Rusty's Naval/Military History thread

[Geo]

I was thinking of the Whydah, sunk near Eastham, Massachusetts.

[Buster's Uncle]

If Napoleon won Waterloo, French-speaking Europe, no world wars?
AFP
By Phillipp Saure  10 hours ago



An empire as far as China, French will be spoken across the continent, and in the 20th century a global war between the great powers will be avoided; just some alternate histories imagined if Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)



Brussels (AFP) - It is the evening of June 18, 1815 and an exultant Napoleon Bonaparte surveys the field after winning the Battle of Waterloo, planning his next conquest.

Within years his empire will stretch as far as China, French will be spoken across the continent, and in the 20th century a global war between the great powers will be avoided because of the stability his rule created.

These are some of the alternate histories that writers and experts have envisaged had Napoleon really been victorious in the battle 200 years ago, which actually ended in his humiliating defeat and exile at the hands of British and Prussian forces.

Historian Helmut Stubbe da Luz said that had Napoleon beaten generals Wellington and Bluecher on the plain of Waterloo, he would have carried on his march as far as northern Germany.

"Bremen, Hamburg and Luebeck would have become French again," da Luz told AFP.

That scenario, however, should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt, da Luz added, as the European monarchies of the time would not have let a defeat at Waterloo go unavenged.

As Belgian historian Philippe Raxhon, a specialist in the Battle of Waterloo, puts it: "Waterloo was a total victory for the allies but it would not have been a total victory for Napoleon."



Historian Helmut Stubbe da Luz believes Napoleonic rule across continental Europe, balanced by Britain's enduring maritime supremacy, would not necessarily have been that bad for the world (AFP Photo/Jeff Pachoud)


- First Russia, then China -

But if one imagines that Bonaparte had eventually defeated his European enemies in the long-term, his ambitions afterwards would have been demonstrably larger, historians said.

"If Napoleon followed his original plans for 1810, he would have invaded Russia again and potentially extended his empire as far as China," Helmut Stubbe da Luz said.

An even more radical scenario was put forward in the 19th century by the French writer Louis Geoffroy. In his novel "Napoleon and the Conquest of the World, 1812-1832" he described how Napoleon was able to overrun China, turning it into a mere "Asian province".

The 1836 alternate history novel -- a literary genre that imagines parallel realities and includes classics such as Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" about a United States beaten by Japan and Germany -- Geoffroy takes the story back to three years before Waterloo.

"I wrote the history of Napoleon from 1812 to 1832, from Moscow in flames to the universal monarchy and his death, 20 years of incessantly increasing glory which elevated him to an all-powerful level above whom there is only God," he wrote in the introduction to the novel.



Belgian historian Philippe Raxhon, a specialist in the Battle of Waterloo, points out that while Waterloo was a total victory for the allies it would not have been a total victory for Napoleon (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)


But what would an all-powerful Napoleon have been like to live under?

For Stubbe da Luz, "Napoleon was a dictator but not a reactionary dictator like the Tsar of Russia."

Napoleonic rule across continental Europe, balanced by Britain's enduring maritime supremacy, would not necessarily have been that bad for the world, he said.

"The dictatorship that Napoleon exported to the countries under his domination was a regression compared to the progress of the French Revolution, but it wasn't bad for his new subjects in Germany, Holland, Italy and Spain," he said.

He cited the "equality of rights for religious minorities and rural populations, the right to vote for men, a new judicial system and an expanded economic area".


- A less-powerful Germany -

Cautiously looking further into the future, the historian imagines a "continental Europe dominated by France" throughout the 19th century.

Had that happened Germany would not have become so strong during that period, he says.

"Germany would therefore probably not have been in a position to provoke a First and Second World War," he said.

But imagining parallel histories is risky business for historians.

"The causes of events are innumerable," said Raxhon, the Belgian historian, from the University of Liege.

He limited himself to scenarios directly linked to the fates of the main protagonists. For example, a defeated Duke of Wellington would no doubt have returned by sea to England via Ostend, because Wellington himself had "envisaged losing the battle", he said.

Novelists of course have freer rein. In his 1992 best-seller "Fatherland", British writer Robert Harris imagines a Germany in 1964 that is preparing for a visit of the American president "Joseph Peter Kennedy" (JFK's father) to Adolf Hitler, the winner of World War II.

That of course is a war that according to some scenarios would not have happened... if Napoleon had won at Waterloo.

http://news.yahoo.com/french-speaking-europe-no-world-wars-napoleon-won-053256366.html

[Rusty Edge]

Interesting.
Napoleon reformed a lot of things, not just the metric system and the legal code. He replaced a patchwork of serf and caste systems with a meritocracy. He abolished church taxes. He was an ambitious charismatic genius workaholic. But whether he was a  popularly elected 1st Council for Life, Emperor, or an early Euro fascist dictator, the government depended on him.

Whether he died of poisoning attempts or not, he had advanced stomach cancer, the same thing that killed his father early. Even with Britain kicked off of the continent and sitting at sea, I don't think he had the time or successor to grow his Empire past Austria, Poland and Turkey. I think he would have been another Charlemagne, leaving a legacy and an Empire too big for a lesser man to govern.

No WWI? Maybe not. A lot would depend upon how the cookie crumbled.

[Buster's Uncle]

The article is simply wrong about Napoleon being a regression, for all that I've complained that the revolution was betrayed and all for nothing - the French Revolution was a mass murder disaster, and Napoleon couldn't have come along with just another stupid monarchy if the revolutionaries hadn't soiled everything with all that murder.

He was a capable administrator, but there's no evidence I'm aware of that any of his relatives had any sizable fraction of his talent for anything - and so all the nepotistic usurpers he would have left behind would have been in a lot of trouble the instant he passed, save if he'd lived a long time and spent a few decades consolidating and stabilizing the French Empire.  -And training an heir into an unassailable position.  What you wanna bet that any brothers, uncles, nephews and in-laws who survived his death long would have fallen into open warfare like Charlemagne's sons?

[Rusty Edge]

Yeah, I forgot about the Bonaparte siblings.

I was thinking about the Marshals, raised by meritocracy, with the loyalties of the armies, and granted various titles of nobility. Likely suspects-

Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, Chief of Staff, and later Prime Minister of France. You know he had the ambition.

Marshal Ney, "The Bravest of the Brave", Prince of Moscow, Duke of Elchingen , might have been the hero of Waterloo, had the French won.

Marshal Murat, Admiral of France,( I have no idea why he held that title. He was considered in America to be the greatest cavalryman in the history of the world when the War Between the States began.) Prince and King of Naples, Grand Duke of Berg, and brother-in-law of Napoleon.

[Buster's Uncle]

You never know whether a really capable general is going to be your salvation or your downfall...

[Rusty Edge]

As you say-

Napoleon had hemorrhoids and couldn't sit a horse.

Murat was in the doghouse, because he negotiated with Austria to try and hold onto his throne when the French were retreating from Russia and countries started turning on Napoleon, resulting in the exile to Elba. Murat was in Italy, not  at Waterloo.

Solt was trying to fill Marshal Berthier's shoes as chief of staff. Berthier fell out a window as the Prussians  reached Paris before the exile to Elba. Nobody is sure if it was an accident, suicide, or murder. Solt was a great planner and preparer, but was a poor improviser.

Not only was Ney the "bravest of the brave" before the battle, but he had 5(?) horses shot out from under him that day.  It reminds me of Nat Forrest,CSA,  and I can't help but think that he would have known what to do if he were in charge.

Or if Ney had been the cleverest of the clever, he might have given some thought to what he'd do if he actually reached Wellington's artillery on the ridge, and been prepared to disable it or use it against Wellington's infantry squares. As it was, all he accomplished was to scare the artillerymen into the squares for a time.

[Geo]

As I see it, even a French victory at Waterloo would only have delayed things. The allies already sort of lost 2 battles in the days prior to Waterloo. A new army could try undo whatever Napoleon gained already. They had more manpower to spare.

[Buster's Uncle]

Agreed - and I severely doubt that Napoleon would have ever laid off the warmongering/conquest to consolidate his gains and create something lasting, even given the opportunity.


I thought the account I read a very long time ago, of the case for someone having slipped Napoleon arsenic over a long spell in St. Helena, was rather convincing.


Nathan Bedford Forrest was an interesting figure.  A man of great achievement and presence, and no little contradiction.  I can't help thinking that if I'd been there at the time, I wouldn't have cared for the racist activities of the original Klan, of course, but might well have been all over the idea of riding out with General Forrest to terrorize carpetbaggers and resist the occupation (Rusty, you should be flattered - it's a rare Yankee I would bring that up to and hope for any understanding).  My brother named his dog after him.

[Rusty Edge]

Thanks, Buncle.

Napoleon was clearly poisoned at St. Helena, but he was dying of natural causes anyway. Win or lose, his days were numbered. Still, I think his various reforms did lay the groundwork for the European Union.

Forrest led a life as interesting as they come, and he did leave the Klan because it was becoming too violent. My impression was that he wasn't a cruel man, he just saw negroes as something closer to horses than humans.  Expendable property. Beasts of burden.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Tangent-

Some things are pretty intolerable- tyrants, arrogant ignoramuses, holier- than-thou-hypocrites, and carpet baggers.

Generally the hypocrites are more insufferable than the ignoramuses, but I'm contemplating another comparison. Graft vs. Bureaucracy. One person can become greedy when given too much power/responsibility, but at least they can get things done. The more people you
involve, the harder it is to get secrecy and collusion, but it's also harder to reach a consensus, or operate efficiently.

I'm reminded of a friend who was appointed to be in charge of a village water company. He had a master's degree and was considered to be one of the few smart enough to manage not only the testing, but the federal  forms. He was pretty frustrated and suggested that a certain amount of graft would be preferable to the present amount of bureaucracy.

Which is worse? Or is the compromise which gives you both the worst case?

[Buster's Uncle]

My own tangent, and forgive me if I go ahead and go off on a thing now that I introduced the subject, 'cause I read an article a few days ago on a rather far leftist site I follow, about a ceremonial burial of a Confederate flag in Florida (not part of "The South", BTW, except in the far northern part) that set my teeth on edge, and I'd be crucified if I spoke up there, however diplomatically.  The performance art/political cremation and burial of a long-dead symbol I could care less about, and even approve of on several levels, but the article, written by an associate professor of history who therefore ought to know better than to make such bald and un-nuanced assertions about the history in question in passing, really bugged me.

(This isn't aimed personally at anyone here, because the Civ community has been pretty cool to me about my origins with me not having to hide that I'm North Carolinian at all and never even got MUCH static about it from the trolls of 'poly when it once came up - it's a rhetorical cry to the Yankees of the world and everyone who's bought their propaganda that's. still. going. on. [today and seemingly forever, the winners writing the elementary school history texts starring the Divine Lincoln Who Died to Save us From Our Sins and all])

All that stuff that happened 151(+) years ago?  I wasn't there, I wasn't involved, and I don't happen to approve of either side - so stop insulting me.  Stop insulting my mother.  Stop insulting whatever shreds of pride I can salvage from the tatters of my heritage.  From The Beverly Hillbillies to Hee Haw to Momma's Family to whatever's out there right now that I don't know about since I stopped watching TV while I was in Texas - but I'm sure there's SOMEthing.  From critically-acclaimed stuff like the plays of Tennessee Williams (good but entirely alien to my experience in every way, and I resent being lumped in with his degenerate characters so, alas identified with "Southerness") to the movie of In the Heat of the Night (the TV adaption was nuanced with bigots and good people, smart and ignorant and all in-between, and it gets the BU "Southern" militant seal of approval for being true and good in its complexity - we are not so different than everyone else, save some stuff a very long time ago we will never be allowed to live down.)

This is tiring.  This is a subject so long and involved that it needs a book to begin to cover it all.  This is a subject with the game so profoundly loaded that it is a really bad idea to bring up at all -ever- to anyone but fellow victims of the systematic oppression and bigotry.  Pretty much only bigots (sure we have some - doesn't everyone?) angry young white men from the southeastern US (the same sorts who may or may not be bigots but definitely don't know what insensitive, impolitic, perspective-lacking jerks they're being when they wail of superficial unfairness like recent race riots or the stuff men's rights activists go on and on about) and absolutely no public figure a millimeter to the left of the late Lewis Gizzard would ever dream of raising in public.  I wouldn't dream of it in a crowd any larger than this for all that I love you guys and trust you to think and be cool.

I'd love to discuss this with a German - I intuit with my enormous buncle powers that a German would get it for some mysterious reason.  The changes in South Africa were too recent to be applicable, I think, though when Buster's Daddy was a missionary in New York City in the 90s, he knew a white girl from SA who later admitted she'd been surprised at how much he exceeded the expectation she'd had the second he first spoke in front of her and gave his regional origins away.

This is my life.  I used to travel a lot for my work - and I might still be out there in tights, making bank flirting outrageously with women avec renfair cleavage if I hadn't gotten my start with a crowd of Minnesota bigot-hypocrites who thought they were in Mayberry and provided me with a textbook example of a hostile working environment.  Here's how it works, whether you're black, fat, a woman or "merely" of a despised geographic origin: they make (hateful) jokes (and treat you in general like you're nothing in whatever way occurs to them, which part escalates if you ever object) until you get pissed off, then hold your attitude against you while also collecting anything else they can run to the boss with.  Being disliked because abused is a hole I have absolutely no notions -even in far-fetched theory- how you could possibly ever climb out of.  They got the impression that I was an angrier person than I actually am, which is really saying something.

(Also what they did to me at WPC, BTW, though because nerdz doing institutional gang-up bullying, not because bigotry.  I don't think it's something people plan out to get you, but it IS a kind of groupthink thing that happens once the group decides they don't like you strongly.)

Mayberry.  Y'know, I'm not stupid, and smart as I am, not a sport, either - that's part of the myth, the Andy, who explains the exceptions that aren't all that hard to find.  My college-graduate parents are smart, and all my grandparents, none of whom were educated beyond high school and some not that, read for pleasure in their spare time.  They were not terribly unusual for that.  I'm not in the Klan, haven't, to my knowledge ever known anyone who is, and I'm not related to myself for about four generations back.  Momma checked, despite the Yankees burning down a lot of courthouses and a great deal of the records of my decent.  Not a lot of slaveholders in the family tree, which in one case goes back to 15-something in Saxony.  Nobody's family tree is clean on that count -sorry Ben Affleck - it's only a matter of how far back.

Those ignoramuses with the Confederate battle flag on the back of their coat or otherwise on public or private display?  God, do I ever wish they'd stop for a long list of reasons, only some of which don't relate to this rant.  Yeah, it's a totally jerk-ass thing to do, who anyone over the age of six should avoid for the obvious reason of the message it tends to send.  And I do not deny for a second that that symbol that has been irretrievably soiled so badly by a worst element almost as bad as Nazis is nothing any decent person not in a historical movie should ever have anything to do with EVER - and some of them with the flag are saying exactly what all you outsiders think.  -But let me point out some other things it sometimes says, not that strongly related to the first meaning.  A lot of times it's a great big ol' raised middle finger to our conquerors who still vigorously oppress us, with an eternal barrage of insults and jokes and contempt forever, if nothing else.  You wouldn't think that was a non-problem if it happened to you.  -All your. life.  And Neal Young - oh. my. God, Neal Young and his song The Southern Man.  Look it up if you never heard the song -I'll wait- and enjoy the story you'll find about how the classic Sweet Home Alabama was a direct result/reaction.  (It's a rockin' good song, for all that as far as I can see, Alabama sucks.  Mr. Young, that parts really true about the "Southern" man not needing you.)

Some of them pitiful Joe Dirt doinks in their denim Confederate-from-the-back jackets ain't sayin' a thing in the world but that they like Skynard.  Honest to God.

I am a citizen of the United States of America by force, for all that I think we're all better off in our imperfect, hypocritical, oppressive, union.  I am a conquered subject tired of being punished for stuff I wasn't in on, even the stuff around the time I was born.  And the first time I traveled out of state working renfairs, I got pulled into nearly as many conversations about the Late Unpleasantness, the War of Northern Aggression (a self-serving label, sure, but still with some truth attached) as the rest of my previous 30 years on this planet combined.  It is not a subject of any great interest to me, and I assure you that I am not unusual in that.  That is another of those myths perpetuated against us, possibly with the justice that someone talking to a Yankee would tend to be in mind, possibly bringing it up as an expression of hostility, overt or otherwise. It honestly looks from my seat like we're not the ones most guilty of holding onto it, given all the crap I've mentioned having to live with, not least the winners' propaganda history.

Incidentally, accents are a thing.  I have one, and there's nothing wrong with that, and I think you talk funny too, but consider bringing it up appallingly rude.  I don't even have a normally-strong local accent, I've been told, but it's certainly been strong enough that the sin of talking has rebounded on me to my displeasure far too often in my travels, ever being too often and it's been more than that.  Please world-ruled-by-Yankees, stop singling me out as a comedic figure for something everybody is guilty of.  It's beyond old, and I don't want to have to insist you respect my boundary twice - this being about the millionth time, and it seeming a bit abusive by now from over here.

Americans have collectively never made their peace with losing that war in Vietnam, because when you've got a pretty solid record, you don't want to admit to the marginal cases.  We took a real beating in 1812, but the British went home without achieving their war aims, so win.  Korea was horrible, scarred my daddy to his deathbed, but South of the 49th is still not communist, so war aims and win.  We don't like to admit Vietnam --- because it hurts.  It does something to you as a society.  And my people already knew that hurt, a hurt we can't expect the winners to understand, but wish they would stop rubbing it in, stop endlessly forever and ever claiming it was about one single [inexcusable] thing with which we are tarred and shamed with poor justice after all these years when any sensible close reader of even faintly objective history knows it was the violent stage of a cultural and economic power struggle older than this nation.  Slavery was always in that mix, but stop lying that slavery was all - because if I don't have any problem admitting the truth that my people were way behind the curve of civilization on a horrible and inexcusable matter, I think it's reasonable you, oh my tyrannical northern masters, to admit that it's a bullcrap excuse for a democracy of the people that kills you by the millions and erases your heritage forever for some Old Testament seven generations of guilt bullcrap vengeance stuff, and the lie that a very complex thing was only about one thing is a cover for an illegal war of conquest, with no angels, even the Divine Martyr Lincoln.  It was 151 years ago, and now safe to admit.

Where I sit, the bones of my ancestors are pretty much all buried within 200 miles, going back 500 years.  Nobody very far at all in the past is in any position to throw stones, and all that Washington-owned-slaves/the-Emancipation-Proclamation-only-applied-to-slaves-in-states-rebelling/race-riots-in-New-York-City-during-the-war stuff.  You go ahead and have your pride in your place and your people, whatever you can manage, and leave me mine in peace.  Please. Let it go and stop assuming -or EVER saying; that's rude- ugly things about my mother, a decent woman who didn't choose her place of birth, but embraces it, nonetheless, as is only human nature.  It just isn't right that I, a man at least as imperfect and flawed as the next, but who has struggled to understand the other and be kind and better than his sinful nature and prejudices for his entire adult life has it so bad that his back goes up from the very mention of The South.

The South, message being that I am an ignorant inbred three-toothed retarded KKK racist, and so's my mother who is probably also my sister.  The South, where they had to censor this or that in a racist way or our theaters wouldn't show it, and absolutely not an excuse for racism on the part of the non Southern racists.  The South, font of all that's bad in the United States that forced it to stay in and must regret it by now.  The South, which was not still behind the curve when I was born because we were conquered impoverished occupied and oppressed -still oppressed 100 years later- and angry about it, bucking the federal government possibly more on general principals -because screw you and your tyranny of the majority- than on (undeniably) backwards ideas about the issue at hand.  The South, which is bad because they's just bad and has everything in common with Germany in 1938 and nothing in common with Germany in 1920 (look it up; it made me want to launch a revenge war and conquer France, too).  The South, which is at total fault and not kicked-around people pissed and acting out because of being angry at abuse and engaged in all-too-human regrettable-but-still-common scapegoating (seriously - go read the Wikipedia about the Weimar Republic and give it a good long deep think - yes, I did just try to blame the lingering of my people's racism on the Yankees, and no, I don't really stand behind that, but I'm not kidding about what a harsh and hateful occupation after a lost war, combined with generally awful hard times and the most insane inflation that you just won't believe how bad it was did to the German zeitgeist - Hitler was a product of his times, I swear.)

I just have to ask; in this nation of the people for the people and by the people  --- if it wasn't time yet when everyone involved in the Civil War and slavery and all that was dead --- when exactly do I get to be just one of the people, distinguished only by my own merits and accomplishments and acts, or lack thereof, and not despised, even in South Africa while still under apartheid, for the accident of my birth?

I don't want that flag back, but how about the fair chance and the human dignity everyone deserves?  Let me be an American, just another American at last, like everyone else, not a Southerner assumed guilty - and please lay off my mother.

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh, and I left this out - I refuse to try to trot out whatever progressive credentials I have as some refutation - that's a trap of the some-of-my-best-friends-are-black sort, and even if it passed the smell test, I can always be classified as an Andy, a sport, the exception that tests the rule.  I ain't playing that rigged game, being a person who strives for truth and fairness and what's right, just like a lot of people of all kinds from all places, to whom I extend a lot of credit for trying and expect the same back, even if we fall short of perfection.  Trying does count for something.

Lincoln wanted to send the blacks back to Africa and wanted a conciliatory policy towards the conquered ex-Confederate populace, a policy Andrew Jonson was branded the worst president ever forever for trying to maintain (I honestly think a wiser one, though there's never a way to know in those might-have-beens) in the face of a congress mad for harsh revenge against the "traitors" and acting a lot like the clown college of a congress we're cursed with now.  And Washington made his slaves grow hemp and all that - point being, nobody has a perfect roster of ancestors and we all know about Kennedy's personal habits now and --- Rusty I agree with every bit of what you say about General Forrest with only the additional contextual observation that okay, Forrest loses this contest because slaves until they were taken away from him, but it was Victorian times and the other side was more not-as-bad than better, and you could probably round up the abolitionist Quaker radicals working on the Underground Railroad and find, questioned under truth serum, some holding racial opinions so vile by modern standards that they would keep them from so much as getting elected dog catcher at a Klan rally in Bellingham Washington today.  Forrest was a better man than some and worse than others, as are we all.  I don't care for the stank on that time he killed an ex-slave with an ax, but I wasn't there and don't know if his story was true.

Back to rant endnotes, these mountains I'm up against are pronounced ahpuhLAHchan, and ahpuhLAHcheeuh, they're our mountains, that's the correct pronunciation and no LAYs need apply - thank you for that error, Lyndon Johnson, and for also adding the poorest people findable from the poorest US state to the world mythology against us - and West Virginia was never even part of The South in the first place, so good misinformation all around.

I grew out of my own angry young white man phase a very long time ago, and regret how much all this resembles that - but the game is rigged against me and it's sound like them or stay silent forever, a crucial difference being that I'm fighting the power, not railing against the excesses of the most extreme element of whatever oppressed grouping currently annoying me, whom I imply don't really have it all as bad as they have deluded themselves into thinking if they're not straight up lying.  I'm actually identifying with those oppressed, for all that the nature of the game (The South) leads them to pile on instead of identifying back.  It's lonely being the default bigot, and thus always fair game, as gravy to all the rest.  Beats getting pulled over and shot, to be sure, but still sucks.  And finally, an appalling portion of our society is way back there in Victorian stage on the gay thing, and this here SE corner of our big national tea party sure ain't ahead of THAT curve, and I ain't tryin' to claim different, for all that I wish it was otherwise.  Our racism is exaggerated -there being far too much unreflected assumptions out there that it's not much changed since the 60s- but I won't kick at calling us 'phobes too hard as long as you're not too determined to hang that one on me personally sight-unseen.  Way too much of that crap flying everywhere here in the future where it doesn't, too much people confusing their cultural norms and what makes them uncomfortable or not with stuff that isn't that strongly present in the actual Bible, and not enough people minding their own business.

And finally back on topic so I can go to bed, Napoleon's laws and units of measure have most assuredly passed the test of time, and he certainly seems to have given more thought to posterity and the future after him than Alexander the Great did -faint praise- but I just can't see a victorious Boney ever laying off all the war and getting serious about the consolidating and stabilizing and creating something lasting.  It's just not something you ever seem to see with these top conquer to every horizon and beyond types, and nobody much remembers Alexander for his astonishing diplomatic skills, either, being far more impress with how many people he killed for a truly breathtaking expanse of dirt.  -Also for being the last guy Afghanistan stayed conquered under.

For your tangent, I'd have to know how you kept the graft more reasonable in the long run; thieves steal because they're greedy and successful ones go on to steal more.  Seems like it would tend to escalate into something even more burdensome and obstructive than bureaucratic overhead and red tape a lot more quickly than the inexorable cancer of bureaucracy, which is like the windmills of the gods.

On the other hand, they're still sinfully proud of Huey Long in Louisiana, but then he was shot before he was done, too.

[Geo]

Still, I think his various reforms did lay the groundwork for the European Union.

A bit far-fetched. I could as well state the trade unions did more for equality then anything else at the onset of the 20th century.

Which is worse? Or is the compromise which gives you both the worst case?

Sofar, compromises worked for my own country, and in extension the EU as well.

[Rusty Edge]

Still, I think his various reforms did lay the groundwork for the European Union.

A bit far-fetched. I could as well state the trade unions did more for equality then anything else at the onset of the 20th century.

Oh, sure, it's a stretch. I meant that generally speaking, breaking down trade barriers, standardized measurements, and a common legal framework, etc. are the kinds of things that the first emperor Qin did to weld a feudal region into China. The kind of things that would need to be done sooner or later in order for a feudal continent to become a working EU.

[Rusty Edge]

Well, Buncle, on the whole, I get it. You know that's too much for me to respond to this month.

We should sit down to some scrapple some day in the interest of Pan-Appalachian unity.