This is fascinating

[mamadeb]

Gacked from ellen_fremedon: The American Conservative claiming maybe Bush is from another universe.

Comments

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Quoting from Pat Buchanan's and Taki's magazine? Why not just quote Spotlight and be done with it.

Oh, and there certainly was guerilla activity in Occupied Germany. That Cochran claims his uncle never mentioned it is irrelevant. And Lincoln may not have executed any Copperhead congressmen, but he did arrest and exile them, and he did publicly wish he could execute anyone who urged soldiers to desert.

With that record, I haven't bothered to look up any of Cochran's other alleged "facts". By his own argument, he's already in an alternative universe himself, so the rest doesn't matter.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm not such a fan of Buchanan.

But, um. Huge difference between exile and execution or stating a wish to execute and actually doing it. But that particular quote by Lincoln has been discredited.

I can't speak to guerillas in Germany - perhaps you can give me sources?

However, it's pretty much historical record as to how many Japanese carriers were destroyed at Midway, and when Roosevelt died (before the end of WWII, not afterwards.)

(And I'm sure that historical mistakes have been made by people of all political bents, and I'm not really ascribing malice to these.)

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Nazi guerillas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werwolf).

Lincoln did arrest and exile Copperheads, including former (not current) congressman Clement Vallandigham, and I think he either arrested or threatened to arrest former president Franklin Pierce. He certainly threatened to arrest Chief Justice Taney. He didn't execute any of them, but then nobody claimed that he did. He did say that he ought to do so, so all that's wrong with the quote offered is that it's not his exact words. It is an accurate reflection of an opinion he held and publicly expressed. Which doesn't, of course, necessarily make it right. Oh Maryland isn't a fan song.

If we're going to raise phoney quotes, though, who was it who falsely quoted Jefferson as saying that "dissent is the highest form of patriotism"? John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Nadine Strossen (http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_05_07-2006_05_13.shtml#1147013765), wasn't it? By the argument of this article, they must be all living in an alternative universe too.

The fact is that bad quotes do float around - how many people quote Voltaire as saying that "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"? We know he never actually wrote that, but it is an accurate reflection of his opinion.

This particular Lincoln "quote" turns out to have been the result of an innocent mistake by a copy editor (http://fourthworldwar.blogspot.com/2006/08/hanging-offense.html).

Cliff May was absolutely correct that FDR put off any investigation into Pearl Harbour until after the war. That he didn't live to see the end of the war is a red herring. May didn't say he did hold an investigation after the war, just that he refused to have one until then. Which is true. He also personally requested Wendell Wilkie not to raise it as an issue in the 1944 campaign - and Wilkie complied with the request, and perhaps as a result lost the election. I don't believe for a second that any candidate running against Bush in 2004 would have done that.

That's way more energy than this stupid article deserves. I was just surprised that you quoted it in the first place. I suppose your first reaction was to think "wow, even conservatives have turned against Bush", without realising that the American Conservative is the organ of the Buchananites who have thankfully left the GOP, and has never had a kind word to say about Bush.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Okay. Small amount of googling around tells me that there was, indeed, some guerilla activity in Germany after WWII. It was called Werwolf, and it was basically a minor nuisance at worst that died out after a few months. Only one person, Perry Biddiscombe, believes they were worse than this, but even he says they mostly committed vandalism, although they may have killed. There are even historians who don't believe they did anything at all - Germany was just plain *tired* after the years of war and there was significant occupying force.

However, yes, you are correct. There was probably some guerilla activity there, but more than likely on a level that most people wouldn't even notice, much less remember.

Werwolf and alternate history

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

Yes, there was guerilla activity in post-Capitulation Germany. No, it was not a significant factor in anything. The guerilla Werwolf units were almost nonexistent after May 7, 1945. There were a few isolated incidents, which may have been Werwolf, or may have been other isolated fanatics.

This review http://www.johnreilly.info/wer.htm of a book about Werwolf itself talks about an alternate history where Werwolf really was a significant factor in the occupation of Germany.

As for the other, about Lincoln: the Lincoln quote is in fact fabricated, and there's little evidence that he supported the kind of extreme measures that you claim as a matter of conviction, rather than political damage control (better exile than the indefinite imprisonment advocated by Gen'l Burnside): http://www.factcheck.org/article415.html

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

But thanks. Knowing that it's from Buchanan-sympathizers really dulls the apparent edge. Better to know.