The DLC represents the Neville Chamberlain position...............

[msongs]

and if you don't know Neville, look him up on Google. This ties in to TIME magazine men of the year

Msongs

Seasons Greeting from the white house
www.msongs.com/bush-xmas.htm

[iamjoy]

1. Appeaser, You Mean

The DLC wants to "appease" the people in this country by compromising with the Republicans, much like Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler.
At least, that's what I presume you mean.


If so, do you realize the irony of it? The pro-Bush hawks have compared the doves to Chamberlain, trying to appease Hussein. Dubya is compared to Churchill.

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

3. Dubya compared to Churchill. That is disgusting!!

By the way, I heard one of the right-wing idiots (Coulter, maybe) make the following claim about Churchill: If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."

This is totally false and stated as false on the official Churchill website, www.winstonchurchill.org

If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! and would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal.

[iamjoy]

4. In Some Ways, It Is Appropriate

I mean, wasn't Churchill a drunk?

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

5. At least Churchill was honest with his drinking...

not a born-again 'trade the bottle for Bible' overzealous hypocrite.

[AntiCoup2K4]

2. Tony "Poodle" Blair is the proper successor to Neville Chamberlain

...Appeasing this fascist dictator just as before. But then the DLC has described themselves as "Blair Democrats", haven't they? ;)

[indigobusiness]

6. Neville Chamberlain got a bad rap. We were in bed with the Nazis then...

and now.

The root of appease is peace.

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

7. "Peace in our time" as Hitler invaded. No, the rap was correct there.

Sorry, but he was the wrong guy for that place in time.

By the way, did you ever read 'Franklin and Winston'...really interesting insight into the personal dynamics of Roosevelt and Churchill's relationship. They were the right guys for that time.

[indigobusiness]

9. It was far more complex than historians have portrayed.

We won the war, barely. We got to write our version of history.

There is so much more to the story than superficially represented in textbooks.

[NoPasaran]

8. I think this is unfair to Chamberlain

The policy of appeasement has gotten a bad reputation because it failed to prevent the eventual outbreak of World War Two. But it needs to be remembered in the mid to late 1930s Britain was weak militarily compared to Germany. While following the diplomatic strategy of appeasing Hitler, Chamberlain's government also started a defense strategy of rearmament so as to meet Germany on more even terms. And when in March, 1939 Hitler annexed the rump Czechoslovakia left after Munich, Britain and France gave guarantees to Poland which they honored by declaring war on Germany in September. And they remained at war even after the fall of Poland, rather than seeking to restore peace and allow the Nazis a chance to digest their latest conquest at their leisure.

Of course it can be argued that had the Western Democracies stood up to Hitler at some earlier point he might have backed down or been overthrown, but there is really no way of proving this. So I would argue that appeasement did make some sense, and when it was shown that it was a failing strategy, Chamberlain abandoned it and went to war.

In contrast, the elements in the Democratic Party who favor chasing after the Republicans and who have been losing elections cycle after cycle seem determined to give up more ground.

[IrateCitizen]

10. No, I think it's quite fair to Chamberlain...

All things considered, it is quite understandable why Chamberlain acted as he did. After all, Britain had lost most of an entire generation in WWI, only 20 years prior to Munich. It's quite understandable, considering the brutality of the organized slaughter that is known as WWI, that Britain would not exactly be itching to go to war.

That being said, it was quite clear even at the time that Hitler had broad territorial ambitions. Also, from the accounts in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, Chamberlain completely left the Chech Prime Minister out of the discussions that effectively doomed his country. Such a move, IMHO, was inexcusable.

Furthermore, despite all its posturing, the Nazi army was not overwhelming at this time. It has been wondered aloud by historians if Hitler would have even been able to take over Czechoslovakia if it weren't for Munich, because the Czech border with Germany, which was the German-speaking part known as the Sudetenland that Hitler coveted, was heavily fortified. As it was, the rest of Czechoslovakia was left helplessly exposed with the Munich agreement, making its annexation by Nazi Germany a grim inevitability.