It’s important to note that the question did not define the phrase "politically correct." The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as “conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated,” and it has come to be understood by many as prohibiting critical comments about politically sensitive topics and groups....Of course, everyone actually wants a certain type or amount of political correctness in schoolbooks. They just tend to think of the term "political correctness" when they picture their political opponents inserting ideology that they think doesn't belong. Conservatives want the Founding Fathers to be presented in a favorable light, and they may want to soft-pedal the downside of industrialization and to stress individualism, optimism, and opportunity.
Conservative voters are nearly twice as likely as liberals to think most textbooks put more emphasis on political correctness than on accuracy. Military veterans are more skeptical of those textbooks than those who have not been in uniform....
Anybody putting together a schoolbook has to think about inspiring children and building ideals and character. I'm saying that even though I lean strongly in the direction of straightforward, factual information, and I think that it's a serious moral wrong to use compulsory education to indoctrinate children.
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Give us an example of communism that worked. It's a nice theory. The fact that anywhere it was tried led to mass murder might lead you to conclude that the ideology itself is wanting.
Basically, garage, "we should thank the Soviets for beating the Nazis" is no more true than "we should be angry at the Nazis for not doing a better job against the Soviets". Two evil empires went to war; one won, with our help, and emerged stronger. Why should we be thankful to the victor, or happy that it survived the war intact?
If you want a real perspective on the war, talk to Finns. They had to fight off both empires. Try telling them how grateful they should be to the USSR.
WWII would have been okay if it were only the Russians vs. the Germans.
Garage. Does when the Soviet Union murder the hundreds of millions matter to you or do you reflexively change the subject?
Blogger Kchiker said...
I have faith in your research skills.
Actually, everything you've said is complete & utter bullshit.
As usual, I'm coming late to this but my wife edited textbooks, freelanced, for years up to the turn of the century & I sometimes helped her.
IMHO, the presentation was always unfair & unbalanced & the feeling for the US could only be described as one of deep disdain. That is when it wasn't deep hatred.
So I’m saddened that Prof A is operating like Fox News when it puts on two partisan "experts", one of whom gives Dem Propaganda & the other GOP propaganda, & the host feels that he/she has presented something "balanced". To paraphrase "The equal presentation of unbalanced positions is unbalanced!"
So when she says
“Conservatives want the Founding Fathers to be presented in a favorable light, and they may want to soft-pedal the downside of industrialization and to stress individualism, optimism, and opportunity.”
I say “Strawman, OOPS Person alert”. She’s been looking at those chain letters that indicate that textbooks have removed Jefferson’s name from the list of the presidents or some such nonsense. Conservatives want, rather, a balanced approach. OK, George Washington & old Jeff owned slaves & the Industrial Revolution quickly brought about Dickensian results, but where’s the rest of the story?
My wife was always asked to include more minorities, more woman, more Left organizations, etc. & as little as possible about our Judeo-Christian heritage, more about race and gender, and less about free markets and gun rights. And Global warming & other assorted unscience….
Did you know that 27 Filipinos fought with Andy Jackson in the battle of New Orleans?
My wife once got a laugh by allegedly following the minority factor in changing a sentence “John hit the ball” to “Jesus hit the ball”. Of course it didn’t make the final.
I tell my grandkids: Capitalism is not a sin, despite what you may hear in your Sunday sermon or your textbooks, where the preachers think that socialism is more “compassionate” than capitalism because it allegedly gives everyone the same size piece of the pie. Nevermind that the pie somehow keeps shrinking since Socialism never quite actually, ya know, accomplishes anything useful & is actually quite destructive, whereas Capitalism, despite its Darwinian features, actually raises the masses up & increases the size of the pie. Yes, Save The Planet, Save The Environment, but you really don’t want to go back to Pre-Industrial Revolution days where I wouldn’t be around now at my age to enlighten you, hee hee.
Why should we be thankful to the victor, or happy that it survived the war intact?
We were on the topic of "stuff that doesn't get taught in school textbooks". The U.S. and Britain combined were fighting 10 German divisions. The Russians alone were fighting 200 German divisions. Churchill himself said it was the Russians that tore the guts out of the Nazi army. I think most people learned from history that we defeated the Nazis and we were forced to drop atom bombs on Japan. Just not true, and we would be better off examining truths early on than propaganda.
Garage. But the Gulag and Stalinist progroms are not taught either.
The strength of capitalism has always been it will work with any group of humans who are motivated by self-interest, i.e. basically all of them. The weakness of communism has always been that it requires a nation of Jesuses in order to function properly.
There are only two external motivators: carrots and sticks. Communists (and leftists) believe systems using carrots are outrageous. The result is obvious.
Garage,
Would you rather more than 1 million people get killed in an invasion of Japan?
The Japanese don't blame us for dropping the two bombs. If it doesn't bother them, why do you care what some Boomer history teacher thinks.
Garage. Does when the Soviet Union murder the hundreds of millions matter to you or do you reflexively change the subject?
We were on the topic of "stuff that doesn't get taught in school textbooks".
The Russian front generally gets skipped, sure. I also agree that that's a bad thing. I'm simply objecting to your oversimplified version of it. Like I pointed out, we *also* overlook teaching the fact that we spent WW2 allied with a nation that was objectively worse than the nations we were fighting.
We should be thankful the Soviets tore the guts out of the Germans. And vice-versa.
If the government-run schools cared about "inspiring children and building ideals and character," they'd teach from the Bible.
Would you rather more than 1 million people get killed in an invasion of Japan?
That's a myth. Military leaders like MacArthur, Eisenhower, and others, were against the use of atom bombs.
Garage has the revisions down pat. Russians defeated Germany. No comment on Stalinist progroms, starvation, Gulag. No need for Atom Bomb. No comment on Kamakazi culture on the homefront.
If Stalin hadn't doublecrossed the West and cut his own deal with Hitler to divide up Poland and a couple of other countries, World War II might not have happened.
The only thing Germany ever feared was a two-front war. Stalin's actions gave Germany a free hand to attack in the West.
I regard anyone who is an open admirer of the Soviet Union to be just as despicable as anyone who was an open admirer of Nazi Germany. In both cases, the regime's main claim to fame was mass murder.
But getting back to the original issue, I do not believe that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Communist (though he had some friends who were). But MLK definitely started having socialist leanings.
In later years, MLK had started to look more at economics than racism. And he mistakenly concluded that it was capitalism that was keeping black people in poverty.
Tragically, MLK was assassinated before he could realize his mistake. He died before recent decades in which many blacks became businessmen, started their own companies, became professionals, etc.
MLK's socialism and his support for affirmative action type programs (though back then this term didn't exist yet), are often ignored by conservatives who want to cite MLK's famous "I have a dream" speech to attack affirmative action:
"I have a dream, that my four little children will *one day* live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
But conservatives typically ignore MLK's operative phrase "one day".
MLK did NOT mean that we should start treating blacks and whites equally today. Today, he believed that compensatory help for blacks--what we call affirmative action--was needed. But someday, it would no longer be needed and everyone could be judged solely on their character instead of their skin color.
Garage. http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/undervisningsmateriale/Fussel%20-%20thank%20god%20for%20the%20atom%20bomb.pdf
It's important to clear the air about the use of the atom bombs.
Given the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese atrocities in the Pacific, and their oft-stated desire to rule the entire Pacific, the American people had been promised the unconditional surrender of Japan.
Japan was prepared to surrender--but not unconditionally.
Japan wanted to negotiate some kind of armistice that would leave Japan pretty much intact, the same sort of armistice with Germany that "ended" World War I (and sowed the seeds for World War II). That is, Japan insisted that it would not be occupied by U.S. troops.
That was unacceptable to FDR, Truman, and the American people. We didn't want to have to fight Japan again in 20 years. This time, the U.S. was resolved to effect regime change in Japan, removing the militarists from power once and for all.
The militarists would never have agreed to that, because their own necks were on the line. Once captured by U.S. troops, they would certainly have been executed as war criminals.
The atomic bombs enabled the peace faction in Japan to conclude the kind of peace the U.S. wanted, over the objections of the militarists.
And besides: The Japs had it coming.
So much for political correctness!
The notion that Japan could have been successfully invaded without killing at least as many people as the A-bombs did doesn't pass a laugh test.
Now, would an invasion have been *necessary*? That's something we'll never know. What we do know is that the Japanese had refrained from surrendering long after it was obvious the war war lost. Does the defender in a war have a moral obligation to patiently continue the war until such time as the aggressor deigns to surrender? That's a bit iffy, no?
garage mahal displays his knowledge of World War II: "The U.S. and Britain combined were fighting 10 German divisions. The Russians alone were fighting 200 German divisions."
This does not appear to be true. The heavily-footnoted Wikipedia article on the invasion of Normandy writes (under German order of battle): "The military forces at the disposal of Nazi Germany reached their numerical peak during 1944. By D-Day, 157 German divisions were stationed in the Soviet Union, six in Finland, 12 in Norway, six in Denmark, nine in Germany, 21 in the Balkans, 26 in Italy and 59 in France, Belgium and the Netherlands."
If we assume that those in Russia and Finland were the ones fighting the Russians, while the ones in Italy were already fighting the western allies and the ones stationed in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands soon would be, the ratio between East and West is 157:85, or a bit less than 2:1, where GM had claimed it was 20:1. Typical garage mahal: off by an entire order of magnitude!
He continues: "Churchill himself said it was the Russians that tore the guts out of the Nazi army." That is true, though there is much more to the question of who won the war. No doubt the German Army was the most formidable force to be defeated, but it was not the only one. The US and British Commonwealth did most of the work of defeating the Italian armed forces, bombing Germany, and supplying the Russians with equipment they could not make themselves, and damned near all of the work of defeating the German Navy (not much of a job, you may think - if you forget the U-Boats), as well as the Japanese Army, Air Force, and Navy.
MLK did NOT mean that we should start treating blacks and whites equally today.
The widespread belief that he DID mean that is why he is held in such high esteem today.
He was, after all, trying to convince the white majority to pass laws. "Black people should be treated better than white people, to make up for all those years when the reverse was true" wouldn't have sat well with vast majority of white Americans who had nothing to do with Jim Crow or slavery.
From rethinking history
So talk of the Germans having 200+ divisions on the Eastern Front compared to only 80 facing the West tends to hide the fact that a large majority of the Eastern Front units were undermanned infantry, and a far more significant percentage of the units facing West were mechanised, and often at or near full strength. In sheer combat power, the removal of ten percent of divisions (say 20 divisions) from the Eastern Front to face the Western Allies (happened 3 times – Tunisia/Mediterranean 1942, Sicily/Italy 1943, and France 1944) looks a lot more significant if it involves moving 50% of the available Panzers and 70 or 80% of the high quality, full strength, specially equipped, Paratroop or Mountain or Waffen SS divisions. (Though far more Germans – and their Axis Hungarian, Rumanian, Finnish, etc allies – died on the Eastern front than in the west. See my post here for a discussion of the numbers fallacy on the Eastern Front.)
Garage said
The U.S. and Britain combined were fighting 10 German divisions. The Russians alone were fighting 200 German divisions. Churchill himself said it was the Russians that tore the guts out of the Nazi army.
Obviously your education has failed you.
Michael said...
Garage has the revisions down pat. Russians defeated Germany. No comment on Stalinist progroms, starvation, Gulag. No need for Atom Bomb. No comment on Kamakazi culture on the homefront.
Nor the fact that the United States provided many of the needed supplies that allowed the soviets to pursue the war.
Cedarford, I don't comment here to get in knife fights with others, but I feel I have to respond since you did call me out.
Your standard Green argument makes me yawn. As PJ O'Rourke said a very long time ago, "just enough of me, way to much of you" - especially when the "you" are brown and poor - is how y'all see the world. I'm not interested in convincing you that you're wrong, nor do I want to hear the 42 reasons why you think you're right (and so much smarter than me to boot). I could go on to tell you "please do the earth you love so much a favor and don't reproduce, refuse treatment for serious illness, etc - because as I know you believe, fewer people makes the world a better place." ... but I won't, because it's after 5 on Friday and who can be snarky at such a wonderful hour? Enjoy your weekend, and your opinion, in peace. Cheers.
Yes, we should be very skeptical of what strangers are teaching children, but there can be great alternatives, like teaching your own children values through instruction and example at an early age and supplementing instruction with other materials during the school year, or new subjects in the summer. My mom would get on teacher's cases about what standard curriculum that was not being taught and forced them to teach it.
This would just be your own children, though. Another way to influence ways children learn is to volunteer tutor, volunteer at a Boys and Girls Club, or something similar, do VBS and Sunday School outreach, and the list goes on and on. We can argue curriculum until we are blue in the face, but when defeated, we can positively help the community with the alternate materials.
A friend of mine is a retired geologist who is interested in paleontology. He often goes on digs with graduate students and their professors. He is a man of strong opinions and one of his opinions is that intelligent design is a bogus argument.
Well, he recently returned from a dig in Turkey where he found an ancient pottery shard. And he was quite proud of that. I asked him how he distinguished between that shard and mere piece of broken rock. He told me that the shard showed evidence of design because of the symmetry of lines and circles cut into its surface. When I pointed out that he had just used an argument based on intelligent design, he responded that in some cases the argument is appropirate and in others it is not.
Political correctness, it seems, will determine for us when it is permissible to use this argument form.
The notion that Japan could have been successfully invaded without killing at least as many people as the A-bombs did doesn't pass a laugh test.
Japan barely recognized what had happened to them in Hiroshima, the U.S had already firebombed over 100 Japanese cities. What difference is 200 bombs from 200 planes or one bomb from one plane? Stalin declared war on Japan, invaded Manchuria in 1945, and was destroying Japan's army in days. Truman could have waited what, a few weeks? Truman was a small man who should have never been in the position to make that decision in the first place.
AEH. excellent post. The suggestions for positively influencing children are on point.
Ahh, WWII - Ballantine's Illustrated History of WWII is a good read.
Always the argument, it's not like they didn't have warning a week before.
Honor-Shame Military Culture.
Robert Cook said...
"Communism has lead to the deaths of at least tens of millions and probably hundreds of millions. It is unquestionably the most destructive ideology in the history of mankind."
I'd blame the psychopathic power mongers (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.) more than the ideology they used as their justification.
Yeah, communism will work if only the right people are in charge. We've heard that before, many times, but it always seems to end up with the wrong people in charge, for some reason.
It couldn't be that human nature itself is based on self interest, and not some unicorn crap idea of egalitarianism, and thus those who achieve power will always abuse that power. Naw, that would be a bit to simplistic. Such an unnuanced view.
I haven't read Marx but I doubt you will find prescriptions in his writings for the mass murder of human beings, just as, assuming Martin Luther King were a communist, I doubt very much he would have proposed or supported the imprisonment or murder of millions of human beings.
And yet, every time Marx is followed, it leads to the mass murder of humans beings. Every. Single. Time.
Champions of communism are just like champions of capitalism in that they believe the tenets of economic organization they propose will improve the lives of human beings and result in a better society for all.
Reality is always more complicated and difficult than theory.
Reality is quite simple.
Communism leads to mass murder and death without bringing about the promised prosperity. Every example from history shows this to be ture.
Capitalism brings about the greatest benefits in any measure you want to compare, for the largest segment of people. It really isn't even a fair fight to compare the results of the two.
Communism doesn't value life, neither did feudalism. There will always be someone to tend to their betters.
The prosperity is there if you're connected, what was the name of the department store? Gumm's?
Political correctness, it seems, will determine for us when it is permissible to use this argument form
I'm not sure if your anonymous friend didn't bother trying to explain it to you or if you just didn't understand, but I'll be nice enough to clear up your confusion:
We know of two things that can produce a smooth, decorated piece of baked clay: human pottery, and natural geological processes. The former is much more common, ergo it is the rational thing to believe.
We know of only twos things that are capable of producing complex organisms: evolutionary forces and human genetic engineers. Human genetic engineers weren't even around prior to the late 20th century, so they're obviously a silly explanation for the existence of the live we see around us.
Of course, the usual ID argument is more along the lines of "I just know in my heart that such-and-such feature shows 'evidence of intelligent design', and I posit that an undetected and undetectable 'designer' created them. And for some reason gave legs to whales and screwed up the human eye".
But that's not a theory. That's just making shit up. :)
Japan barely recognized what had happened to them in Hiroshima,
That's why we dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, too.
What difference is 200 bombs from 200 planes or one bomb from one plane?
If there's no difference between nuclear and conventional bombing, why whine about our nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Anyway, as anyone with common sense and/or a knowledge of history recognizes, the difference was (and is) psychological. The Japanese didn't know how many we had or what the effort was in producing them. Their initial response to Hiroshima was to assume it was a one-off trick; the Nagasaki bomb (correctly) convinced them that we had the ability to produce multiple weapons.
Stalin declared war on Japan, invaded Manchuria in 1945, and was destroying Japan's army in days.
Yeah, I'm sure being conquered by what was then the most genocidal regime in world history would have been MUCH better for both us and the Japanese. :)
Revenant said:
"Really? Tell us about how you scientifically test for "designed" versus "not designed". :)"
So if there is no way to scientifically determine is something is designed or not designed, then by your own argument, Intelligent Design is equally as valid as Evolution.
Impressive "own goal" of your own!
I'm also impressed with your explanation that we know of only two things that can produce complex organisms: evolution and human genetic engineers.
Now, let's parse that. Are there anteater genetic engineers? No. Are there any orangutan genetic engineers? I don't think so.
So "human" genetic engineers as opposed to what?
Seriously: what? You took the time to specify "human" genetic engineers when it is apparent that we are the highest-order corporeal beings in existence. By specifying "human" genetic engineers, you imply that there must be a higher order being that can also do genetic engineering.
Aside from that, you claim we "know" that evolution can result in complex organisms. Really? You know that? You have seen it happen? Or do you merely theorize that evolution can result in complex organisms and haven't yet found anything to refute it.
And it is also worth noting that 40 years ago, no one had even thought of dark matter, much developed a theory...and now some experiments have demonstrated that dark matter may well exist.
So what we "know" right now that can produce complex organisms has zero bearing on what we may later discover...but only if we have an open mind to the possible.
A being contained within a point cannot perceive a line. A being contained within a line cannot perceive a plane. A being contained within a plane cannot perceive a solid. We are limited to 4 dimensions, and our presence in the 4th dimension is unidirectional (from past toward future).
If there were a being that can travel multidirectionally through time, we could not perceive it with 4-dimensional devices. If there were a being that could exist in 5 or more dimensions, again: we could not perceive it.
Eventually we will develop the math to develop sound, verifiable theories of higher dimensions. When we do, we may well find God, and if we do, he may well be the Intelligent Designer.
"Give us an example of communism that worked. It's a nice theory. The fact that anywhere it was tried led to mass murder might lead you to conclude that the ideology itself is wanting."
I don't purport to argue for the efficacy of communism as a means of organizing large nation states. (And don't think capitalism isn't and hasn't also been responsible for the deaths of many.)
I merely take issue with someone pointing out Martin Luther King's faults and equating his allegedly being a communist--I doubt there is any evidence to support this notion, although he probably was an advocate of greater economic justice--with his being a philanderer or a plagiarist.
One's being a communist is no more a fault or indicative of bad character than being of any political orientation, including being a Republican.
MichaelS is correct.
Political Correctness is the notion that the answer to all socio-political questions is already known and there is no further need for debate...all remains is to pressure everyone else to accept those answers.
Political Correctness is 100% the province of the left.
The Left argues by assertion, and cannot explain the reasoning behind their beliefs. That's why they water-down education, because the more people that can't reason effectively, the more Democrat voters there are.
Teaching Intelligent Design in schools is not Political Correctness because any conservative that favors it is more than happy to debate the issue with you. There is no opinion, belief, or tenet of the conservative viewpoint that is not open to discussion and debate.
That's why the Left has worked so hard to control news and entertainment media and education: so they can push their ideas without any opposing view to expose the weakness of their arguments.
That's why the Left bans speech they don't like, where the Right always says that the best way to combat speech you don't like is with more speech. Sometimes some conservative individuals will forget that, but (again) they always come around after you remind them with some discussion.
It is very interesting to chart out comments here in Althouse:
Notice how much of the time the conservatives are explaining why they want/don't want, like/dislike, or agree/disagree with something. Then notice how often the liberals just assert something to be true without providing any background or evidence. On the rare occasion when they do provide a link to back up an assertion, it is a link to a far-left article that is composed of non-sourced assertions.
The conservatives end up addressing every single point the liberals make. Agree with the response or not, all points are addressed.
Whereas the liberals just ignore most of the conservatives points by making new assertions. They particularly avoid the strongest arguments to nitpick a minor point, then pretend they have won the argument.
What is most fascinating is when some ostensibly conservatives lapse into such political correctness on their own pet topic, like Ms. Althouse on SSM.
Robert Cook said...
One's being a communist is no more a fault or indicative of bad character than being of any political orientation, including being a Republican.
At this point in history, being a communist is overwhelming evidence of either bad character or complete stupidity.
Rev, you passed over a critical inference in trying to explain the difference between the pottery shard and a piece of rock. From the the evidence of the mathematical symmetry of the marks on shard, or in your words the "decoration", we infer an intelligent cause. From the inference of an intelligent cause, we infer the souce of that intelligence to be a human being.
I take it that your objection is not to the logical form of the argument, but, rather, it's use should be restricted to certain areas of human experience and prohibted in others.
So if there is no way to scientifically determine is something is designed or not designed, then by your own argument, Intelligent Design is equally as valid as Evolution.
Let me explain the mistake you're making, here.
ID makes the positive claim "there is evidence that such-and-such a feature was designed" ("the eye" is a popular choice). If it is impossible to distinguish designed features from undesigned ones then the claim "there is evidence of design" is false -- there can only be *belief* in design, not evidence of it. Thus the theory is useless *unless* it is possible to distinguish designed features from undesigned ones.
The theory of evolution, on the other hand, doesn't depend on the claim "there is evidence this feature wasn't designed". It relies on explaining how the feature *could* come to exist through natural processes.
So on the one hand you have a natural process that could have done it. On the other you have belief, but no evidence, that a "designer" has been running around for a billion years manually imitating a natural process. The former theory is the rational choice. If the designer deigns to make an appearance either in the modern day or in the fossil record, theories will be revised accordingly.
But until then, saying "there was an intelligent designer" is the equivalent of saying "it was Martians". Except that we've got proof that Mars exists, so technically the Martian theory has an edge. :)
If there's no difference between nuclear and conventional bombing, why whine about our nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
There is a big difference between nuclear bombs and conventional bombs. Dropping nuclear bombs on non-combatants is morally reprehensible, and the "we needed to do it" argument has justified endless stupid wars and endless military buildup right up to this day. George Bush thinks highly of Truman, that should tell you something.
garage mahal said...
the U.S had already firebombed over 100 Japanese cities. What difference is 200 bombs from 200 planes or one bomb from one plane?
[waves hand furiously] I know! I know!
The Japanese didn't surrender after the firebombing of > 100 cities. They did surrender after two doses of one bomb from one plane.
Gee, that didn't seem all that difficult. Was it a trick question?
George Bush thinks highly of Truman, that should tell you something.
Guess that means you don't think very highly of Bill Clinton, who said:
"Harry Truman was a hero to me from the time I was old enough to look at politics."
[waves hand furiously] I know! I know!
Actually you don't know.
Feel free to correct my statement of the facts.
Or you could try to stop being so predictably lame.
Feel free to correct my statement of the facts
I already have.
george mahal's pal Joseph Stalin advised the Japanese to ignore our warning about having a new weapon that would be able to destroy a large city with a single use. 1)Stalin wanted to see it in action and many Soviet scientists didn't believe it would work. 2) Stalin had his own plans to invade the North of Japan--setting up a divided country like in Eastern Europe--he needed time to get ready, though. After Hiroshima, the Japanese still came to Stalin for advice and he told them that the Americans couldn't do it again--they couldn't possibly have enough fissile material for two bombs. 1) He wanted to see what we did have and if the bomb was dependable. 2) He wanted us to expend whatever we had on the Japanese so that it couldn't be used against him.
The Japanese needed better advisors than Stalin and garage.
I already have.
I see. Well into the home brew, eh?
So "human" genetic engineers as opposed to what?
As opposed to whatever ID believers think was manipulating genes during all those hundreds of millions of years before humans existed, obviously. But no, my implied mention of non-human intelligence does not imply either (a) that it "must" exist or (b) that it be of "higher order" than us, whatever the that means.
Aside from that, you claim we "know" that evolution can result in complex organisms. Really? You know that?
That depends. Am I allowed to say "I know slavery once existed in the United States", or do I have to say "I don't actually know that slavery ever existed here, that's just a theory"? Same answer, really.
So what we "know" right now that can produce complex organisms has zero bearing on what we may later discover...but only if we have an open mind to the possible.
We do have an open mind on the subject. When you make those hypothetical discoveries that lend credibility to your hypothesis, you go right on ahead and let us know.
But until then, do stop pretending you're any better than people who think aliens killed Kennedy. :)
A being contained within a plane cannot perceive a solid.
A being contained within a plane perceives a solid as the two-dimensional slice of that solid that intersects the plane.
We are limited to 4 dimensions, and our presence in the 4th dimension is unidirectional (from past toward future).
Our perception and memory are unidirectional; we perceive only the past. Whether we are moving through the "time" dimension or can simply only perceive in one direction is an open question.
If there were a being that can travel multidirectionally through time, we could not perceive it with 4-dimensional devices.
A being moving "backwards" in time would be perceived by us as a being moving forwards in time, but doing everything in the reverse order of how it was "really" doing it. So yes, we absolutely would perceive it. More broadly, anything which interacts with our 4D world must by definition be detectable by things within our world; interaction IS detection.
You're really obsessed with this Star Trek-like vision of "higher orders", "higher dimensions", et al. What you miss is that there is no such thing as one-way interaction. To act is to be acted upon. A being we cannot act upon is a being that cannot act upon us, either.
I see. Well into the home brew, eh?
No. I just don't think you've read much in depth history on this topic.
What difference is 200 bombs from 200 planes or one bomb from one plane?
There is a big difference between nuclear bombs and conventional bombs.
Garage has asked the question. Apparently he also knows the answer. Whether he will choose to let the rest of us know the difference... that is the remaining question. :)
I just don't think you've read much in depth history on this topic.
Tell us again about how the Germans only devoted 5% of their forces to the western front. I loved that part. :)
So garage mahal thinks that someone else hasn't "read much in depth history on this topic"? The same garage mahal who refuses to acknowledge my demonstration (5:28pm) of the extraordinary ignorance of his claim that "The U.S. and Britain combined were fighting 10 German divisions. The Russians alone were fighting 200 German divisions."
Here's another little bit of information for GM: Wikipedia's heavily-annotated article on the Falaise pocket concludes that "More than 40 German divisions were destroyed during the Battle of Normandy. No exact figures are available, but historians estimate that the battle had cost the German forces a total of around 450,000 men, of whom 240,000 were killed or wounded." Forty is a lot more than ten, and there were plenty of other German divisions still to be fought after Falaise. Will GM correct his false statements? I'm not holding my breath.
@Revenant
Japan wasn't too concerned with civilian casualties. If they didn't surrender after Tokyo, they weren't going to after Hiroshima. They didn't seem to concerned over civilian casualties.
Germany didn't surrender from allied carpet bombing over Dresden in 1945. Britain didn't surrender over London getting bombed to hell.
Poor garage mahal doesn't seem to have noticed that the Emperor's address to the people telling them the war was over specifically mentions "a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable", but does not mention the Russian intervention. Someone seems to be determined to magnify Stalin's role in winning the war and minimize Truman's. I wonder why.
My AP United States History teacher made us also read parts of A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn with approving commentary.
I'm so glad I was out of school before this sort of idiocy started. It's a hard thing to accept, but talking to people just out of high school I realize much of what they've "learned" will have to be unlearned unless they want to work in academia or for the government.
No. I just don't think you've read much in depth history on this topic.
I'll go slowly.
Your first claim is that the A-bomb was unnecessary.
Your evidence in support of this claim is that Japan did not surrender after many firebombing raids. The irrelevance of this evidence is demonstrated by the simple fact that Japan did surrender after two A-bomb attacks.
Your further claim is that a combined invasion by the US and the USSR would have induced surrender by Japan at a lower cost of civilian life.
The evidence you have provided in support of your conjecture is....absolutely nonexistent, aside from your claim of deep historical understanding based on your reading of unspecified sources. (I'm guessing a recent post at Mother Jones.) Did your sources discuss the invasion of Okinawa?
The blindingly obvious point that any such invasion would have cost a huge number of US and Soviet soldiers lives appears to be of no importance to you.
How strange.
RichardS is quite correct that the term "political correctness" did not originally mean the avoidance of certain expressions or acts but rather the adherence to the approved expressions or acts.
The first use of the term that I know of is in 1939. Three key members of the Communist Party of Great Britain had supported the declaration of war by the UK; CPGB General Secretary Harry Pollitt, "Daily Worker" editor Johnny Campbell, and Willie Gallacher, MP. The CPGB remained faithful to the Comintern line that the war was between rival imperialists; Pollit and Campbell were sacked [Gallacher refused to leave Parliament]. In 1941 they were re-accepted as being "members in good standing".
The October 1939 motion stated that the dissidents had "a politically incorrect approach".
Japan wasn't too concerned with civilian casualties. If they didn't surrender after Tokyo, they weren't going to after Hiroshima.
Wow, deja vu. Yes, garage, they weren't going to surrender after Hiroshima. That's why we dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. The Japanese themselves said that's when they decided to surrender.
Saying the Japanese were "unconcerned with civilian casualties" is just more dumbass myth-making on your part. The Japanese government was semi-democratic and could no more decide "feh, who cares what the people think" than, say, the Canadian government could. The Japanese people themselves were *extremely* worried about getting slaughtered en masse, and with good reason.
Dropping nuclear bombs on non-combatants is morally reprehensible
But dropping conventional bombs on non-combatants is peachy-keen in GarageWorld, I suppose. Otherwise there's no point to the distinction, is there?
My high-school history class (early 90's) covered three topics on World War II: the internment of Japanese-Americans, the Holocaust and the atomic bomb. As a World War II buff, I found this intolerably lazy.
I have the utmost respect for the tactical and strategic prowess of the Red Army and the sacrifices the people of the Soviet Union made during the war. However, it is dishonest to talk about the Soviet war effort without mentioning the vast aid the SOviets received from the western powers and the culpability of Soviet leadership in starting the war in the first place and in being responsible for the horrible state of the Soviet army at the time of the German invasion (which led to a lot of those needless sacrifices).
Beyond that, celebrating the Soviet war effort while talking up supposed US 'atrocities' is just crass, given what happened during the initial Soviet invasion of the Baltics, Poland and Finland and what happened during the later push to Berlin, and that's without getting into what the Soviets did to Eastern Europe after the war.
Personally, I'd like to see some of the quotes from that Mother Jones polemic in context. Some of them are pretty hard to fathom, but others . . . . ?
Hypothetically -- these are FICTIONAL contexts
'Following the brutal,forced migration of the Cherokee, many missionaries worked to convert the Native Americans, leading at least one Cherokee to bitterly exclaim "God used the Trail of Tears to bring many Indians to Christ."'
#4 Given the evangelical nature of some Christians, It's not surprising that Dr. Dogooder said, after his last trip there in 2002, "Africa is a continent with many needs. It is still in need of the gospel…Only about ten percent of Africans can read and write. In some areas the mission schools have been shut down by Communists who have taken over the government."
#5 might change a little
'Although the emotional cost cannot be overstated, physical abuse of slaves not rampant. Although callously redarded as animals, slaves were valuable, even as livestock was. "A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well." At least as far as their physical well-being was concerned.'
#6:
'Students may well ask, how did an organization as evil and repulsive as the KKK become as popular as it did. But they should understand that sometimes it donned a veneer of respectiability. The "Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians."
If parents do not do their job and teach the kids at home what they do not bother to teach during the school day then that child's outlook on the world is completely skewed and warped, unable to make correct choices based on history.
It reminds me of being about 14 and the Nam war was starting to ramp up. I would listen to the news from the US then turn my old console Zenith to Radio Havana, Cuba. Both were so slanted that you would find the truth somewhere in the middle.
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