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  1. B

    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    It's interesting that the swastikas on the building are arranged symmetrically, with the arms going clock-wise on one side and counterclockwise (or anti-clockwise) on the other side. That must have provoked some interesting comments during the war. The Finns also used the swastika, chiefly on...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    It was curious the way the German Army appropriated several symbols that previously had no particularly evil connotations and made the theirs. For example, not only was the swastika an ancient American Indian symbol, it had even been used as a vehicle emblem by some British units in the 1920s...
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    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    One of my interests, not quite a hobby, is old adolescent adventure books, like the Hardy Boys. They're easily the best known but there were dozens of others. One that I read through the other day used the term "airbus" in referring to an airplane. Airbus Corporation is one of our larger clients...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    The German officer wearing the busby is Von Mackensen, who lived to be 95. He liked wearing his old uniforms long after he was retired. The poster may have been referring to the Iron Cross, which has been a favorite motif among several groups, and is in fact still a German army symbol. The...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    My conclusion is that they first of all believe in bumper stickers.
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    Actually being born might be seen as something of an accomplishment. The real problem is you don't get to choose the circumstances.
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    Fair enough but don't apply 21st century sensibilities and values to the early 17th century. You'll get bad answers every time. Just the same, I agree with you, although I'm more inclined to think that moral and doctrinal purity equaling wealth is from a later period. That was the age of...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    Whether or not being American is something I should be proud of just because I was born here, I can't imagine being anything else. It's even pointless to try. As far as the Pilgrims and Puritans in Massachusetts, they came only for their own freedom and not just their religious freedom. Just...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    Don't confuse believing that slaves were better off, if not necessarily happier, with advocating slavery. They'll probably be the first to tell you that their family never owned slaves, which was probably true. In most Southern states, about 25% of families owned slaves. But in Mississippi and...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    Nice reply. Mine's going to be shorter. I'm also proud to be an American, although I don't say it as though it were an accomplishment. All I had to do was be born here. The first person bearing my family name, who spelled it a little differently, came here (about a hundred miles from right...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    Nationalism as we use the term doesn't go back that far. For most countries in Europe, only to the post-Napoleonic period, in this country, to the Revolution, obviously. It is easy to forget that there was no national government in America before the revolution. Before that, governments of...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    My impressions have been that for the average Russian, the standard of living rose during the Soviet era. That's by Russian standards, not ours. But different standards are applied by some people to other people. Some people in this country to this day believe that black people were better off...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    Whatever future generations decide, they'll keep changing their minds.
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    The post-war period in Germany as well as the rest of Europe is another example of forgotten history. It isn't intentional; it's just a case of it didn't happen here and it didn't happen to us. Your mother might have said to eat your spinach because people are starving in Europe but beyond that...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    The problem with conspiracy theories is that it ignores the possibility that a single person, all by themselves, can do something like that. In other words, the theories are based not on what someone can do but on what someone can't do. My father spent a year as a prisoner-of-war in Germany...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    Belt buckles during the Nazi period displayed the motto "Gott mit uns." God with us.
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    1941: My hometown

    I read a week or two ago that my hometown of Princeton, West Virginia, was the poorest town in the state. I was surprised and saddened to read that, if, in fact, it was true. I do know that the place has had a vacant look to it for the last twenty years as one business after another either moved...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    Part of the reality of the post-war period was that the Soviet Union was occupying half of Europe, not just half of Germany. So the political landscape, as they say, had changed almost overnight. The term "iron curtain" became part of our vocabulary, mainly from its use by Churchill, although...
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    You know you are getting old when:

    An interesting thing about Vietnam is that the senior officers had mostly all served in Korea or WWII, which was also the case in the unit that I was stationed with. And likewise, the senior officers in WWII had mostly served in WWI. For WWI, it was the Spanish-American war and for the...
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    Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

    The Germans didn't stop being German, either. But the US Government had a harder time convincing people that the Germans were bad before the US entered the war, in spite of how people (like my father-in-law) said "everybody knew" that we'd be going to war with them. That finally happened but it...

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