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But, there is a problem with what you say: Some of the very people who founded this nation believed very much that the people should be always threatening the government with violence to safeguard their rights.
They were wrong. As it turns out, threats of violence against the government don't have any meaningful impact on the strength of a democracy at all.
But, there is a problem with what you say: Some of the very people who founded this nation believed very much that the people should be always threatening the government with violence to safeguard their rights.They were wrong. As it turns out, threats of violence against the government don't have any meaningful impact on the strength of a democracy at all.
Not that it would even make sense to try these days anyway, even if the government was actually tyrannous. Back in the day a group of civilians with rifles might have had a better chance against the government if things really turned sour but nowadays?
If the U.S. Government actually wanted to kill you they could ignore your small arms by sending drones to pick you off one by one and blow up any compound you hide in with a missile fired from 200 miles away.
S%@~ even the regular police have tanks these days.
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And have demonstrated a willingness to shoot first, ask questions later. Plus, federal agents don't even need a warrant to monitor your phone or computer activity.
If you'd said this would be the world of 2015 back in August of 2001, I'd have laughed in your face, then, possibly called the men in white coats.
I'm not worried about police having tanks, I saw them use one in Seattle to fire tear gas into this guy's apartment (they had the wrong house even!) you would not believe what a terrible shot they were, just because they have them doesn't mean they know how to use them:-D
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I'm not worried about police having tanks, I saw them use one in Seattle to fire tear gas into this guy's apartment (they had the wrong house even!) you would not believe what a terrible shot they were, just because they have them doesn't mean they know how to use them:-D
That scares me more, not less.
If anybody would like to quote-fight the guns out, the Congressional Record only goes back to 1873. Before that, you've got the Congressional Globe. The author of many of my headaches reaches back to 1833. Its early end overlaps with the Register of Debates and then the Annals of Congress.
The further back one goes, the more care one should use. The Annals were a later-compiled highlights reel, not exhaustive or necessarily verbatim. The idea of doing that, and recording roughly contemporaneously, took hold during the Globe years. The reading is generally more interesting than fun.
If anybody would like to quote-fight the guns out, the Congressional Record only goes back to 1873. Before that, you've got the Congressional Globe. The author of many of my headaches reaches back to 1833. Its early end overlaps with the Register of Debates and then the Annals of Congress.
The further back one goes, the more care one should use. The Annals were a later-compiled highlights reel, not exhaustive or necessarily verbatim. The idea of doing that, and recording roughly contemporaneously, took hold during the Globe years. The reading is generally more interesting than fun.
I have my own opinions of the reasons the founders may have had to institute the 2nd Amendment (Yes, sorry Libertarians, it's an institution at this point), but it's important to remember that the Bill of Rights was a set of amendments to the original document.
Back to your regularly scheduled RPG talk! :)
If anybody would like to quote-fight the guns out, the Congressional Record only goes back to 1873. Before that, you've got the Congressional Globe. The author of many of my headaches reaches back to 1833. Its early end overlaps with the Register of Debates and then the Annals of Congress.
The further back one goes, the more care one should use. The Annals were a later-compiled highlights reel, not exhaustive or necessarily verbatim. The idea of doing that, and recording roughly contemporaneously, took hold during the Globe years. The reading is generally more interesting than fun.
I have my own opinions of the reasons the founders may have had to institute the 2nd Amendment (Yes, sorry Libertarians, it's an institution at this point), but it's important to remember that the Bill of Rights was a set of amendments to the original document.
Back to your regularly scheduled RPG talk! :)
Can't source it, but IIRC, I do believe the Bill of Rights was written in response to a riot in Massachusetts(?) involving burned Revolutionary veterans, that resulted in a raid on an armory. And at this time the fledgling US didn't have a proper standing army.
That said, I think the 2nd Amendment is an important one, or certainly was, in its historical context. As others here have said, it's a pretty moot point with drones and guided missiles.
And if you'd said same-sex marriage would be legal throughout the country by now back in 2001, we'd have laughed in your face and possibly called the men in white coats.
Meh. Cali and Hawaii were doing domestic partnerships (though legally speaking those weren't worth the paper they were printed on). And Vermont and Massachusetts would legalize full gay marriage just a few years later. Still, I'd never have thought that Wyoming or Utah would've gone for it.
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Can't source it, but IIRC, I do believe the Bill of Rights was written in response to a riot in Massachusetts(?) involving burned Revolutionary veterans, that resulted in a raid on an armory. And at this time the fledgling US didn't have a proper standing army.
Sounds like you've got Shay's Rebellion in mind, which was a major impetus for the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was added at the insistence of various states as a condition of ratification. Whether this condition had any legal effect or not is questionable. Madison was of the opinion that ratification was inherently in toto (as then was) and forever, with conditions equivalent to no ratification at all. He wrote this to Hamilton during the New York debates and in response to an offer to drop opposition in exchange for a promise of a Bill of Rights. They really could not spare New York and the matter really was in doubt, so if he was ever going to make concessions, you'd expect it then.
So far as I'm aware, the federalists made no ironclad guarantees or pledges. But states did submit bills of rights along with their instruments of ratification. What would have happened if ratification went through and none been forthcoming is an interesting question. I suspect some states would have tried to quit, but others would not or would have accepted the fait accompli because the Articles were clearly non-viable and their independent existence similarly non-viable.
We do know that at least one of the proposals got eviscerated to the point of mootness before making it into the Bill of Rights. It's the 10th Amendment. The state-preferred draft would have absolutely restricted Congress to enumerated powers by including the word "expressly". The version that the states ratified did not have any such word. The states accepted this and many would argue for quite sweeping federal powers thereafter. This, incidentally, is the actual original intent. The Congress power as adopted by the convention was to pass laws on any subject of general interest. The enumerated list, minus the Necessary and Proper Clause, were added by a committee gone slightly rogue when everything was drafted up formally. The convention as a whole fixed things with the aforementioned.
Which is all to say, at least, that original intent is a hopeless chimera. Which intention? Of whom? When? You can make a founderstein out of any collection of those, and plenty of historians have tried, but it's one of those things that refuses simplification.
That said, Robert Middlekauf's chapter on the convention in The Glorious Cause is profoundly amusing if you've spent a lot of time dealing with neo-Confederates. So are South Carolina's internal debates in the 1820s. Quite a lot of Early Republic history, in fact. One ends up wondering if they're even literate.
Weren't there another 2 proposed Amendments that weren't passed with the Bill of Rights? My memory's fuzzy, but IIRC one of the two were recently (in Amendment terms) passed.
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Weren't there another 2 proposed Amendments that weren't passed with the Bill of Rights? My memory's fuzzy, but IIRC one of the two were recently (in Amendment terms) passed.
The proposal before Congress had twelve amendments, yes. One was ratified and sent off to the states, but never got its 3/4 and was forgotten until some student rediscovered it in the late 70s. It was ratified as the 27th Amendment back in '92. The gist is that Congress can vote itself pay raises, but they don't take effect until an election's been had. This was not taken as universally a great thing, since it meant there could be constitutional time bombs left for future generations. Hence more recent amendments come passed with language that states must ratify them within seven years, occasionally with an extension.
The other one was actually the first on the list, a system to regulate congressional apportionment. Delaware balked at it and left it one shy until 1803, by which point it was taken as a dead letter and forgotten. Bit of a shame since it would have established that the House must increase as population does, something we haven't really done in almost a century now. Congress did this on its own, kind of piecemeal, until things got stuck at the rough size of 1929 with generally poor consequences that exacerbate the already serious issues with apportionment in Congress.
Both of whom emancipated their slaves, with compensation, after their deaths. A method of graduated manumission that would be favored even by Southern plantation owners in the years leading up to the Civil War - Jeff Davis wanted slavery done away with before the end of the century. Agrarian economies like the South just weren't sustainable post-industrialization.
"Regulated" in that sense is usually taken to mean "trained."
Can't find it at the moment, but there was an article making the rounds about some court throwing out every petty money-making infraction in Ferguson since...I wanna say 2012?
Riots, violence and threatening the government seem to work okay sometimes.
Can't find it at the moment, but there was an article making the rounds about some court throwing out every petty money-making infraction in Ferguson since...I wanna say 2012?
Riots, violence and threatening the government seem to work okay sometimes.
Worked fine for us 'Muricans in the late 18th century. Not so well for France though.
Actually with one or two exceptions, Jefferson's slaves were sold off along with the bulk of Monitcello's furnishings, to help pay off the mountain of debt he left behind.Both of whom emancipated their slaves, with compensation, after their deaths. A method of graduated manumission that would be favored even by Southern plantation owners in the years leading up to the Civil War - Jeff Davis wanted slavery done away with before the end of the century. Agrarian economies like the South just weren't sustainable post-industrialization.
"Regulated" in that sense is usually taken to mean "trained."
Huh, I always heard he managed to compensate a good number of them (hence why Jefferson along with Washington are more common surnames for African-Americans than whites by and large). Forgot about the debt, though. That does make sense.
"Regulated" in that sense is usually taken to mean "trained."
If one is referring to the Second Amendment, keep in mind that the US did not have a professional, standing land army of any consequence until ~1917 (National Army).
For all practical purposes, the Army we are familiar with today did not come about until the aftermath of World War 2.
Under such circumstances it is understandable that the citizen-militias be armed without constraint. Radio took a wee bit to come into play while telegraphy has its own limits.
"Regulated" in that sense is usually taken to mean "trained."If one is referring to the Second Amendment, keep in mind that the US did not have a professional, standing land army of any consequence until ~1917 (National Army).
For all practical purposes, the Army we are familiar with today did not come about until the aftermath of World War 2.
Under such circumstances it is understandable that the citizen-militias be armed without constraint. Radio took a wee bit to come into play while telegraphy has its own limits.
Much for the same reason the UK still has local regiments rather than a Royal Army in contrast to the Royal Navy.
Speaking of WW2, if memory serves the armed citizenry of the US was taken into account by IJN Admiral Yamamoto who cautioned against an invasion of the continental US, saying "Every blade of grass hides a rifle."
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Don't they have a separate Civil War thread?
Cant you take the history lessons there:-)
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Please don't bring your arguments about Revolutionary War figures into the Civil War thread.
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Well maybe a new thread then:-)
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Both of whom emancipated their slaves, with compensation, after their deaths. A method of graduated manumission that would be favored even by Southern plantation owners in the years leading up to the Civil War - Jeff Davis wanted slavery done away with before the end of the century. Agrarian economies like the South just weren't sustainable post-industrialization.
"Regulated" in that sense is usually taken to mean "trained."
Not so much: Civil War here.
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Washington actually wasn't a slave owner by his choice. They were his wife's slaves. His choice is seen where he made it a point to free them upon his death.
Mount Vernon has a good piece on Washington's slaves, though I think it's a little more sympathetic than I'd be.
He had ten from age eleven, which he inherited from his father. Not entirely his fault and you can expect he wouldn't instantly free them since he's eleven and all. But they were his property and he ended up buying more for himself. His dower slaves made up only around half of his total holdings.
He also elected to keep them until, you know, they could no longer personally enrich him. That's better than condemning them in perpetuity, and he did order that the elderly slaves be provided for out of his estate, but it's also a particularly easy path for him.
He actively pursued runaways, even including Ona Judge who got all the way to New Hampshire. He opted to leave her there only when it appeared to be a political liability to go after her. When the national government was in Philadelphia and thus within the bounds of Pennsylvania's emancipation law (the first in the country), Washington followed the normal practice of slaveholding officeholders and got around PA's laws on keeping slaves from other states indefinitely by regularly cycling them out through another state. I think mostly he sent back to Mount Vernon and got replacements, but I recall seeing references to more cynical trips that were just across the river to New Jersey for a day. This was enough of a hassle, especially given Philadelphia's large free black community, that Washington eventually transitioned to using German indentured servants.
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Speaking of WW2, if memory serves the armed citizenry of the US was taken into account by IJN Admiral Yamamoto who cautioned against an invasion of the continental US, saying "Every blade of grass hides a rifle."
Yamamoto might have said that; I have no idea either way. But there were no serious plans for the Japanese to launch an invasion of the mainland US, or even of Hawaii. They had this titanic land war already going on in China which consumed the military capacity necessary for such a campaign, even if they'd had the logistics to pull it off. The grand strategy for attacking the US was essentially to win a few decisive battles and get a peace treaty that would accept Japanese possession of the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia, Brunei, half of Malaysia) Papua New Guinea and general Japanese ascendancy in the western Pacific. That's why so much attention was devoted to wrecking battleships but other naval infrastructure wasn't damaged nearly so much.
Things did not go to plan.
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I think my college history professor owes me an apology. Because my education on it turned out to be full of ****.I'm going to withdraw from this discussion while I dig more deeply into what I've said to verify it.
The site has what looks to be a decent collection of articles on Washington's slaves. This is much better than it did twenty years ago when I visited. Slaves were a marginal factor then, sort of in the air but largely unacknowledged. Same thing at Monticello, which I'm given to understand has done much to clean up its act.
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Can't find it at the moment, but there was an article making the rounds about some court throwing out every petty money-making infraction in Ferguson since...I wanna say 2012?
Riots, violence and threatening the government seem to work okay sometimes.
In that case in large parts because of the sympathy factor, if large groups of Ferguson citizens had taken up guns and opened fire on the police....
There's a bit more complexity in the Empire's decision to attack Pearl Harbor and thus start a war with the United States, much the same as the complexities leading up to the great tragedy of the American Civil War so eloquently outlined in your other thread, Samnell.
The Combined Fleet went there with the specific objective of sinking the three carriers of the Pacific Fleet - everything else they could sink was gravy. Unfortunately for the Empire, those carriers weren't in port.
If they had succeeded in sinking those carriers and any other ships of the line they could at Pearl, they would have only had to contend with the remaining surface ships of the Pacific Fleet, none of which could project power in the way that carriers do. Ideally, the simple fact of "you can't do anything to us, we can do anything we want to you" was thought to be sufficient, if necessary with sufficient demonstrations of subsequent strength, to force the US to agree to either a truce or a treaty.
;) Things definitely did not go according to plan.
There's a bit more complexity in the Empire's decision to attack Pearl Harbor and thus start a war with the United States, much the same as the complexities leading up to the great tragedy of the American Civil War so eloquently outlined in your other thread, Samnell.
Of course.
The Combined Fleet went there with the specific objective of sinking the three carriers of the Pacific Fleet - everything else they could sink was gravy. Unfortunately for the Empire, those carriers weren't in port.If they had succeeded in sinking those carriers and any other ships of the line they could at Pearl, they would have only had to contend with the remaining surface ships of the Pacific Fleet, none of which could project power in the way that carriers do. Ideally, the simple fact of "you can't do anything to us, we can do anything we want to you" was thought to be sufficient, if necessary with sufficient demonstrations of subsequent strength, to force the US to agree to either a truce or a treaty.
Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply that the battleships were the only targets. I just had them in mind because they were present and the carriers were not. Taking them out would have been a pretty exceptional Mahan-style decisive battle, even if Mahan didn't know from carriers.
There's a bit more complexity in the Empire's decision to attack Pearl Harbor and thus start a war with the United States, much the same as the complexities leading up to the great tragedy of the American Civil War so eloquently outlined in your other thread, Samnell.Of course.
Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply that the battleships were the only targets. I just had them in mind because they were present and the carriers were not. Taking them out would have been a pretty exceptional Mahan-style decisive battle, even if Mahan didn't know from carriers.
The Combined Fleet went there with the specific objective of sinking the three carriers of the Pacific Fleet - everything else they could sink was gravy. Unfortunately for the Empire, those carriers weren't in port.If they had succeeded in sinking those carriers and any other ships of the line they could at Pearl, they would have only had to contend with the remaining surface ships of the Pacific Fleet, none of which could project power in the way that carriers do. Ideally, the simple fact of "you can't do anything to us, we can do anything we want to you" was thought to be sufficient, if necessary with sufficient demonstrations of subsequent strength, to force the US to agree to either a truce or a treaty.
I suspect Mahan would have grasped the carriers' strategic capacity quickly enough. :) Mahan would appear to have been a strong influence upon Teddy Roosevelt, whether the latter acknowledged as such or not.
You never know, it can take generals quite a while to realize that tactics need to change with new technology. Take the Civil War for example.
You never know, it can take generals quite a while to realize that tactics need to change with new technology. Take the Civil War for example.
Admiral Mahan may have been smarter and more imaginative than the average general. In fact, he almost certainly was. If you're specifically discussing the Civil War, for example, Mahan was one of the people arguing in favor of the armored battleship in the teeth of the military theorists that didn't think change was necessary in the wake of the CIvil War.
You never know, it can take generals quite a while to realize that tactics need to change with new technology. Take the Civil War for example.Admiral Mahan may have been smarter and more imaginative than the average general. In fact, he almost certainly was. If you're specifically discussing the Civil War, for example, Mahan was one of the people arguing in favor of the armored battleship in the teeth of the military theorists that didn't think change was necessary in the wake of the CIvil War.
Going on memory, the time of Mahan - Roosevelt (1870s - early 1900s) was a bellwether of change in the USN, culminating in the Great White Fleet of 1907-1909. The Civil War itself was a time of military innovation on both sides in terms of technology. Balloons (aerial reconnaissance), rail-based logistics, telegraphy (later applied to naval use), naval mines ("torpedoes" of the time), ironclads (precursors to the steam-powered battleships and the age of the dreadnaught), repeating firearms storing internal ammunition (lever-action and tubular feed magazines) and of course the infamous Gatling gun (earliest machine gun), just to name a few of the big ones.
I like to think better of the US than history demonstrates as assorted efforts were considered and a few undertaken to eliminate slavery in the long years leading up to the American Civil War. By comparison to today I like to think we've come a long way in ~240 years. Rose-colored glasses, I suppose.
The Japanese adhered to Mahan's grand strategy of controlling trade, which led them to build and design submarines as support vessels for a fleet, instead of long range vessels capable of disrupting trade. The Americans and Germans built long range subs capable of disrupting trade which granted each significant advantages in their respective theaters.
Mahan's theories on the decisive battle also proved to be incorrect with the invention of aircraft carriers and submarines. Losing a major battle at sea was certainly costly, but it was more important to keep your supply lines open while disrupting the enemies, which aircraft and submarines are particularly potent at.
In WW1 and WW2, the German's violated his theories quite effectively. The refused to engage in a decisive battle in WW1, leaving their fleet as a constant threat. In WW2, their U-boats certainly didn't control the seas, but they proved costly and dangerous to the enemy.
Japan tried several times to engage in their decisive battle. Pearl Harbor certainly slowed the US, but it didn't crush us. Then their attempt at Midway was certainly disastrous. With their ship designs they weren't capable of harrying US supply lines like the Germans could.
A lot of his other theories are still very relevant though. Also, from what I understand, he avoided serving on coal ships as much as possible, preferring to command square-rigged ships. Which seemed to have problems with collisions (mostly due to human error).
Mahan definitely refined how nations thought about naval power, but he wasn't immune to advances in technology. It's a pretty common thing in military history that someone is great at analyzing grand strategy, but advances in technology befuddle them when it comes to tactics.
Japan tried several times to engage in their decisive battle. Pearl Harbor certainly slowed the US, but it didn't crush us. Then their attempt at Midway was certainly disastrous. With their ship designs they weren't capable of harrying US supply lines like the Germans could.
I dunno, I'd actually argue that they did engage in their decisive battle (at Midway), but lost it.
The Japanese adhered to Mahan's grand strategy of controlling trade, which led them to build and design submarines as support vessels for a fleet, instead of long range vessels capable of disrupting trade. The Americans and Germans built long range subs capable of disrupting trade which granted each significant advantages in their respective theaters.
Mahan's theories on the decisive battle also proved to be incorrect with the invention of aircraft carriers and submarines. Losing a major battle at sea was certainly costly, but it was more important to keep your supply lines open while disrupting the enemies, which aircraft and submarines are particularly potent at.
In WW1 and WW2, the German's violated his theories quite effectively. The refused to engage in a decisive battle in WW1, leaving their fleet as a constant threat. In WW2, their U-boats certainly didn't control the seas, but they proved costly and dangerous to the enemy.
Japan tried several times to engage in their decisive battle. Pearl Harbor certainly slowed the US, but it didn't crush us. Then their attempt at Midway was certainly disastrous. With their ship designs they weren't capable of harrying US supply lines like the Germans could.
A lot of his other theories are still very relevant though. Also, from what I understand, he avoided serving on coal ships as much as possible, preferring to command square-rigged ships. Which seemed to have problems with collisions (mostly due to human error).
Mahan definitely refined how nations thought about naval power, but he wasn't immune to advances in technology. It's a pretty common thing in military history that someone is great at analyzing grand strategy, but advances in technology befuddle them when it comes to tactics.
Decisive Battle as a naval doctrine was valid during Mahan's time. I'd wager that he was savvy enough to revitalize that doctrine - which is what the USN did for its carrier forces - once he grasps just how much reach the combination of carrier aviation, radar and radio gives such a force. A different form of decisive battle occurs when you can launch your ordnance from several hundred miles distance instead of 10-30 miles.
The Imperial Navy had a hybrid of Decisive Battle and Carrier Task Force naval doctrines IIRC. They viewed submarines as warships, not commerce raiders as the USN and Kriegsmarine did, much to their regret.
Pearl Harbor forced a doctrine shift overnight for the USN since the main battle fleet was mauled. Instead of supporting the battleships, carriers became the battleships.
I dunno, I'd actually argue that they did engage in their decisive battle (at Midway), but lost it.
Japan tried several times to engage in their decisive battle. Pearl Harbor certainly slowed the US, but it didn't crush us. Then their attempt at Midway was certainly disastrous. With their ship designs they weren't capable of harrying US supply lines like the Germans could.As predicted.
"I can run wild for six months … after that, I have no expectation of success" - Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
Midway ended was six months, to the day, after Pearl Harbor.
I think Yamamoto may have been too pessimistic.
Let's assume that, instead of the American planes catching the Japanese carriers with armed aircraft on deck, it went the other way around, and all US carriers (Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown) were sunk. The Lexington had already been lost in the Battle of the Coral Sea, so that's basically half the US carrier fleet gone, which makes it very difficult to maintain any force projection capacity across the Pacific.
Yes, eventually the US could (and did) build lots of new carriers, but I think there would definitely have been a window where the politicians could have talked it out -- which was all the Japanese were looking for in the first place. ("Japan would bloody out nose a time or three and we'd sue for peace,")
I think a success at Midway could easily have bought the Japanese another year.
Yamamoto himself operated under a combination of underestimating USN morale and failure to concentrate his OOB in sufficient strength to make a difference. Added to this was successful decryption by the US, failures in the IJN's pilot training program and simply insufficient aircraft and carrier production capacity to replace losses since earlier in 1941 by the IJN.
That the IJN invested too much into the construction of the Yamoto and Musashi dreadnaughts instead of taking the equivalent steel and materials into production of additional carriers and attached carrier air groups did not make things any better given the results of the Battle of Midway. IIRC just that material alone would have been sufficient for another half-dozen or more Akagi-class fleet carriers.
I forget which admiral it was, but I was reading one of the Japanese Admiral's diaries from the war and he talked about when he knew the war was lost. He was looking overhead at the US planes in the sky and comparing it to battle reports of how many planes were shot down. Either the US had 3 times the number of carriers he knew about, or he could not trust a single intelligence report he was getting. Either way, he knew Japan had lost.
Decisive Battle as a naval doctrine was valid during Mahan's time. I'd wager that he was savvy enough to revitalize that doctrine - which is what the USN did for its carrier forces - once he grasps just how much reach the...The Japanese adhered to Mahan's grand strategy of controlling trade, which led them to build and design submarines as support vessels for a fleet, instead of long range vessels capable of disrupting trade. The Americans and Germans built long range subs capable of disrupting trade which granted each significant advantages in their respective theaters.
Mahan's theories on the decisive battle also proved to be incorrect with the invention of aircraft carriers and submarines. Losing a major battle at sea was certainly costly, but it was more important to keep your supply lines open while disrupting the enemies, which aircraft and submarines are particularly potent at.
In WW1 and WW2, the German's violated his theories quite effectively. The refused to engage in a decisive battle in WW1, leaving their fleet as a constant threat. In WW2, their U-boats certainly didn't control the seas, but they proved costly and dangerous to the enemy.
Japan tried several times to engage in their decisive battle. Pearl Harbor certainly slowed the US, but it didn't crush us. Then their attempt at Midway was certainly disastrous. With their ship designs they weren't capable of harrying US supply lines like the Germans could.
A lot of his other theories are still very relevant though. Also, from what I understand, he avoided serving on coal ships as much as possible, preferring to command square-rigged ships. Which seemed to have problems with collisions (mostly due to human error).
Mahan definitely refined how nations thought about naval power, but he wasn't immune to advances in technology. It's a pretty common thing in military history that someone is great at analyzing grand strategy, but advances in technology befuddle them when it comes to tactics.
I didn't say that the Decisive Battle was never valid. I'm pointing out that by WW1 it's effect was diminishing and by WW2 it was largely irrelevant.
Decisive Battle was only ever relevant when it took years to build ships and great fleets were the products of decades of production. As the nations became more industrial and output continued to increase, it became less and less relevant.
The comparison would be to look at land battles. There are many wars where one side lost many decisive battles, going back many, many centuries, yet they still managed to win the war in the end. The Civil War again being a great example of this. The Union lost many battles and was hemorrhaging soldiers regularly, but their ability to keep sending more to the front meant they could out sustain the Confederacy until they actually started to win some battles. There are even numerous situations where the Union lost a battle tactically, but strategically they won because the Confederacy had to give up something afterwards. Perryville and Kentucky come to mind (probably because I was recently there).
Anyways, this is all besides the point. My main point is that there is no guarantee Mahan would have adapted to new technology (he even showed a distaste for it personally) and his strategies were not victorious after his death, they proved to be quite fallible with new technologies.
History is full of generals who were great commanders in one war, but utter failures in the next. The Civil War is a great example of neither side adapting to new technologies well, which lead to exceptionally bloody battles as they hurled men against gun fire.
This doesn't just happen in the military either. Einstein made great innovations in physics, but had difficulty when the field started to advance beyond his contributions. He completely dismissed quantum physics.
I don't really see a lot of evidence that Mahan would be immune to the passage of time. He was brilliant and his strategies defined 50+ years of naval doctrine for multiple countries. That's no guarantee though that he would have adapted well to the changes that have happened since.
Amusing ...
"The mindless rejoicing at home is really appalling; it makes me fear that the first blow against Tokyo will make them wilt at once...I only wish that [the Americans] had also had, say, three carriers at Hawaii..."
(1942)