'Merica

[Strike For The South]

USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA

[rajpoot]

If that's a speech from a movie, then my compliments. It sounds very real.

If it is a real speech, then I don't know what to say....it sounds very Hollywood.

Edit:
Oh and by the way, Happy Independence Day to all Americans. The Star Spangled Banner is one of my all time favourite songs.

[Kralizec]

It's from the Patton movie. Good movie, btw.

Happy independence day to you Americans, long live the US and A

[Husar]

I stopped halfway through.

First of all, he looks like a royal, and is presented like one, had Americans already forgotten the sacrifices made to fight the royals in the war for independence by 1945?

Secondly, "Americans hate losing, that's why America has never lost a war, and will never lose a war", on one hand I could say Vietnam, on the other hand, America's enemies hated losing, too, but they lost wars, that may be a nice speech for patriotic people who don't think twice, but for me he needs to try a little harder.

[Kralizec]

Vietnam

Patton was a general during the second World War.

Even then, he'd still be wrong, but meh.

[PanzerJaeger]

...

[Hax]

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

[Adrian II]

Have a good one, my American friends. And Strike, you feast on that fried sucker like there's no tomorrow.

AII

[Lemur]

Happy Independence Day to all my fellow 'Mericans. And best wishes to all other Orgahs, except for the hated British, who will taste blackpowder defiance at the end of my musket. Or something like that.

[lars573]

First of all, he looks like a royal, and is presented like one, had Americans already forgotten the sacrifices made to fight the royals in the war for independence by 1945?

You have to remember with Patton your looking not at the average Yank, but a southern Aristocrat. Who came from an upper class military family and married money. His Grand-father, whom he was named after was a Confederate General in the civil war.

If that's a speech from a movie, then my compliments. It sounds very real.

If it is a real speech, then I don't know what to say....it sounds very Hollywood.

Edit:
Oh and by the way, Happy Independence Day to all Americans. The Star Spangled Banner is one of my all time favourite songs.

It's actually both. The movie Patton used this as an opening. The producers took chunks from a bunch of real addresses by Patton cobbled them together and had George C Scott read it off.

[Moros]

Language Warning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhnUgAaea4M

[Crazed Rabbit]

1776:

[Louis VI the Fat]

The new statue of Thomas Jefferson along the banks of the Seine. It was installed on the fourth of July, five years ago to date. By lovers of the ancient traditions of French-American fascination and friendship. Forever a dying breed, but one that still wields prestige, money (the Virginians) and pens (French), and that can still get one of their American heroes cast in bronze and placed directly opposite the Louvre.

Jefferson stands facing the hôtel de Salm, which inspired Jefferson's Monticello. Of which Jefferson was himself the architect. The statue is a-political, a statue of a foreign leader standing right between the French assembly and the Louvre is a bit much as it was. However, semingly innocently Jefferson is waving in his left hand his blueprint for his Monticello. A building inspired by the Paris' example in front of him. A nod then to the America he built. One build not just out of stone, but of ideas, for both of which he drew inspiration from his years in Paris. He holds his architectural plans for the new world directly at the left bank, the centres of state power to his right, of learning to his right. The statue seduces, subtly, like a man can who's lived in Paris for five years, as Jefferson did. He seduces by ostensibly paying a compliment, by drawing inspiration from what he sees in front of him. Drawing the spectator closer, inspiring to take a closer look, for him to discover that, although looking at France it is America that Jefferson is drawing, a whole new world, to love and to draw inspiration from in return.

It is beautiful.

[Populus Romanus]

~ ~ ~ ~

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Flag draped from the roof of the Pentagon

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

~ ~ ~ ~

[Centurion1]

murica' yeah.

[rajpoot]

It's actually both. The movie Patton used this as an opening. The producers took chunks from a bunch of real addresses by Patton cobbled them together and had George C Scott read it off.

That makes more sense...because I cannot digest the fact that any general would ask his troops to grease their tanks with their enemies' guts, hyperbole or not.

[Adrian II]

It is beautiful.

So is your own little vignette about the statue. Mes compliments, mon vieux.

AII

[Greyblades]

Hrm... I dont realy have much to say about a celebration of a war my side lost... Except this: You fought like hell, you beat the crap out of us, sent us fleeing, and might have very well have sent our empire on a course that ended it. You beat the russians and the nazi's and set yourselves up on the world stage as the greatest country on earth.

Dont screw up now.

Also anyone else a little confused that the flag in the behind Patton is backwards?

[Slyspy]

It has been argued that the American Revolution (sorry, War of Independence) created the British Empire.

Hope you Yanks had a good 4th July!

[Lemur]

You fought like hell, you beat the crap out of us, sent us fleeing, and might have very well have sent our empire on a course that ended it.

Joking, yes? The American Revolution was early days in the British Empire. You built up India into a trading colossus after we showed you the door. Fairly sure the British Empire peaked in the late 1800s.

[lars573]

That makes more sense...because I cannot digest the fact that any general would ask his troops to grease their tanks with their enemies' guts, hyperbole or not.

Thing is the real Patton DID say that. But the movie speech gives the line without any kind of context.

[Greyblades]

It has been argued that the American Revolution (sorry, War of Independence) created the British Empire.

Huh, I was under the impression the british empire started when we started claiming territory on other continents.

[Greyblades]

Joking, yes?

Mostly, I was told that america urged britain to release the colonies and helped the released nations after WW2 but I was mostly trying to be nice.

[PanzerJaeger]

That makes more sense...because I cannot digest the fact that any general would ask his troops to grease their tanks with their enemies' guts, hyperbole or not.

This coming from a general who told his men that taking no prisoners would make them immortal. The man had a way with words...

As for the United States, it is going to suck living through the decline of our power, wealth, and prestige. This is, perhaps, the worst time to live in a failing empire - those born before enjoyed the rise of America and all the associated benefits that came with it and those born after the fall will not miss what they never had. We, though, will witness it crumbling before our eyes. We will know what it was like to be the most wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth as we slide down the international totem pole.

Our empire has turned out to be one of the shortest lived in history, but the extraordinary rise in our standard of living will surely be missed as it falls ever more precipitously in the coming decades.

[gaelic cowboy]

Our empire has turned out to be one of the shortest lived in history, but the extraordinary rise in our standard of living will surely be missed as it falls ever more precipitously in the coming decades.

The UK used to have an empire and the last time I checked the standard of living was hardly that badly off.

[PanzerJaeger]

The UK used to have an empire and the last time I checked the standard of living was hardly that badly off.

Public debt can only prop up living standard for so long. What were all of those budget cuts about last year, again?

[gaelic cowboy]

You said standard of living not not debt to GDP ratio the standard of living is many times better than when they had the empire.

Even a 50% cut in every single goverment spend would I'm willing to bet still end up with a better standard of living than the imperial past.

Also I think you will find it was private debt that increased the standard of living into unsustainable levels, hence the cuts now to reign in the private debt which was decided to be made public.

Anyway thats beside the point the real point is that passing on the eagle banner does not mean you all end up eating out of bins or summit

[gaelic cowboy]

double post gah

[PanzerJaeger]

You said standard of living not not debt to GDP ratio the standard of living is many times better than when they had the empire.

Even a 50% cut in every single goverment spend would I'm willing to bet still end up with a better standard of living than the imperial past.

In a nation like the UK, public debt and standard of living are inextricably linked. Look at what is being cut.

[gaelic cowboy]

Yes indeed and it could drop by 50% or more and still be 100% above the level of the 1950s