Seventy years of Democratic dominance made us the most powerful nation on the planet. That's just a touch more than simply providing wedge issues.

Brandon:

The Civil War made us the most powerful nation on the planet.

OJ,

How could you come to that conclusion? I seem to recall an British Empire that existed around that time.

Yeah, there was a Turkish Empire too. So what? None of them could beat us.

"Sen. Daniel Webster, one of the Legislature's most respected conservatives and head of the Senate's judiciary committee,"

Send him back to Washington where he belongs!

Being "unbeatable" does not make a nation the most powerful in the world. China and Russia are "unbeatable" in the sense that it would take an occupation army greater than one we could put together to make them submit to our will (in the Clauswitzian sense). That doesn't make them the most powerful nations in the world.

Ninteenth-century Britain could have bottled us up in our ports and occupied our cities at will. We would have been unable to carry the war to them to defeat them.

China and Russia are certainly not unbeatable. We could make them glow in the dark in an instant.

In the 1860s, the British could easily have blockaded our harbors and marched an army to burn down the White House just like they did in 1813. Their leadership wanted to intervene on the side of the South but public opposition to slavery made that impossible.

The massive industrial development and expansion across the frontier made us the most powerful economy in the world by 1900. This was a bi or actually multi-partisan effort. It was only after the election of McKinley and later Teddy Roosevelt that we started looking outward and developing our military power in a world class manner. Because of our relative safety due to our isolation and our enormous industrial capacity fueled by domestic energy sources, we were the most powerful nation in the world by 1918.

Although we let our military languish in the interwar period, our industrial edge was so enormous that it was a simple matter to retool to be the greatest military machine in the world, as we remain today.

Somehow, I think the US would have found a way. After all, we sank several British vessels becoming a free nation, and several more during the War of 1812. The French and the Spanish never did that.

Certainly, we would have defeated them on land.

Bart:

Here's the single most astonishing fact about the Civil War--by 1863 just the North had the same GDP as the pre-War United States. We established then that we were uniquely capable of arming and running a domestic economy with virtually no adverse economic effects from war.

Their military didn't even learn the lessons of the Civil War in time to avoid the waste of WWI. Our military would have crushed them in the 1860s.

Brandon:

Why occupy a smoking crater?

Oh for gods sake, if we can "beat" China and Russia by obliterating them with nuclear weapons, then they can do that to us too. Hell, France can do that to us as well. So I guess we are as "beatable" as any other nation on earth. So then we are not the most powerful nation on earth. But you also say that we have been so since 1865? None of these arguments makes any sense at all.

Brandon:

No, they can't--that's the beauty of it.

Hey, I wanted to read about school vouchers, and all I got was stuff about the Civil War and the British!

A number of states have the word "public" inside their constitutional "right to education" provisions. The teacher's unions joined forces with anti-Catholics to get these in, and they did a pretty good job of it. Being venal and malicious doesn't always make you stupid 100% of the time.

These are a barrier to be overcome, but they will be overcome. NCLB will force the change. Federal constitutional law on separation of church and state will enable it, and even the evolving resurgence of federalism will not preserve the state monopoly.

Public education is finished: the principles of equity, inclusion, and multiculturalism are so deeply imbedded in it that they cannot be excised. Arrogance has come to the aid of venality. Public education has operated as though it owned the children and parents' wishes do not count. We are past hubris and are getting close to nemesis and ate.

Wm. McKinley & T-Rex Roosevelt were mid-wives to the US' birth as an "imperial" world power!

I don't believe that public education is finished. I do believe that we're in the process of realizing that the right to elementry and secondary education belongs to all people in our nation, its public! So, since we've made a commitment to pay for this education with community money, we must let those persons in the public (students) who use the educational dollars use their money for education where they choose to use it.