"J. R. Molloy" wrote:
>
> "Mike Lorrey" wrote,
> > Our
> > only 'extremism' was in dropping two nukes on Japan, which was more a
> > matter of a lack of desire to sustain 1-2 million casualties in trying
> > to take the Japanese home islands than any sort of actual extremism. An
> > extremist would have gladly sustained such casualties (as the Russians,
> > Japanese, and Germans all did in battle,
>
> That's true enough, and in addition, according to Ben Wattenberg, the US
> caused _at least_ ten times more casualties in Japan by firebombing than by
> nuking, and the reason the US stopped the firebombing was that we ran out of
> bombs. Anyway, WWII demonstrates overall just who the nuttiest nations were,
> and fairly well demolishes the argument that extremism has its capital in
> America (unless one categorizes freedom as a form of extremism).
In that respect: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation
in the pursuit of freedom is no virtue" - Sen. Harry Goldwater
paraphrasing the Roman Senator Cato
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:41 MDT