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Why our prep-school diplomats fail against Putin and ISIS
New York Post ^ | March 15, 2015 | Ralph Peters

Posted on 03/15/2015 12:27:25 PM PDT by x

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To: x

Maybe Putin will give them a “participation trophy”, and they’ll feel better about themselves.

Everybody wins!


21 posted on 03/15/2015 1:05:09 PM PDT by moovova
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To: Regulator
Nice kids lose to street thugs every time.

True. But from the stories the mainstream media dig up about Bushes or Romney every election, it sounds like the old single-sex prep schools could be pretty nasty places.

Maybe they still are to judge from the scandal stories that periodically surface at elite schools, but the expectation is always that nothing's really ever going to hurt the elite, so students and graduates don't come to terms with some of life's basic realities.

22 posted on 03/15/2015 1:05:50 PM PDT by x
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To: 1rudeboy
Do those guys look like rational actors?

I think it was the Finns that managed to wiretap Hitler, and the recording survived.

Hitler missed his calling as an actor, because the he came across as quite normal, outside of the Fuhrer persona.

Granted, a brief, translated recording belied what he really was, so I can understand how the "best and brightest" would think it vulgar to add "but verify" to dealings psycho- and sociopaths that are "one of them".

23 posted on 03/15/2015 1:13:01 PM PDT by Calvin Locke
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To: x

Some of this would change if a different kind of person was recruited into State. Like, giving strong preference to ex-military. Even more preference to retired military.


24 posted on 03/15/2015 1:17:17 PM PDT by marron
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To: x

Where is Putin, anyway. Greece, perhaps? Italy?


25 posted on 03/15/2015 1:34:13 PM PDT by familyop (We Baby Boomers are croaking in an avalanche of corruption smelled around the planet.)
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To: marron; x

My Grandfather was hired by the State Department in 1919 after taking a civil service test in 1918. He got the telegram while on a troop ship headed to London halfway across the Atlantic. He had been drafted just after taking the test and it took the government a long time even then to make a decision.

He had no college. He was a farm boy from Indiana. But he self educated to the level where he tested as a graduate student over the years.

And being brought up in a self sufficient world, he was no one’s fool. He spent much of the pre-WWII years in Prague, going toe to toe with the Germans brought in to run Czechoslovakia by the cession of the Sudetenland. They didn’t get very far with him. He was a stubborn SOB who later became a police chief. That was the old State Department.

Now we have callow children. Imagine them up against Reinhardt Heydrich.


26 posted on 03/15/2015 1:37:00 PM PDT by Regulator
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To: x

The answer is in the picture: it is because these people are neither our best nor our brightest. The assumption that they are is a part of the Group think to which millions of Americans, who also are neither the best nor the brightest, subscribe.


27 posted on 03/15/2015 1:47:59 PM PDT by Savage Beast (During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. --George Orwell)
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To: x

If you are irreligius you cannot understand religious motivation. If you have no national pride, you cannot understand nationalism in others.


28 posted on 03/15/2015 1:49:20 PM PDT by SampleMan (Feral Humans are the refuse of socialism.)
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To: Regulator
Somewhat reminds me of Ronald Reagan's strategy for the Cold War: "We win; they lose."

It wasn't fancy. It wasn't nuanced. You didn't need an Ivy League education to come up with it. You just needed good sense and a strong character. And you had to understand the people you were dealing with.

29 posted on 03/15/2015 1:50:21 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy (The dog days are over /The dog days are done/Can you hear the horses? /'Cause here they come)
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To: x

30 posted on 03/15/2015 1:53:21 PM PDT by McGruff (Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.)
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To: x

It has always been our leftist leaders that have “failed” against our enemies. After Decades of this we might learn that they are not trying to protect our interests and failing but rather they don’t see America’s enemies as their enemies.

Chamberlain’s failure with Hitler was not that he didn’t understand what Hitler was, he simply didn’t think Hitler cold harm his power or politics. FDR didn’t fail with Stalin, he admired the man and wished he had the same power here. The only people leftists see as true enemies are people who are a threat to their power.

You watch a leftist react to a true threat to his power and you will see the creampuff veneer fall off immediately, prep school education or no.


31 posted on 03/15/2015 1:56:00 PM PDT by RightOnTheBorder
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To: RightOnTheBorder

The only people leftists see as true enemies are people who are a threat to their power.

You watch a leftist react to a true threat to his power and you will see the creampuff veneer fall off immediately, prep school education or no.
*************
Bulls eye!
Repeat that often. That is the greatest truth about lefties.


32 posted on 03/15/2015 2:22:56 PM PDT by Finalapproach29er (luke 6:38)
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To: x

“Why our prep-school diplomats fail against Putin and ISIS”

Because they’re pussies; they can only talk.

They can’t change a tire, a light switch or their shoes )w/o wifey’s OK).


33 posted on 03/15/2015 2:38:38 PM PDT by Darteaus94025 (Can't have a Liberal without a Lie)
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To: x

Because they’re educated beyond their intelligence?


34 posted on 03/15/2015 3:14:43 PM PDT by beethovenfan (If Islam is the solution, the "problem" must be freedom.)
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To: x

And how is Mr. Putin doing this evening?


35 posted on 03/15/2015 3:37:31 PM PDT by Oliviaforever
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To: McGruff
US can't kill our way out of this war

Apparently the Regime believes that we can surrender our way out of this war.

Granted; that does work. However, the consequences are very bad. Very, very bad.

36 posted on 03/15/2015 3:40:37 PM PDT by ChicagahAl (Don't blame me. I voted for Sarah.)
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To: x
There was a very good program today on C-SPAN3 about the Rosenbergs, which had Marvin Kalb and six scholars who have written on the Soviet spies in the US and related topics, including Ronald Radosh, Harvey Klehr, Allen Hornblum, and Mark Kramer. They all agreed that the Rosenbergs were guilty and that the books claiming their innocence over the years were deliberate lies. They also said that the people on the stage were all the scholars who would come out and say that the Rosenbergs were guilty (the evidence is overwhelming)--for a young scholar to take that line would probably mean not getting hired or at least not getting tenure.

One of them made the point that Truman and Acheson could not believe that Alger Hiss was a spy because of his elite social background--they just found it incomprehensible that such a person would betray his country.

Another point made was that the Rosenbergs could have avoided the death penalty by admitting their guilt but they were more valuable to the Left as martyrs so they chose to die--putting their devotion to Stalin ahead of their parental duties to their two young sons.

37 posted on 03/15/2015 3:47:55 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: beethovenfan

The truth is they aren’t very smart. College educated idiots.


38 posted on 03/15/2015 4:04:23 PM PDT by refermech
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To: x

Generations ago, prep schools had their students read Thucydides, Plutarch, Livy and Polybius, and when they learned about modern history they learned about Metternich and Talleyrand in reasonable detail. That changed when the long march of the left through the institutions basically sacked American academe. Now prep school students are lucky if they get a good grasp of American history since 1945.


39 posted on 03/15/2015 4:54:54 PM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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To: GreyFriar

Thanks for the ping to your post # 18. I agree.


40 posted on 03/15/2015 7:21:00 PM PDT by zot
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