Originally Posted by tonkovich

yes, but remember harry lime's speech about the swiss in "the third man":

"You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

i know. i'm rambling. and my point seems to be lost - even to myself.