It’s always tempting to second-guess things like this, but it was the best decision that could have been made at the time with the information available at the time. Hundreds of thousands of troops were expecting to have to fight (and die) to take the home islands as hard as they just had for Okinawa. And countless Chinese were still being tortured and murdered.
The idea that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima — and, since the Japanese failed to surrender, of Nagasaki on August 9 — was a ‘war crime’ has slowly acquired currency not only among the anti-American intelligentsia but also among other sentimentalists of limited worldly experience.
De Tocqueville, born 225 years ago (he was about the same age as the nation) predicted it. The Constitution, born the year before he was, was supposed to prevent it, but I guess the Constitution is for the little people, not the ones running the country.
Thoughts on the Venezuela meltdown, corporatism, and fascism:
I don’t think Obama wants a brutal tyranny any more than Hillary Clinton does (which is to say I don’t think he wants anything of the sort). But I do think they honestly believe that progress is best served if everyone falls in line with a national agenda, a unifying purpose, a “village” mentality expanded to include all of society. That sentiment drips from almost every liberal exhortation about everything from global warming to national service. But to point it out earns you the label of crank. As I said a minute ago about that “We’re All Fascists Now” chapter, I think people fail to understand that tyrannies — including soft, Huxleyan tyrannies — aren’t born from criminal conspiracies by evil men; they’re born by progressive groupthink.
Yes. It’s all well intentioned in their minds, never understanding the paving stones on the road to perdition. Of course, Hitler was well intentioned, too. He just wanted to get a little lebensraum, and purify the race.
I should note that it’s not just Democrats. The problem with Republicans is that (per the Chamber of Commerce), they’re pro-business. They’re not pro-market.
Heh: “So it’s okay to have socialism, but it can’t be international socialism, it has to be socialism in one nation. A sort of national socialism, I guess.”
Back in 1968, the Democrat Party was divided between liberals who loved America and liberalsleftists who hated everything about it. The situation is a little different now, with today’s Democrat Party divided between liberalsleftists who hate everything about America and liberalsleftists who really, really hate everything about it.
Fixed it for him.
[Update a few minutes later]
This is a nice summary:
Nineteen sixty-eight was the year normal Americans saw the Democrats for what they were, and that’s the danger for them in 2016 too – that normal Americans will be reminded about what a circus of welfare-chiseling, race-obsessed, work-averse, baby-shredding freaks the Democrat party is.