No, we have never been invaded by a foreign power, or succumbed to their demands. And it wasn't because of our skills at consensus and negotiation. It was because we were prepared to fight.

For a European to condemn war against tyranny is a bit ironic.

One would think nations that had been invaded would have learned a little something about consensus and negotiation versus Panzer tanks. It is no coincidence that Eastern European nations with a fresh memory of what it is like to be occupied support us, while nations where only the very old remember the jackboots don't.

One would think that a nation would know better that had come close to being devoured by tyranny, save for a little help from those nasty military types in America and the massive killings, massive loss of properties, massive humiliations, massive denounciations, executions, and total chaos of the war in Europe. Not to mention megatons of retaliatory death aimed at those who would conquer the planet.

Sometimes in my nastier moments I think we should have just let them be eaten by Hitler or Stalin. But there would have been little satisfaction in it, since once the minority of "undesirables" had found their fate in the ovens, the rest of them probably would have gotten along just fine and dandy in Vichy France or the French Soviet Republic.