The Good War, A toast.

Parent Cafe
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<p>^^Like most veterans my dad wouldn’t talk about the horrors of the war either, but I know he was haunted by some of the things he experienced. Instead, whenever he told war stories he liked to tell of the funny ones. Like the time his unit came under heavy attack with bullets hitting all around him. He felt a sticky liquid running down his back, thought he had been hit and yelled for the medic. The poor medic came scrambling out under heavy fire to save him only to discover that the “blood” on his back was juice from a nearby can of peaches that had been hit by a bullet.</p>

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<p>RE: Son of Opie</p>

<p>Stop your medical exam prep for an hour. It does not take very long to read “War is a Racket”. It is not ‘War and Peace’. </p>

<p>In any case, I will give you a hint. In order to wage war, what do armies need more than weapons? </p>

<p>A simple question deserves an obvious answer.</p>

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<p>Okay, I skimmed it, and it seems like most of it refers to World War One. Granted, he’s right in that there are people that profit off of war at the expense of the common soldier, but he doesn’t mention much about the cause of WWII in Europe. Hitler would have forced the continent, and eventually the US, into that conflict sooner or later.</p>

<p>WWI was preventable, I agree, but it was a totally different set of circumstances.</p>

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<p>It was not Hitler who would have forced the US into war. It was the people who provided the funds to his war machine. Learn who they were and you will have found the reasons why ALL wars are a racket. Including the “war on terror”.</p>

<p>Clearly, you need to apply some critical thinking skills to this issue. [An</a> Introduction to Critical Thinking](<a href=“http://www.freeinquiry.com/critical-thinking.html]An”>http://www.freeinquiry.com/critical-thinking.html)</p>

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<p>You’re right, I must not be smart enough to understand… since I disagree with you and everything.</p>

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<p>It is not a question of intelligence or being smart. Clearly you are. But now you have to forget everything you learned and start doing some research on your own. One of the most important things I can teach my students is learn how to think…critically. It is important to bring back the lost art of critical thinking. </p>

<p>That means to not assume that what we are taught in school have equiped us with the all the facts, or even some of the facts. Here is a book that will open your eyes as to why I say that. [the</a> deliberate dumbing down of america](<a href=“http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/]the”>http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/)</p>

<p>The point of view and conclusions you draw are typical of what our schools (both secondary and college) produce, unfortunately.
But that can…and will change. It is inevitable.</p>

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<p>Downloading it, and I’ll take a look at it… might take a while. However, it wouldn’t hurt for you to state your case on the forum (or post the parts of it that are relevant to your argument)… If I read the whole 500+ page book, we might come to different conclusions…:)</p>

<p>Also, conspiracy theories always make me suspicious.</p>

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<p>Yes, we have been taught to be suspicious of so-called conspiracy theories. However, it is the process of thinking critically that one begins to understand how to separate fact from fiction. </p>

<p>I am pleased you have accepted the assignment.
Try to maintain an open mind and beware of cognitive dissonance.
CD can lead to “head in the sand” thinking. <a href=“http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/cognitive_dissonance/[/url]”>http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/cognitive_dissonance/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Don’t be so arrogant and presumptuous as to believe that you know how to “think critically” better than most other people here. Truly intelligent people don’t spout platitudes and jargon that sound like they date from the 1920’s or 1930’s (“it was the munitions makers who profited from the Great War!”), and think there’s one simple explanation for everything. I doubt you really know very much at all about Hitler or “the people who funded his war machine.” </p>

<p>Why don’t you tell us the name of the undoubtedly august institution where you teach?</p>

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<p>OK, now I get it. Northeast is a lunatic, crackpot ■■■■■ who sees Commies under his or her bed. Look at this excerpt from the website for the wonderful book he’s touting about the dumbing down of America (a self-published vanity press masterpiece!):</p>

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<p>Ha ha ha – I haven’t read such a stellar example of “critical thinking” since I came across some John Birch Society pamphlets 35 years ago.</p>

<p>As I said: a crackpot ■■■■■ trying to hijack a thread about D-Day, of all things.</p>

<hr>

<p>My father already worked for the Army as a civilian clerk in 1940 and 1941 after he failed to complete his last year of college at Yale (he didn’t write his senior paper), and joined after Pearl Harbor. He was stationed at Camp Shanks in Spring Valley, New York for the entire war, and was a warrant officer. There were a lot of people stationed there whom he knew, like Joe Louis I think. He’s pretty sure that if the war hadn’t ended when it did, he would have been shipped overseas himself (with everyone else) for the invasion of Japan.</p>

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<p>Your anger is self-destructive, Donna. You have needlessly turned a civil exchange into an angry rant about communists and the John Birch Society? Whew! </p>

<p>But you have made my point regarding the lack of critical thinking skills by too many in our society; when combined with cognitive dissonance further discussion is futile. By the way, all of this has nothing to do with intelligence. It has to do with the fact that from junior high school on we are taught what to think, not HOW to think.</p>

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<p>Fnord.</p>

<p>(10 Char…)</p>

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<p>Ha – no anger, northeast. I think your shtick is rather amusing, actually. As is your little trick of using several putatively profound sentences to say – nothing at all. (Even though this was hardly the thread for it.) Fnord is right.</p>

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<p>There is no spoon…</p>