Machine guns vs sharpened fruit.
It used to be easy to make an Empire and keep it.
It used to be easy to make an Empire and keep it.
Was Tattoo a racist episode?
- Thread starter The Overlord
- Start date
Haha, true. I don't think any empire could conquer and keep parts of the Middle East and Africa at this point. Not without extreme measures to destroy every insurgency group.
Neither Scotland nor Wales will be permitted to actually leave the UK, which is to say, England. Obviously some degree of autonomy is permissible. But any effort to extend it to true independence will in fact be met with force.
Ireland is one country. The majority of Irish people in the whole island wanted the English out but they still didn't leave. The only silliness is the smug assumption that the English had the right to partition the country. You can't even pretend that Ulster was in fact a local region that should have been treated separately. The Orange enclave only included part of Ulster, no doubt because the including the whole thing would have left the Protestants in the minority from the beginning!
If slavery kept the southern states from being democracies, then the US wasn't democratic till after the Civil War, and stopped being democratic after the Compromise of 1876, at least until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like it or not, democracy is totally compatible with racial and religious persecution, up to the point of genocide. This has decidedly negative implications about people who highest ideas of morality stop at democracy but there you are. The Confederacy was profoundly antidemocratic of course, but not because of slavery. The southern refusal to abide by the results of the free and fair democratic election of Lincoln was the great offense to democracy. And the South would have been guilty even if they had managed to maneuver Lincoln into shooting first.
Ireland is one country. The majority of Irish people in the whole island wanted the English out but they still didn't leave. The only silliness is the smug assumption that the English had the right to partition the country. You can't even pretend that Ulster was in fact a local region that should have been treated separately. The Orange enclave only included part of Ulster, no doubt because the including the whole thing would have left the Protestants in the minority from the beginning!
If slavery kept the southern states from being democracies, then the US wasn't democratic till after the Civil War, and stopped being democratic after the Compromise of 1876, at least until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like it or not, democracy is totally compatible with racial and religious persecution, up to the point of genocide. This has decidedly negative implications about people who highest ideas of morality stop at democracy but there you are. The Confederacy was profoundly antidemocratic of course, but not because of slavery. The southern refusal to abide by the results of the free and fair democratic election of Lincoln was the great offense to democracy. And the South would have been guilty even if they had managed to maneuver Lincoln into shooting first.
I have no idea how this became a discussion on Irish politics, but haven't most polls shown that the majority in Northern Ireland favor staying in the UK?
Also, what are you basing the assumption that Scotland wouldn't be able to peacefully leave the UK on? If the rest of the UK agreed to Scottish independence, what would the issue be?
Uh-huh. Whatever.
Meanwhile, you haven't addressed the right of the people in Northern Ireland to democratically determine whether or not N.I. stays in the U.K. or joins the Irish republic.
Voting Rights Act of 1965, actually.
And yes, I would indeed contend that the United States was not a true democracy until the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Even during the period between the Civil War and the Compromise of 1876, after all, it was still denying the right to vote to women.
Insofar as we can describe any election in the United States before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act as "democratic," I'd certainly agree that their refusal to abide by the results of a free and fair election was a great offense. But their refusal to do is is tied up intimately with their enslavement of a third of their population, so I see no need to try to "rank" which is the greater offense against democracy.
England does dominate the UK, but I disapprove. But then, I disapprove of monarchy too, so the fakeness of the "United" in UK sort of blends into the rest of the muck.
Actually dividing up the assets of the UK between England, Scotland and Wales would provide many, many, many issues, starting with who gets what's left of the North Sea oil. Then there's division of bank assets, physical properties of the state, liabilities in state debts, "defense" policies and expenditures. Then there's the real shape of independence, with laws on money, banking, taxation, customs, it goes on endlessly. The English won't give up sheep herds in the South Atlantic or a useless rock in Spain, they aren't going to give all that up.
The only relatively painless division of the state in modern times was the division of Czechoslovakia, which was accomplished by a nondemocratic counterrevolutionary government which regarded all assets of the workers' state as things to be expropriated and divvied up amongst the new ruling classes. It is easy for the new Czech ruling class to give away Slovakia (and vice versa for the new Slovak ruling class) because they were giving away what was by long custom and usage not their's at all. Generosity with someone else's property is always easier, no?
The trick here is of course the crass assumption that a local majority in one part of a single country constitutes reason for a foreign power to partition said country (while simultaneously claiming the halo of democracy
) in effect assumes the conclusion. Namely, that Northern Ireland is a separate country that has the right to independence. Since the Stormont has come and gone at the whim of London, that certainly is believed to be true by anyone, no matter what they say. The majority of the people of the whole of Ireland do not want the English. They apparently do not want a war to liberate the rest of their island, either, but fear of violence is not an expression of the democratic will. and insofar as Roman Catholic prejudice against Protestants is involved it is the very opposite of democracy. Which explains why some of the fake lefts are so favorable I suppose.In the sense that everyone gets a vote and their votes count equally, neither the US nor the UK is a democracy. The US constitution specifically provides that the minority can overrule the majority, insitutionalizing inequality in the Senate and the Electoral College. And the UK has monarachy and lords. The selective application of the label democracy is a sure sign of a fake left trying to cover trickery.
False comparison. Democracy doesn't refer to the end result of every individual piece of legislation, it refers to the mechanism by which public officials are chosen. Everyone in each state gets one vote for U.S. Senator, and everyone's vote is equal. This is democratic.
I sort-of agree with you about the Electoral College, though. Insofar as the E.C. doesn't go against the popular vote, I'm willing to call the United States a democracy. But the Electoral College really has to go -- there should be no legal mechanism by which someone who has the support of neither a majority or plurality of the electorate can become President.
ETA:
Just so I understand things:
You are contending, stj, that even if a majority of Irish people in a concentrated geographic area of Ireland did not want to become part of the Irish republic, they had no right not to join said republic? That their desire to stay in the United Kingdom does not matter, that the Irish republic should be able to claim their territory as its own?
I'm sorry, but how is that democratic?
When did the Native Americans get the vote in America?
The southern rich must have been super pissed to think that they would lose control of voting blocks worth untold thousands of votes large once their slaves were freed.
That's totally castrating.
You're one guy who owns 10 thousand slaves, which means you can cast 6001 votes on election day one year and the following year you can only cast one vote.
As nasty as slavery is, that really sounds like Lincoln was trying to cripple the Souths ability to vote/determine who the next president would be, ergo rigging conceivable the next dozen elections.
The southern rich must have been super pissed to think that they would lose control of voting blocks worth untold thousands of votes large once their slaves were freed.
That's totally castrating.
You're one guy who owns 10 thousand slaves, which means you can cast 6001 votes on election day one year and the following year you can only cast one vote.
As nasty as slavery is, that really sounds like Lincoln was trying to cripple the Souths ability to vote/determine who the next president would be, ergo rigging conceivable the next dozen elections.
The Indian Citizenship Act was passed in 1924.
Uh, no. People held in slavery were not allotted any votes whatsoever, and slavers were not given extra votes on the basis of how many enslaved persons they held.
True enough, my bad, but for every additional 50,0000 black people the Southern Gentlemen Cotton Barons could force the conception and rearing of, they could add another like minded congressman to the ranks of the government to extend and preserve the sanctity of their lifestyle.
At least that's what the 1800s seem like from this joke I heard Chris Rock telling once about how it was like true love when his great grand parents met on the plantation.
At least that's what the 1800s seem like from this joke I heard Chris Rock telling once about how it was like true love when his great grand parents met on the plantation.
No, a percentage of the population is seeking independence. That's always beens the case. They're simply making more noise and in a better place to achieve it now.
The majority, according to most polls, still do not support Scottish independence.
Yeah, these nasty Catholics vs. these holy Protestants. Gotta love such balanced, totally unbiased, objective views.
Those "holy" Protestants made a deal with the English invaders for their support in maintaining a system that privileged their religious sect. In fact, this sort of thing is quite typical of religions, and thus really is holy, but it is morally wrong, and antidemocratic. So much for them.
However, although I do not know why the majority of the Irish in the Republic favor the maintenance of the Orange statelet, I make no apologies for suspecting that some do so because a Protestant population doesn't fit their vision of Ireland (which is to say, RC.) And I firmly insist that such sectarianism is morally wrong, and antidemocratic.
Everyone who votes for President has one vote, just like everyone who votes for a Senator has one vote. If the one is democratic, then so is the other. Any arrangement that allows the minority to dictate policy is undemocratic. If you agree that majority rule is justified on the grounds of equality, then any government that persecutes a minority is false to its true justification, equality, thus, despite a (hopefully, temporary) majority is not democratic, because it violate the principle that was supposed to give the government legitimacy.
This however does not appply is you conceive democracy as just being a numerical majority in an election, even if there is an elaborate arrangement to prevent any real choices. It especially doesn't apply if the government systematically favors the wealthy, so long as it democratically forbids both rich and poor from sleeping beneath bridges.
If a local majority hopes to maintain its social privileges, then by this noxious conception, it can declare itself to be another state. Or, in the case at hand, pretend it is part of England. In truth of course, Ireland is one country. The majority wanted the English out, but the English didn't leave entirely. The local majority has used the English to oppress the Roman Catholic population. Defending the Orange enclave may defend the conception of democracy that ignores outcomes, but it is also defending oppression. Which is the primary reason for limiting the definition of democracy so narrowly. The English do not have the moral right to partition someone else's country, whether or not they get a local majority for it.
Calling Northern Ireland "their territory" presupposes that there is no whole country of Ireland where the majority should rule. It also presupposes that a religious denomination is sufficient to define a country. both of these claims are illiberal in the extreme and I deny them on simple humanitarian grounds. It presupposes that any group can legitimately claim sovereignty, which is what setting up your own country amounts too. You have to be aware that a claim to sovereignty as it now functions, is the claim to the right to wage war. As such, it is a decision as fraught with difficulties as the notion of just war, for the same reasons.
Oppressed nations have the right and duty to be free in order that the majority of the populations in those countries can be free. No one has the duty to approve those countries that are freed so that the majority of the population can be oppressed. Or even a minority. And everyone has a duty to disapprove the pretense that a part of a country, like Northern Ireland, is really a country of its own.
So... You don't know. You admit you don't know. Yet that doesn't stop you from making an assumption, on the basis of no evidence provided, and then condemning them for that assumption.
Gotcha.
Yes.
No. "Democracy" does not mean "the majority's opinion always prevails in all possible policy formulation mechanisms." It means that everyone gets an equal say in determining who will assume legislative, executive, and/or judicial leadership positions.
If we want to get particular liberal democracy refers to the more complex system of combining the above with constitutional requirements that resultant policies be compliant with the preservation of certain enumerated rights for individuals and minorities and obligations on the part of the state. Thus, there's nothing undemocratic about, say, a supreme court ruling that same-sex civil marriage is protected by the constitution even if 70% of the population opposes same-sex marriage.
But that's not what democracy means. Democracy doesn't mean majority rule, it means that the government must obtain a mandate from its populace via an egalitarian voting system.
No one in Northern Ireland pretends it is part of England. England is a distinct constituent country of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland is not considered a part of it.
No. It presupposes that there was no Irish state and that the Irish people's loyalties were not unified, and that, thus, a large, geographically contiguous minority within the island of Ireland whose loyalties substantially differ from those of the majority of the people of the island of Ireland, lacking an Irish state to which they must historically owe loyalty, should have the opportunity to decide, democratically, their final status.
And, no, believing that Irish Unionists should have the chance to decide democratically to stay in the United Kingdom or join the Irish republic does not mean one must therefore condone acts of oppression undertaken against Irish Republicans within Northern Ireland. It is entirely possible to support one and condemn the other.
Similarly, I favored independence for Kosovo from Serbia. And, similarly, I favor Kosovo giving those ethnic Serbians within its borders, who live in a geographically contiguous area, the opportunity to hold a democratic referendum on whether they wish to stay in Kosovo or re-join Serbia -- and, if the latter, I favor Kosovo adjusting its borders and handing those Serbian enclaves back to Serbia.
Actually, you might have noticed that I tend to regard it in terms of Unionists vs. Republicans, not Protestants vs. Catholics.
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Majority stroke?
Typographical corrections added in brackets. As seen above, the first thing mentioned about support in the Irish Republic for the Orange statelet is reluctance to engage in war. The word "insofar" is a qualifier. I don't know if Horation83 neglected context and merely focused on the phrase "Roman Catholic prejudice against Protestants" but context matters. He is misinterpreting.
On the other hand, Sci's pretended concern about prejudice is merely disgusting. The Orange statelet was set up so that the Protestants could continue an oppressive regime, that included systemic discrimination against Roman Catholics and sectarian privileges for Protestants. That's what Unionism is about, while Republicanism has always had its secular and revolutionary elements. If he were to be consistent, he would have admitted that the South was justified in secession as well. Even counting the slaves as a united bloc against secession, secession would have had a democratic majority! By his morally impoverished standard of democracy, that is.
As for supporting the US attack on Serbia, I am not surprised, just disgusted. There will be no returns of "Serbian" territory to Serbia, nor for that matter will the so-called Kosovars unite with Albania. Democratic will has nothing to do with it. This concept of democracy is purely ideological, allowing any regime to be dubbed "democratic," regardless of its true nature, at the will of the authorities. Northern Ireland is the example here, but other have been South Africa and Israel.
The insistence that majority rule means every single policy decision has to be voted upon by a perfect legislature is an effort to redefine the question as an absurdity. The constitutional inequalities mandated in the Senate allowed the so-called Dixiecrat bloc to stop civil rights for years. It was only the last liberal president, prodded by civil disorder and the perceived needs of the struggle against Communism that brought Lyndon Johnson to make these reforms. And now that the Communists are gone, sure enough, every one of these reforms, and those of Franklin Roosevelt too, are being eroded. But it's all democratic!
Or to put it another way, the US is a democracy in the egalitarian voting system sense. Therefore it is completely democratic for the 1% to have policy outcomes consistently favoring them over the 99%. And carping about it is just for hypocritical whiners pissed that a college degree doesn't automatically guarantee them an uppper middle class life any more.
"Pretended?" You're entertaining pretensions of telepathy now?
Again, one can be in favor of the right of those geographically contiguous Irish Unionists to stay in the United Kingdom on the basis of a democratic vote if one does not accept the proposition that a politically disunified Irish populace need be politically unified -- and you can do that while still condemning discrimination and oppression. I'm very sorry that you can't accept that others see a distinction between wanting to stay in the U.K. and wanting to stay in the U.K. in order to discriminate against Roman Catholics, but that doesn't mean others can't see the difference.
Did I ever say or imply that the Irish Republicans were in any way unjustified in seceding from the United Kingdom? If so, where?
'Cos I don't remember saying or implying that at all. I do think the Irish had the right to secede -- just like I think that the Irish Unionists had the right to stay. And just like I think neither side has the right to oppress the other.
Ah. So, let me get this straight:
You are contending that an ethnic group (the Irish) within a geographically contiguous region (the island of Ireland) of a sovereign state (the United Kingdom) that is being persecuted and oppressed (e.g., Black and Tars) by a dominant ethnic group (the English) has the right to secede and form their own sovereign state (the Irish republic), on one hand...
... but that, on the other hand, an ethnic group (the Kosovar Albanians) within a geographically contiguous region (Kosovo) of a sovereign state (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) that is being persecuted and oppressed (eg, Operation Horseshoe) by a dominant ethnic group (the Serbs) does NOT have the right to secede and form its own sovereign state (the Republic of Kosovo)?
How does that logic work, exactly?
I'm sorry, but I don't see how the issue of Kosovo secession is fundamentally different from the issue of Irish secession. Just as I would contend that the Irish had a right to secede from the United Kingdom and form their own state, and that the minority of geographically contiguous Irish who favored continuing membership in the U.K. have the right to democratically decide to remain in the U.K., I would contend that the Kosovar Albanians had a right to secede from Serbia (the successor state to FR Yugoslavia) and form their own state, and that the minority of Kosovar citizens who are ethnic Serbs and favor continued membership in the Republic of Serbia have the right to democratically decide to remain in Serbia.
I'm sorry if you dislike the fact that I don't view it in sweeping, simplistic terms -- "KOSOVO FOR KOSOVARS! IRELAND FOR IRISH!" -- but I happen to think that these sorts of issues are too complicated for any simple answer to be good.
What is politically probable is not the same thing as what we think ought to happen ideally, which is what I have understood the discussion to be about.
I did not contend that the Northern Irish regime has been democratic, stj.
That's what it sounded like you were trying to say.
Yes, and that's a profound failure of constitutional makeup of the Congress. The intention was to make sure that states with smaller populations are not steamrolled over in favor of the interests of states with larger populations -- that a minority, in other words, is not harmed by a majority, which is perfectly compatible with the concept of liberal democracy. On the other hand, as you point out here, this mechanism has been used to promote the exact opposite -- to PROTECT the harming of a minority by a majority.
I don't know what the answer is to this dilemma -- how to ensure that states with small populations are not steamrolled over by Members of Congress advocating for the interests of states with larger populations without this process being abused in the service of inequality and oppression. I have some thoughts on how to mitigate such abuses -- starting with making it easier to override a filibuster and actually physically harder to carry out a filibuster -- but I do not know if it would be enough. I'm open to the idea that it may be that either a British-style solution (allowing the full House of Representatives to vote to override a Senate filibuster and/or to send a bill straight to the President in spite of a negative Senate vote, the same way the House of Commons can override the House of Lords), or an abolution of the Senate entirely, may be the way to go. I'm not sure.
I think you are completely right about the threat posed to the New Deal, Great Society, and civil rights movement legislation. Certainly the move towards neoliberalism/Friedmanitism has done a great deal to undermine the movement towards equality and to entrench the powers of the American aristocracy.
So, I'm looking over the conversation, and I think where we got tripped up is from this comment from you: "Any arrangement that allows the minority to dictate policy is undemocratic."
When I saw that, I didn't think in terms of a minority consistently controlling all policy -- I interpreted your statement to mean that any system in which a minority may in any circumstances have their policy preference prevail over a minority's, at all, must therefore be democratic. And that, thus, if, for instance, a minority of persons who favor legalizing and protecting the right to same-sex civil marriage manage to have their policy prevail over the majority who favor banning same-sex civil marriage, that this would necessarily make the entire state undemocratic.
Looking at the conversation in context, I get the sense that I misinterpreted your statement -- that your argument is that a system in which a minority consistently or in the vast majority of cases is able to prevail in policy fights over a majority is by definition undemocratic.
So, given that I seem to have misunderstood what you were saying, stj, I apologize for mischaracterizing your argument. I do agree that a system that elevates a minority into a position of absolute domination over the majority -- in which the richest 1% control all economic policy and use it to wage class warfare by redistributing wealth from the 99%, for instance, or in which a white minority dominate the black majority in an apartheid state -- is undemocratic.
I'm ambivalent about whether or not the United States is truly democratic. Some days, I'm inclined to call it a mostly-liberal democratic regime that has plutocratic tendencies that endanger the generally liberal democratic nature of the system. Other days, I'll go so far as to call it a semi-plutocratic democracy. Other days, I'll go so far as to call it a semi-democratic plutocracy.
There is nothing to interpret if you write stuff like this. Your following posts have been far less biased.
Like Sci I view the Northern Ireland issue as a complicated matter and my gut feeling is that the current compromise seems to be a decent solution. But I don't go all "wicked Catholic terrorists!!!" when an android in a sci-fi series talks about a fictional history in which a violent struggle lead to the Irish Reunification. You cannot focus on subjective violence and ignore systemic violence. It's like with Israel, you can't focus only on what is today labeled terrorism and ignore the slow landgrabbing, destruction of economic opportunities and everyday discrimination of the other side (by the way, I say this as a guy who was for the last two Israeli military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon).
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