Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
And That’s Where It All Went Wrong
World History has plenty of moments where a single decision — or a seemingly insignificant act — brought about enduring disaster that appears, in retrospect, to have been be tragically avoidable. The events of late summer of 1914 come to mind.
More obscurely, Winston Churchill famously regretted the monkey who bit King Alexander of Greece on the leg, which caused a fatal infection and set off a succession crisis in during the Greco-Turkish War, arguably leading to the deaths of a quarter million people.
I wonder if the history of the United States is unusually immune to such tipping points. Certainly, the central disaster of our history, the Civil War, happened due to an almost mathematical inevitability. On the other hand, you can point to the Great Depression or the War of 1812 as being all too unnecessary.
If you had a time machine and could undo just one act in history, what would it be? Let’s avoid the obvious; please limit yourself to U.S. history, or to the more obscure events of world history since 1492.
Image Credit: Shutterstock user Voronin76
Published in General
I may be recalling this poorly, but I remember reading that in the George H. W. Bush administration, we were advising Russia and pushing for a strong legislative body and a weaker executive office. When Clinton beat Bush, he handed America’s Russia policy to Al Gore who then reversed the original plan and advised for a strong executive office and a weaker legislative branch.
If this is correct, it’s further proof that Democrats should never get the reins of foreign policy as they always think they know a lot but in fact they are idiots, and again it points to the disaster of the Ross Perot candidacy that brought down George H. W. Bush.
Would I be accused of Godwinizing if I evoked Hitler here?