Gawdzilla Sama
TImeToSweepTheLeg
Ah, those rights. I disagree with the concept of "rights". It implies that something more powerful than the current political structure granted them.
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The US Civil War: why was the North so adamant about holding the Union together?
- Thread starter lpetrich
- Start date
Ah, those rights. I disagree with the concept of "rights". It implies that something more powerful than the current political structure granted them.
Meed
boy named crow
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2009
- Messages
- 5,206
Yeah, it's not a canard, it's just semantics. It might be more clear if you used the term "direct democracy", because when most people say "democracy" they are including representative systems within that definition.
Still, the history of southern and confederate slavery doesn't do anything to demonstrate that direct democracy is a bad thing. As for the founding fathers, they were against what Madison called "tyranny of the majority". This clearly did not refer to the tyranny of black people by white people. The founders were not abolitionists and some of them even owned slaves.
Not more powerful, necessarily, but more authoritative, in a moral sense. The Law, for example, or some concept of natural right or customary right, or the security of property or freedom of movement and expression.
You don't really mean that you prefer "the current political structure" to start executing people, by cruel and unusual punishments, after subjecting them to Acts of Attainder.
Gawdzilla Sama
TImeToSweepTheLeg
You didn't. It's a reductio ad absurdum of my own devising intended to illustrate the danger of granting unchallenged supremacy to "the current political structure".
Gawdzilla Sama
TImeToSweepTheLeg
I'd call it a strawman.
Myron Proudfoot
Master Poster
Which raises the hilarious possibility of the Union fighting on the side of the central powers.
I can see the US and Germany getting along well especially if both were suspicious of Britain...
I'll discuss this, if I may, at greater length later. But first, are you saying that the concept of a "Government acting unlawfully" is not meaningful?
Mark6
Philosopher
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2008
- Messages
- 6,261
This is a major part of Harry Turtledove alternate history series in which Confederacy won. In 1914 USA and CSA enter the Great War -- CSA on the Entente side, and USA on German side.
Gawdzilla Sama
TImeToSweepTheLeg
I'm a historian.
Yes, no doubt. But does that inhibit you from addressing my question?
Gawdzilla Sama
TImeToSweepTheLeg
Well, first off, I'm not fond of being primrosed.
If you're not willing to address the issues raised, you're not willing to engage in any meaningful dialog. That's fine, but it's a little disingenuous to then pretend otherwise.
I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with that expression. What do you mean?
The canard is that the USA isn't a democracy, it's a republic. The terms are not mutually exclusive. The USA is quite clearly both a democracy and a republic.
What bad things has democracy done for you?
1. If the North had allowed the South to form their own nation, then slavery, racial, religious, and sexual discrimination would have gone on a lot longer than they did/do in real life. Although many people in the North may not have cared too much if these things continued in the classical South, expansion of slavery to the new States was a real problem, if only due to the political power that would grant the slave owners. And having the South retained as part of the Union led many people in the North to rethink the fairness of fellow citizens in the South being deprived of human rights, given that the victims were in the same country as the Northerners.
2. In practice, the result would have been a relatively poor, agricultural country just south of the more industrial and wealthier North. If you think immigration from Central and South America is currently a problem for the modern USA, I can only imagine to what this kind of division might lead.
2. In practice, the result would have been a relatively poor, agricultural country just south of the more industrial and wealthier North. If you think immigration from Central and South America is currently a problem for the modern USA, I can only imagine to what this kind of division might lead.
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dudalb
Penultimate Amazing
Probably an election did not turn out the way he liked....
ddt
Mafia Penguin
Indeed. I never understood this quip, which you see often repeated.
The opposite of democracy is oligarchy or autocracy, where few or only one person(s) have a say in government, instead of all the people.
The opposite of a republic is a monarchy, with a (hereditary) monarch, called Prince or King or Emperor or some such, is head of state.
You can have all four possible combinations of those two opposition pairs: a democratic republic like the USA; a democratic monarchy like Norway or the Netherlands; an autocratic republic like Syria; or an autocratic monarchy like Saudi Arabia.
And with both opposition pairs, the lines are, of course, fuzzy. Do you call the European countries of the 19th Century with census suffrage democratic or oligarchic? And while North Korea is in name a republic, in practice they have a royal family all but in name, while, on the other hand, 15-18th Century Poland had an elective monarchy where the nobility (actually about 10% of the population) would elect the next King.
Then there are nations with ceremonial or figurehead monarchies like the UK, where the Prime Minister does the work of leadership, but is chosen by whichever party or coalition of parties had gotten the majority of votes. They may thus be called crowned republics or quasi-republics. In John Adams: Defence of the Constitutions, 1787, John Adams called them "monarchical republics", which he discussed alongside "democratical republics" and "aristocratical republics".
In another forum, I got into a lengthy argument about with someone who maintained that a "monarchical republic" is a contradiction in terms. I didn't think so -- that seems appropriate for a nation that acts like a republic except for having a figurehead monarch.
Such nations have parliamentary systems of government, and there are also several "pure" republics with parliamentary systems. They have elected ceremonial heads of state.
In another forum, I got into a lengthy argument about with someone who maintained that a "monarchical republic" is a contradiction in terms. I didn't think so -- that seems appropriate for a nation that acts like a republic except for having a figurehead monarch.
Such nations have parliamentary systems of government, and there are also several "pure" republics with parliamentary systems. They have elected ceremonial heads of state.