Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
His argument is against the unjust use of war, not any and all war. For some reason, you cannot comprehend that. YOu choose to focus on socialist red herrings instead of actual content.
There's no such thing as a "just" war. One of the two sides is wrong. Usually that's the side that started the war, though there are possible exceptions. Was the American revolution started by the English or by the colonists, for example?
He didn't say they were either. More strawmanning.
Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
He didn't say they were either. More Strawmanning.
He didn't say they were either what?
Lets cut to the chase. Wars happen. To claim that the termination of each war is automatically the initiation of preparation for the next war is to demonstrate a lack of comprehension of human nature that boggles the mind.
The only country I know of that's never had much war in it's history is Canada, and that's because they've never had to defend themselves. Who else? Mexico got invaded by the French, other than that, they've been picking fights with the big kid on the block for some reason or other.
The Soviet Union? They made a deal to split Poland up with Hitler, and kept it after the war. They're the reason Afghanistan is such a mess today.
England? France? Germany? All those other european countries? Until WWII, those ratholes squabbled more than ten coyotes gathered round a dead skunk. All the rest of the countries of the world, the same.
War is the state of mankind. To single the United States out when we've not fought one war of aggression is an amazing distortion of history. Yes. I said "not one". Zinn is nothing but a propagandist and a revisionist, and his works are definitely to be read only when one is studying disinformation techniques.
Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
You aren't actually stupid enough to make such a comment about just war theory, are you? Really... you get exposed to a basic ethics course in college, correct? When you actually learn about concepts in something called "ethics," get back to me. Saying there is no such thing shows you have no qualifications to discuss it. Haha. I didn't know I was dealing with someone who was uneducated. Sorry. I will tone down the logic for ya.
No. I'm not stupid enough to make such a comment. I'm honest enough.
Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
Well, according to your comprehension of the material, which doesn't seem very deep, he's useless, but in reality, not so. He's a pretty good refresher after reading the standard textbook propaganda bleeting out how great the USA is about everything as if it's some beacon of light and everyone else sucks. He's also far from anti-american, and this Anti-American argument is bullshit bleeted out by drone-highschoolers thinking any criticism or against-the-gradient views are anti-american. Don't go with the flow? You're anti-american! You may have been brainwashed into thinking that Pro-War, Pro-Administration equates to Pro-America, but they don't. He actually is quite good, if you were to stop merciliessly strawmanning him for a second.
You should try arguing your points, defining your terms, establishing your positions before you burn your hayfield and forget that the creek ran dry.
Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
In doing so, you completely miss the entirety of his essay's context and purpouse. He wasn't writing against America, rather in support of it and on behalf of Veterans on Veterans Day. He was honouring them, and he got quite a bit of praise from the "Americans" whom you think he is somehow "against." You, on the other hand, from the ethics comment, seem to have the college education of a non-accredited university.
Oh. I'm a veteran. Why didn't I feel honored that the country I served was being called a war-monger? Must be something wrong with me. Not.
Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
And no, they weren't screwed at the peace conference only because Wilson was sick.
No, but it sure didn't help any. They were mainly screwed at the peace conference because their Navy had turned commie and deserted, their army was defeated, and they had no resources left, leaving them with no means to resume hostilities and thus no leverage at the bargaining table.
Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
1. America had no business in the war and only made it worse for Germany by even getting invovled.
That's the first intelligent thing you've said. Who thought that up for you?
Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
Sadly, the treaty wasn't harsh ENOUGH as it should have been, and France and the former Entente ony went part way in screwing them over, but not enough so they could never rise up again and use that attempt to dick tem over in Nazi rhetoric over a decade later. The end of WW1 didn't end anything. It merely created a new war later on to finish the first.
And it looks like you started doing your own thinking again. You probably shouldn't do that on your own until you get your training wheels back from the shop. That was the most absurd thing I've ever read about the end of WWI.
The hostility of the Germans after the war to the peace treaty was enhanced because the Kaiser lied to them throughout about the course of the war. The sudden loss came as a terrible shock and the word "betrayal" never stopped echoing through the Weimar Republic.
The leaders elected to head the Republic were either royalists wishing for a return of the Hohenzollern monarchy or others seeking the end of the republic for their own ends.
The Weimar government inflated the internal currency horrendously to erase internal debt, wreaking havoc on an already war ravaged nation. This was blamed on reparations, it was blamed on jews, it was blamed on the international community.
The reparations were too harsh, and did arouse legitimate in Germany, especially since Germans didn't actually start the war. The war started in Austria. And don't lecture me about von Moltke's plan to rapidly immobilize France so Germany could have a single front facing Russia. I obviously already know about it.
The strict limits on re-armament in the Treaty of Versailles offended, rightly so, the German people, who resented the permanent second-class status it implied.
That's just a few of the things wrong with the Treaty of Versaille and the post war attitude of the victors. Do I need to go into the opportunities to avoid the second war the West refused to take? Key crisis points include the re-militarization of the Rhineland, the Anschluss of Austria, and the Munich Accords that surrendered Czechoslovakia to Hilter.
These turning points towards war each could have been altered by the decision made by a single man. So what's this nonsense about how nation's moves to war are inevitable? It's nonsense.
Technocratic_Utilitarian said:
Nazi Germany wasn't Socialist either in the socio-economic sense. The original party members gutted most of the true elements of socialism in favour of a perverted skeleton of socialism. Hitler as well as most of the higher-ups in the Nazi state were, in fact, vehemently opposed to it according to author Ian Kershaw of "The Hitler Myth." Nazism was an amalgamation of State Capitalism with a pretend-market, much like Mussolini's Fascism.
Nazism is fascism which is a bastardized form of centralized economic control in which private parties are alleged to own the businesses even though the state makes all decisions regard that business.
Socialism is a form of lunacy in which no one owns the business but the state makes all the decisions regarding it. The myth of socialism is that the "workers" own it, but anything owned by all is owned by none.
The practical differences between socialism and nazism are...
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hmmm...socialism has more dead bodies...
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socialism's ruined more countries..
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socialism's been around longer..
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well, a lot of jews are socialists, and not too many nazis are jews.
Anything else?
I'm happy to be a capitalist.