Dan Walker > Recent Status Updates

"...the empire established by Lenin and his confederates was the first to be based on terror itself since the short-lived tyranny of the Jacobins in revolutionary France." I don't think anything more needs to be said about communism.

As a kid, I always wondered why "Lend/Lease" got so much attention when discussing WWII. It was held in awe, which didn't make much sense to me. Now I think I know why it is so well regarded: because unpaid WWI allied war debts were so politically unpopular in the US. Avoiding that raw nerve with the Lend/Lease program was a great political achievement for FDR.

Shares a couple of key points that the OTHER book in war debts chose to ignore: even with the debt that Britain owed the US, she was still a net CREDITOR. The book also points out that Britain insisted on payment terms that made the debts unmarketable to retail buyers. Britain wanted to deal with the US because she expected to be able to negotiate the terms down in the future. IMO she was negotiating in bad faith.

ANOTHER book on Britain's failure to pay its WWI debt to the US? Well, I find the debate very relevant. After all, what people really mean when they believe we should fight Russia in Ukraine is that the US taxpayer should pay for it. It was the same for WWI. When Europeans got mad at the US for expecting repayment, what they really meant was that the US taxpayer should pay for Europe's foolish decisions.

In socialism, everyone is equal. But some are always more equal than others.

Only now, the author directly states that the US taxpayer was told that the Allies' debts to the US were commercial loans and would be repaid But the Wilson admin must have known all along that they WEREN'T commercial loans: they weren't backed by any assets AND weren't spent on capital projects to generate income to repay the loans with interest. Churchill states the truth: the loans were literally shot away!

Awesome book, but there is a huge hole in the narrative. The book starts AFTER the war. After the US gov't had loaned money to the Allies. So the US looks like a meany. After all, why not forgive the broke Allies' debts? I suspect the reason is that the US public was repeatedly assured that the money would be repaid. Meanwhile, the Wilson administration signaled the Allies that they WOULDN'T have to repay it.

A stunning summary of the book of Job, which "provides no answer in the sense of an explanation or a justification of suffering and injustice. What it does offer is a stern warning to avoid the Scylla of blaspheming against the victims by assuming their wickedness and the Charybdis of blaspheming against Yahweh by assuming his (Greenberg, “Job,” 301)."

"This insistence that the faithful person’s relationship with Yahweh was not broken even in an idolatrous land, when added to Jeremiah’s hope for a newcovenant and future restoration, provided the exiles with the ideas that would transform the nation of Israel into the religion of Judaism."

On page 345, the author FINALLY states the obvious: Bo Jackson was a difficult man to like.

On page 180, Professor Hays shares how scholars of the last century or so have considered the purity laws (of the Torah) as "primitive and irrational taboos." It made me wonder what rituals we have today that future scholars will think of as irrational. What immediately jumped to mind was recycling, which serves no purpose except maybe to signal our devotion to the deity Mother Earth.

Reading about Hugh Culverhouse ticking off Bo Jackson in every way possible is making me think about Jerry Jones, who's now 3 for the last 3 training camps with a ticked off superstar who wants a new contract. I'm starting to think Jerry's too old for this business.

What I'm really hoping for is an explanation of WHY so many people want to immigrate to the US. I doubt I'll get that. Books that advertise themselves as being on Obama's reading list will most likely just whine about how terrible Americans are and how awful US immigration is.

The review of the Austro-Hungarian empire was fascinating. The fact that Woodrow Wilson was so focused on dismembering an empire that had stood for a millennium while leaving intact a Germany that had existed less 50 years strikes me as monumentally stupid. Possibly the stupidest act in world history.

I'm beginning to believe that the author deliberately made the book boring, so perhaps readers would miss the really important points that are made. OK, maybe that doesn't make much sense. But there is a lot of important history here that you'll miss if you're not alert.

Churchill and Orwell defended individual freedom, including the right to be persistently wrong? The right to criticize government leaders, especially when those leaders are completely convinced that they are right? What crazy ideas!

Most audiobooks, after a bit, you just want them to be done. Well, I'm 50% of the way into this one, and still utterly fascinated!

Of course, JP Morgan could straddle both worlds - the Old Guard elites and the new wealthy industrialists. But in business, he was "drawn to talent, energy, and competence, he had rejected partners whose qualifications were only dynastic." So Morgan was the TRUE traitor to his class.

Ah, we come to the real source of antipathy to the "robber barons" - the Knickerbockers and Brahmins - the Old Guard elite who could trace their social status back generations - who were replaced by the fabulously wealthy arrivistes. Men who made millions in railroads and finance in the last few decades of the 1800s.

Hard to tell if this is actually a history of the efforts of the British government to keep WWI going (propaganda, suppression of any dissent, curtailing of civil liberties), or a commentary on the tactics of our own government today.

I didn't used to read biographies, because I felt like the authors would give undue praise to the subjects of their books. After all, if the subject wasn't a "great" person, why read the book? But have no fear, Alan Schom wastes no opportunity to criticize Napoleon. Maybe the sad thing is how much there is to be critical of.

Well so far Napoleon won in Northern Italy because he was aggressive and motivated his poor troops by, uh, promising them lots of loot and women. Meanwhile the invasion of Egypt quickly turned into a catastrophe when Nelson unhelpfully destroyed the French fleet. Interesting about Nelson: as soon as he found the French fleet, he attacked, sailing into a harbor he didn't know and fighting well into the night.

If you have a problem with being too optimistic, and you need something to settle you down a little, surely the denizens of Lonesome Dove will do so, if not push you into downright depression! :)

Seems appropriate for Memorial Day. What I'm learning from this book is how appropriate it is that we recognize the sacrifices of people in uniform. Soldiers, airmen and sailors weren't just fighting the Germans, they were also suffering from inept leadership, from Ike on down, to inadequate planning and supply. As usual it makes me question just how good "The Good War" was for average people.

How could a book written over 10 years ago about a guy born over 200 years ago be so relevant today?! Slavery (and how NYC profited from it), an aristocracy that considers it their birthright to control the the country economically and politically - this book has it all!

Huh? What do you know! On page 189 the name of none other than Anthony Fauci appears! Seems that being involved in a gigantic government SNAFU nearly 20 years ago simply wasn't enough for him.

Huh. 100s die when the Germans launch a surprise attack on the port of Bari, Italy. One ship sunk was carrying mustard gas, which subsequently killed and hurt probably 1000s of people who would have been helped just by washing them off and removing their soaked clothing - if medical personnel had known. It would be decades before this was acknowledged. So much for the "Good War."

Man's inhumanity to man comes out in war. The Germans ruthlessly looted Naples, destroyed priceless artifacts, and creatively destroyed what they couldn't carry off. And yet Naples was lucky. Just as the Allies were learning how to conduct amphibious attacks, the Germans were learning how to destroy cities they were evacuating. Future cities would fare worse.

Well if you genuflect at the altars of the heroes of WWII-better skip Part One, as the Allies launch the greatest diversionary attack in history. FDR makes decisions by refusing to do so, Churchill is overbearing, Eisenhower contributes zero, and Patton is an asshole. No one has a strategic plan as the generals allow the Germans to easily escape Sicily. The price is always the lives of soldiers and sailors.

So far I'm confused by the "robber baron" label applied to Rockefeller. So people who call him that would have preferred the oil business be shared by... other rich businessmen? I doubt it. In other words those who hated Rockefeller most are accusing him of a crime with no victim. Unless they considered other rich businessmen as victims, which I sincerely doubt.