I don't understand where you're going with this.

Jack and Diane, in the lab are a homage to the mediocre John Mellencamp song "Jack & Diane". My post was a parody of the first two lines of said song.

I dunno maybe in the long run it is the Legion. Many people see the Romans as good guys and if you see the Romans as the civilizers of the western world then the Legion is no different. The Romans did the same awful things, hence why Caesar chose them as his model/

What FO1 did you play? Khans were raiders - they kidnapped people, had a bunch of slaves, raided caravans, and kidnapped Tandi from Shady Sands - a small, peaceful farming community that would become the NCR. Your character in FO1 was asked by Tandi's dad to rescue his kidnapped daughter from being enslaved and [censored]. You could do it one of many ways you want.
Then in FO2, remnants of the Khans took over the ruins of Vault 15 and used it as their base of operations for raiding caravans, then lied to the squatters above claiming they had restored the vault's food and water machines and used them to hide their base. And a couple of their members kidnapped a young girl who was getting to close to the door - and if I remember correctly, probably had plans to [censored] her.
Of course, these Khans are quite different from the Khans in New vegas. I sympathize with their cause. They just seem to want to survive out in the world anyway they can, and were forced into some raiding due to necessity.

And in terms of Caesar's Legion, if you talk to Caesar he seems to, ultimately not believe in the actions of the Legion. He only does it in an attempt to create a better world. He talks about thesis and antithesis - Thesis being the ideas of the NCR and antithesis those of the Legion - and how neither are perfect and both have many flaws. But only by them clashing and wiping each other out can we get Synthesis, a culmination of the good parts of both without the bad parts of each. He refers to the Roman empire, and how it was democratic then become despotic but ultimately found a balance. I think.

Caesar is delusional. I'd follow his tumor before I'd follow him.

I wouldn't be surprised if that is what prompted him to found the legion in the first place!

Well, his delusion have proven quite effective.

So did Hitler's

For a while, yes. He [censored] up, though.

Which just goes to show that even if your effective, it still doesn't mean that your not a delusional, sociopathic, genocidal maniac.

NOTE: Sociopathic is not a word

:rofl:
What a world we live in. So I checked http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sociopathic in the online Webster dictionary to find its first use date. (and sarcastically quip, "neither is 'Jiggy', but its in the dictionary").

And lo... what do I discover..... http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jiggy

They're the suppliers of the fiends, who're one of the biggest (and most brutal) raider gangs in the wasteland.



I'd argue that raiding caravans as opposed to buying from them is rather evil.



...There was a pretty good reason to want them dead in FO1, what with how they kidnapped Tandi in hopes of getting Aradesh to surrender the town. They also kept slaves - remember how the leader had two slave girls you could rescue, and who thanked you profusely for liberating them?

The Khans weren't nice people in FO1. In FO2 they lie to the people of the squat in order to use them as human shields against the NCR's military, so they weren't nice people there either. Also remember that they're raiders. Not peaceful farmers or artisans or anything. They make their living off raiding, stealing, killing, and looting.

Their initiation rites are also excessively brutal.

Really, it felt good to gun them all down. Though perhaps that was the fact that they'd apparently escaped my vengeance twice before even though I thought I'd cleansed the wasteland of their filth back in California. Twice.

Huh, the only use I could find it in is sociopathic personality disorder, which isn't the context I was going for.

It doesn't necessarily mean otherwise either (hitler aside).

Not if your effectiveness comes from your delusion, like you stated in your first post on the subject. My whole point though is that the Legion are the closest to evil in NV. If they are grey, they're like 'snow on the side of the highway' grey.

Delusional people are never great leaders unless they are charismatic.

Yeah, Pol Pot was a regular Teddy Roosevelt... j/k

Heh

My point was that nobody rises to power on their own. Even Pol Pot needed some help. In order for him to rise to power, he needed to sway collegues.

Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao... All were brutal dictators. They were charismatic leaders though (with propaganda on their side).

Caesar in Fallout: New Vegas fits that bill. He's not a stupid guy after all. He was able to bring many tribes under his control and then used his knowledge and character to build his empire on the ruins of conquered people.

Yet Caesar has the charisma of a plecostomus.

If he wasn't good with words and people, the tribesmen who he rose to power through would've just killed him on the spot instead of keeping him alive.

Bad guys? Whoever isn't making unprovoked attacks on me. Those are the good guys.

This guy gets it!

His contemporaries thought they were dogs. Others were just starving raiders. The auto-doc could of lead that motley crew.

Not everyone can lead. It takes someone that the group can respect to lead and even then, the leader needs to know what he or she is doing.

I'm trying to figure out how anyone who visited Nipton becomes an apologist for the Legion.