Was the American Revolution justified?

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While I do admit in the realm of painting and architecture America lags behind Europe, I must say our literature, music and cinema is up there with the best.
 
Ohhhh, my friend, the US has made the single greatest contribution to architecture in the last 1000 years.

Levittown. The world’s first planned suburb.

America made an economical home in a safe planned community available to the masses like never before in human history.
 
VonDerTann said:
Ohhhh, my friend, the US has made the single greatest contribution to architecture in the last 1000 years.
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I’m sure there’s some cathedral somewhere that gives it a run for it’s money.

Literature especially is where America has shined. Twain, Henry James, Melville, Hawthorne, Faulkner, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, etc. Even our pop books have been game changing, like Lovecraft, noir fiction.
 
But what’s so good about lunar exploration?

Isn’t it just another Tower of Babel?
 
Painting? You know we agree on lots of stuff but US artists are far superior to Europe.

Whistler. Bellows. Edward Hopper. Georgia O’Keefe. Andy Warhol. Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School.
 
And… ?

Did it make anyone happier? Did it save souls? Or did it just cost a fortune and help in tge development of ever more effective ways of killing people?

I would offer as humanity’s greatest technical achievement the mediaeval cathedrals of Europe. What more could humanity possibly need?
 
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And knowing you, you’ve read them all!

Sorry, gotta get some sleep. What a shame - this was fun!
 
VonDerTann said:
Painting? You know we agree on lots of stuff but US artists are far superior to Europe.

Whistler. Bellows. Edward Hopper. Georgia O’Keefe. Andy Warhol. Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School.
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Georges Rouault is my personal favorite painter. His paintings of Christ are my favorites.
 
The entire world watched the space race: it was a completion between free market capitalism and communism. The whole world saw capitalism win and communism lose. That alone influenced millions.
 
Well the entire world is also watching Coronavirus. A weird fascination is not a measure of success.

The fall of communism had very little to do with the space race and was due largely to its own internal logical flaws. The system had to crack, which it did two decades after the moon landings which were irrelevant to it.

If there were external forces involved, it was the influence of St John Paull II and the Polish solidarity movement.

The triumph of capitalism is not an absolute good, as successive popes have pointed out
 
No one who is fair minded can thank JPII for the fall of communism without also thanking his counterpart in that demise, Ronald Reagan.

JPII without Reagan? USSR doesn’t collapse. The plan to collapse the USSR AKA the"evil empire" was masterful: bankrupt them by vastly outspending them in defense. JPII alone couldn’t have pulled that off. Only with the help of the world’s strongest economy (USA of course) does that occur.

In all candor, Max, I am quite happy to expose your Sentiments (“no contributions to art, architecture and law”? REALLY?!?) as completely factually lacking, and it looks like your recent posts are just you trying to save face.
 
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Oh, and BTW - cathedrals are utterly inconsequential achievements compared to a manned moon landing.

All cathedrals are, are big ornate buildings. Many took a hundred years or more to build.

Going from nonexistent rockets to manned space flight to a moon landing,
In 10 years, while also creating the infrastructure to do it, while the whole world watched and your heated adversary was trying to outdo you and get there first? Now that’s a real achievement.
 
ltwin said:
If I own a house, the government should not be able to take that house away from me unless they have a good reason and they compensate me fairly.
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I actually don’t believe that the government should be able to force you to sell your property.
 
The US government can’t take your land without fair compensation: “eminent domain” aka the power to seize land for a public benefit (like installing a road or a military base in wartime) requires payment of fair compensation. The only exception as far as I know is when your property is itself criminal proceeds, i.e. You use $ from smuggling drugs to buy a house and the house is then subject to seizure - and even then it requires due process, i.e. Court proceedings.
 
VonDerTann said:
The US government can’t take your land without fair compensation: “eminent domain” aka the power to seize land for a public benefit (like installing a road or a military base in wartime) requires payment of fair compensation. The only exception as far as I know is when your property is itself criminal proceeds, i.e. You use $ from smuggling drugs to buy a house and the house is then subject to seizure - and even then it requires due process, i.e. Court proceedings.
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They have to pay you, but I believe it should be the property owners decision whether or not they want to sell, or majority decision in the case where multiple properties need to be purchased.
 
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There are issues with that. First, the govenment can only take the land when its really necessary to do so, again, say for a military base in wartime.

As to majority rule, now you’ve ceded control of your property to your neighbors where they have no such rights otherwise.
 
VonDerTann said:
As to majority rule, now you’ve ceded control of your property to your neighbors where they have no such rights otherwise.
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Yes, it gets complicated when multiple peoples properties are needed for a project. I think majority is the fairest.

In the case of a single person I certainly think that person should have the right not to sell their property.
 
Eminent domain is a hard concept to make fair. As someone who is very pro property rights I acknowledge that.
 
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