With the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, we might be in another one of those
"moments" that is determined by fate or chance. One of the forgotten facts of George H.W. Bush's nomination of David Souter was who the runner-up was if Souter had turned it down....
Kenneth Star.
Star would have been the 5th vote to overturn Roe v. Wade in Planned Parenthood v. Casey if he had been the pick instead of Souter. The same could be argued with the nomination of Anthony Kennedy. He was appointed after the defeat of Robert Bork. Bork would have been the 5th vote to overturn "Roe" & God knows what else if he had made it to the bench. Bork sure as hell wouldn't have written the opinion that Kennedy did in Lawrence v. Texas...
You could attribute the survival of Roe
(so far) to chance, fate, or the luck of history. In mathematics & physics,
Chaos Theory talks about how small incidents can cause enormous consequences & repercussions. What if certain event would have
"zigged" instead of
"zagged"? I think all of us have wondered over nearly the past 5 years, what if Al Gore was in the Oval Office instead of George Bush.
How would things be different?
So what do you think have been important events in history that have defined our existence. Some have been small decisions, but others could be giant events. Here are 3 events that could be defining moments in history in ways that you don't know...
Assassination Of John F. Kennedy
This is regarded as a major event in American history, but few people realize how consequential it might be. A lot of people mark Kennedy's murder as the point where the idealistic American innocence of Camelot was lost, and cynicism in government began. Also, there are theories that if Kennedy had lived, he would not have went as far into Vietnam as LBJ. However, few people remember that Kennedy's re-election in 1964 was far from assured. He might have lost to Goldwater or another Republican nominee.
The other thing is President Lyndon Johnson's passage of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Civil Rights Act was done, in part, with the political capital he gained from the national grief from JFK's memory, and the landslide victory that resulted from it in 1964. If the assassination never happens, those programs & bills may never occur. It could be argued that JFK might have done more in death, than he could have ever done in life...
The Battle Of Thermopylae
"Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie."
Western civilization may owe its existence to
300 brave souls & their few thousand allies who held back an army that numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not
millions. In 480 BC, Xerxes I
(the King of Persia) launched an invasion of the Greeks. Knowing that it was suicide, King Leonidas I of Sparta took 300 Spartan hoplites & a few thousand Greek soldiers to the mountain pass of Thermopylae to confront the force. Even though they were outraegously outnumbered, they held back the Persian army, that the Greek historian Herodotus said
"drank rivers dry", for 3 days. Eventually betrayed by one of the Greek soldiers who told the Persians of a seperate route through the mountain pass, Leonidas & his Spartans fought to the last man. When Leonidas was killed on the battlefield, his Spartan soldiers fought their way to his body, only to be struck down in a hail of arrows. While the Persians won the battle in the end, they had suffered severe losses & it would come back to bite them in the long run.
The Spartans & Greeks had held back the Persians long enough for the Greek Navy to regroup. This would eventually be pivotal in the Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis. If the Persians had not been delayed, the Greeks could have been conquered. Since most of western civilization has its roots in Greek philosophy, religion, and politics, Islam might be the major religion of the planet if Leonidas had not held them back for 3 days...
The Use Of Atomic Weapons On Japan
It's still debated whether it was moral or ethical to use Nuclear Weapons to end the war in Japan. So what if we hadn't? The United States would have suffered thousands of losses in taking the island. There is a theory that the Soviets would have invaded from the North. This theory predicts that Japan would have been divided between North & South, in the same way Germany was divided between East & West. The Japanese would have been caught in the Cold War. Whether that fate would have been better than the destruction from Hiroshima & Nagasaki is one that's debatable.
What are the important moments to you?