"Or as Jim Morrison sang, 'We got the numbers, but they've got the guns.' As long as we keep it non-violent, their guns don't matter."
Okay, I got The Doors quote wrong.
Think about this: for the last sixty years, we have been trying to achieve a full blown health care solution for this country, without success. President Johnson, one time "Master of the Senate" (as Robert Caro called him), possibly the single best political arm twister in American history, made several attempts before he finally got Medicare and Medicaid passed in the 1960s.
Part of the effectiveness of the conservative movement over the last forty-plus years--besides their lip service towards rational truth in favor of emotional statements defining reality--is their patience. The liberal-left concept of sharing, peace, love, and brotherhood that suffused the Sixties failed, not because it was wrong; it failed because we were impatient. To quote another song by The Doors, "When the Music's Over," from the album Strange Days, "We want the world and we want it "NOW!"
Gotta love Jim Morrison.
Some of the greatest military blunders in history are the result of one side believing that they had to defeat their opponent outright, rather than simply avoid defeat. The Romans' campaigns against Hannibal in Italy, during the Second Punic War, are a perfect example. Every time the Romans confronted Hannibal directly in the Italian Peninsula, the Romans were annihilated, including some 70,000 troops lost at Cannae.
Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus called Cunctator or "the delayer," showed Rome the way. He wore down Carthage's master strategist--rated one of history's great commanders--with a campaign of harassment that prevented Hannibal from supporting Carthage or its provinces, while slowly weakening his army. Finally, because no Punic general except Hannibal could withstand the might of Rome's legions, he was recalled to North Africa to defend Carthage itself. So decimated was the once proud Punic Navy, that Hannibal had to leave his troops in Italy to find their own way back to Carthaginian territory. Their absence would be keenly felt in Hannibal's loss at Zama.
George Washington understood this lesson. He knew that as long as he maintained the Continental Army in the field against the most powerful military in the world, he was undermining the support of the British people for the war, while bolstering foreign support for the fledgling United States. Men such as Washington's rival Horatio Gates however, did not understand this principle, and threw away their troops in head-on battles with the British, like Camden.
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