I remember that slave, fascist, nazist, and communistic nations STARTED wars and they were the ones that ended badly. The slogan may be catchy, but it is shallow.
Oicu812: you are barking at the wrong tree; DEFENCE against an agressor is good, Justifying war before an agresion is evil.
In fact, he never even noticed it was going on! “Eva, liebchen, did you hear zomezing?” “Ach, zat vas just ze thunder, Adolph!”
So, then it is your stand that the American Revolution was wrong, immoral, and should never have taken place, GIGO?
Oicu812, besides being irrelevant to the slogan at hand, I think the moment the British shot at the future Americans was the moment it became a duty to revolt.
You forget, sir, that it was the Americans… er… excuse me, DISLOYAL ENGLISH SUBJECTS that fired first.
Traitors to the Crown.
And this argument is NOT irrelevant to the point at hand. It is PRESICELY the point at hand. The very nature of this thread… So quit trying to weasel out, here. Yes, or no?
You managed to totally ruin one of the finest toss-offs in the entire movie!
After citing the sewers, irrigation, education and all that, someone else offers up the roads. Their mention of it is instantly dismissed with, “That goes without saying.”
One of the all-time howlers in the whole film.
Exkweeze me, but I believe there has been no conclusive evidence about which side fired the first shots at Lexington and Concord, which most would agree was the beginning of the American Revolution.
You forgot the Boston Massacre, and no, the one that is weaseling out is you by not dealing with my point, and by adding a democratic movement to the dictatorial ones on the shallow slogan.
Oops. “Precisely”.
Anyway, your point is that it is never acceptable to strike first, and I disagree with you. Correct?
And how did I not deal with your point? I brought up a historical example of a people that went to war pre-emptively, over taxation (money) and political representation (power).
Anyway, the summation still fits: You think it is wrong to strike first, and I don’t.
Mainly, all the anti-war garbage is very thinly veiled anti-Bush rhetoric, anyway. Clinton bombed Iraq, and we didn’t see this kind of garbage then. As a matter of fact, Tom Daschle was all for it, saying that we had exhausted all other options at that time.
Let me find the quote… Hold on a minute…
Ah, here it is!
[quote]
“I hope Saddam Hussein and those who are in control of the Iraqi government clearly understand the resolve and determination of this administration and this country. This may be a political year, . . . but on this issue there can be no disunity. There can be no lack of cohesion. We stand united, Republicans and Democrats, determined to send as clear a message with as clear a resolve as we can articulate: Saddam Hussein’s actions will not be tolerated. His willingness to brutally attack Kurds in northern Iraq and abrogate U.N. resolutions is simply unacceptable. We intend to make that point clear with the use of force, with the use of legislative language, and with the use of other actions that the president and the Congress have at their disposal.”
-Tom Daschle - September 1996
“Look, we have exhausted virtually our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so? . . . The answer is, we don’t have another option. We have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily.”
-Tom Daschle - February, 1998
[quote]
O
Crap. Not my day for spelling OR coding, it seems.
O
How about we just talk it out.
I thought the reason the so-called Massacre (the death toll wasn’t exactly on a macro scale) occured was because the Future Americans were already revolting…?
ummm, That’s not the way I learned it.
Here’s a cite and from that PBS article I confirmed that:
*That evening a group of about thirty, described by John Adams as “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs,” began taunting the guard at the custom house with snowballs, sticks and insults. Seven other redcoats came to the lone soldier’s rescue, and Attucks was one of five men killed when they opened fire.
Patriots, pamphleteers and propagandists immediately dubbed the event the “Boston Massacre,” and its victims became instant martyrs and symbols of liberty. Despite laws and customs regulating the burial of blacks, Attucks was buried in the Park Street cemetery along with the other honored dead.*
Granted, they were prevoked, but I do believe the Brits fired first.
The OP contained no refernces specifically to US slavery, or any government-sanctioned/enforced slavery, nor did the poster specifically address “Nazi Germany” or WWII. But:
As others have pointed out, war did not end US slavery, it simply kept the nation intact. However, we still have slavery in Africa, the US, Australia, Columbia and Japan, and, oh, the US again. I could cite more but I think that should make the point.
There are American Nazis, Swedish Nazia, Norwegian Nazis, Canadian Nazis, and Neo Nazis, among others. Hell, there are so many nzais that some people feel the need to organize as Anti-Nazis.
I really can’t believe any thinking person with resource to world information can actually claim that fascism and communism are dead with a straight face. The existence of China negates the latter, and I’ve spent far too much time on this already to go looking up the number of regimes that are referred to in world media and opinion as fascist.
Hope that helps clarify. 
presidebt: Instead of me trying to reiterate an excellent post, why don’t you go back and read Metalhead’s first post in this thread?
It pretty much explains the difference between practicality and nit-picking.
Not that it helps, but I was watching History Channel last night, and they had an episode on famous guns. You know, Oswald’s rifle, the derringer that shot Lincoln, train robber guns, the gun that started WWI, the lot. They mention that historians may have narrowed “The shot heard round the world” to one of three guns, a rifle in, uh, Philadelpha, or two pistols in, uh, Boston? Something like that.
Years ago I was in the freshman International Relations class at Notre Dame, taught by the renowned George Lopez.
In the first day, Dr. Lopez was doing a general lecture on the breadth of the class and the relations between States, and he asked the open question about how States resolve differences.
“Treaties !”, came one reply. “Mediation !”. “Arbitration !”. “The U.N !” followed in small choruses.
Then the answers petered out, but Dr. Lopez was unsatisfied. “Anything else? Any other ways of resolving differences ?”. Silence.
Up goes Kakkerlak’s hand.
“Victory and defeat”.
Even the ROTC students just stared.
I understand your point, but I think your distinction’s a bit too nice: it separates the idea from the people who have it. For many, Fascism became a “bad idea” mainly because it ultimately brought them military defeat. Indeed, the examples you give - Portugal and Spain - undermine you because those were the only fascist countries to survive WWII largely untouched, whereas Germany, Italy, Romania, Yugoslavia and Japan found themselves largely destroyed. Physical devastation is a powerful mind-changer. The fact that remnants still adhere to defeated philosophies doesn’t prove much of anything, other than that there’s not much difference between insanity and a minority of one.