If y’all couldn’t bring your A-game, you shouldn’t have played…
Eight Frigates is an interesting book on the US Navy during the war. Apparently if the British had moved enough ships to blockade the USA, they couldn’t properly blockade France, which really wanted to invade Ireland or England.
Yeah, that’s always bothered me, too. And I’m “Merkan”! Just seems to speak to “Merkans”’ belief that when it comes to sports (except for soccer, of course) they think that they have the best in everything (although, to be fair, they’re probably right when it comes to [American] football and basketball).
Not really, no. Will Ferguson put it best; Canada won, the USA won, Britain tied and the Indians lost.
Exactly this; you see it a lot on this boards, and it sometimes seems that the agrguments for or against something are almost beside the point: your side have to be the good guys, and so the other side must be the bad guys, with hissed epithets all round. We tend to be a bit more pragmatic and assume that they’re all bastards, so we’ll voote our best interests but not look for saviours or villains on any side. And I stick to my assertion that what the United States has is an elected monarchy, whereas Britain has a hereditary presidency.
Cecil disagrees.
Run that by again.
I thought the British Prime Minister was the fellow who mattered.
define “American beer.” 'cos I can find any number of bottle conditioned beers from American breweries which can’t contain preservatives, else they couldn’t be bottled condition.
It’s not a commutative property. Budweiser is an American beer, but an American beer is not necessarily Budweiser.
This law is not current in Germany. It has not been legally binding for the last few decades. Many beers (in multiple countries) use it as a marketing term. The original law also excludes yeast, which is necessary. They didn’t know it was needed, but introduced it through various means nonetheless. Many German beers don’t follow that strict line (wheat beer is not just a name).
Sounds like she’s missing out on a lot of good beer.
I mostly agree, although it is better than some European countries. North Rhine-Westphalia has the most variety IMHO, with actual non-lager beers (Altbier and Kölsch, which are ales made using lager-like techniques).
Perhaps the issue is that the monarch in the U.K. is the equivalent of a president in other parliamentary systems.
Which is why we fell back under British hegemony. Oh, wait …
Not a Cecil article, but good all the same.
Exactly so; the Westminster system firmly separates the Head of State from the Chief Excecutive: we tend to see a President with executive powers as the realm of tinpot African dictators and South American generalissimos. Really America is running Democracy 1.0, an old operating system where your president has the duties and functions of an 18th Century monarch, while the British system has evolved to where the Queen’s role is to chair the nation, not to run the government.
1.1. The OS was updated in 1865. Major fix was the slavery bug.
Having the capital fall and the White House burned is a pretty good sign of taking a pretty good licking.
It is a pretty good sign that a battle was lost in Washington DC, nothing more. The city might have been taken and the presidential residence burnt, but the government did not fall nor did the US surrender.
“… that was never a British war aim.” Is how I have to assume you were intending to finish that sentence. 
Reconquering the United States was never an official British war aim just as conquering Canada was never an official American war aim. So if Canada won a victory by not being conquered, so did the United States. And if the United States lost the war because it didn’t conquer any British territory then Britain lost the war because it didn’t conquer any American territory. Washington was burned and so was Toronto.
The war really did end with a draw. Neither side got everything it had wanted but both sides kept the other side from getting everything it had wanted. So both sides failed offensively and succeeded defensively.
I have been given to understand that some historians disagree with you on that point. Ian W. Toll in his book Six Frigates, for example.
Huh. I’ve read that one several times and somehow never noticed it was by Gfactor. :smack: