Existential Threats...then and now 

Existential Threats...then and now

Adam Gopnik, writing in the August 23 New Yorker with no apparent intended irony, says,

"How a great power at the apex of its influence, with no obvious rivals in sight - the British didn't want a rival navy, but were more or less content with a minor German empire - grew convinced that it was beset by an overwhelming existential danger is difficult for a contemporary American to understand, of course, but somehow that is what happened."

Having seen millions of my fellow citizens mislead to believe that an essentially rag-tag group of foreign terrorists threaten the very existence of our nation, it is not difficult at all to see how Great Britain, at the beginning of the last century, might feel that Germany posed an existential threat. What I find astonishing is that anybody could have missed the parallel.

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Sun Oct 16, 2005 1:43 am MST by Lakers Tickets

Comment Mr. No (or is it Dr.?), you be the one to hold your breath, okay?

Tue Sep 7, 2004 12:46 pm MST by mrgumby2u

Comment Irony is just around the corner, one hopes.

Tue Sep 7, 2004 10:08 am MST by Sadly, No!

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