On Thu, Jun 2, 2016 at 11:23 PM, Kurt Feltenberger <xxxxxx@thepaw.org> wrote:

On 6/2/2016 10:31 PM, Richard Aiken wrote:

BTW, the lost Russian empire I was referring to (of course) was not the collapse of Imperial Russia but rather the collapse of the USSR and consequently the Warsaw Pact.

We call that one the Evil Empire. ;-)

Definitely an empire of conquest (both actual - re Prague Spring - and threatened), in the terms of Professor Thomas F. Madden [http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Trust-Built-America-Building/dp/0452295459].

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville (1843)

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester

"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.