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There were at least four Great Villains; Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt. Hitler was repudiated by his defeat. Stalin was repudiated with the fall of the USSR. Churchill and Roosevelt are at the top of the list now. We live in their world the way that Russians lived in Stalin's world. That will soon change.

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Bill, I agree with the idea that Darryl Cooper used a bit of hyperbole on Tucker Carlson for a shock value. That is how I interpreted it when I heard it. I find Darryl Cooper’s take on history refreshing, thought provoking and more honest than much of the “accepted” views of the past. I also realize it is his opinion based on significant research of what has already been written. It is worthy of consideration and should be used as one more source for those of us who like to dig deeper into understanding the past. Once you become a member of a group (such as the credentialed historians), group think and bias starts to creep into their work. No one wants to upset the group and risk losing their power status. It is another form of power corrupting and coercing the individual.

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Well said, Will, and as Kuhn told us in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" which I think has important things to tell us about looking at interpretations of the past and decoding the cascade that is history I find these three insights prevail in trying to divine that single most accurate picture.

“Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.”

“Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition.”

“Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.”

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