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Comment by muninn_ | Hacker News Reader

So you can only be serious about political ideas if you start shooting cops? Nonsense.

Why? One of the pillars of statehood is self defence. His political ideal is founding a state, not promulgating an ideology.

To be clear I'm not suggesting that he should, but if he wishes to found a libertarian state, that would be the correct step.

Can you think of any state that had a non-violent birth?

Brazil became independent without a war.

And the Indians just peacefully gave up their land.

Next falsehood?

That was Portugal, not Brazil.

But Brazil would not exist without that foundation of violence. Do you think that if the Portuguese hadn't invaded Brazil would still somehow exist?

And I'm sure Serbia and Croatia had their fair share of violence in the past, hence by your standard the new microstate already has that foundation.

No, the correct step is finding people to join his cause. Doing otherwise is being dumb, not serious.

And once people join his cause, then what? Serbia go "oh alright then"?

You can built a movement as much as you like but until it actually moves it's just a group of people doing nothing.

You can built a movement as much as you like but until it actually moves it's just a group of people doing nothing.

Yes, until they do something, they haven't done it. #lapalissade

Singapore?

Canada gained its independence without a war.

You can call out the native issue as in the case of Brazil, but then you doom any possible future state to a "violent birth" just by virtue of some cromagnon somewhere beating the last neanderthal to death to establish Homo Sapiens dominion on the planet.

And in any case, so what if every state so far has had a violent birth? Are we doomed forever to repeat the same paradigm?

The modern South Africa. Zambia. 17 African territories in 1960 were made independent without war.

To be fair, Canada's not _actually_ independent yet. The queen is still our head of state, but that probably lasts only until she actually tries to act like it.

She's the head of state, not the head of government. She doesn't have the power even theoretically to make any executive or legislative decisions. Aside from "representing" Canada in a very vague sense, the closest thing to real power that she or her representative (the governor general) has is to "decide" which party to ask to attempt to form a government after an election. This is basically always simply the part with the most seats, barring very rare exceptions.

Anyhow, tl; dr: Canada is most certainly independent, and gained its independence peacefully (although there were minor conflicts prior to that).

I still sort of liked it when a couple of French colleagues, who had moved to Francophone Quebec, eventually applied for citizenship, and took the oath... to Queen Elizabeth II.

This is woefully incorrect.

The Crown is the head of our State; all authority derives from our Sovereign.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/House/compendium/web-content/c_d...

He said she was the head of state. I don't know how this disproves the point that the queen has no legislative or executive powers in the Canadian government

The Sovereign may recall the Governor General, or request that their Governor General dissolve Parliament and call an election and the Governor General is compelled to comply.

Ultimately, all legislation requires Royal Assent, and all executive powers are granted by the authority of the Sovereign, who may revoke them at their will and so force an election.

Canada is a completely independent and sovereign state. The fact that the Queen of Canada and the Queen of the United Kingdom are the same person is incidental.

Would you say UK is not _actually_ independent because it's a constitutional monarchy? If not so, why would Canada be any different?

The Crown is the head of our State; all authority derives from our Sovereign.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/House/compendium/web-content/c_d...

Read the page you just sent me. I challenge you to find any mention of any country other than Canada.

Yes, Canada is a monarchy, yes, the Queen has the ultimate power in theory, but the head of state is the Queen of Canada, not the Queen of the UK.

I'll repeat myself, them being both the same person is incidental, if you think the fact Canada being a monarchy means it's not independent, does that also mean the UK is not?

I think you're being overly reductive. The Queen of Canada and the Queen of the UK, being the same person who wields Sovereign authority over both, cannot be independent of herself.

Many countries have had a non-violent birth, but generally, it takes a considerable will of actual people actually living there to achieve it.

For instance, the dissolution of personal union between Norway and Sweden, where Norway got independence in 1905.

Malaysia was rather glad to get rid of Singapore in 1965.

Much of the dissolution of the British Empire happened without actual violence in the independence, although there has been considerable violence in many of the places afterwards.

Even the independence of Baltic states and other Soviet republics in 1991 at the collapse of USSR came without real war; there was some violence but you can't really call it a violent birth.

You are talking about places which already had governments and had an orderly transition of power - not a new state being founded from nothing.

To say there was no violence in the Baltics is highly disingenuous - Latvia gained independence through bloodshed, lost it through bloodshed, gained it again through bloodshed, lost it through bloodshed, then finally glastnost - which was largely non-violent. I was quite literally at their independence memorial today in Riga.

Well, an orderly transition of power and a functional government are clearly a requirement for forming any new country, peacefully or violently. If you didn't set up a government, you've got no country because you have no way of managing anything.

As I said, with Baltics I was specifically referring to 1991 which was largely non-violent. Yes, not entirely without violence, but these modern countries were not forged by military power, they were forged by the will of the nation.

So, the war of independence was non-violent? Honestly, learn history beyond the last 25 years before you shoot your mouth off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_War_of_Independence

Would you please read my post and notice I was referring to the formation of the current Latvian independence, and events of 1991? Not the wars of 1918-1920 of which I am quite well aware, thank you. (I even have some distant family members who were fighting in the related, similar war in neighbouring Estonia at that time.)

Yet none of those would today exist as independent states if not for the earlier conflict - they would have been Russia.

Tell this to the US troops shooting British marines in 1812. Without shooting British "peacekeepers" the US could not get its independence.

What nonsense. The US came into being by the will of the people. There was no bloodshed.

Is that so? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812 Also tell that to Mexican people - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_frontier#The_Mexican....

and of course here there was no bloodshed at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

I suppose this thread exemplifies the problems with using sarcasm in textual discussions.

When sarcasm rubs up against incoherence, who can say where the border actually lies?

Way off to the right - in liberaland.

Facts and reason don't work, so sarcasm it is.

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