P.M. Lawrence:
I can see where Terry is misinterpreting you, but I'm not sure his misinterpretation makes much less sense than what you're actually proposing.
You seem to be assuming that the French and English could have trained 4 million American civilians into cohesive fighting units faster than the Americans did, which seems a dubious proposition at best.
Who would equip them? The French and English didn't exactly have 4 million full infantry kits lying around, let alone artillery, logistical support etc etc. They could have been supplied from American industrial output, but that means that you need Americans who are familiar with the equipment to do the training, and we're back to square one.
Who would train them? You seem to assume that there was a large, well-staffed training operation in both the French and British armies, but with three years of war thinning the ranks, I find it hard to imagine that the British and French hadn't made several passes through their training corps, plucking out the best and most able-bodied men to go command at the front. When the combat branches of the service were so desperate for manpower, I doubt that the training branches would be able to hold onto good trainers.
Who would lead them? Remember, junior officers actually suffer attrition at higher rates than any other rank, so the officer corps of the French and British armies was already looking mighty thin below the rank of Captain by 1917. Where are you going to find a couple hundred thousand second lieutenants to lead those 4 million men?
Why would Americans allow this? The war was not terribly popular in America. Wilson had been reelected only a year before on the platform of "He kept us out." Drafting men to send them to Europe as part of an AEF was unpopular enough, imagine if Wilson had proposed sending our boys to die under foreign commanders.
As for your idea of training soldiers en route, I don't doubt that some of this went on. In fact assuming that this was completely lost time seems to be assuming incompetence on the part of the organizers of the AEF. But there are two big constraints that I think you're missing. The first is simply that it's awfully hard to do much of the important training involved in turning a civilian into an infantryman on board a ship. But even more importantly, there's the problem of trainers. A trainer who's on board a ship from New York to Liverpool for two weeks training the first class of recruits is a trainer who has to spend two weeks twiddling his thumbs on a ship from Liverpool to New York before he can train the second class of recruits. The training time is not just constrained by the time the trainees have, but also by the time of the qualified trainers.
P.M. Lawrence:
I can see where Terry is misinterpreting you, but I'm not sure his misinterpretation makes much less sense than what you're actually proposing.
You seem to be assuming that the French and English could have trained 4 million American civilians into cohesive fighting units faster than the Americans did, which seems a dubious proposition at best.
Who would equip them? The French and English didn't exactly have 4 million full infantry kits lying around, let alone artillery, logistical support etc etc. They could have been supplied from American industrial output, but that means that you need Americans who are familiar with the equipment to do the training, and we're back to square one.
Who would train them? You seem to assume that there was a large, well-staffed training operation in both the French and British armies, but with three years of war thinning the ranks, I find it hard to imagine that the British and French hadn't made several passes through their training corps, plucking out the best and most able-bodied men to go command at the front. When the combat branches of the service were so desperate for manpower, I doubt that the training branches would be able to hold onto good trainers.
Who would lead them? Remember, junior officers actually suffer attrition at higher rates than any other rank, so the officer corps of the French and British armies was already looking mighty thin below the rank of Captain by 1917. Where are you going to find a couple hundred thousand second lieutenants to lead those 4 million men?
Why would Americans allow this? The war was not terribly popular in America. Wilson had been reelected only a year before on the platform of "He kept us out." Drafting men to send them to Europe as part of an AEF was unpopular enough, imagine if Wilson had proposed sending our boys to die under foreign commanders.
As for your idea of training soldiers en route, I don't doubt that some of this went on. In fact assuming that this was completely lost time seems to be assuming incompetence on the part of the organizers of the AEF. But there are two big constraints that I think you're missing. The first is simply that it's awfully hard to do much of the important training involved in turning a civilian into an infantryman on board a ship. But even more importantly, there's the problem of trainers. A trainer who's on board a ship from New York to Liverpool for two weeks training the first class of recruits is a trainer who has to spend two weeks twiddling his thumbs on a ship from Liverpool to New York before he can train the second class of recruits. The training time is not just constrained by the time the trainees have, but also by the time of the qualified trainers.
I think that would be a defensible point, in the same way that if James Joyce had renounced his Irish citizenship, he would have suddenly stopped being an Irish writer and become a French or Swiss one.
I meant, of course, that Joyce wouldn't have stopped being Irish.
In fairness to Mr. Rovell, I think he put his foot in it more by a combination of specialist thinking (what Language Log calls nerdview) and factual error, rather than any great nativist instinct on his part.
In reading his original column, I think it's clear that what Mr. Rovell meant to say that Meb Keflezighi was only technically an American runner which, if he had gotten his facts straight, would have been a defensible argument. He thought that Mr. Keflezighi was a product of African running training, competition and culture, and that his victory had little to say about the strength of American running.
I think that would be a defensible point, in the same way that if James Joyce had renounced his Irish citizenship, he would have suddenly stopped being an Irish writer and become a French or Swiss one.
Of course we wouldn't be talking about this if it weren't that Mr. Rovell got his facts completely and utterly wrong. But I'm more inclined to criticize Mr. Rovell for not doing even as much as a close reading Mr. Keflezighi's Wikipedia page (which says he ran for a high school in California), rather than reaching for the overbroad term "American citizen" rather than "American runner."
Chris Quinones:
Of course, my error. (I had 11/11 on the brain after you mentioned it. I suspect the main reason I keep making that particular error is because this is the time of year I tend to think about The War To End All Wars, and years of reading Theresa's 11/11 post probably has something to do with that.)
The idealist in me recognizes Grayson's statements as hyperbolic and wishes that our discourse wasn't so full of this type of overheated rhetoric.
The realist in me recognizes that a situation where one party is allowed to regularly slander the other with the most outrageous rhetoric while the victims are expected to remain timidly polite is much much worse than one where both parties go at it with fists flying.
So while I can't quite bring myself to cheer Grayson on, I still prefer a world with him in it to one without.
Chris Q:
Briefly, so as not to derail the thread with a wall of text.
a) Kaiser Wilhelm's relentless pursuit of the trappings of English European dominance (A powerful blue water fleet, a large collection of overseas colonies) needlessly antagonised the British, who could have easily coexisted with a Germany content to dominate the Continent. (No High Seas Fleet, no Anglo-French Entente, no British Expeditionary Force.)
b) I think there's a plausible argument that the audacious original version of the Schlieffen plan would have resulted in a much more decisive opening phase of the war, either by allowing the German right to envelop Paris before the main French forces could recover from their assault on Metz or by precipitating the collapse of the weakened German forces around Metz.
c) I think that some sort of conflict was likely in the early 20th century as Great Britain ceased to be the premier industrial power and Germany took its place, but technology, politics and economics were changing so rapidly that a war fought in 1920 or 1910 might have had a dramatically different character than the one fought in 1914. There was always going to be some damn thing in the Balkans, but it's important that it was some damn thing in the late fall of 1914.
d) The unique awfulness of the Western front, and the whole inexorable drive to war in the Fall of 1914 was largely determined by worries about mobilization tables and the conviction that the country who delayed mobilization would suffer the fate of France in 1870. This is premised on a very specific set of "lessons learned" from the European wars of the 19th century and a very specific failure to learn from conflicts like the ACW and the Russo-Japanese war. The lessons drawn by the European military establishment seem, in hindsight, uniquely suited to make the war as horrible, bloody and indecisive as it was.
Terry @51
Chris W. Not all the Eastern War was that way. First Bull Run is a classic example of outdated thinking (the South held the field, and so thought the issue decided. In a strange way they were suffering from the idea the lessons of the US Revolution, and the campaigns of Napoleon (both before and after he supplanted the Revolution).
McClellans attempt to flank the Confederacy by invading them (in the same way MacArthur later succeeded at Inchon) was an attempt to win by strategic action, not brute force.
I didn't mean to imply that the eastern theater was always a war of annihilation. And I think that before Grant explicitly adopted the annihilationist logic, Union strategy was somewhat overdetermined. I.e. with Lee committed to the defense of Richmond, it was irrelevant whether Union commanders wanted to destroy Lee's army in order to capture Richmond or they wanted to outflank and attack Richmond because that was where Lee's army was. You can read the peninsular campaign either way, and for the first part of the war I don't think Union commanders distinguished much between the two.
It's also worth noting the generals who used the brute force approach in the East were the same one's who used the geograhic warfare of the West. It's an interesting question as to whether the terrain in the East dictated some of the WW1 presaging behaviors in the Eastern Theater.
I think that redounds to the flexibility and ability of Grant and Sherman as strategists. One point where I agree with Keegan is that while they never showed the tactical flashes of brilliance that characterized Lee, Sherman and Grant were the only two generals who saw the totality of the war clearly and charted a clear, plausible course to victory.
It is an interesting thought. It may just be my natural contrarian, but the more I read about WWI the more I'm convinced that, contra the view that the war and it's horrors were somehow inevitable products of technology and politics, the unique awfulness of the western front was produced by a unique confluence of factors that were hardly inevitable.
I'd also add one other factor which was the force imbalance between East and West. My recollection (based on Weighley, but I can't find the cite right now) is that the Union had roughly equal numbers of men on either side of the Kentucky/Virginia border, while Confederate manpower, partly owing to Lee's influence, was heavily concentrated in Northern Virginia. So, not only were there lots of important rivers and passes for Union troops to occupy, they weren't faced with an imminent threat like the Army of Northern Virginia which would force them to concentrate and not disperse to occupy them.
Fidelio @17:
Also, VDH's writings about ancient military history always give me the uncomfortable impression that he's worried about his penis shrinking.
I stopped paying attention to anything Hanson wrote (except to mock it) when I realized that he thought that the problem with the Athenian's Sicilian campaign (which Thucydides persuasively argues constituted the largest long distance naval invasion ever mounted at that time) was that the Athenians just didn't have the resolve to really commit to it.
Hanson has long been one of the leading lights of what Matthew Yglesias termed the Green Lantern School of Geopolitics.
kid bitzer @5
I think that the importance of the geographical details is partly dependent on the nature of the war being described. The Napoleonic wars (and to a large extent the eastern theater of the US Civil War) were Clausewitzian wars of annihilation. The goal wasn't the occupation of any geographical feature or landmark, but the destruction of the enemy army. The Western theater of the USCW, by contrast, was all about rivers and mountain ranges, with Federal forces trying to cut off the rivers and valleys that allowed communication between the eastern and western halves of the Confederacy. (It's worth noting that the western theater is where most of the errors seem to be focused.)
The other point worth making is that geography is more important to the USCW because the U.S. has got more of it. The Napoleonic Wars took place largely on the plains of Northern Europe. There just wasn't any geographic feature that loomed as large in Napoleon's campaigns as the Mississippi or the Blue Ridge Mountains did in the campaigns of the USCW.
That's not to say this stuff is easy. I've read my share of Civil War histories, and I wouldn't be able to keep the narratives of any of the campaigns straight without a good map in front of me. But that's all the more reason to get this stuff right. A military historian who can't be bothered to make constant reference to a map of the terrain involved seems a little bit like an accountant who can't be bothered to refresh his memory of the tax code before preparing your return.
Drawing from my own experience and some of the comments I've seen here and in other conversations, I think that the critical characteristic of the type of corporal punishment that some loving, effective parents use is that the idea of a spanking is more powerful than the spanking itself.
At least in my personal experience, the handful of times my parents used physical punishment the worst part by far was knowing that I had done something so bad that it had pushed my otherwise loving and supportive parents to spank me. The punishment was predicated on the fact that I knew what I had done was wrong, and the physical discomfort was largely irrelevant except as a reminder of their disappointment. (This is why I hesitate to accept Lee's formulation that any spanking that involves an implement is a beating. I can think of a thousand ways in which the use of an implement might suggest that corporal punishment in question isn't the type I consider acceptable, but one can spank with a belt or brush handle just as easily as one can beat without them.)
This is the exact opposite of the rationale offered by Dobson. According to Dobson, both dogs and children will only obey if they are "threatened with destruction." I.e. if your kids aren't in fear for their lives every time they are punished, then you aren't doing it right. The emphasis is on submission, rather than understanding, and, oddly enough for one who spends so much time bloviating about morality, the appeal is entirely to physical power, rather than moral authority.
C Wingate @70
I realize this is incidental to your main point, but as a long-time, though now lapsed, Episcopalian, I'm not sure which churches you're going to. The only pulpitless Episcopal church I've ever seen was the one in the unfinished basement of the Episcopal house at my college, and having watched some almighty rows between the rector and factions of the congregation over minor adjustments to the order of service, I can say canon law or no, the priest's omnipotence in matters of worship is not all it's cracked up to be.
As to your larger point: No one here is arguing that change is a good in and of itself. And no one is arguing that fear of change is either irrational or even substantively wrong.
What they are saying is that unfocused fear of change can lead people to think and act in ways that don't help anybody. And that when large numbers of people believe outrageous things (e.g. that Obama is a super-secret Kenyan Communist Nazi Manchurian Candidate bent on America's destruction) it's worth asking whether feelings of powerlessness and fear in the face of change aren't the real drivers here.
Because sometimes it's less scary to believe that someone's out to get you than to accept that things can happen to you for reasons beyond anyone's control or even comprehension.
They didn't dance with women, because they thought that was a bit gay.
On a certain level I think I understand that logic better.
Being straight means wanting to have sex with women. Ergo, if you enjoy doing anything else with women you must not want to have sex with them, and therefore you must be gay.
Of course maybe the reason I find that more logical is just that there are a lot more straight men who are willing to make it known that they don't think women have any redeeming qualities outside of the bed room, rather than straight (100% STRAIGHT! TOTALLY NOT GAY!!!!!) men who are willing to admit that when they think about sex, pictures of beautiful beautiful boys burst unbidden into their brains.
Which doesn't say much either for gender equality or acceptance of homosexuality in our society.
Miss D Grace @180:
First of all, I'm glad that you were able to unload all of this. I hope it helps. And like just about every person on this thread I'm amazed at the strength and perseverance that you've shown just by keeping on.
But the thing I wanted to respond specifically to is the therapists who told you that you must be repressing some deep feelings about the horrible 19 year old who had sex with you when you were 13.
They don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about.
I'm sure that therapists come across lots of people who were shattered by their early sexual experiences. But there are also a couple of good longitudinal studies out there that look at this question (e.g. Laumann et al The Social Organization of Sexuality) and every one I've seen has come to the conclusion that there is one big difference between people in your position and the average person.
People who had an early, post-pubertal, non-coerced first sexual experience on average have more sex and more types of sex than those who didn't.
That's it. They don't report being more unhappy. They don't have higher incidence of mental illness or needing therapy. They don't report increased incidence of sexual dysfunction.
So not only are your feelings your own and no therapist is allowed to tell you that they're wrong, it turns out that your feelings are not unusual for people who've had that one specific experience.
Some more general thoughts:
I think part of the problem is that people (even academics) mean so many different things when they talk about analysis and interpretation, even within the ivory tower.
There's analysis of form and structure, which I think can be the closest to being a normative measure of "worth." How does the author achieve the effects they do (or fail to achieve them?) How do the letters on the page add up to a whole?
Relatedly there's interrogation of meaning. What does the story tell us? How are we supposed to feel about the characters? What are the ideas and themes investigated? What values are implicit in the work?
And then there's the construction of interpretations. What sort of intellectual playground does this work give us? How does the work respond when we poke it and prod it with different tool sets? How many different ways can we cut it up and paste the pieces back together and come up with something interesting?
I guess my point is just to recognize that when Wesley (@45 he presents an argument for type #3) analyzes a book, he's not necessarily doing the same thing you are. And that's going to end up with different results with different works. I love Wodehouse's novels dearly, but they are so immaculately put together that constructing an interesting literary interpretation of them seems rather like grabbing a paint brush and setting out to improve on the Mona Lisa. They simply don't reward that sort of analysis.
And of course none of this says that revealing and playing with flaws can't be just as rewarding. I recently watched the first few episodes of HBO's True Blood and spent an enjoyable evening trying to quantify why the series so completely failed to engage my interest and sympathy or suspend my disbelief.
rm @102 re: teachers and book recommendations
Your post gave me one of those light bulb moments where all of a sudden you see a situation from both sides at once. I suspect that the real problem with literature teachers isn't a few who bully their students into accepting their tastes as "better."
From the student's point of view that's sort of built into the whole situation. After all, you're getting recommendations from someone who by definition ought to know these things better than you do. If you don't like the books they recommend, it can be easy to assume that either their expertise isn't worth much or you're just not very good at reading.
When the student says they didn't like the book and the teacher gives that slightly disappointed "Oh, well..." I'm sure the teacher feels bad that their recommendation didn't give the pleasure they had hoped, but it's awfully easy for the student to read that as "Oh, well...I thought you were smarter than that."
@Paula:
What ruling was this?
And without knowing the details of the case or having read the opinion, I strongly suspect this is a case of saying "The President has the power to make rules governing the behavior and spending of government agencies, as long as such executive orders don't violate the law or constitution." It just happens that in this case the order was one most liberals find repugnant.
Saying that an opinion upholding the right of a president to issue an executive order is the same as "championing" every single aspect of that order is the same (il)logic the right used to spin Kerry's no votes on omnibus defense budgets into "Kerry opposed the F-15 and wants our armed forces to go into battle with spit balls."
Aww, I always found POSSLQ (pronounced possle-queue) rather charming, although at the moment I can't find my favorite instance of it, a filk of Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." ("You'll live with me, and I with you, and you shall be my POSSLQ.")
While we're discussing the potential naughty uses of future technology, one can only imagine the amorous contortions possible using the portal gun from Portal.
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| 2009 | 31 |
| 2008 | 20 |
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