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Roborant:
rob"o*rant, n. A roborant drug; a restorative or tonic.
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Category: History
I love history, but I learned almost none of it in school. I've spent the last 20 years trying to read up and catch on to what I've missed.
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Western Civilization Almost Didn't Happen
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Western Civilization has almost been wiped out - twice.
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The Athenian Navy
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The Athenian navy ruled the seas for 150 years, but sank to almost nothing practically overnight. What happened?
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Mockery
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There's still one hill that political correctness has not stormed.
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The Classics are Important
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There's a reason that we used to teach our kids ancient history.
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The Other Greeks
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Victor Davis Hanson argues that it was the farmers, not the bigshots, that made Greece great. I think he's probably right.
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Greatest General of All Time?
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So, was Hannibal the greatest general of all time? You decide.
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Hannibal in the Alps
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Which route did Hannibal take through the Alps? Well, academics are certainly glad you asked!
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Hannibal and Rome
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Hannibal's talents made him an irresistible force, Rome's strength of character made them the absolutely resolute immovable object. Which would win?
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The Punic Wars
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There were three Punic wars, each worse than the last.
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Hannibal Studies
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I came to the subject of Hannibal almost by accident, but it grabbed me and held me for some months.
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50 Million Marks! I'm Rich!
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The bank notes of countries undergoing hyperinflation cut a few corners...
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Hell On Ice
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One of the least-told, but most heroic of all voyages of exploration.
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The Outlawry of Chainstores
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People always seem to have it in for anyone else who is successful.
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The Moon Landings and Life magazine
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Photos from the August, 1969, issue of Life magazine.
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Giant Brains or Machines That Think
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Giant Brains! Sounds like a zombie movie, but it's actually a blast from our past.
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The Morality of War
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All war is not immoral and we have recent illustrations of this fact.
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Europe's Last Summer
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Fromkin's book explores the causes and events behind the beginning of one of the bloodiest wars in history.
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World War II Audio: 1945
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Audio history from World War II
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World War II Audio: 1944
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Audio history from World War II
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World War II Audio: 1943
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Audio history from World War II
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World War II Audio: 1942
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Audio History from World War II
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World War II Audio: 1941
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Audio history from World War II
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World War II Audio: 1940
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Audio history from World War II
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World War II Audio: 1939
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Audio history from World War II
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The Presidency of John F. Kennedy
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Giglio's book about the Kennedy presidency is well-written and easy to read, but there are some odd things about it.
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No More Manhattan Projects!
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I'm getting sick of some wag proposing a "Manhattan Project" every time there is a perceived crisis.
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Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity
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Walter Winchell was probably the second most powerful media figure of the 20th century. Wether you've heard of him or not.
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A War Like No Other
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Victor Davis Hanson's book on the Peloponnesian war is strikingly relevant to contemporary world events. It's also entertaining and very nicely written.
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Elegant Design
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Elegant design is celebrated today, but it wasn't always uncommon.
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Woodrow Wilson: Epic Fail
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The more I learn about Woodrow Wilson, the more I think Jonah Goldberg was right. Wilson was a fascist, he fits the definition to a tee.
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H.L. Mencken, Super Genius
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H.L. Mencken was about eighty years ahead of his time. Not many people can toss off a newspaper column that's so smart it predicts a scholarly shift eight decades later.
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Profiles in Folly
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Axelrod's book is more annoying than edifying.
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Surprises in Grandma's Papers
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My grandmother's papers reveal some surprising facts.
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An Unchanging Theme
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Obama stands for Change. Where have I heard that before?
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Was Woodrow Wilson Fascist?
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Was Woodrow Wilson really a fascist President as Jonah Goldberg claims? Let's check some additional sources and find out.
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Liberal Fascism
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Goldberg's book is a startling look at the political history of the twentieth century.
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Ancient Greek Information Technology
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You never know what you're going to run into when you start reading the classics.
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Norbert Wiener: why you never heard of him
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Norbert Wiener is one of the heros of the Information Age, but you've never heard of him. That's mostly because of his own paranoia and a rather nutty wife.
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City of Austin: Tear Down This Wall
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Twenty five years ago, the city of Austin played a cruel joke on neighborhoods split by the new Mopac freeway. It's time to fix it.
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Gibbon and The Decline and Fall
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Gibbon's book is a classic and deservedly so. He clearly explains the decline and fall of the Roman empire and has fun doing it.
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Hello to you folks in the future
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Here's a message for you folks living in the future: we had it hard back in the olden days
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Cold War, Old War
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The Cold War has faded from our memories, thanks to the efforts of hundreds of historians.
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Dreams of the Information War
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All conflict now is an information war, but we don't act like we've figured this out yet.
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Greenspan on Income Disparity
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Alan Greenspan's new book surprised me on one thing: he blames US income disparity on the US educational system. Does anyone else think this?
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Ngo Dinh Diem
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The image of Diem has evolved over the years. From Karnow's judgement to Moyar's we see a distinct pattern emerge.
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War in Iraq was inevitable after 9/11
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After the 9/11 attacks, Bush had a very good reason to attack Iraq - and it had nothing to do with WMD's
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Camp Swift
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My grandfather served as a civilian at Camp Swift during WWII, so I couldn't resist this picture book
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Ho Chi Minh
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The image of Ho Chi Minh has evolved over the years. He has gone from altruistic nationalist to fervent communist over the course of fifty years.
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The Evolution of History
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History evolves. The participants in events spell out the first understanding of those events, but later generations often find that their understanding was limited by their participation.
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Dam Fun
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For the first time in fifty years, the Highland Lakes are all at flood stage at the same time. We decided to go and see what that looked like.
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The Riches of Solomon
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Even average people in the US are richer than King Soloman himself. Do we appreciate it? And what debts do we owe to it?
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Bygone Days
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An article from the 1955 New Yorker can tell us a lot about what's wrong with our media and politics today.
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Proceedings of the Old Bailey
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I love raw history: eye-witness accounts, period diaries and the like. These criminal proceeding at the Old Bailey are a candid look into the lives and crimes of ordinary Englishmen.
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From the Shadows
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Gates' book isn't exactly new, but it's an amazing piece of history that everyone interested in the Cold War should read.
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Johnnie's Place
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Johnnie's Place was a fun place to hang out in the 1930's.
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1968: A Very Bad Year
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Robert Gates claims in his book that 1968 was the worst year of modern times, was he right?
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Bush, You Gotta Love Him
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Bush had it all: smarts, vision and a sense of history
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The Evolution of a State
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Noah Smithwick lived a full and rich life during Texas' formative years. Somehow, he lived to write about it.
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Vietnam, A History
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Karnow's book really does an impressive job of telling a complicated tale.
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The Age of Liberalization
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From the mid 1600's to the mid 1800's mankind witnessed a remarkable transformation in human ideas. From Hobbes to John Locke to Jeremy Bentham to Voltaire and John Stuart Mill, our world underwent a change of thinking about as profound as any in history.
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Hobbes' Leviathan
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Hobbes' attempt to put philosophy on scientific grounds and "prove" that the idea of monarchy is good for us isn't very convincing.
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Word of the Day
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Duns Scotus has left a very unusual legacy.
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Voltaire
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Voltaire had it all: he was rational, successful and witty.
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Perspective
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It's hard to have perpective on history.
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Why They Hate Us
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Today seems like a good day to cover a little of the history of Islamic Totalitarianism and understand clearly "why they hate us".
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Sure They Love Us
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The idea of hating America and Americans is nothing new. That attitude was prevalent back in the 1950's, and probably all of the rest of the time.
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The Blitzkrieg Myth
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A look at Hitler's methods during WWII. Not surprisingly, a lot of the conventional wisdom is suspect.
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On Liberty, Part II
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The second installment in our discussion of Mill.
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On Liberty, Part I
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John Stuart Mill's book is a milestone in democratic thought. Locke set up what government is supposed to do, Mill explains what it must not do.
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Jeremy Bentham
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Jeremy Bentham played an important role in the development of democracy.
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Second Treatise On Government
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This is Locke's most important work, in my opinion. It is the blueprint for a democratic government made up of multiple branches, with checks and balances between them.
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First Treatise on Government
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A screed against the monarchy that any modern blogger will recognize as a first-rate fisking.
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John Locke
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John Locke was one of the fathers of modern democracy. His writings were some of the seeds that started the United States.
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The Power of the Glyph
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The invention of writing with a phonetic alphabet was one of the greatest feats of all time.
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Democracy in America
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Alexis de Tocqueville was an amazing man. In a mere nine months he
traveled the length and breadth of the United States of the 1830's and
came to understand it better than most citizens who live in the US
their whole lives.
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More European Troubles
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More evidence that Europe is in big trouble.
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Russian Troubles
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Russia is in even worse trouble than Europe.
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Palestine's Bad Luck
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Palestine has had a lot of bad luck over the years.
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Terror and Liberalism
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Paul Berman's book takes a deep look at the origins of Islamist Extremism.
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A Low Dishonest Decade
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The 1930's were truly terrible years, not just in the US, but all around the world.
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The 1960's: you can have them
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These days, the 1960's are remembered with nostalgia and fondness. If you really look back, however, you see that it wasn't really a fun decade.
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FDR and GWB
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There are more similarities between the presidencies of FDR and George Bush than you might think. Both men had to drag the country kicking and screaming into war and both were reviled in their time.
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