by Charles Mudede
There are three movements in this post. The first is prompted by a comment in Ken Burns's vastly overrated and utterly shallow documentary (and it obscures this shallowness with its length—18 hours), The Vietnam War. The second is prompted by a comment made in the seventh lecture, "The Loss of the American Colonies," of Patrick N. Allitt's Teaching Company course The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. (To make more sense of this comment and its place in this post, pleas
There are three movements in this post. The first is prompted by a comment in Ken Burns's vastly overrated and utterly shallow documentary (and it obscures this shallowness with its length—18 hours), The Vietnam War. The second is prompted by a comment made in the seventh lecture, "The Loss of the American Colonies," of Patrick N. Allitt's Teaching Company course The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. (To make more sense of this comment and its place in this post, pleas