Under military rule, Venezuela oil workers quit in a stampede
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When the collaboration of the citizens is not required to generate wealth, dictators emerge. For Venezuela, it's oil.
We are also seeing how technology is generating enough wealth and power to allow tech companies to compete against society. Today, it's tracking people for advertising purposes, tomorrow it could be a mass surveillance at the scale of what is emerging in China.
(Norway and Canada.)
Of course, this is almost tautological, since any liberal democracy worth its salt ends up with an economy that does a lot more than simple resource extraction.
I would have to research the other Western Hemisphere examples you mention, though with the levels of corruption and often outright civil war in many of them, I would question whether they qualify as "liberal democracies" (or perhaps I should add the qualifier, "stable").
I fail to see the connection at all.
I dont know when or if it will come.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2014_Venezuela...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2017_Venezuela...
Theres nothing much we can do, guns vs stones.
People realized is easier to leave the country than figthing this.
Gun control works.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/do-not-resist-and-t...
They've done pretty well in every one they've fought within the territorial boundaries of what is now the US.
Farther afield, less so.
Finally, even in the unlikely case that a revolution was successful, it would be unlikely to promote liberty but rather just install another autocratic ruling class [1].
[1] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1043463970090030...
Syria is a highly-complex environment, but it more closely resembles a traditional "take-and-hold territory" war. ISIS needed territory to fulfill their caliphate, for instance.
Should another insurrection occur in the US, I would assume it would resemble an insurgency rather than a proper war. You're not going to see a company of modern-day Johnny Reb's parade through your town. You're going to see bombings, assassinations, and destruction of critical infrastructure by what one could reasonably call a terrorist... or freedom fighter.
The 2A making it such that small arms and ammunition are distributed so thoroughly makes it hard for a tyrant to take hold and thrive. If you live amongst the jackboots, then you can hit them when they're vulnerable.
The Viet Minh had substantial outside support in its successful campaigns (the allies against Japan in WWII, and then the PRC against France in the First Indochina War), the Viet Cong were crushed even with substantial outside support, and the NVA weren't anti-government insurgents, so unless you mean something in Vietnam other than the conflict of the 1940s through 1970s, I don't think it counts.
I'm as pro-US as they come, but The Tet Offensive, of which the Viet Cong played a crucial role, was crucial in breaking the will of the American populace to support the war leading to its end. I'd call that a pretty successful insurgent group.
Would they have won as quickly, or as soon as they did without the NVA? Who knows, maybe they would have broken the will or maybe it would have been the United States' Afghanistan.
Being pro-US has nothing to do with it; as you might note in my other comments, I've made a similar argument against the US revolution being an example of an insurgent group being independently successful against a well-equipped national force.
> but The Tet Offensive, of which the Viet Cong played a crucial role, was crucial in breaking the will of the American populace to support the war leading to its end. I'd call that a pretty successful insurgent group.
They had massive outside support the whole time, even before Tet, and the VC was essentially gone after the Tet Offensive. Sure, it was important in breaking US will to continue the war, but without the NVA taking up the main battle after Tet, there would have been no war to continue.
Yes, for an insurgent group, the VC was relatively successful; that underscores that insurgent groups almost invariably succeed, if at all, with either massive defection from the military of the regime they are fighting or massive outside support, or both.
I'm noting that as to avoid the assertion that I'm somehow being revisionist to make a favorable point as is en vogue.
> They had massive outside support the whole time, even before Tet
Being ignorant of the details, what level of support did they receive? Training? Small arms? Heavy ordnance?
> Yes, for an insurgent group, the VC was relatively successful; that underscores that insurgent groups almost invariably succeed, if at all, with either massive defection from the military of the regime they are fighting or massive outside support, or both.
Ultimately and per my original point, this is all an apples-oranges-comparison taken past the point of relevance. The common thread to both is the question, can you bleed an army to the point of withdrawl / end of conflict in your favor? The answer is yes, but the question then becomes can we and what would be required?
You assert this is only possible with external assistance, but to my original point the widespread proliferation of arms, ammunition, and military training the United States would position an insurgent force to not require external supply or training. The exception to this may be the category of "destructive devices."
I think you mean “protestors” or ”insurrectionists”. “Protestants” suggests something somewhat different.
The French Revolution might be an example. Or might not, depending on the exact criteria.
> For me this reasoning for the 2nd amendment comes out only as a power fantasy which, if it was to actually play out, would simply leave the country worse off (versus unviolent opposition that may need outside support to succeed over a longer term).
Successful revolutions tend to involve outside support or defection of the government forces as decisive factors, but often start with internal non-government armed insurrection.
OTOH, the critical and forgotten underpinning of the 2nd amendment was the expectation (which failed to be mandated) that the federal government (and the states) would simply never have large standing armies or internal security forces, and that the call up of the universal militia would be the mechanism of fighting any needed wars or dealing with civic unrest. An armed citizenry is necessary to that model, but it's the absence of significant government armed forces to oppose the citizenry, not the mere fact of an armed citizenry, that is the guarantee of liberty.
Vietnam. Korea. Haiti.
> this reasoning for the 2nd amendment comes out only as a power fantasy
That's the reason the 2nd amendment was written the way it was: 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.' It was legal for most of American history to own military grade hardware. Explosives. Cannons. Naval Armadas. Food for thought: it's still legal for companies to own all of these things but not individuals.
The Vietcong were indigenous, though funded and armed by the NVA. They were thoroughly defeated during Tet.
Yet they still lost almost every battle against the Americans (sorry France, Dien Bien Phu...). After Tet, the VietCong ceased to exist as a fighting force.
S. Vietnam would have held against the NVA if Congress hadn't cut off funding to their army.
When North Vietnam attempted to invade the South in 1972, they had 67% casualties. In 1975, when Congress refused to provide air support, the South fell.
You can call it sophistry, but the facts stand as true.
The American Revolutionary War was, in many respects, a French proxy war against Britain that blew up into a direct war between the two major powers. Of course, this is one of those things we Americans like to ignore in our national mythology, but...
It's not about armed revolt. It's about creating a set of circumstances that prevent the oppression that leads up to one.
Other amendments on the bill of rights have similar effects. An abusive government needs to control the narrative and shortcuts to bypass due process at scale. The ability to do those comprehensively are severely handicapped by other amendments.
And what do you think the chances of that even happening? <.1%?
Even in Venezuela most of the violence toward opposition supporters comes from non-government "Colectivos" made of government supporters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colectivo_(Venezuela)
Even in the US, the San Jose PD is currently facing a lawsuit for corralling people attending a Trump rally into a mob of violent protesters (Hernandez v. San Jose). The SJPD is arguing that attending a Trump rally is an inherently unsafe act so they have no obligation to protect the citizens there.
So it's very easy for NRA supporters to imagine say the California government turning a blind eye to assaults on their homes.
If the old regime is overthrown, it will likely not be more equal. I would be highly surprised if it wouldnt come to a famine then without major NGOs stepping in.
I hope I have the wrong impression though. The situation is simply terrible.
It already is. People aren't eating zoo animals for fun. They are eating them because they are hungry.
Which, in a country as green and lush as Venezuela, makes me wonder if the population is mildly retarded. You probably don't even have to try to grow food there. Just throw seeds on the ground.
Basically most of the farms shut down because the government mandated food prices below the cost of production. Food was imported by the government instead.
Then the government ran out of money, and Venezuela doesn't have food or farms.
If farmers had held out through the hard times Maduro would have just nationalized their farms to try to fix the food problem. So quitting was really their only option.
Anyway, fast forward and nobody is producing food, or at an uncompetitive cost. As noted, the food imports ruined the balance of trade, the falling oil prices ended their exports, and the country went bankrupt.
Has any socialist country survived the death of their cash cow? These experiments seem to work in principle, but only as long as huge amounts of cash are injected from outside.
My point being, there isnt a simple way out. There is no get rid of the president and everything will be fine. It will likely be worse of, even if just for a short while for a lot of people if major NGOs dont step in.