That wasn't my assertion. My assertion was simply that in spite of the ability of modern planes to fly themselves we still expect and demand a human to keep an eye on things, for a variety of reasons. Malfunction response but is one of them.

Personally, I don't wish to share my roadways with completely autonomous vehicles, particularly when I'm out walking or running on said roadways, without the benefit of airbags and crumble zones. It would be awesome if technology would advance to the point that human failures (I'm looking at you, asshole who texts while driving) could be mitigated. That's the really encouraging part of these technological advances, IMHO at least.

They were never "obsolete", at least as the term is commonly used. During WW2 they were useful for all manner of things, from escort duty to shore bombardment, and the only reason you didn't see the envisioned clash of battleships in the Pacific is because Halsey blundered at Leyte Gulf and took the battleline with him in pursuit of Ozawa. If he had left Task Force 34 behind, as he should have, it would have been American battleships and cruisers clashing with the Center Force, rather than escort carriers and destroyers.

As it happened, the Allied battleships performed their envisioned missions with distinction, and even a single German battleship (Tirpitz) was taken seriously enough to tie down most of the Royal Navy's battleships until she was put out of action. It was actually pretty damned hard to sink a battleship with aircraft, even under favorable conditions, as evidenced by Tirpitz, Yamato, and Musashi. To my knowledge there was only one Allied battleship lost at sea to aircraft, HMS Prince of Wales. American battleships were damaged by aircraft at sea, but never sunk or even put out of action.

Oh Gawd, they'll be licensed like Windows:

"Car, please plot a course to Milwaukee and engage."

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that. Automotive Pro is limited to trips of 500 kilometers or less. Please enter your Automotive Ultimate license code."

Thus guaranteeing that it never happens, at least in the litigious society known as the United States of America.

Aerospace is held to a far higher standard than automotive ever will be, with modern planes able to fly themselves from takeoff to landing, but we still expect qualified pilots to sit in the front seat and keep an eye on things. An autonomous automobile may well have more variables to contend with than an airliners autopilot. Children don't tend to dart out in front of airliners, the physics of air travel don't change drastically with weather conditions, and airplanes are built with more redundancy than automobiles.

Even if you can account for such things, how will your autonomous vehicle handle malfunctioning sensors? Aerospace has been working at this for decades and still hasn't figured it all out.

How many parsecs does it take to travel that distance?

Biology doesn't have exclusive claim to the noun evolution:

"a process of change in a certain direction"
"a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state"

Tours (and for that matter, the Siege of Vienna) may have saved Western Civilization but Greece was the birthplace of it. We can never say how the Greek cities would have fared as Persian client states but it seems highly unlikely that history would have unfolded as it did if the Greeks hadn't retained their Independence. If you accept Greece as the cradle of Western Civilization then it follows that the Greco-Persian wars were decisive. In that instance it's just a matter of picking the turning point, and Salamis is the best contender. The better known battles of Marathon and Thermopylae weren't turning points, the former bought a ten year reprieve and the latter was a delaying action turned into noble and doomed last stand.

Salamis was also a naval engagement, which may lead to some bias on my part, though the West has traditionally excelled at sea, so..... :)

The Iconians did. ;)

If depends on how you define "massive"; Salamis had more ships than Leyte Gulf and was significantly more important to Western history. In fact, it was arguably the most important battle in Western history, but that's a different discussion. :)

Leyte Gulf usually wins the biggest title on the basis of personnel involved and sheer geographical scope, neither of which have a historical analogue.

This is commonly repeated but it's a false assertion. The Two-Ocean Navy Act was passed in 1940 and explicitly recognized the ascendancy of the aircraft carrier.

Yamato was deployed at Midway. She was part of the body of surface combatants (with one light carrier as escort) kept out of range for the surface action that Spruance wisely declined to permit. The deployment at Midway was a Rube Goldberg contraption that personifies everything that was wrong with IJN thinking in WW2; multiple formations scattered too far apart for mutual support and a requirement that the enemy do what you expect for victory to occur.

Neither ship was used at Guadalcanal for the same reason that the old American battleships weren't used: Neither side had sufficient tanker assets in theater to keep the old battle-wagons fueled. The USN deployed new design battleships (USS South Dakota, North Carolina, and Washington) but kept the Pearl Harbor survivors on the West Coast. The IJN used two older battle cruisers (Kirishima and Fuso) that weren't as fuel hungry as their bigger/newer cousins.

The biggest flaw with the IJN was their inferior fire control technology. This is evidenced both in surface actions (Samar being the best case study) and in the anti-aircraft role. The USN had radar directed fire control in 1942, for both surface targets and aircraft. The Japanese paid an extremely heavy price when attacking our ships with aircraft, the two carrier battles in the Guadalcanal campaign (Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz) were Pyrrhic tactical victories at best, with most of the Japanese aircraft losses coming from AA fire.

Straw man; better one! Bonus points for absolutism.

When you've finished with Atlas Shrugged do yourself a favor and Google "compelling state interest", "strict scrutiny", and "case law." If you're going to rail against the system you might as well understand how it works in the real world.

You'll brook no argument from me on civil forfeiture. The reporting requirements are trickier; they were put in place because ongoing criminal enterprises were using cash to launder the proceeds of their ill gotten gains. There's a history there and if you want to drill down deeper into Constitutional Law the reporting requirements pass a strict scrutiny test. The State has a compelling interest in preventing criminals from laundering money and the policy is narrowly tailored. It does not represent a significant burden on or intrusion into your daily life.

I can see the philosophical objection, but in the hierarchy of infringements (real and imagined) on my personal liberty this ranks pretty damned close to the bottom. Such are the tradeoffs you make for being a member of civilization and I doubt that there are many people in the political mainstream (or even within Libertarianism) that think we should make it easier for criminal enterprises to launder money.

I'm not so thrilled that large cash transactions must be reported to the government, but that strays off topic.

That's actually his chief complaint if you read between the lines.

So your chief complaint really is the fact that the Government doesn't make it easy for you to cheat^Wlive outside the system?

Yawn.

I suppose you could try your luck at living off the land in Alaska. They're still doing homesteads up there and you'll find a ton of parcels that can be had for <$10,000. Property taxes are pretty low, albeit a non-zero amount. It's probably as far away from the man as you can get and still be on planet Earth.