History will not look fondly upon this time period. We have a long way to go to be truly great, a lot of problems to overcome, and carrying a nationalist-like thought in one's head that we're Amurrricuh and we're number 1 (USA! USA! USA! USA!) is only going to hold us back from recognizing what is wrong with us and fixing it.

I see. This is one of those 'America isn't perfect therefore it sucks' rants. That's cool. I never said it was perfect or that we did everything right. In fact I even mentioned that in my first post. Democracy is slow, messy and frustrating as hell, and examining the US during the 20th century bears those truths out in stunning fashion. But as one of my favorite authors once said, Democracy is the notion that more than half the people are right more than half the time. I think the Cold-war era is proof of that in spades. We didn't do everything right, but we did a lot right. And that's something to say for any nation possessing the absolute power we did after WW2.

[AsburySkinsFan]

20th century is being called by historians as "The Century of Blood". We cherish the ladt 100 years but it is a century defined by war. There is nothing great about that. We're in love with the idea that the US winning WWII, and we demonize the Germans (and there were many things done horribly wrong) but the whole thing was brought about because of the brutal Treaty of Versailles which impoverished Germany and gave rise to Hitler.

I think America was at her best when she was digging her way out of the Great Depression, we were unified by something oher than bloodshed for just about he only time during the 1900's.

[JMS]

I wouldn't say containment policies were necessary either. .

HA! I think History has pretty much disagreed with you.... As soon as the war in Europe was over it was Game on for Stalin. He reniged on every treaty we signed with him; and he tried to weazle his way into the Japanese occupation too. The cold war didn't start with the Marshal Plan, the Marshal plan was a response to Soviet agression in Iran, Turkey, Greece, Japan and Italy as they tried to take advantage of the void and fund civil wars in these countries.


1945: August 6 -- United States first used atomic bomb in war against Japan
1945: August 8 -- Russia enters war against Japan
1945: August 14 -- Japanese surrender
1945 Sept 8 - General Marshal responds to Soviets demand to break Jap;an up into territories of control as was done in Germany by
threatenning the Soviet Union with armed conflict should Red Army soldiers attempt to occupy any part of Japan.
March 2: British soldiers withdraw from their zone of occupation in southern Iran. Soviet soldiers remain in their northern sector
1946: March Winston Churchhill anounces an Iron Curtain has decended across Europe.
1946 April 5: Soviet forces evacuate Iran after a confrontation with the US.
1947: March -- Truman declares active role in Greek Civil War against communist take over and attempted communist take over of Turkey
1947: June -- Marshall Plan is announced in Boston at Harvard University. Truman is not politically popular at the time so he has his very respected secretary of state introduce the plan.
1947 July 4: The Philippines gains independence from the United States, and begins fighting communist Huk rebels (Hukbalahap Rebellion).
1948: February -- Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia
1948: June 24 -- Berlin Blockade begins
1949: July -- NATO ratified
1949: May 12 -- Berlin Blockade ends
1949: September -- Mao Zedong, a Communist, takes control of China
1949: September -- Soviets explode first atomic bomb our monopoly on the atomic bomb is over.

Truman was an opinionated and a crafty bastard who had Stalin's number the first time he met him. Truman had met Stalin face to face at Potsdam conference for two weeks in July of 1945. Truman tells a story of the Soviet leader entertaining the conference and as the soviet tradition all were drinking vodka. Truman notices that stalin is drinking from a special bottle. Truman takes a swig of Stalin's drink to find he's drinking white wine.... Truman thought Stalin was a crooked as the day was long.



---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 09:24 PM ----------


20th century is being called by historians as "The Century of Blood". We cherish the ladt 100 years but it is a century defined by war. There is nothing great about that. We're in love with the idea that the US winning WWII, and we demonize the Germans (and there were many things done horribly wrong) but the whole thing was brought about because of the brutal Treaty of Versailles which impoverished Germany and gave rise to Hitler.

I think America was at her best when she was digging her way out of the Great Depression, we were unified by something oher than bloodshed for just about he only time during the 1900's.

We were unified by the space race too.

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

This country has some serious issues to deal with:

- Health care costs continue to spiral out of control.
- People have to work 50 to 60 hours per week just to get a 2 - 3% raise while their CEO is making millions of dollars.
- Only 75% of kids graduate high school. The one who don't have skills that are worth only a few dollars an hour on the world market.
- Despite spending trillions of dollars, this country has no real growth. That type of spending will have to end, what happens then?
- A college education is getting so expensive that it may soon not be worth it to get one.

Other than that, things are cheery.

not only does healthcare cost ridiculous sums, its also among the worst in the first world.

the country is an absolute mess right now, and I refuse to accept that this country is great right now.

---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 10:06 PM ----------


There's no time in history when life was great for everyone. But to your point, in th '50s we had this:

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2012/7/20/9/enhanced-buzz-19070-1342791271-4.jpg

which I can only assume is showing some boys heading to NAMBLA headquarters back in the '50s.
yeah, that stuff has been around forever.

But to my point, it was legally ok to not treat everyone well in America. This country only became free for all after the Civil Rights Act was signed.

[JMS]

not only does healthcare cost ridiculous sums, its also among the worst in the first world.

the country is an absolute mess right now, and I refuse to accept that this country is great right now.

We are great right now, because we have an economy right now that every other country in the world envies; the largest most diverse economy in the world..
We likewise have a great and powerful military, easily the strongest in the world which can protect us from any foe...

We ahve problems, every country has problems, what makes us great is we can handle our problems. The only think keeping us from doing so is our will. We are not unified and we differ on how to fix our problems and that leads our leaders into inaction. I proposed this thread to look back on history and to remember a time when we were unified and when we were not affraid of big projects. When we did new things and we did them better than anybody else in the world...

A lot of water under the bridge since then, frankly a lot of improvments; but we've lost some things too. Seems to me we've lost a little of the will to be great, and somehow replaced it with the will to do what is cheapest and easiest..

[zoony]

These threads are always a great window into seeing just who on ES is in fact a miserable bastard :ols:

[Stadium-Armory]

The cultural transition that occurred in the 60s was an example of a great moment in our history. Young kids - the volunteers of America - forcing the country forward; Ending the war in Vietnam, civil rights,and the lunar landing,


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboRijhWFDU

[AsburySkinsFan]

We were unified by the space race too.

I thought about that, but the disqualifier was that the space race was a product of The Cold War and was part of that war, had the space race occured without The Cold War and our sins committed therein I would have chosen that time. Even still I struggled with the end of the Great Depression because of the institutional racism that was commonplace throughout the first 2/3rds of the century.

[No_Pressure]

Yeah. Still disagree.

We didn't create countries that were dependent on our money. World War II did that. We just had the money. And we gave it to them.

Did we do it because it was in our best interest? Of course we did. That doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea, or that there were a lot of other very bad ideas out there that we could have had. I think it's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that countries we were sending billions of dollars to were equivalent to Soviet satellite nations. All you have to do is look at East Germany and West Germany. Night and day.

I didn't say they were in the same shape as satellite nations. The Soviets coerced cooperation and solidarity through fear, we did so through economic incentives. That doesn't make us great, it means we took advantage of things which would suit our interests and make us look good at the same time. Please tell me the money we sent to France and the Netherlands wasn't used to suppress their "subjects" in Vietnam and Indonesia, you didn't even address that, and it is a fact.

Was West Germany better off because of our economic policies? Sure, but I wonder how things played out in south east asia.


It wasn't Communism we were worried about. It was the USSR. They were gobbling up countries after WW2 and turning them into the aforementioned East Germany. I find it hard to believe anyone would seriously suggest the world now would be a better place had we simply abandoned the rest of the world to a despotic superpower while we curled up in the fetal position and surrounded ourselves with our nukes and planes and subs while smearing our faces with apple pie. We had already tried ignoring the world's problems a few times over the previous 30 years and several times over that span some very very bad things happened which did, surprisingly, eventually back up on us. I think had we allowed that to happen a THIRD time ... well, that would have been idiotic.

Once again, what business is it of ours. It is sad to see arrogance (probably over how great we think we are) dictates our foreign policies, AND that it is viewed as great all the time. From a humanitarian standpoint is it a good thing to be interventionists? Most people would say yes, since they feel it is our duty to save the world from themselves. We weren't protecting the South Vietnamese from the horrors of losing democracy. When we got involved in that war the south had just undergone its first of two military coups in two years. Their government was far from democratic, and its people were far from at a consensus as to what they wanted. When we inevitably failed in our goals in Vietnam what happened? Was anybody better off from our efforts? Thousands of dead human beings and what did we have to show for it? What we tried to prevent in the 1960's happened in the 1970's and had gone through a number of issues internally until they enacted a number of reforms in the 80s and 90s. Now they're a major trading partner in Asia.

We ignored the world's problems in WW2 until we were dragged into it, and once we were we had reason to be involved and fight. We were also not concerning ourselves with internal issues within other nations. Soviet backed or not, these were the political problems of another nation entirely and were not our problem. Whats idiotic here is supporting an obviously flawed and failed interventionist policy that we watched as a nation blow up in our faces for over a decade of turmoil. Communism couldn't sustain itself. It was a stupid idea and we knew it. If we had done nothing and let smaller nations fend for themselves I doubt the world's landscape would be all that much different today. Perhaps there wouldn't be the most heavily defended strip of land in the world on the 38th parallel in Korea, and I'm sure that wouldn't have ended well for S. Korea, but we sure didn't give a **** about the South Koreans during about 35 years of Japanese domination (because we're so great) until they almost unified under a form of government that made us irrationally shake with fear.


I see. This is one of those 'America isn't perfect therefore it sucks' rants. That's cool. I never said it was perfect or that we did everything right. In fact I even mentioned that in my first post. Democracy is slow, messy and frustrating as hell, and examining the US during the 20th century bears those truths out in stunning fashion. But as one of my favorite authors once said, Democracy is the notion that more than half the people are right more than half the time. I think the Cold-war era is proof of that in spades. We didn't do everything right, but we did a lot right. And that's something to say for any nation possessing the absolute power we did after WW2.

America doesn't suck and you should refrain from putting words like that in my mouth. Not great isn't the same as "yep, we're great!" or "wow we suck" and if you read my first post in this thread, you know, the one where I argue there isn't a good definition of the word which can be applied to ANY nation on the planet at ANY point in time because no collective group of people should ever be classified as overall great or overall bad, especially when we still have all of these problems to overcome, you may have noticed I'm not trying to argue that America sucks. We didn't do a lot of things right. We made a lot of mistakes along the way. Everybody is human and that is as good of an explanation as we can muster until we as a species elevate ourselves above what we are today, just as we have elevated ourselves in many ways over what we once were years ago.

We did some things right and plenty of things wrong. It took us until 1964 to enact civil rights. That should make any normal person very angry, not happy that it got done- mad that it took so god damn long to do it. All I am saying for this thread is that we can't just say "hooray America did A, B, and C correctly therefore we are a GREAT country!" we're not that great, nobody is, nobody has been. We should set the bar much higher for ourselves and rather than celebrate our successes both major and minor, pay closer attention to our faults and failures, major and minor, because we have just as many of the latter as we do the former and pretending we're somehow the apex for human societies and the model for all civilization is absurd.

[Jumbo]

A week ago last Friday, especially between 9 & 11 P.M.

[Corcaigh]

A week ago last Friday, especially between 9 & 11 P.M.

What timezone?

[Jumbo]

What timezone?

Doesn't matter. It's in the past. We must move forward. Or, scuttle sideways, crablike.

[nonniey]

[QUOTE=JMS;9059789]I was going to say the same thing. Man I remember when Viktor Belenko defected in 1976 in his Mig 25. We thought that was the baadest plane ever. The Migs had consistantly been superior airplanes to our own fighters and the Mig 25 was their latest and greatest plane. For a decade it kept our airforce inteligence people up at night. The Mig 25 was one of the fastest most sophisticated fighter plane ever built at that time. We thought for nearly a decade, it was an agile fighter too and developed the F-15 to perform comparable to what our intelligence told us about the Mig 25... Only when the Pilot Belenko defected in 1976 flew his Mig 25 to Japan we learned while fast it was also heavy and our F-15 was better... But that came as news to us and was proable the first time during the cold war when our fighters were better than the Soviets. After the Mig 25 the soviets continued to build pretty good planes, but they could never really build them in enough numbers to challenge us...

Our pilots training were always better and that was the big difference maker in Korea and Vietnam, not our planes...[COLOR="Gold"]

---------- Post added July-23rd-2012 at 07:19 PM ----------

Must admit it is always interesting to read your historical musings. You generally throw something completely wrong into your statements to go along with some accurate information. The only Soviet Jet Aircraft that was arguably superior to US Aircraft (from the same generation) was the Mig 15 and many will argue the F86 was superior (US Pilot proficiency allowed a 14-1 kill ratio despite the quality of the Mig 15).

[China]

Doesn't matter. It's in the past. We must move forward. Or, scuttle sideways, crablike.

Tearing ourselves apart as we go...

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f373/mebecker55/1260445219_crab-leaves-his-arm.gif

:paranoid:

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

We are great right now, because we have an economy right now that every other country in the world envies; the largest most diverse economy in the world..
We likewise have a great and powerful military, easily the strongest in the world which can protect us from any foe...
our economy is a big reason why hte world is a mess right now. We screwed up. ON top of that only the top 1% can say that this generation has done better than the last. Everyone else is either even or falling behind. The economy is only great for those at the top, which sounds like the economy of a 3rd world country.

and its typical American mentality to say "but our military can kick everyones ass 6,000 times over." Great, but do we need a military that can kick everyones ass 6000 times?


We ahve problems, every country has problems, what makes us great is we can handle our problems. The only think keeping us from doing so is our will. We are not unified and we differ on how to fix our problems and that leads our leaders into inaction. I proposed this thread to look back on history and to remember a time when we were unified and when we were not affraid of big projects. When we did new things and we did them better than anybody else in the world...
we have MAJOR problems. American, and Western society as a whole, has been stagnant since the internet age.

We dont actually do big projects anymore and they arent even being proposed because everyone is scared to try something big for fear it will get shot down in congress.


A lot of water under the bridge since then, frankly a lot of improvments; but we've lost some things too. Seems to me we've lost a little of the will to be great, and somehow replaced it with the will to do what is cheapest and easiest..
exactly.

I say this knowing that America can be great, and can do amazing things like it used to, but right now this country is not great.

[Corcaigh]

Doesn't matter. It's in the past. We must move forward. Or, scuttle sideways, crablike.

We can be sure it wasn't on either cost, where the "blame America" crowd congregates.

[pointyfootball]

We dont actually do big projects anymore and they arent even being proposed because everyone is scared to try something big for fear it will get shot down in congress.

I disagree.

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/research/x35/x35_05.jpg

[AsburySkinsFan]

I disagree.

That's not a great project, that's a money suck for the profiteering of defense contactors. In 100 years no one will look at the JSF as a monument of achievement, just another coup by the MIC.

[Henry]

I didn't say they were in the same shape as satellite nations.
This is what you said:

the Marshall plan could be seen as economic imperialism since through the plan we were creating nations which were dependent on our money for their recovery and survival just as nations under Soviet influence had become.

That’s drawing a pretty direct comparison. We did not subjugate other nations just as the Soviets, who were true imperialists, did. I wholeheartedly disagree with that.


The Soviets coerced cooperation and solidarity through fear, we did so through economic incentives. That doesn't make us great, it means we took advantage of things which would suit our interests and make us look good at the same time.

Well, at now there’s a qualifier. First of all, I’ve said several times we did what we did because it was in our best interest. However, I don’t think doing something that suits our own interest automatically makes it a bad something. I think that’s very flawed logic.

And, um, why would it make us look good?


Please tell me the money we sent to France and the Netherlands wasn't used to suppress their "subjects" in Vietnam and Indonesia, you didn't even address that, and it is a fact.

Because that’s for the people of France and the Netherlands to address when people ask them about the cold war era.


Once again, what business is it of ours. It is sad to see arrogance (probably over how great we think we are) dictates our foreign policies, AND that it is viewed as great all the time. From a humanitarian standpoint is it a good thing to be interventionists? Most people would say yes, since they feel it is our duty to save the world from themselves.

It wasn’t arrogance. It was the fact that we had everything. We had a stronger military and economy than the rest of the world put together. That was a fact, not some ‘Amurrica Git R’ Dun yeah!!!’ rallying cry. For us to sit on our hands while the rest of the world collapsed in on itself, again, would have been crazy. It wasn’t going to happen. The US belief in isolationism was over. WW2 ended that. It wasn’t because some rednecks started driving down the strip waving flags.


We weren't protecting the South Vietnamese from the horrors of losing democracy. When we got involved in that war the south had just undergone its first of two military coups in two years. Their government was far from democratic, and its people were far from at a consensus as to what they wanted. When we inevitably failed in our goals in Vietnam what happened? Was anybody better off from our efforts? Thousands of dead human beings and what did we have to show for it? What we tried to prevent in the 1960's happened in the 1970's and had gone through a number of issues internally until they enacted a number of reforms in the 80s and 90s. Now they're a major trading partner in Asia.

Vietnam was a cluster****. The reason I didn’t address that is because I don’t disagree with you on that. What I do disagree with are its implications, that somehow a lost battle proves we didn’t win the war. In this case the Cold War. Or that one example of policy failure counters many other examples of success as proof that the policy was an overall bad one.


We ignored the world's problems in WW2 until we were dragged into it, and once we were we had reason to be involved and fight.

And yet, had we taken our place on the international stage earlier there may not have been a WW2. And there may not have been a fight in which far more Americans, and citizens of the world, died than in oh-so-terrible Vietnam. We can play the ‘if’ game all day.


We were also not concerning ourselves with internal issues within other nations. Soviet backed or not, these were the political problems of another nation entirely and were not our problem.

I disagree. The USSR was very much our problem, whether we wanted it to be or not. Holding the power we did and ignoring the rest of the world, especially the second strongest nation with strong imperialist designs, would have been very counter to even the simplest interest of self-preservation.


Whats idiotic here is supporting an obviously flawed and failed interventionist policy that we watched as a nation blow up in our faces for over a decade of turmoil. Communism couldn't sustain itself. It was a stupid idea and we knew it. If we had done nothing and let smaller nations fend for themselves I doubt the world's landscape would be all that much different today.

If you are suggesting that because communism failed in Vietnam it was bound to fail everywhere I whole-heartedly disagree. Again, using one example to counter numerous others in which the injection of financial and military aid resulted in economic prosperity and stability which not only halted the increase of the Soviet sphere of influence but enabled us to develop strong allies and trading partners is not convincing. Soviet imperialism absolutely devastated Eastern Europe for half a century. Keeping it in check in order to rob the Soviets of more resources while strengthening our own was a sound policy. Do it the way we did, without having to actually fight a war against them, was brilliant. Yes there were proxy wars, but weighed against what could have happened had we taken them on directly, which is what has happened 99% of the time previous major world powers have squared off, the price was relatively small.


Perhaps there wouldn't be the most heavily defended strip of land in the world on the 38th parallel in Korea, and I'm sure that wouldn't have ended well for S. Korea, but we sure didn't give a **** about the South Koreans during about 35 years of Japanese domination (because we're so great) until they almost unified under a form of government that made us irrationally shake with fear.

Yeah, because like Vietnam, North Korea has reformed all by itself and has become a prosperous, thriving nation and peaceful member of the international community … oh wait.


We did some things right and plenty of things wrong. It took us until 1964 to enact civil rights. That should make any normal person very angry, not happy that it got done- mad that it took so god damn long to do it.

Well, uh, this thread is about when America was at it greatest, not whether or not it’s some amazing fabulous super-duper country. And I said we were at our greatest when we did, finally, enact civil rights. Of course it shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, which is why I didn’t say the 19th century was our greatest time, or pre-WW2 …


America doesn't suck and you should refrain from putting words like that in my mouth. Not great isn't the same as "yep, we're great!" or "wow we suck" and if you read my first post in this thread, you know, the one where I argue there isn't a good definition of the word which can be applied to ANY nation on the planet at ANY point in time because no collective group of people should ever be classified as overall great or overall bad, especially when we still have all of these problems to overcome, you may have noticed I'm not trying to argue that America sucks. We didn't do a lot of things right. We made a lot of mistakes along the way. Everybody is human and that is as good of an explanation as we can muster until we as a species elevate ourselves above what we are today, just as we have elevated ourselves in many ways over what we once were years ago.

All I am saying for this thread is that we can't just say "hooray America did A, B, and C correctly therefore we are a GREAT country!" we're not that great, nobody is, nobody has been. We should set the bar much higher for ourselves and rather than celebrate our successes both major and minor, pay closer attention to our faults and failures, major and minor, because we have just as many of the latter as we do the former and pretending we're somehow the apex for human societies and the model for all civilization is absurd.

Nobody said we’re the apex of human society and the model for all civilization. So maybe we can both refrain from speaking for each other.

We can be proud of our accomplishments while also acknowledging our failures and striving to do better. This thread was about what did we do best and when was that and I think its ok have an opinion on it. If someone starts a thread on what was our worst time and what we did wrong I can come up with plenty on that too, I promise.

[gbear]

As I read through the "We were never great" thoughts, I am reminded of a poem, "The Dying Negro."

There is a part in it which seems could have been written by any of the good for some people crowd.

"let philosophy and science glory in a race of illustrious disciples, whose labours may dispel the gloom of fanaticism, and teach mankind whatever the Almighty has permitted them to know.—Here, while the delighted eye of presumption gazes with rapture, and pronounces the tablet perfect and eternal,—reverse the scene, and inscribe the mortifying lesson of human imbecility. Introduce commerce and prosperity spreading over the land, and enervating the minds of men with a secret, but swift infection. Let avarice and sensuality succeed to honor; faction and servitude invade the asylum of liberty; and manly reason, like a fettered lion, be dragged in triumph by fashion and caprice."

http://www.brycchancarey.com/slavery/dying.htm

The irony is the poem was written about England in 1773. We have come a long way since then, but it is interesting to note the sense of greatness being cheapened by the unmentioned part of our society has been around for quite some time. With that said, I don't think the thoughts longevity cheapens it. Rather, I think it speaks to an enduring truth. It's why we as a country have been at our greatest in universally shared trials and triumphs, few though they may be.

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

I disagree.

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/research/x35/x35_05.jpg

thats going to really improve the lives of average Americans. Def on the scale of the interstate highway project or getting a man to the moon.

[JMS]

Must admit it is always interesting to read your historical musings. You generally throw something completely wrong into your statements to go along with some accurate information. The only Soviet Jet Aircraft that was arguably superior to US Aircraft (from the same generation) was the Mig 15 and many will argue the F86 was superior (US Pilot proficiency allowed a 14-1 kill ratio despite the quality of the Mig 15).

Thank you, I do try an entertain... I don't always remember with 20 - 20 hind sight but let me try to support my position.

The Mig 15 (1949) was superior F86(1949) saber, It was lighter, had 40% more range, as well as a higher serviceable ceiling and it was more sophisticated being the first fighter with swept back wings, something the saber copied.



The MiG-15 was one of the first successful swept-wing jet fighters, and it achieved fame in the skies over Korea, where early in the war, it outclassed all straight-winged enemy fighters in daylight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-15


The Mig 17, and Mig 21 were superior fighters to the Phantom II, they were smaller, faster, harder to see and more manuverable planes designed purely as fighters. The Phantom(2 seater) was heavier and carried more weapons, ( 8 missiles to 2). The phantom suffers in comparison with pure fighters because the Phantom was a multi role aircraft which was forced on all three branches of the Military by secretary of defense Robert Macnamara as a cost cutting measure. The Phantom was used by the airforce, navy, and marines to support multiple roles. As a bomber, for close ground support, and as a fighter. The Migs were just interceptors. Originally and famously the Phantom's didn't have guns but relied on missiles alone. Unfortunately, the reliability of the early missiles in the Vietnam conflict was poor enough that Air Force pilots frequently found themselves in a turning battle with a more maneuverable MiG without a close-in weapon to utilize for the kill. So evenutally they were forced to added a gun to the Phantom. Latter in the war as US missiles improved in reliability, the Phantom pilots faced another problem, the rules of engagement called for visually identifying enemies before you could shoot them down. This effectively gave away one of the Phantom II's greatest advantages. It's missile advantage and superior radar.

Overall the Phantom II was a very versitle plane, and it highlighted the problem with using a multi role aircraft alone. Versitle at many things, but not the best at what it was primarily designed to do... Interceptor. It's the reason why we have two aircraft today... One an air superiority weapon ( F-15 which has been followed by F-22 ) and a multi role aircraft for versitility (F-18 which will be followed by the F-35 Lightning )....

Some interesting reads.


difficult weather conditions to unreliable missile armament to unequal rules of engagement, this book tells the story of the challenges faced by the F-4 and MiG-21 pilots. Using first-hand accounts wherever possible the author draws us into the dangerous world experienced by American and North Vietnamese pilots. Influential leaders and tacticians will be profiled to provide a comparative evaluation of their contrasting skills. This book will also reveal the technical specifications of each jet with an analysis of the weaponry, avionics and survival devices of the Phantom and MiG-21. The fighters' strengths and weaknesses will be compared also, including turn radius, performance at altitude, range and structural integrity. This was an intense and deadly duel between vastly different rivals. In the Phantom, a second crewmember and good radar compensated for the difficulty of providing command and control at long distances from the targets. However, the F-4's smoky engines and considerable bulk made it visible at much further distances than the small, clean MiG-21 and Phantoms were often hit by unseen MiG attacks. On the other hand, the F-4s eight-missile armament compared favorably with the two-missile provision of the MiG. Often pilot skill, if not luck, would be the determining factor between the smaller, faster MiG and bigger, better-gunned Phantom. First-person extracts will reflect on the dangers of these aerial duels while graphics based on records of engagement and technical manuals will illustrate the experience of air combat as they struggled to overcome their shortcomings and survive their deadly duels.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1846033160/3dgazo397-20






The Mig 25 was thought to be the best Mig Yet. The F-15 eagle was designed ( some would say over designed ) to compete with what our intelligence believed the Mig 25 could do.



In 1967 U.S. intelligence was surprised[8] to find that the Soviet Union was producing a large fighter aircraft, the MiG-25 'Foxbat'.[9] It was not known in the West at the time that the MiG-25 was designed as a high-speed interceptor, not an air superiority fighter,[10] so its primary asset was speed, not maneuverability. The MiG-25's huge tailplanes and vertical stabilizers (tail fins) hinted at a very maneuverable aircraft, which worried the Air Force that its performance might be better than its U.S. counterparts. In reality, the MiG's large fins and stabilators were necessary to prevent the aircraft from encountering inertia coupling in high-speed, high-altitude flight.

The F-4 Phantom II of the USAF and U.S. Navy was the only fighter with enough power, range, and maneuverability to be given the primary task of dealing with the threat of Soviet fighters while flying with visual engagement rules.[9] As a matter of policy, the Phantoms could not engage targets without positive visual identification, so they could not engage targets at long ranges, as designed. Medium-range AIM-7 Sparrow missiles, and to a lesser degree even the AIM-9 Sidewinder, were often unreliable and ineffective at close ranges where it was found that guns were often the only effective weapon.[11] The Phantom did not originally have a gun, but experience in Vietnam led to the addition of a gun. An external gun pod was tried and later the M61 Vulcan was integrated internally on the F-4E.




When first seen in reconnaissance photography, the large wing planform suggested an enormous and highly maneuverable fighter. This was during a period of time when U.S. design theories were also evolving towards higher maneuverability due to combat performance in the Vietnam War. The appearance of the MiG-25 sparked off serious concern in the West, and prompted dramatic increases in performance for the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle in late 1960s. The capabilities of the MiG-25 were better understood in 1976 when Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko defected in a MiG-25 to the United States via Japan. The large wing turned out to be due to the aircraft's very heavy weight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiG-25


---------- Post added July-24th-2012 at 12:56 PM ----------


thats going to really improve the lives of average Americans. Def on the scale of the interstate highway project or getting a man to the moon.

Both were very important.. The HW system was the huge improvement of the 1950's built by the Eisenhower administration who as a young officer was the first to take trucks across country in a convoy in the early 1900's.

But don't discount the Apollo space program's importance to our economy either. If you look at all the technology which came out of the Apollo and then look at our largest exports, ( computers, avionics, telecommunications ) we would not be the same country today without the space program either.

---------- Post added July-24th-2012 at 01:23 PM ----------


I think you might run into trouble if you use the Newsroom as a viable source of unbiased information. They err, imho, when they conflate "Tea Partiers" with the Republican part en masse. Two weeks back they called Tea Partiers no better than registered sex offenders. I don't know how to take that seriously.

I did a little research on this one because I didn't remember it...

What they did was show Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck making unsubstanciated mischaracterizations of an Obama state visit to India.. Claiming that his trip cost the US Taxpayer $200 million dollars per day... Typically these trips cost on order of $5 million dollars per day. Glenn Beck went so far as to claim 30 US warships, or 13% of the US Navy accompanied Obama on his state visit, totally just threw that in. The White house spokesman responded to the accusation saying "these numbers bare no resemblence to reality". At which time Michelle Bauchman reiterated the accusation saying in total the taxpayer will spend like 1.2 billion for Obama's visit...

The Newsroom show, after showing clips of each person making their wild accusations, The anchor said, "People who knowingly spread falsehoods should be forced to have warnings for the general public follow them around like child molesters do"... I don't think that equates them with child molesters so much but it does basically say what most Americans already realize, that these folks aren't reputable sources for news, and if you hear something from them, it's best to verify it independently before you repeat it. I don't know if I really have a problem with that.

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

Both were very important.. The HW system was the huge improvement of the 1950's built by the Eisenhower administration who as a young officer was the first to take trucks across country in a convoy in the early 1900's.

But don't discount the Apollo space program's importance to our economy either. If you look at all the technology which came out of the Apollo and then look at our largest exports, ( computers, avionics, telecommunications ) we would not be the same country today without the space program either.

apologies for my sarcasm not registering. I was saying that jet is not a "Big project" like the poster tried to suggest. (but then again, he may have been sarcastic too)

[No_Pressure]

This is what you said:

the Marshall plan could be seen as economic imperialism since through the plan we were creating nations which were dependent on our money for their recovery and survival just as nations under Soviet influence had become.

That’s drawing a pretty direct comparison. We did not subjugate other nations just as the Soviets, who were true imperialists, did. I wholeheartedly disagree with that.

No, we didn't engage in true imperialism like the Soviets did, that's why I said economic imperialism, and I stated that it COULD be seen as that. I only brought the god damn thing up because I have numerous friends in Germany and Austria who I've had this discussion with and some of them are divided about the benefits vs. underlying motives of things like the Marshall plan.


Well, at now there’s a qualifier. First of all, I’ve said several times we did what we did because it was in our best interest. However, I don’t think doing something that suits our own interest automatically makes it a bad something. I think that’s very flawed logic.

And, um, why would it make us look good?

You're putting words in my mouth again. I said it didn't make us great which is what YOU said it did in your original post. JMS asked you what you thought was great about America in the Cold War era and you said

"The Marshall Plan. The fact that a) during the second half of the 20th century we had an unprecedented amount of wealth and power and b) we gave some of it away to help other nations recover from the war and to stabilize the world and prevent another war like that from happening again. "

I responded that "There are some who would view the Marshall plan in a less than loving light". Not "THE MARSHALL PLAN IS BAD AND TERRIBLE AND MAKES US A HORRIBLE NATION!" as you seem to think I said. I can see how one could EASILY confuse the two statements, they're almost identical. Oh, and why would an economic program that suits our own purposes with the Soviets under the guise of altruistic generosity be thought of by onlookers as a good thing? Golly-gee, I just don't know.


Because that’s for the people of France and the Netherlands to address when people ask them about the cold war era.

Ignore it if you want to. You said the Marshall was something which was great about us. I said the Marshall plan directly funded colonial suppression for our recipients, which we knew about at the time. Not so great.


It wasn’t arrogance. It was the fact that we had everything. We had a stronger military and economy than the rest of the world put together. That was a fact, not some ‘Amurrica Git R’ Dun yeah!!!’ rallying cry. For us to sit on our hands while the rest of the world collapsed in on itself, again, would have been crazy. It wasn’t going to happen. The US belief in isolationism was over. WW2 ended that. It wasn’t because some rednecks started driving down the strip waving flags.

Could you quote me the part of my post where I said our foreign policy was dictated by ‘Amurrica Git R’ Dun yeah!!!’ rednecks? I said that carrying that attitude as citizens towards our own nation blinds us from a true analysis of ourselves and what we are, but I don't recall the part where I said rednecks created our interventionist policies. I said they were created by arrogance. The arrogance that we think everything has to do with us and that every other nation's varying internal problems are by extension our problems and require our intervention. The only time we ever successfully intervened was in Korea, though it is difficult to call an almost 60 year old cease fire rather than peace treaty a successful solution, I believe that the South Koreans are certainly happy with the state of affairs compared to the alternative therefore it was successful. Every other time we have intervened, whether it was on our own or as part of one of those UN Coalitions composed of 80%+ American policies haven't exactly been rousing successes.


Vietnam was a cluster****. The reason I didn’t address that is because I don’t disagree with you on that. What I do disagree with are its implications, that somehow a lost battle proves we didn’t win the war. In this case the Cold War. Or that one example of policy failure counters many other examples of success as proof that the policy was an overall bad one.

The Cold War was like war of the worlds. When all the aliens die at the end of the story it wasn't our losses or victories that won it for humanity, it was germs that took the aliens down from the inside. Communism and an economic race won the Cold War. The Soviet Union couldn't sustain a reasonable standard of living while still competing with our military might. It didn't have to do with which areas of the globe we tried to contain them as much as it had to do with the flaws of Communism as an economic system. It was only a matter of time for them, they had to either reform or risk major problems down the road, so they reformed.


And yet, had we taken our place on the international stage earlier there may not have been a WW2. And there may not have been a fight in which far more Americans, and citizens of the world, died than in oh-so-terrible Vietnam. We can play the ‘if’ game all day.

Ok, here's another "if". Perhaps if we had not been so eager to intervene in WW1 and had let those psychopaths bring that war to its natural conclusion, the conditions which eventually fueled Hitler's rise to power would never have existed and WW2 might not have happened.


I disagree. The USSR was very much our problem, whether we wanted it to be or not. Holding the power we did and ignoring the rest of the world, especially the second strongest nation with strong imperialist designs, would have been very counter to even the simplest interest of self-preservation.

Again, what were the Soviets going to do exactly? Invade Western Europe? They would have gotten a shower of nuclear bombs throughout the 40's since we were still helping rebuild. In the 50's they would have gotten that nuclear shower from England, by the 60's from France. What were we afraid of in Asia? Oh no! God forbid the Vietnamese become communists! That might...mean...that they're communists! Oh no!!!


If you are suggesting that because communism failed in Vietnam it was bound to fail everywhere I whole-heartedly disagree. Again, using one example to counter numerous others in which the injection of financial and military aid resulted in economic prosperity and stability which not only halted the increase of the Soviet sphere of influence but enabled us to develop strong allies and trading partners is not convincing. Soviet imperialism absolutely devastated Eastern Europe for half a century. Keeping it in check in order to rob the Soviets of more resources while strengthening our own was a sound policy. Do it the way we did, without having to actually fight a war against them, was brilliant. Yes there were proxy wars, but weighed against what could have happened had we taken them on directly, which is what has happened 99% of the time previous major world powers have squared off, the price was relatively small.

No, I'm saying that communism was bound to fail everywhere because it was simply bound to fail. The economic system those nations were modeling themselves after was catastrophic to themselves long term. Name one successful communist nation today. The Soviets spent themselves dry trying to figure out a way to make computers small enough to fit inside their jets with vacuum tube technology because they couldn't afford the R&D on solid state microchips like we could, amongst many other things, the Vietnamese couldn't feed themselves properly and have since adopted capitalist tendencies, and even the Chinese are participating in capitalist endeavors today, though that is a whole different can of worms entirely. It wasn't a lack of resources which took down the Soviets, in fact they had pretty much every resource imaginable in their massive country or through their unofficial comintern buddies. They couldn't afford to keep up with us because their system was flawed.

I didn't even say that we shouldn't have waged the cold war. I said that our policy was flawed, we fought a lot of battled which we shouldn't have or didn't even need to. We have always had allies and I'm not favoring total isolation. The only thing I intended to say in my original post was that the Marshall plan wasn't something to point to and feel warm and fuzzy about. It isn't some terrible thing, but it hardly makes our nation "great". Keeping the Soviets in check with regards to matters which directly affected our national security I.E. the Cuban missile crisis, I won't argue that those were good ideas. They were not containment policies either, they were national security issues.


Yeah, because like Vietnam, North Korea has reformed all by itself and has become a prosperous, thriving nation and peaceful member of the international community … oh wait.

They're on their way, and the best thing we can do as a nation is allow them to develop and advance as best they can without being tainted by outside influences that they don't want.


Well, uh, this thread is about when America was at it greatest, not whether or not it’s some amazing fabulous super-duper country. And I said we were at our greatest when we did, finally, enact civil rights. Of course it shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, which is why I didn’t say the 19th century was our greatest time, or pre-WW2 …

Nobody said we’re the apex of human society and the model for all civilization. So maybe we can both refrain from speaking for each other.

We can be proud of our accomplishments while also acknowledging our failures and striving to do better. This thread was about what did we do best and when was that and I think its ok have an opinion on it. If someone starts a thread on what was our worst time and what we did wrong I can come up with plenty on that too, I promise.

Naturally you are entitled to your opinions on when this nation was great. I obviously disagree, and I think it is also okay to disagree with someone's opinions on this board, especially when the original post in this thread did not limit posters to only saying positive things about our nation.

I don't think you're right and I don't agree with your opinion, as you obviously don't agree with mine. I don't think that we can say we were great or at our greatest or that we've "arrived" as I think it said in the OP since I don't think it has happened yet. We have plenty of things to be proud of, many accomplishments and advancements but we haven't arrived and nobody has. With every great thing we've done there are major mistakes or blemishes we've had along the way. I do think we can get there someday, but until we learn to provide responsibly for ourselves, live more peacefully, and recognize the failures in ourselves and our policies as a nation, we're not going to be what I would consider as great, and I'm not going to figuratively pat our country on the back and give it an "atta boy" when there is so much left to be achieved.

[JMS]

No, we didn't engage in true imperialism like the Soviets did, that's why I said economic imperialism, and I stated that it COULD be seen as that. I only brought the god damn thing up because I have numerous friends in Germany and Austria who I've had this discussion with and some of them are divided about the benefits vs. underlying motives of things like the Marshall plan..

How was the Marshal Plan "economic imperialism" ? Is it econoimmic imperialism when you apply for a home loan? Is it imperialism when you give a hungy man a fishing net or a cup of soup? The Marshal plan had a lot of loan forgiveness, grants, and nw loans entailed within it. Not so the United States could dominate Europe, but so the Soviet Union couldn't..... And contrary to your assertion the Soviets weren't going to move on Europe, they had already swallowed eastern europe in violations to their agreemeents with us, and made moves on Turkey, Iran, Japan, and Greece before the Marshal Plan was ever announced. They were also actively destablizing Itally. These actions were Harry Truman's stated reasoning for proposing the Marshal Plan. To thwart soviet agression.

Hell man we gave France massive Marshal Plan help,and they withdrew from NATO February 1959, a few years after they cashed the final check, and have generally been pains in our buttocks ever since....
Likewise we offered Marshal Plans to the Soviet Union, and they turned us down.... How is this any sort of imperialism?



Oh, and why would an economic program that suits our own purposes with the Soviets under the guise of altruistic generosity be thought of by onlookers as a good thing? Golly-gee, I just don't know.


Let's put this in perspective... Today Grece is really hurting, Itally, Spain, and several other countries aren't far behind. Germany who has an entire economy based on exporting goods is telling Greece to go curl up and die... No path to future economic growth, No daylight at the end of the tunnel. Suck it up and deal with your shrinking economy as best you can.... We aren't impressed with your 22% unemployment or the fact that communists and Fascists are winning elected office there.
Is Germany justified? Would it take some balls for Angela Merkel to go in and actually try to lend a hand to Grece and put them on a road to sustainability? Do you think SHE thinks it's in Germany's best interest to help her neighbor? ( Given eventually her hand will be forced and she will be forced to do so to Spain and Itally? ) Hell yeah it would take some balls.....I don't think any sort of argument would convince the German populous it was in their interest to bail out the rest of Europe, much less Greece.

Harry Truman's actions in 1948 were visionary, and incredible bold. He used America's resources to help Europe off it's knees at great expense and great personal and political danger to himself... Let's not forget Truman's approval ratings were at historic lows for most of his time in office after the honey moon, not that it bothered Truman much.

http://theinvisiblehand.typepad.com/.a/6a010535dbab09970c010536d465ac970b-pi

Between the time Truman announced the Marshal Plan and the time Congress passed it his appoval ratings dropped 20 points...

Can you imagine if Obama said, America today I crafted a plan to put Europe on a sustainable economic path. It will only cost us a trillion dollars and I'm confiident that we will get that money back in the coming decades in the form of trade, security, and payments on some of the non grant money I put into the package.... The Republicans would eat him alive.

[deejaydana]

I'm not so sure Merkel is as indifferent to the plight of Greece as you imply. I do like your thought out post here however JMS. I think the dilemma with the EU on a fundamental level is having people and govt's reach across cultures and, well govt's, to achieve a mutually agreeable end place.

[Henry]

I responded that "There are some who would view the Marshall plan in a less than loving light". Not "THE MARSHALL PLAN IS BAD AND TERRIBLE AND MAKES US A HORRIBLE NATION!" as you seem to think I said. I can see how one could EASILY confuse the two statements, they're almost identical.

And I responded with 'I understand that. I disagree.' I don't think that's where I drew my apparently incorrect conclusion.

But look, if I misjudged you and you don't think America or the Marshall plan sucks that's great. I'm happy to let that go.


Oh, and why would an economic program that suits our own purposes with the Soviets under the guise of altruistic generosity be thought of by onlookers as a good thing? Golly-gee, I just don't know.

Because ... it was good thing? Whether our motives were 100% pure or only 50% pure or 5% pure, it was a good thing. I'm sorry if some guys in Germany today hold a different opinion, but I disagree with them.


Ignore it if you want to. You said the Marshall was something which was great about us. I said the Marshall plan directly funded colonial suppression for our recipients, which we knew about at the time. Not so great.

No so great by France, I agree.


I said they were created by arrogance. The arrogance that we think everything has to do with us and that every other nation's varying internal problems are by extension our problems and require our intervention. The only time we ever successfully intervened was in Korea, though it is difficult to call an almost 60 year old cease fire rather than peace treaty a successful solution, I believe that the South Koreans are certainly happy with the state of affairs compared to the alternative therefore it was successful. Every other time we have intervened, whether it was on our own or as part of one of those UN Coalitions composed of 80%+ American policies haven't exactly been rousing successes.

Our ultimate goal was defeating the Soviet Union, therefore they were all successes.


The Cold War was like war of the worlds. When all the aliens die at the end of the story it wasn't our losses or victories that won it for humanity, it was germs that took the aliens down from the inside. Communism and an economic race won the Cold War. The Soviet Union couldn't sustain a reasonable standard of living while still competing with our military might. It didn't have to do with which areas of the globe we tried to contain them as much as it had to do with the flaws of Communism as an economic system. It was only a matter of time for them, they had to either reform or risk major problems down the road, so they reformed.

That's the thing about empires. If they don't spread they die.


Ok, here's another "if". Perhaps if we had not been so eager to intervene in WW1 and had let those psychopaths bring that war to its natural conclusion, the conditions which eventually fueled Hitler's rise to power would never have existed and WW2 might not have happened.

Our big mistake in WW1 was retreating back into ourselves after the war was over. Setting up the League of Nations, leading the world into an era of internationalism and then disappearing from the world stage and ignoring Europe as it began to eat itself alive.

Which, coincidentally, is why I didn't include WW1 on my list.


Again, what were the Soviets going to do exactly? Invade Western Europe?

Um ... yes? It wouldn't have been much of an invasion. Just move their armies in and stay there, which is what they did in Eastern Europe. No country in Western Europe was even close to being able to keep them from doing that. Not even close. Maybe the UK. But I doubt it.


They would have gotten a shower of nuclear bombs throughout the 40's since we were still helping rebuild.

Who had a shower of bombs in the 40s? in 1945 we had 2 and we used them both. In 1946 we had 9. In 1947 we had 13. Of course back then we would have had to fly them to their targets for them to be effective, which wouldn't have been a given. The Soviets had withstood operation Barbarossa. They would have handled a few nuked cities. And of course by 1949 they had the bomb too.


In the 50's they would have gotten that nuclear shower from England, by the 60's from France.

Funding from the Marshall Plan ended in 1951, and all other funding in 1953. Clearly England and France had become self sufficient by then.


What were we afraid of in Asia? Oh no! God forbid the Vietnamese become communists! That might...mean...that they're communists! Oh no!!!

Let's make a deal: I'll stop saying you say America sucks if you stops saying I say intervention in Vietnam was a great thing.

By the way, Vietnam wasn't part of the Marshall Plan. For future reference. :)


I didn't even say that we shouldn't have waged the cold war. I said that our policy was flawed, we fought a lot of battled which we shouldn't have or didn't even need to.

That's true about every war ever waged ever by any nation that's ever fought a war. That doesn't mean you can't look at the victories as good, or even great things.


We have always had allies and I'm not favoring total isolation. The only thing I intended to say in my original post was that the Marshall plan wasn't something to point to and feel warm and fuzzy about. It isn't some terrible thing, but it hardly makes our nation "great". Keeping the Soviets in check with regards to matters which directly affected our national security I.E. the Cuban missile crisis, I won't argue that those were good ideas. They were not containment policies either, they were national security issues.

That's fine. I still disagree with that.


]They're on their way, and the best thing we can do as a nation is allow them to develop and advance as best they can without being tainted by outside influences that they don't want.

They are on their way? We are talking about North Korea here right?

NK is a freaking nightmare. The worst country in the world. Personally I'm glad it's half the size it could have been right now.


Naturally you are entitled to your opinions on when this nation was great. I obviously disagree, and I think it is also okay to disagree with someone's opinions on this board, especially when the original post in this thread did not limit posters to only saying positive things about our nation.

I don't think you're right and I don't agree with your opinion, as you obviously don't agree with mine. I don't think that we can say we were great or at our greatest or that we've "arrived" as I think it said in the OP since I don't think it has happened yet. We have plenty of things to be proud of, many accomplishments and advancements but we haven't arrived and nobody has. With every great thing we've done there are major mistakes or blemishes we've had along the way. I do think we can get there someday, but until we learn to provide responsibly for ourselves, live more peacefully, and recognize the failures in ourselves and our policies as a nation, we're not going to be what I would consider as great, and I'm not going to figuratively pat our country on the back and give it an "atta boy" when there is so much left to be achieved.

I don't really disagree with much of any of this. Hell, in my first post I said 21st century America has been uninspiring. I don't think I've said we've arrived either. Pretty much why I said the 20th century instead. :)

[JMS]

I'm not so sure Merkel is as indifferent to the plight of Greece as you imply. I do like your thought out post here however JMS. I think the dilemma with the EU on a fundamental level is having people and govt's reach across cultures and, well govt's, to achieve a mutually agreeable end place.

Actually I think Merkel is very indifferent to Greece. It's Spain, Italy and maybe France whch is going to challenge Merkel because while Greces is like 4% of the EU's gdp, these other countries behind Greece are much more likely to impact Germany's economy if they are allowed to implode.

Heard on the radio this evening that Germany's economy thought to be impervious to the broader european slow down is beginning to show signs of stress. moodies is talking about down gradeing Germany... Whooooo Hooooo as US government bonds trade at near record lows as again capital is flowing into the US as a safe haven...

I'll go further than sayhing Merkel doesn't care about Greece... If Obama or the any politiicans in this country had any balls they would step into the European debt crisis and help work out a solution. The US is borrowing money today at what 1% interest, bellow 1% interest?, Greece Spain at about 17%? There is definitely a role for the US in resolving this crisis. European troubles aren't going to do the US economy any good in the long term, and where the hell do we get off sitting around watching Europe implode like this without even lifting a finger. If we had Truman's vision, bals and constitution to stand up for what he thinks is right, we would be coming up with a solution and financing it on our dime trusting what's good for Europe, is ultimately good for us too. Like Truman did and like Wilson did before him.

[deejaydana]

Actually I think Merkel is very indifferent to Greece. It's Spain, Italy and maybe France whch is going to challenge Merkel because while Greces is like 4% of the EU's gdp, these other countries behind Greece are much more likely to impact Germany's economy if they are allowed to implode.

Heard on the radio this evening that Germany's economy thought to be impervious to the broader european slow down is beginning to show signs of stress. moodies is talking about down gradeing Germany... Whooooo Hooooo as US government bonds trade at near record lows as again capital is flowing into the US as a save haven...

I'll go further than that... If Obama or the any politiicans in this country had any balls they would step into the European debt crisis and help work out a solution. European troubles aren't going to do the US economy any good in the long term, and where the hell do we get off sitting around watching Europe implode like this without even lifting a finger. If we had Truman's vision, we would be coming up with a solution and financing it on our dime trusting what's good for Europe, is ultimately good for us too.

Well while that last part is noble I have to wonder how financially viable that really is for us. Do you think we could or should step in there? If so to what degree and where do we pull money from here to help them out?

[JMS]

Well while that last part is noble I have to wonder how financially viable that really is for us. Do you think we could or should step in there? If so to what degree and where do we pull money from here to help them out?


I think if you want to be a world leader, you lead. We are a great nation and we should expect great things from ourselves. As foreign capital flows into our boarders due to European troubles, why can't we use our economic prestige to extend reasonable interest ratest to countries in Europe.... We borrow money at what bellow 1% interest from global money guys looking for a safe haven, why can't we use some of that cash to let some of these smaller European countries refinance? It's not like foreign money managers are going to sock away all their money in Red China if we do..

Greece, Spain, Itally are not in trouble because they can't afford their debt. They are in trouble because they can't afford to pay 17% interest on that debt. We could do something about that.....Hell we could charge them 3% and still come out looking like Hero's. Siiiigh, not during an election year though I guess.

[zoony]

Greece, Spain, Itally are not in trouble because they can't afford their debt. They are in trouble because they can't afford to pay 17% interest on that debt. We could do something about that..... Siiiigh, not during an election year though I guess.


What would you suggest Obama do?

[deejaydana]

I think if you want to be a world leader, you lead. We are a great nation and we should expect great things from ourselves. As foreign capital flows into our boarders, why can't we use our economic prestige to extend reasonable interest ratest to countries in Europe.... It's not like foreign money managers are going to sock away all their money in Red China if we do..

Greece, Spain, Itally are not in trouble because they can't afford their debt. They are in trouble because they can't afford to pay 17% interest on that debt. We could do something about that..... Siiiigh, not during an election year though I guess. I'm not saying we can't do it. I also think a leader proposing that right now in the run up to the election would get just mercilessly hammered on all sides. Our financial issues are really as dire as much of Europe and they will be accelerating and soon. I think most residents here would choose addressing them prior to solving Europe's woes. Regardless ALL reform has to come with teeth attached to be meaningful.

[Predicto]

This nation started on great principles and we have always had elements of greatness within us. Sometimes we fall short of our promise, as do all nations. We're all made up of human beings, after all.

Of course, I don't think there is any value in yammering about American Exceptionalism, unless your purpose is to make other nations hate us.

[JMS]

What would you suggest Obama do?

The large money managers are basically sticking it to Greece because Greece is too small to protect itself. Thus loans which were 4% two years ago are today 15% - 17% and Grece can't aford it. So the Greeks suffer through meaningless austerity programs seeking crumbs from Germany but are given no path to solvency. Meanwhile radicals are taking over Greeces government and their GDP is contracting and folks are becoming systemically unemployed.

The same money manaters who are dieing to lend us money as a save haven for what is about to happen in Europe, We could borrow that money and make it available to Greece at reasonable rates and give them a path towards solvency.. Sure they'll still have to do auterity programs, but their GDP would stop contracting and there would be a light at the end of the tunnel other than a train.

We could do what Germany should be doing. Not that I fault Germany here. Germany is looking out for #!, even if it kills her. We traditionally are a little better at looking at the complete picture..

A 21st century marshal plan if you would.

There really isn't that much risk to use to do this because as far as the money managers are concerned we are the only game in town. Japan is twice as worse off as we are... The EU is on it's knees, Who's going to let the Red Chinese watch their retirement account? Nope we are the only game in town and that's why the interest / yeild we are paying on our bonds has dropped to the lowest rates since 2009 and folks are still knocking down our doors to buy them.

[Predicto]

The large money managers are basically sticking it to Greece because Greece is too small to protect itself. Thus loans which were 4% two years ago are today 15% - 17% and Grece can't aford it.

I also suspect that the money managers are charging 15% percent to compensate for the serious risk they face: that the debt will never be repaid.

[JMS]

This nation started on great principles and we have always had elements of greatness within us. Sometimes we fall short of our promise, as do all nations. We're all made up of human beings, after all.

Of course, I don't think there is any value in yammering about American Exceptionalism, unless your purpose is to make other nations hate us.

Well screw them then.... How many times do we have to save the world for folks not to think of us as Exceptional.. WWI, WWII, Cold War, Hell the 2008 banking crisis.. We didn't pull a Germany and say hey we are bailing out only American Banks... We bailed out the Swiss, and German, and French banks too. We didn't cut off our stimulus packages to just American Comanies, We let foreign nations participate too.

I'm sorry that's pretty GD exceptional, pretty GD big picture.... I frankly don't care if the French hate us... the french hate everybody.. It's part of their charm..

I remember getting in a debate with this chick from the former soviet union about how America bombed Japan at the end of the war to be dirty SOB's and get one shot in before Japan surrendered... This is your run of the mill soviet era propaganda which our smithsonian administrator tried to include in the Enola Gay's 50's aniversary... I argued until I was blue in the face with her, as only I can do, and didn't crack the facade of her graspe of what occured. Then a buddy of mine older guy, from Taiwan chimes in and talks about Japan's occupation of his homeland and what happenned when the US started Bombing Taiwan.... He said the US would sit back and watch the Japanese build a ship, or a locomotive, or a rail line, until it was nearly complete.. then they would fly over and drop notes to the Taiwan workers... " we will bomb this object at 2pm tomorrow so besure to stay home tomorrow".... then we would do that..... My buddy who lived through the Taiwan occupation as a boy basically supported my position and talked about how the US fed the island after the war and rebuilt the economy.... That's very impressive stuff, especially when you look and see what's going on in Europe today... Every man for himself type crap.. Hell yeah we've been very exceptional in our history... The French can suck eggs.

[deejaydana]

I also suspect that the money managers are charging 15% percent to compensate for the serious risk they face: that the debt will never be repaid.

That's the rub for them now. Are there willing lenders out there? Of course there are but no money manager in their right mind would lend this country money on anything but agressive terms. Much of their fate has been brought on themselves unfortunately and Germany or anyone else wants to feel that they'll see some of their money back at some future date versus none at all. All solutions at this point involve pain.

[JMS]

I also suspect that the money managers are charging 15% percent to compensate for the serious risk they face: that the debt will never be repaid.

IT's more like a vampire trying to soak out every last drop of blood from it's victem before it drops the carcus on the side of the road and flys on to it's next unsuspsecting prey..

There is no Risk in loaning money to Greece.. Everybody understands Greece has no ability to pay back it's debt. The debt will nver be repaid, not at 15% interest. They (Germany, France) know that. If it's hard for the Greeks to make the payments today it will be harder for them to pay in six months when their GDP is 10% smaller, or the next year when their GDP is 15% smaller than that. Germany and France forgiving half Greeces debt is meaningless when Greeces GDP's contraction already eclipses that. I mean who's kiddding who... Greece's economy is contracting at 5.5 to 6.0 percent a quarter..
http://www.dailyfx.com/forex/market_alert/2012/02/14/Euro_Tumbles_after_Greek_GDP_Shows_Sharper_Contrac tion.html


Greece is not going to pay back Jack unless she can turn around her economy and her European helpers aren't giving her a path to do that. That's the point.

Greece needs to restructure her debt and get enough new loans to get that thing growing again.... A new loan designed to allow her to make the next 17% interest payment as Germany is offering just doesn't get it. That kind of help isn't about Greece, it's all about Germany trying to look out for German banks.

[Predicto]

Well screw them then.... How many times do we have to save the world for folks not to think of us as Exceptional.. WWI, WWII, Cold War, Hell the 2008 banking crisis.. We didn't pull a Germany and say hey we are bailing out only American Banks... We bailed out the Swiss, and German, and French banks too. We didn't cut off our stimulus packages to just American Comanies, We let foreign nations participate too.

I'm sorry that's pretty GD exceptional, pretty GD big picture.... I frankly don't care if the French hate us... the french hate everybody.... I remember getting in a debate with this chick from the former soviet union about how America bombed Japan at the end of the war to be dirty SOB's and get one shot in before Japan surrendered... This is your run of the mill soviet era propaganda which our smithsonian administrator tried to include in the Enola Gay's 50's aniversary... I argued until I was blue in the face with her, as only I can do, and didn't crack the facade of her graspe of what occured. Then a buddy of mine older guy, from Taiwan chimes in and talks about Japan's occupation of his homeland and what happenned when the US started Bombing Taiwan.... He said the US would sit back and watch the Japanese build a ship, or a locomotive, or a rail line, until it was nearly complete.. then they would fly over and drop notes to the Taiwan workers... " we will bomb this object at 2pm tomorrow so besure to stay home tomorrow".... then we would do that..... My buddy who lived through the Taiwan occupation as a boy basically supported my position and talked about how the US fed the island after the war and rebuilt the economy.... That's very impressive stuff, especially when you look and see what's going on in Europe today... Every man for himself type crap.. Hell yeah we've been very exceptional in our history... The french can suck eggs.

Some would say that the most exceptional thing about the US is the exceptional width of the two oceans that have uniquely protected us throughout out history from the other powers of the world, and the way that this has allow us to concentrate on getting exceptionally rich. :whoknows:

[deejaydana]

Some would say that the most exceptional thing about the US is the exceptional width of the two oceans that have uniquely protected us throughout out history from the other powers of the world, and the way that this has allow us to concentrate on getting exceptionally rich. :whoknows:

I think this is a mistake. America has been an inspiration for countless immigrants who (rightly) viewed this country as a beacon and a country that allowed its citizens to rise above their given circumstances. I think if there's any negativity attached to our country it's where we've wandered in a military sense (which hasn't always been a bad thing but that 'road of good intentions' maxim applies at times). People abroad DO believe in American exceptionalism. I've lived in enough foreign countries to have run into the sentiment quite often.

[JMS]

Some would say that the most exceptional thing about the US is the exceptional width of the two oceans that have uniquely protected us throughout out history from the other powers of the world, and the way that this has allow us to concentrate on getting exceptionally rich. :whoknows:

Well they don't know what they are talking about do they... We fought a pretty GDB civil war to ensure our peace, I mean wasn't that why we fought the civil war in the first place? Lincoln said as much., and we have had alot more gifts than just large oceans to be thankful for.

I wouldn't deny any assertian which claims we are fortunate. I would however point out that on many occassions used our good fortune for the benifit of everybody. I'll also freely admit having a big picture/ long view has worked out very well for us as wall.. I don't deny that; and yet we still see Germany's ( me me me ) myopic view of foreign poiicy the previlent view rather than being willing to step up and do the right thing, even when it's in their interest to do so....

[Predicto]

I think this is a mistake. America has been an inspiration for countless immigrants who (rightly) viewed this country as a beacon and a country that allowed its citizens to rise above their given circumstances. I think if there's any negativity attached to our country it's where we've wandered in a military sense (which hasn't always been a bad thing but that 'road of good intentions' maxim applies at times). People abroad DO believe in American exceptionalism. I've lived in enough foreign countries to have run into the sentiment quite often.

I actually agree with you in part. We have been very lucky in our geography and resources, and we have been a beacon to the world about the American Dream (that is not a true as it once was, of course) and we have a great principle with this idea of a government limited in its powers vis-a-vis individual rights.

However, as I said before, I don't see the point in crowing about American Exceptionalism or making our politicians publicly profess their belief in it - that just backfires on us. It would be really exceptional if we could come across as a little less arrogant.

[zoony]

Some would say that the most exceptional thing about the US is the exceptional width of the two oceans that have uniquely protected us throughout out history from the other powers of the world, and the way that this has allow us to concentrate on getting exceptionally rich. :whoknows:

Why does Mexico suck?

Oh yah, that's our fault too

It's coming into focus now

[deejaydana]

However, as I said before, I don't see the point in crowing about American Exceptionalism or making our politicians publicly profess their belief in it - that just backfires on us. It would be really exceptional if we could come across as a little less arrogant.

It's a double-edged sword really. I think citizens want a leader or leaders who DO think the country is above average. The arrogance I've seen can more capably be described as presumptuousness as we think we can install or establish "democracy" within countries that have no history of it to begin with. It's noble for sure but we've seen it has less than stellar results.

[zoony]

The large money managers are basically sticking it to Greece because Greece is too small to protect itself. Thus loans which were 4% two years ago are today 15% - 17% and Grece can't aford it. So the Greeks suffer through meaningless austerity programs seeking crumbs from Germany but are given no path to solvency. Meanwhile radicals are taking over Greeces government and their GDP is contracting and folks are becoming systemically unemployed.

The same money manaters who are dieing to lend us money as a save haven for what is about to happen in Europe, We could borrow that money and make it available to Greece at reasonable rates and give them a path towards solvency.. Sure they'll still have to do auterity programs, but their GDP would stop contracting and there would be a light at the end of the tunnel other than a train.


It's not the money managers, its a market reaction to Greece's solvency. Greece borrowed on the EU's credit like a newleywed couple in Target with the lights off. As it has become more and more clear that Greece will be unable to repay their debts the interest rates have taken a corresponding turn.

Do you think the big money managers arbitrarily set rates?

This is the same kind of thinking that got us into trouble in 2008... that things are just a liquidity problem. Give everyone bigger piles of money and things will be just fine.

[JMS]

It's not the money managers, its a market reaction to Greece's solvency. Greece borrowed on the EU's credit like a newleywed couple in Target with the lights off.


That's not true. The EU doesn't issue bonds. The EU doesn't borrow money. That's the big debate now, they are stronger if they pool together. If they pool together then have a little of the protection we have. Then they would be the worlds largest economy. But they don't pool debt, they don't issue Bonds. That's why Greee is effectively on their own. But only kinda. Because the banks which have loaned them money are the German and French banks. Germany has no wish to see their banks go under due to Greek bad debt. So Germany loans Greece the money to make payments at 17 % interest, but not give Grece a way out from under. All the Asterity measures in the world won't help greece is they cause her GDP to shrink.



As it has become more and more clear that Greece will be unable to repay their debts the interest rates have taken a corresponding turn.


What turn? Why would you charge 17% interest on money you know that Greece can't pay back? Cause you want to squeeze every last dime out of them before you write them off. That's the point. Nobody in this end game is trying to actually solve the probleml they are all looking out for #1.




Do you think the big money managers arbitrarily set rates?


Arbitrarily? no, but it's not based upon a formula as your assert. IT's not that Greece is bad, but Spain, Italy, and France are good. IT's that Greece is small and powerless, and can be written off without killing the patient. Spain, Italy, and maybe France will get different deals, realistic deals because if any of them died they would impact everybody in Europe....



This is the same kind of thinking that got us into trouble in 2008... that things are just a liquidity problem. Give everyone bigger piles of money and things will be just fine.

Actually this is the same kind of thinking which Truman employed when he saved Europe from Communism under the marshal plan. Big picture thinking. What's good for Europe is good for the US. More than that it's leveraging the banks need for access to our debt; against their willingness to drop greece off a cliff. It's the opposite in 2008. In 2008 we bailed out the banks with tax payer credit. In this case we would twist the arms of the banks to get more realistic with Greece ensuring they would have a growing GDP which would allow Greeks to have a reasonable employment rate and hope for the future.. so we could keep the wing nuts out of government.

[Jumbo]

It happened again, today (America's greatness). I scored an amazing deal (way super cheap but in new condition) on some used high-end speakers for a third-zone system---on CL of all places.

[JMS]

It's a double-edged sword really. I think citizens want a leader or leaders who DO think the country is above average. The arrogance I've seen can more capably be described as presumptuousness as we think we can install or establish "democracy" within countries that have no history of it to begin with. It's noble for sure but we've seen it has less than stellar results.

ABOVE AVERAGE??? We have the largest most diverse economy in the world, We have the oldest and most prestegious republic in the world, We have consistantly engaged and accomplished tasks no other country could do. I think we are a little more than just above average.

I don't think their is anything wrong with a little pride in your country. Just so you aren't arrogant, cause we have also had our set backs failures and down right bad behavior.

---------- Post added July-24th-2012 at 10:04 PM ----------

Predicto the point of this thread is although we have a fairly conservative bunch on this board; almost nobody considers the guilded age our high water mark. Where as I think that's exactly where the Koch brothers would put it.

[deejaydana]

ABOVE AVERAGE??? We have the largest most diverse economy in the world, We have the oldest and most prestegious republic in the world, We have consistantly engaged and accomplished tasks no other country could do. I think we are a little more than just above average.

I don't think their is anything wrong with a little pride in your country. Just so you aren't arrogant, cause we have also had our set backs failures and down right bad behavior..

I'm not sure you got my gist there, I'm fairly sure I WAS making a strong case for our country amigo.

[artmonkforHOF]

I picked coming out of depression and WW II. IMO, the times after that where advertised as great, but set the nation on the path for bad things that are slowly starting to show their ugly heads.

Maybe a little off topic, but you hear the political B.S. of making America Great again, or get back to when times where good, like life could be as prosperous as it was 30, 40 or however many years ago. That mindset has to stop, those times are not coming back and they weren't really all that great in the first place. What America needs to do is move forward, not cling onto past glories, instead try to creat new ones. Post war 1960's boom time economy is not coming back, but that doesn't mean things are going to be bad, just different. Change is hard, but holding onto the past only prolongs the suffering.

[nonniey]

ABOVE AVERAGE??? We have the largest most diverse economy in the world, We have the oldest and most prestegious republic in the world, We have consistantly engaged and accomplished tasks no other country could do. I think we are a little more than just above average.

I don't think their is anything wrong with a little pride in your country. Just so you aren't arrogant, cause we have also had our set backs failures and down right bad behavior.

---------- Post added July-24th-2012 at 10:04 PM ----------

Predicto the point of this thread is although we have a fairly conservative bunch on this board; almost nobody considers the guilded age our high water mark. Where as I think that's exactly where the Koch brothers would put it.

We have a fairly conservative bunch on this board? Really? (Well maybe when it comes to thinking the country is great).

[zoony]

That's not true. The EU doesn't issue bonds. The EU doesn't borrow money. That's the big debate now, they are stronger if they pool together. If they pool together then have a little of the protection we have. Then they would be the worlds largest economy. But they don't pool debt, they don't issue Bonds. That's why Greee is effectively on their own. But only kinda. Because the banks which have loaned them money are the German and French banks. Germany has no wish to see their banks go under due to Greek bad debt. So Germany loans Greece the money to make payments at 17 % interest, but not give Grece a way out from under. All the Asterity measures in the world won't help greece is they cause her GDP to shrink.



What turn? Why would you charge 17% interest on money you know that Greece can't pay back? Cause you want to squeeze every last dime out of them before you write them off. That's the point. Nobody in this end game is trying to actually solve the probleml they are all looking out for #1.




Arbitrarily? no, but it's not based upon a formula as your assert. IT's not that Greece is bad, but Spain, Italy, and France are good. IT's that Greece is small and powerless, and can be written off without killing the patient. Spain, Italy, and maybe France will get different deals, realistic deals because if any of them died they would impact everybody in Europe....



Actually this is the same kind of thinking which Truman employed when he saved Europe from Communism under the marshal plan. Big picture thinking. What's good for Europe is good for the US. More than that it's leveraging the banks need for access to our debt; against their willingness to drop greece off a cliff. It's the opposite in 2008. In 2008 we bailed out the banks with tax payer credit. In this case we would twist the arms of the banks to get more realistic with Greece ensuring they would have a growing GDP which would allow Greeks to have a reasonable employment rate and hope for the future.. so we could keep the wing nuts out of government.


You really owe it to yourself to smarten up on this topic, especially prior to becoming entrenched in your opinions. You are wrong on pretty much every point.

For instance, I am aware that the EU doesn't issue bonds. That in no way makes what I said untrue. Your homework assignment is to find out why

[JMS]

We have a fairly conservative bunch on this board? Really? (Well maybe when it comes to thinking the country is great).

I've been posting here for more than 10 years. During the bush years it was pretty hard to find another poster willing to criticize him. It was pretty much me and Predicto...
I think this board is fairly conservative.

And really the point of the thread wasn't to erupt a discussion on American exceptionalism. The point of the thread was to identify when most folks on this board thought the country was being well run, when they were
most proud of out governments actions. This is because it seems the tea party or activist wing of the GOP is really trying to steer us back to a gilded age and I was wondering who considered that to be our golden era.

Most people here seem to have picked accomplishments undertaken when moderate left leaning leaders where in charge. Which surprised me. So maybe your original point was correct.

.

---------- Post added July-25th-2012 at 11:59 AM ----------


You really owe it to yourself to smarten up on this topic, especially prior to becoming entrenched in your opinions. You are wrong on pretty much every point.

For instance, I am aware that the EU doesn't issue bonds. That in no way makes what I said untrue. Your homework assignment is to find out why

I apologize if I misunderstood and mis-characterized your position.
You said,



It's not the money managers, its a market reaction to Greece's solvency.


The money managers are the market here right.



Greece borrowed on the EU's credit like a newleywed couple in Target with the lights off.


And then I said that is not true, Greece borrowed on their own credit, not the EU's; The EU has no credit, issues no bonds and further this frames an ongoing debate. The EU could raise significant funds if they did issue bonds and do what the United States did under George Washington where the federal government ( as proposed by Alexander Hamilton) assumed the Revolutionary War debt of the states. Mostly Northern States as the south paid for the revolutionary war as they went.

this compromise between Hamilton and Jefferson brokered by Washington is how the US Capital ended up in DC, between two southern states. and not NY as it was when Washington was President.

(*NY capital of the US from 1785 until 1790)


If I may further characterize your point rather than getting off on this tangential line of EU Credit.... Your position as I understand it is; Greece made their own bed, now let them sleep in it. Which is a perfectly valid point, and one which mirrors Germany's position on the matter. My point is that Harry Truman when faced with the same decision in 1948 made a different decision, and his decision historically turned out to be much better for us... I'm not saying we assume all of Greeces debt, ( although I will note that Germany/France has already assumed half of it). I'm saying we need to give Greece hope, a chance to fix their own problem and that the current deals on the table don't do that and will only hurt Greece further by increasing already bad unemployment, and contract their GDP...



Greek debt crisis: how did the Greek economy get into such a mess?

Like many countries, the Greek government relies on borrowed money to balance its books. The recession has made this harder to achieve, because tax revenues are falling just as welfare payments start to rise. It doesn't help that, in Greece, tax evasion is commonplace and pension rights are unusually generous – but, to be fair, using public spending to even out the bumps of the global downturn is what most large developed economies are trying to do right now.

Unfortunately, investors have lost confidence in the Greek government's ability to walk this tightrope – so they have been demanding ever higher rates of interest to compensate for the risk that they might not get their money back. The higher its borrowing costs, the harder it is for the Greek economy to grow itself out of trouble.

Events began to spiral out of control when credit rating agencies downgraded Greek government debt to "junk" status, pushing the cost of borrowing so high that the country effectively had its international overdraft facility cancelled overnight. Fearing bankruptcy, Greece had to turn instead to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – the world's lender of last resort – for up to 120bn euros of replacement lending.

But political opposition in Germany and IMF orthodoxy in Washington demands that the rescue package comes with strings attached: a tough series of public sector cuts designed to reassure international investors that the government can become creditworthy again.

The snag is, this traditional market response is complicated by Greece's membership of the single-currency euro club. This means it cannot stimulate growth by devaluing its currency, and nor can it cut interest rates any further, which would help, because these are decided by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Instead, the public sector cuts are almost certain to deepen the Greek recession, reducing tax revenues and making it even harder to service the debts in future.
...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/06/greek-debt-crisis-economy

[greenspandan]

i voted "all of the above" and "none of the above."

our founding fathers created a radically progressive blueprint for self-governance, a blueprint that worked so well that the citizens of this nation have built the united states into an economic, cultural, and political juggernaut. our success has made us a model for the world. all the while, for the most part, we have been expanding the scope of the freedoms and rights outlined in the bill of rights. we have successfully defeated fascism, overcome institutionalized racism, and have lead the world in technological innovation for a century.

And during every proud historic triumph or success, there are simultaneous horrors and disgraces for which we are directly complicit. one example among myriad others: the dark truth is that much of our wealth and power was built on the back of slavery. and another: as our heroic troops were liberating Europe, American citizens of Japanese decent were being forced into American concentration camps. how many democracies have we toppled; how many tyrants have we propped up? we currently are the last industrialized nation to not see health care as a basic human need, and roughly half of us still harbor ugly homophobic prejudices.

[JMS]

Nice Post Greenspandan

[Chump Bailey]

Nice Post Greenspandan

Sure is...

Best summation I've seen yet.