In Virginia

A year short of eight score years ago today, the bête noire and the Persona Non Grata of this weblog was born.

Says “Foseti” in a comment:

What do we have to do to get a post on the removal of your bete noire from his alma mater?

The reactionary/progressive alliance must be able to agree on something[.]

Well, I don't know about that. Although I can see his point, it's a double-edged sword. The ongoing fuss about ousting names of leaders of old is in the end all about ousting views that today are unfashionable. If this ousting crusade is taken to its full extent, all but everyone revered at this weblog will be ousted. We won't be “allowed” to express those viewpoints either, such as that Rhodesia was better than Zimbabwe (cf. a recent comment). The bête noire will never be ousted for his crusade for democracy as long as the God Demos reigns supreme. That being said, I guess I won't mind a few scratches in the lacquer of this “secular saint.”

Also, over at LRC, John V. Denson quotes Stanley Weintraub in a counterfactual scenario:

Wilson, who would not be campaigning for reelection in 1916 on a platform that he kept America out of war, would have lost (he only won narrowly) to a powerful new Republican president, Charles Evans Hughes.

Furthermore, Denson says:

The last chapter of Weintraub’s book is entitled “What If— ?” This is counterfactual history at its best and he sets out what he believes the rest of the twentieth century would have been like if the soldiers had been able to cause the Christmas Truce of 1914 to stop the war at that point. Like many other historians, he believes that with an early end of the war in December of 1914, there probably would have been no Russian Revolution, no Communism, no Lenin, and no Stalin. Furthermore, there would have been no vicious peace imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty, and therefore, no Hitler, no Nazism, and no World War II. With the early truce there would have been no entry of America into the European War and America might have had a chance to remain, or return, to being a Republic rather than moving toward World War II, the “Cold” War (Korea and Vietnam), and our present status as the world bully.