Word: bismarcks
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...Buruma, nothing in modern Japan is completely Japanese. Even the myth of a divine Emperor, he contends, was assembled using imported parts. The old samurai who wrote Japan's first constitution in 1889 borrowed the nation-building blueprint of Europe's wiliest soldier, Otto von Bismarck, transforming Shintoism from a nature cult into a unifying national faith by grafting on German dogmas of military discipline and national essence...
...Morocco to Bahrain, many Arabs a decade ago would practically swoon as they described their adoration of the man who defied America during the gulf crisis. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was the valorous knight, defender of the Arab cause. Arab nationalists debated whether he bore a closer resemblance to Bismarck or to Saladin. In widespread pro-Iraq protests, the refrain in the streets was "With our blood, our souls, we will sacrifice for Saddam!" Some Arabs even swore they saw the face of Saddam on the surface of the moon...
During their long winter at Fort Mandan, near today's Bismarck, N.D., Lewis and Clark encountered Charles McKenzie, a British trader who later wrote,"[Captain Lewis] could not make himself agreeable to us. He could speak fluently and learnedly on all subjects, but his inveterate disposition against the British stained, at least in our eyes, all his eloquence. [Clark] was equally well informed, but his conversation was always pleasant, for he seemed to dislike giving offense unnecessarily...
Obsessed? You say I'm obsessed? With what, obsessed? Oh, you mean these Studebakers. Well, in fact, they happen to be the largest collection of Studebakers in North America, if you don't count Phillips in Bismarck, N.D., with his to-say-the-least questionable "rebuilt" engines. I don't think so. How do you like these Zippo lighters--1,110, if you're counting. I certainly am. What about my Marilyn Monroe movie furniture, my Trekkie memorabilia, my Daisy Buchanan, my Holy Grail, my double helix? Call me obsessed? What do you think of this church ceiling? Took...
...days of the cold war, it was better that the big powers fought proxy wars rather than engage each other. But in the multipolar era the danger of states' losing control of the insurgents they sponsor has soared. It is a reminder of Bismarck's forecast 20 years before the outbreak of World War I: "If there is another war in Europe, it will come out of some damn silly thing in the Balkans." The lesson: don't take Churchill's quip literally. Choose your friends and enemies with equal care, for today's easy way out can create tomorrow...