Stalin's Russia was also one of the other countries that defeated that country where the Reichstag fire occurred, Robomatic...doesn't prove a darned thing either way. To have fought dictators does not in itself guarantee one's own moral spotlessness. Not by any means.

I have long been an avid student of WW II history, and I am far more familiar with maps of Normandy, Barbarossa, and the Battle of the Bulge (Ardennes) than I am with any map of the Shire. :-) Matter of fact, I can't recall any of the principle features on the map of the Shire. My father drove an M5 Stuart tank for the British forces and helped defeat the Nazis...all the way from Normandy to Prague.

The USA was once a bastion of freedom and progressiveness (albeit an aggressive and expansionist bastion of such). It is now just an aggressive bastion, period.

My father, who is still alive, holds that same opinion I just expressed. He is astounded at what has happened in American politics in the last 20 or 30 years, and he considers the present American government to be the moral antithesis of the American Ally whose forces assisted his in defeating the Germans in World War II.

I guess he's living in "the Shire" too according to you, eh?

You're resting on laurels that are way out of date.

I do breathe the air of freedom, because: 1. I'm in Canada, and 2. I'm in charge of my own destiny, and rely on myself instead of on a corrupt bunch of liars in high places to do my thinking for me.