Word: civilizers
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...early 1949, China's in the endgame of its civil war and Mao Zedong's communist forces are poised to take Beijing. Just south of the Yangtze, in Nanjing, Mao's archfoe, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, holds court as the leader of the Republic of China and its Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government. But Mao believes that winning Beijing first will deal a mortal blow to the morale of the KMT. En route to what will be the future People's Republic's capital, he and his top lieutenants pause in a town that has been deserted by shopkeepers and merchants...
...With the civil war practically won, Mao is also shown to be assiduously wooing assorted Chinese politicians, most notably intellectuals who saw the revolution as a chance to usher in democracy. This way, the CCP can be promoted as a party with roots in a broad-based political movement and not just in the spoils of war - thus further boosting its authority. Taiwan figures too. Mao tries to persuade Li Jishen, an influential southern China figure aligned with the KMT, to join the communist government. Li confesses to Mao that he is responsible for the deaths of many communist cadres...
Demonstrations such as these against the nation's military adventures have cropped up at nearly every important conflict in U.S. history. The Peace Democrats of the 1860s became pejoratively known as Copperheads - after a Southeastern snake that attacks without warning - for their opposition to the Civil War. Peace Democrats were mainly recent settlers of the Midwest (Ohio, Indiana and Illinois) with Southern roots and an interest in maintaining the Union, and they made common cause with Northern groups who opposed emancipation and the draft. The antidraft riots of 1863 - dramatized in the 2002 Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York...
Conscription played a recurring role in protests for the next century. At the start of World War I, Socialists and isolationists opposed the draft on the grounds of civil liberties: Charles Schenck, the general secretary of the Socialist Party of America, was convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for distributing leaflets that urged men to resist the draft. In the famous case Schenck v. the United States, Schenck argued (unsuccessfully) that conscription was the equivalent of "involuntary servitude" and thus prohibited by the 13th Amendment...
...flags abounded in a protest movement that had something for everyone. Young adults from middle-class backgrounds - hippies - allied with working-class opponents of the war who felt that an expensive war in a foreign land did not serve their interests. Antiwar protests built on the momentum of the civil rights movement and borrowed many of its nonviolent tactics: among the iconic images from the time are flowers in guns, Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago Seven at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, sit-ins, bed-ins, peace-ins and the ubiquitous peace sign. The 1970 shooting deaths of four students...