2nd Chances

Discussion in 'History' started by PsychoticEpisode, Dec 7, 2005.

  1. PsychoticEpisode It is very dry in here today Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,452
    From all reports, Christ is supposed to make another appearance. Are there other historical figures that deserve Round 2? Is there someone from the past you would prefer to see in the second coming? Why? (assume as adults unless you have a kid in mind)

    Myself......There are a number of people I wouldn't mind coming around again. Da Vinci would be near the top of the list, not because of the recent code baloney but because I admire the sheer genius of the man. He's like one of those guys born ever so often that are too smart for their age(still waiting for one in my lifetime). I'd like to see how he would perform with today's modern technology at his disposal.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Huwy Secular Humanist Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    890
    yeah, and Galileo, and Copernicus.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Oxygen One Hissy Kitty Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,478
    One of the problems with historical figures coming back in this day and age is that we would see them as actual human beings, not as the reputations that sprang up after they died.

    Take Da Vinci for example. In his tank design, it's been pointed out that the gear mechanism is completely inoperable as drawn. Many historians believe that such a horrendous (and painfully obvious) mistake couldn't be the work of Da Vinci because "a man of that level of genius coudln't make such a mistake". Personally, I believe he messed up. Everyone does, and he would be no exception. He might have looked at his drawing and said "Ah shit. Well, I know what I mean." I think, however, that a few might be inspired by such things. "Hey, look. He screws up, too."

    But if it's pure fancy we're dealing with, I'd like to see the return of the Founding Fathers. Many of them (privately) weren't sure the US would last for more than a decade before lapsing into decadence and being swallowed by France, Spain, or England. Yet, for all of our faults and foibles, here we are nearly 230 years later. The Declaration of Independence still stands for the world to judge our actions by, and the Constitution of the United States is still in full effect, showing off its ability to stretch and flex to times, circumstances, and technology that our Founding Fathers couldn't have even imagined would exist. I'd like to hear their opinions of the scoundrels and heroes who have occupied the presidency. I'd also like to see the looks on their faces when they see the flag that used to have thirteen stars held together by only the most fragile of political arrangements having blossomed into fifty states for whom the idea of secession is as alien as submitting to foreign rule. (Individuals and small groups may rattle their sabres for secession, but the truth is we're too interlocked to even consider it feasible.) Yeah, as you may have guessed, I'm a little bit patriotic...

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Still, it's all just fancy. I can imagine Jefferson dodging the paparazzi as he keeps avoiding the Sally Hemmings case.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. leopold Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    17,455
    damn oxygen that almost brought tears to my eyes.
    peronally i would like for nikola tesla to return.
    the rotating feild electric motor was just one of his numerus inventions
    yeah so i don't have spell checker.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2005
  8. Oxygen One Hissy Kitty Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,478
    It would be so cool to have Tesla back just to give him modern technology and see what he can do with it!
     
  9. jhuang Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    49
    being a student currently taking calculus and physics, i think it'd be funny to bring newton back to see his reaction to young men and women learning in a semester what took him a lifetime to develop. granted he had a better understanding of physics and he did INVENT calculus, but it's still kinda interesting...

    and also, i wonder what his reaction would be to finding out that gravity is no longer considered a force, but a fictional force because of the nature of space and universe.
     
  10. Oxygen One Hissy Kitty Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,478
    It always takes longer to invent something than to have others read about your invention. I imagine Newton would be tickled pink to see the advances, and may even have a good laugh at mistakes he's made along the way. The best scientists are funny that way.

    As for my Founding Fathers return, I also wonder how they'd swallow the fact that the US and UK are so tight with each other that it's difficult for many Americans to regard the British as foreigners, let alone that we once actually hated each other's guts. I had a friend from England who was in this country so long and built up a tidy living for himself that he decided to get citizenship (after realizing he'd been in the country illegally for years). He told us that when he went in and expected trouble, the attitude of the INS was "What do you mean you want to apply for citizenship? You're British. Isn't that, uh, I mean, well, aren't the British, eh, oh to Hell with it. Sign here. You're cool." He said it was like it never dawned on the agent that England was a foreign nation and not the 51st state.
     
  11. jhuang Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    49
    hmm...maybe. but supposedly newton was a bit of a prick. they say he was incurably jealous and paranoid; but i guess there's a fine line between genius and being anal retentive.

    and i agree with your choice about the founding fathers. i wonder what they would think about how the democratic process has developed over time. i wonder what they'd say about iraq....yeah...
     
  12. Oxygen One Hissy Kitty Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,478
    Honestly about Iraq? What a lot of people don't remember (or never bothered to learn) about Washington, Adams, and Jefferson was that they didn't relish the idea of the US even having the armed forces. The belief was that if we didn't pose a threat to anybody, then nobody would attack us. (Just a tad on the rose-colored side, don't you think?) Such thinking didn't pan out, and at one time our armed forces consisted of 3 ships for the navy (two of which were incomplete, to be finished only if we went to war with anybody) and about 30 men in the army (one commander and a bunch of moderately-trained troops). Granted, nobody attacked our mainland, but France started picking off our commercial shipping while England was kidnapping our sailors off the high seas (and sometimes even right in our own harbors). Only when they realized that the world wasn't going to just leave us alone and act like civilized nations did the military get ramped up (well, a little bit, and only begrudgingly).

    France had no stomach for a fight, and England eventually backed off, albeit almost 2 decades later, but the real problem lay along the Barbary Coast. For countless generations the Barbary pirates (read: Mediterranean terrorists) had been extorting the rest of the world, taking money, goods and capturing slaves. It had just become the expected way of the area. (Rumor has it that England's navy, the mightiest on the seas, didn't squash the pirates like bugs because England could afford the tributes while the rest of the world was financially hindered severely, an arrangement quite profitable to the British.)

    We were economically very fragile. It was bad enough that our merchant ships were getting picked off, causing insurance rates to skyrocket until almost no American business could afford the much needed overseas business. There was no choice but to pay the tribute, which started getting higher and higher as England let on that we had an abundance of natural resources. (They were still kind of upset over the Revolution.) The Navy was sent over to provide protection for our ships and to enforce a blockade that was about as effective as a quadraplegic on a football team. The pirtaes ran the blockades faster than a fart through underwear. Captain Bainbridge got lured into chasing a pirate ship and lodged the frigate Philadelphia on an uncharted shoal, and that's when we entered the international affairs department in earnest.

    If the pirates kept the Philadelphia (her crew was enslaved, along with Captain Bainbridge), she'd have an unstoppable pirate ship. Our frigates were bigger than the British frigates, were faster by a long shot and could take a stronger beating. Lieutenant Decatur got the job of denying the pirates the opportunity to use her, executing what Vice Admiral Lord Nelson called "the most bold and daring act of our age".

    MEANWHILE...

    William Eaton figured that the problem was the Bashaw of Tripoli himself. Of four leaders in the area, he was our biggest headache. He assembled an expedition and presented his plan to Jefferson. Take out the current Bashaw and replace him with one more friendly to American interests. Sound familiar? Jefferson refused to support the expedition, declaring that while we may get rough in protecting our interests directly, we were not going to be getting sucked into international games of subterfuge and espionage. (Funny, though, how somewhow the Navy got orders to drop him off in North Africa. It's believed to be the work of anti-Jefferson congressmen.) Such things had not been engaged by Washington or Adams, and Jefferson felt they had no place in the United States' policies. (The expedition was militarily a failure, although the USMC got a couple of nifty traditions out of it. The Navy, meanwhile, caused even Lord Nelson to remark that it would become a most powerful force to be reckoned with if England didn't do something soon. They didn't, and we did.)

    Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, I believe would not support our being in Iraq. They might have begrudgingly supported slapping the hell out of Afghanistan (as that's where bin Laden was holed up at the time), but putting our troops on foreign soil for so long (if at all) would have been most distasteful. As far as any imminent dangers that Iraq was feared to be, I think they would have used diplomatic routes first to assess the threat more accurately, then deal with it accordingly. Small, local threat? None of our business. Can you hit us? Our business. I don't know how effective they would be given the violent nature of that region and their apparent tendencies to believe in the basic good of all mankind, but that's the course I believe they would have taken.

    (Sorry about the lengthy historical diatribe, but I thought it might provide a foundation as America's first foreign war.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    )
     
  13. jhuang Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    49
    Yeah, I figured the founding fathers would be less than pleased about the whole issue. Especially since Washington's farewell address essentially said "don't get involved in foreign affairs..."

    But at the same time, I wonder if they perhaps might have understood the inevitability of globalized communication and interaction nowadays.
     
  14. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
  15. Oxygen One Hissy Kitty Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,478
    I believe that they would have tried to maintain a course of neutrality. Europe's affairs were not our business, why should the Middle East's? Unfortunately, though I believe there would have been a point at which even they would have decided to make a military move, I think it might have been only after we were in a state of collapse. Jefferson especially was so slow to take action on anything other than internal matters as to be practically ineffective. I mean, no, you don't want to be going nuclear at the first shot, but you do have to realize that there comes a point when talk stops working.

    spidergoat- Why JFK? (I ask as I unpack my rifle...)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    Why? Because he was a great president, and his term was tragically cut short.
     
  17. Non-Logical-Idea-Guy Fat people can't smile. Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,002
    jimi hendrix the stolen prophet, john lennon obviously, yeah da vinci,kurt cobain
     
  18. RonVolk Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    232
    Sven Forkbeard or some other legendary Vikings maybe Ivan the boneless, or some kievian Rus, then someone in the modern world would understand and appreciate Cheney.
     
  19. Hapsburg Hellenistic polytheist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,224
    Switch Christ with Emperor Frederick II of Staufen. Also, Charlemagne. And Napoleon.
     
  20. Oxygen One Hissy Kitty Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,478
    Okay. JFK, the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's always better to be able to stare the other guy than to have to send in troops. I wonder how JFK would have handled Hussein and binLaden?
     
  21. jhuang Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    49
    out of curiosity, what point is that?
     
  22. Hapsburg Hellenistic polytheist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,224
    When you hear this:
    "Nuclear Launch Detected"
     
  23. ursula Registered Member

    Messages:
    24
    i am very glad somebody (Hapsburg) mentioned frederick II von hohenstauffen! ive always been impressed by the dude.
    ursula
     

Share This Page