Anti-War Speech Sent Eugene V. Debs to Prison, 1918
fifthestate.org
fifthestate.org
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_t...
"In 1969, Schenck was largely overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio, which limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot)."
So we can tell other people to avoid the draft now, even in a dry bureaucratic sense. In real life of course the draft is slavery and immoral, as Ayn Rand and many others have pointed out.
I agree with this, but I also think this is such a “peace time” opinion.
If, for example, the nazis were at risk of invading the American homeland, would you want to wait until they are here and volunteers start coming in?
Again, I agree the draft is immoral, but so is war.
EDIT: for an even better example you should look up what the Japanese did to most civilians in WWII and really ask yourself if a draft to avoid that at home is bad.
I think the response to the 9/11 attacks shows that when something major happens, lots of people feel motivated to get up and do something. Volunteers flooded the different branches and even gov't services. My point being that I'm not sure a draft would be needed in your proposed situation.
It is, and the two examples below aren't comparable, you want a real-life recent example?
Look at Hong Kong and Taiwan: since at least the early 2000s after the hand over to the CCP in 97 many in HK knew the writing was on the wall of what Life would be like (look at films like 10 years for the most stark and sobering use of foreshadowing I have ever seen since maybe the works about East Germany). In the case of HK you have an affluent, highly educated population focused on what you think most modern developed nations seek: careers, status, salary, etc...
Their fight was a valiant one, starting in earnest in 2014 with the Umbrella Revolution, but the sad truth is HK was never in a capacity to thwart a real attack from the CCP in any real capacity since it's population didn't have any combat training or knowledge beyond the ad-hoc problems solving they were left with, coupled that with being unarmed and then seeing how Russia has invaded Ukraine and you can see why a similarly affluent and well educated country like Taiwan has had a massive up-tick in civilian combat and weapons training.
I'd hate to even contemplate what it would take to require the civilian mobilization in the US as even a thought exercise because f the obvious realities, but at that level I think we saw enough evidence from COVID how polarized people are in Society that I doubt how effective that even would be, and that is not even mentioning how unfit people are to be of any use in such situations given how prevalent obesity is in the Country.
> Again, I agree the draft is immoral, but so is war.
This is the conclusion any sane person comes to, and you'd think during/after COVID we would have come out with a better understanding of just fragile our World really is and how quickly it can turn to utter chaos because of unnecessary fragmentation that you'd think we would collectively regard War as the scourge of Mankind and yet some how it persists. It wasn't long into 2021 that Israel and Palestine were starting to kill each other again.
The REAL question is how to render War moot in modern Society, and my only conclusion is to elevate all of Humanity's standard of living such that they have a greater vested interest in stability and diplomacy as the sole form of conflict resolution rather than default to our basic instincts of tribalism that always leads to the perpetual senseless destruction of people and property at the behest of a political class and a few multi-national weapons dealers who profit from it.
If War is indeed immoral, than one has to also realize that War is the health of the State [0].
So, if the government decides to go to war, this opinion becomes irrelevant then?
And if the US can't convince people to enlist when they're under threat of invasion, I guess people just don't support the regime as much. I'm sure North Koreans are telling people "But what if the Americans invade? We must have the draft".
But I think it's fair to say that the US really did need to enter WWII. What if the US military needed more recruits, but no one wanted to enlist?
At least, I think that's what the argument is. I'm still not sure I buy it though, because, still, it's up to government leaders to convince people that there's actually a huge threat to the country, that war is necessary, and that people should put their lives on the line. If they can't do that, then maybe they don't deserve to be able to go to war. And if that does end up being disastrous for the country (or even the world) and its people, maybe that's just how things have to go down.
So they may have claimed. In reality it would have been pretty fine for the USA, Nazi Germany was fundamentally unstable and would be struggling with suppressing dissent in its conquered population for at least a century if it didn't collapse outright.
Sure it needed to enter the war - it wanted to put down Japan and take control of the pacific. Plus, the war allowed it to gain massive influence over Europe and better containment of the USSR.
But that doesn't mean the people of the world needed the US to enter the war. Just like they didn't need the other imperial states to engage in their world wars.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
If you cannot get enough volunteers to fight in your war then tour population early doesn't care that much about winning it.
Even if there might be some hypothetical war where for some aliens-with-mind-control type reason the populace doesn't want to fight but losing the war would be even worse, having a draft as an allowed policy is still net bad because of all the times it will be used when there isnt some existential threat!
In almost every case the draft has been used, losing the war would be far better for the people than being drafted into the war.
But seriously - you don't get to tell me to die because you are afraid. If you want someone to be sacrificed to your fears, start with yourself - you want someone to die, it better be you.
Now, get out there and suffer. I wish all the "glory"[1] of war to you - go die because (and i can't stress this enough) Iran MIGHT BE BAD.
[1] glories like: having your limbs torn off, permanent disfigurement, intense pain for the rest of your life, TBI and all of the difficulties they cause, PTSD, and mystery diseases! These glories assume you survive of course... but listen if you do good they will give you a shiny bauble to pin on your uniform.
Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire is another one.
Just astoundingly awful
I am astounded you'd bother to qualify that "with respect to the First Amendment." They've made stacks of awful rulings, period. Some of their greatest hits: Dred Scott v. Sanford; Plessy v. Ferguson; Hammer v. Dagenhart; Bush v. Gore; Kelo v. City of New London; DC v. Heller; Dobbs v. Jackson.
The Supreme Court is supposed to be above politics but time and again proves it's a vehicle of partisan politics, and one megalomanic sociopath can slant the Court for decades.
The Supreme Court is just that, 'Supreme'. So personally I'd expect supremely capable judges at such a complex and important post.
The fact that that is considered 'quaint', is a testament to the current state of American democracy, and the self confidence of the Americans in it. I hope it's just a phase, and that you guys can work it out.
Huh? The purpose of SCOTUS is very much partisan politics and always has been. It's actually the nature of the job.
Wickard v. Filburn deserves a mention too.
If you are a gun control fanatic, I could see where that one would rub you the wrong way, but it was a fantastic piece of legal scholarship.
Those gun control regulations?
If there are actual gun control regulations from the post-revolutionary period, I'm sure that they'll be used to defend NY's and CA's modern regulations soon.
But we could also talk about the exceedingly common laws against public carry if you want: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/firearm-regionalism-and...
I'm afraid not, and not by a mile. He based his decision on his unfounded and unsupportable belief that most Americans believed that self-defense was inclusive to the 2nd, based on nothing but what he thought, and he was wrong, because most Americans are not idiots, but even if he was right (which he definitely was not), the Supreme Court is not and not supposed to be a democratic institution swayed by the whims of alleged popular opinion.
In considering the 2nd Amendment, the Framers debated self-defense and intentionally left it out of the Amendment. Scalia knew this, being a strict Constitutionalist, probably personally reviewed the minutes of the Constitutional Congresses where it is very clear the Framers did not want self-defense inclusive to the 2nd. They did not want an armed citizenry. The 2nd only concerns militia and tyranny. The proper exercise of the 2nd looks exactly like Black Panthers surrounding the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland, California in 1968. It does not look anything like Florida (and elsewhere) Stand Your Ground nonsense, nor Texans shooting kids in the back.
What Scalia did was criminal, bastardizing the 2nd, changing it from a selfless right to stand against tyranny into a selfish right to protect self and property. Self-defense is far more fundamental than the Bill of Rights and is superfluous there. If the right of self-defense comes from any document, it would be one far, far older than the Constitution. But it's really a natural right, older than writing, older than language. Self-defense transcends our species and is a right of all living things. The Bill of Rights does not give us rights we already have and have had since long before we even evolved into humans.
And self-defense was completely skew and unrelated to the issues of DC v. Heller. That portion of DC v. Heller will be struck down, eventually, as soon as its challenged under a balanced court, because Scalia stepped way, way beyond the bounds of the mandate of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution, instead literally adding meaning that was never there before, sidestepping the legal methods of amending the Constitution aka 2/3rds majority of both houses of Congress or state legislatures.
Scalia vandalized, gutted and diluted the 2nd Amendment. Prior to 2008, the 2nd was noble and great. After DC v Heller, it is worthless. DC v. Heller is just another assault on the Constitution, just like the suspensions of habeas and the 5th Amendment.
Gun owners don't need the 2nd Amendment. Hunters never did. The 10th Amendment was always where (nearly all) gun owners' gun rights derived and still do, through legislation by the States, as the Framers intended, abiding by the first 3 words of the 2nd Amendment, put right up front to underscore their importance, and that every gun owner loves to ignore or lie about their clear and literal meaning. The 2nd limits itself and allows the 10th to legally cement what has become a dirty word: regulation. "Shall not be infringed" was placed last, making it less important than and subject to regulation. And commas are important, and it is easier to understand the 2nd removing the clauses between them:
A well-regulated Militia shall not be infringed.
What is worse is the Court ignoring the fact that at least one of its members is illegitimate and Merrick Garland should have been seated. Barrett is not the only untrustworthy Justice that claimed to support women's rights to choose in order to be confirmed and then apparently couldn't break her word fast enough (we had such high hopes, but it turns out she's as ineffective and as big a fruitcake as Thomas). Alito and Roberts are the surprise. Just what are they thinking? I'd like to know how they think history is going to remember them for making such an impotent and (expectedly) short lived ruling.
The Court also ignores the current state of the country for the last 20 years at least that conservatives are distinctly in the minority and likely will remain so indefinitely. They should not make decisions that are so painfully obviously unlikely to stand. Row v. Wade stood for very nearly half a century. Dobbs v. Jackson will be lucky to make it a decade and a half before it is either overturned or made irrelevant by Congress, either by law or a new Amendment.
Ignoring details, abortion is clearly wrong, but there are some things the government can not do, and saying anything about what a woman can or can't do with their body is one of them. The government is prohibited from doing so by the Constitution as it stood in 1789. Roe v. Wade should not have been necessary, but we have too many intellectually dishonest tyrants that must be put into submission through case law.
It is ironic that there are individuals refusing COVID vaccination, claiming the government has gone too far and has no right to mandate vaccination, crying their rights are being violated, yet by and large these are the same individuals that would have their government tell women they have no choice. It is ironic, but it is also absurd that a vaccination mandate is an intolerable infringement on privacy and the 4th Amendment while at the same time insisting on killing children for the sake of unborn fetuses.
Pro Life and Pro Gun movements go together, and they are each internally logically inconsistent, each reveal cognitive dissonance, and when both ideologies are held by the same individual that individual is necessarily a hypocrite, a twice cognitively dissonant hypocrite as well as a bully and a coward. The Pro Life control freak bullies say: we tell you what you can or can't do; The scared Pro Gun cowards say: don't tell us what we can or can't do. Ridiculously, their sworn political enemies are those that are tolerant of others, including them.
My point is that if your arguments and positions about matters or law always just so happen to align along partisan lines, why should anyone even pay any attention to the arguments long comments you write, when the conclusion is preordained anyway? Why should anyone even bother to answer to the Gish gallop of wrongheaded arguments, if no arguments would ever get to change your position?
Of course, you can prove me wrong, by pointing to any opinion of Court, written by Justice Scalia, that you think is correct, but most Democrat voters would prefer to have been decided differently. Can you?
You're asking for a contradiction. If he had written any decisions correctly, no one would disagree with him. Scalia consistently wrote horrible decisions, but one stands out that is correct, Crawford v. Washington, 2004.
Prove me wrong and relent on moving goal posts.
This is absurd, and only a complete partisan could write something like this. There is absolutely no point in discussing anything with you, because you literally are unable to concede that your side can ever be wrong. This attitude is extremely corrosive to peaceful coexistence: when more people understand that for you, the only “correct” court decisions are the ones that go according to your preferences, why would they want continue to participate in the rule of law? The whole point here is to solve disagreements by appeal to shared rules and procedures. If you are unable to concede that rules and procedures can ever result in an outcome that is against your preferences, you’re effectively telling people that you do not care one damn about these. Why should then anyone else? This will cause the judiciary to devolve into pure partisanship, with some latin words sprinkled on top.
Rules and procedures are merely for civility. Not sure where you get your pejoratives, but partisanship is a very good thing. Things only get better when individuals disagree. Without adversity nothing would ever change, nothing would ever improve, and there would be no such thing as technology. Sometimes disagreements can only be solved by democracy where the majority rules, not like the current State where the constantly shrinking conservative minority has somehow turned that on its head.
• Citizens United v. FEC • Speechnow.org v. FEC • McCutcheon v. FEC
Corporate personhood with rights afforded to actual citizens but separate from actual citizens laid the groundwork for a whole mosaic of wrongheaded schools of thought.
"Amoral, effectively immortal fictional entities can be created at will with the rights and privileges of ordinary citizens. What could go wrong?"
>"Amoral, effectively immortal fictional entities can be created at will with the rights and privileges of ordinary citizens. What could go wrong?"
You realize that the "immortal fictional entities" you speak of are just groups of "ordinary citizens", right? That's the logic behind the Citizens United ruling, ie. that ordinary citizens don't lose their free speech rights when they band together (either as a corporation or a labor union).
(I'm not sure that changes the overall argument, but it speaks to a common fear - influence coming from people who don't have the nation's best interests at heart)
Instead, you had folks who signed up for the national guard thinking they'd just screw around with fancy guns in the woods 2 weeks a year absolutely apoplectic they might actually be put in harm's way.
I remember still being a teenager in Appalachia and being made to feel like you're a hair shy of an agent of foreign power if you suggested the best way to "support the troops" was to say no illegal wars of aggression that put them in harm's way instead of slap a yellow ribbon magnet your car and say let's bomb Iran too.
You haven't truly lived until you tell some aggressive moron wh very purposefully signed up for the infantry because they wanted to kill people of color in an illegal oil war that you don't give a single solitary fuck what they think, you don't thank them for their so called service and that many Marines died at Okinawa died for your right to say that, and that if they don't get their hands out of their pockets and step back you're going to invoke stand your ground and call their wing commander or whoever the fuck is in charge of them to collect the body.
(Many, many folks sing a song about the constitution but break down when you use it for anything other than greasing the wheels of the military industrial complex, and it's DIGUSTING.)
And to remember that WW1 was ended, in part, by labour action: the October Revolution in Russia, and the Kiel Mutiny in Germany.
The full speech is here: https://genius.com/Eugene-v-debs-anti-war-speech-annotated
John Adams kicked it off, and Woodrow Wilson’s craven politics represented a moment where the country could have moved in an awful direction.
It’s unfortunate that we live in an era where many people have mastered the art of mass manipulation. We’re in an era where we’re vulnerable to the same sort of grinding warfare that WW1 became, and the information landscape is a barren one full of propaganda and junk.
Fun fact: Wilson resegregated the entire federal government and even went so far as to show a KKK propaganda film at the White House. The guy was a rabid racist.
Additionally, Wilson had a stroke that left him blind and paralyzed in 1919 and for the remainder of his presidency his second wife and doctor manipulated him so heavily that there is serious debate as to who actually was in control of the White House during those years. Some historians call Edith Wilson, his second wife, America’s first female president the manipulation was so effective.
He left half the members of the court, the people who later convicted him, in tears.
Full speech here: http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/address_to_the_court.htm
The judges are all crooks and liars and will make you pay because you didn't "respect my authority" (read in the voice of the petulant child, Eric Cartman from the cartoon show South Park).
In fact, I feel like I am doing something illegal just by typing this. We cannot win in a court of law. They will simply replace us if we show them any brain activity.
You must reach a unanimous not guilty verdict, not because of jury nullification but because you genuinely believe the defendant is not guilty.
> For the most part, the answer is no. You should NOT discuss jury nullification with your fellow jurors.
> It is well-established that it is perfectly legal for a juror to vote not guilty for any reason they believe is just. However, courts have also decided that they can remove jurors for considering their option to conscientiously acquit.
> This applies anytime until the verdict is officially rendered. Even as late as deliberations, if a disgruntled fellow juror decides to tattle on you to the judge, you could be replaced with an alternate juror. We recommend not openly discussing jury nullification during deliberations.
> https://fija.org/library-and-resources/library/jury-nullific...
All normal disclaimer applies. I am not a lawyer. I anal. Yada yada.
Generalizations like that are not helpful, I am not a lawyer and I won in court with judge, he reversed his own ruling because I've proved he was wrong based on Supreme Court rulings.
They do not take kindly any effort to disrespect them. Remember, a court of law has authority because we as a society gives them this authority. Since we don't live by divine rights of kings, they do not have any claim to authority other than through us, the people. This is the very foundation of our democracy. I agree that usually this is inflammatory language but in this specific case, you must walk into court assuming they are out to get you if you discuss jury nullification.
Once again, this is not legal advice. I anal.
Yes you are, pooper, yes you are.
Jury nullification is not some divine right, it’s an unintended consequence of jury secrecy. It’s like going into a job interview at Twitter, and just talking about how everything is exploited by bots, and then you just complain about how you aren’t allowed free speech on the platform. Who would hire you?
Wait, bad example.
The reason people try to discourage “jury nullification” is because if a law is unjust, it should be removed, not be in place for certain juries to give _some_ people passes.
The law should be the law. If you allow juries to decide to give “innocent” verdicts even if someone broke it, then congrats you have made a system where the jury gets to decide randomly if they want to enforce something.
This is the world we live in though. Imagine telling someone who is facing life in prison "tough luck but we need to fix the law first".
1. Congress is pretty much deadlocked and has been for decades.
2. This guy, Michael Flynn[flynn], received a presidential pardon.
3. Prosecution routinely uses its "discretion" on which cases to bring forward and what charges it wants to recommend. Police / law enforcement uses its "discretion" as well.
If there is any justice, either this guy should serve his full sentence or we should immediately release anyone and everyone convicted of "lying to federal agents[making false statements]" from prison declaring the insane law null and void.
[flynn] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn
[making false statements] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements
White college girl has weed, jury nullifies. Black unemployed guy has weed, jail.
I replied elsewhere but to tl;Dr what currently happens is:
White college girl has weed, no charges pressed.
Jury nullification, of a sort, actually dates back to England. One of the pressures that diminished the penalties for theft (which had crept up to "death") was that juries, seeing a young man in the box with their whole life ahead of them whose only crime was taking from some unaccountable rich boffin, found themselves unwilling to toss the man in the gallows for taking from one who had plenty.
Upon seeing this pattern emerge, the London merchant class panicked and petitioned the king to lower the penalty, lest no crimes against them be punished at all.
Yeah but by the time a person is actually on trial, trying to change the law that they are facing is probably too late, isn't it? And the system is slow and is dominated by the rich and powerful subset of society, so trying to change the law may not work anyway.
>If you allow juries to decide to give “innocent” verdicts even if someone broke it, then congrats you have made a system where the jury gets to decide randomly if they want to enforce something.
To some extent, this will happen one way or another. If I was on a jury, I would not vote to convict someone for breaking a law that I dislike. And a jury is already random in the sense that it's a somewhat random selection of 12 people who may have wildly different levels of intelligence, concern about the law, emotional states, and so on. To some extent, a jury decides randomly in every single trial whether they want to enforce something. The way I see it, informing people about jury nullification just helps to potentially win back some power for what myself and those I care about.
Isn't that jury nullification? That's the exact thing I am saying, shouldn't happen.
White college kid is caught with intent-to-distribute amount of weed, jury allows them to walk away even though they are guilty.
Black kid is caught with intent-to-distribute amount of weed, jury decides to enforce jail time this time.
I mean what harm would it do?
Please try to understand from my perspective. I am trying to say the privileged won't even see trial. If you are especially privileged, it won't even matter if you get convicted. See the case of Michael Flynn.
Jury nullification cannot make the situation worse. All it can do is expand the pool of people who won't have to suffer.
Remember, Congress is deadlocked. I have no hope that we will get sensible repeals like repealing the nonsense "making false statements is a felony" [false].
[false] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements
> Making false statements (18 U.S.C. § 1001) is the common name for the United States federal process crime laid out in Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which generally prohibits knowingly and willfully making false or fraudulent statements, or concealing information, in "any matter within the jurisdiction" of the federal government of the United States,[1] even by merely denying guilt when asked by a federal agent.[2] A number of notable people have been convicted under the section, including Martha Stewart,[3] Rod Blagojevich,[4] Michael T. Flynn,[5] Rick Gates,[6] Scooter Libby,[7] Bernard Madoff,[8] and Jeffrey Skilling.[9]
This is the stupidest law I've ever heard of in my opinion. To convict someone, you have to know they were lying. If you can independently verify they were lying, how did their lying hurt the case? Law enforcement just needs to do its job and not have stuff just handed to them in a silver platter. Remember though, this common sense repeal will not happen in our lifetime. What recourse do you have left?
However I’m not a fan of jury nullification, as it’s a violation of the juror’s oath. I agree jurors individually can in practice give their verdict as they see fit, but advocating openly for others to violate their oaths is another thing.
We can talk all about how jury nullification allows the jury to dismiss unjust laws, but do keep in mind the oath a juror is required to swear:
Do you and each of you solemnly swear that you will well and truly try and a true deliverance make between the United States and ______, the defendant at the bar, and a true verdict render according to the evidence, so help you God?
Aside from that problematic bit, is that oath performed before the jury hears the case or just before they deliberate?
I’m asking because the details of the case may themselves reveal an unjust law that the jury may feel obligated to decide against.
I think to hear him tell it, he was already in prison.
It was not until the last 60-70 years the “zeitgeist” changed such that free speech was considered a freedom for all the government could not intrude upon.
I don't know much about Russia, Germany certainly has given Lenin a train ticket so that he could participate in that revolution, because they thought that it would help their interests. But for Germany, the theory that Germany lost the war because of the revolution is the so called "Dolchstoßlegende", a right wing conspiracy theory. Germany has already lost the war before that revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth
The sailors were not cool with that and decided to not be killed on the final stretch of a pointless war
That was the final straw and was used to kick of the revolution. The monarchy already had lost most of its authority by that point.
This was fascinating and amazingly conniving.
The Churchill quote, saying Lenin was smuggled back into Russia "in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus" is quite the imagery.
Lenin on the Train by Catherine Merridale covers it well.
"in part" saves you there. Otherwise it's nonsense.
WW1 was certainly not ended by the October Revolution. If anything, it made the war 10x worse, by freeing German troops for Ludendorff's 1918 offensive, which almost succeeded.
The Kiel Mutiny? Maybe accelerated the end by a few days. The Germans were already seeking an Armistice.
> certain kinds of political speech were never really protected
Adams and Wilson were indeed villains here. Lincoln suspended *habeas corpus." Roosevelt sent Japanese-Americans to the internment camps.
Was it the right decision, or did it end up losing more lives in the long term? Whole other discussion.
There was a Russian Civil War, which we don't hear much about. So the war hadn't really ended for them. There was also a war between Russia and Poland.
I looked some for a total of "WW I casualties by year" table but didn't find one; only "casualties by country." The significance would be "giant German offensive; therefore giant casualties."
In any case, I don't think there's much of a case for the hypothesis "Russian Revolution saved lives."
It is also disingenous to call Russian revolution a "Labor action", since it was performed first by army generals and members of ruling class, then by political exiles-in-return.
122,000 killed, wounded, or captured. And that was just one battle.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Tannenberg-World-...
The Russians lost 30,000 killed or wounded, while the Germans sustained a total of only 13,000 casualties. Some 92,000 Russian prisoners were taken, two and a half army corps annihilated, and the remaining half of Samsonov’s army severely shaken.
Moreover it has mostly uprooted the surviving rest of society.
That trauma has dwarfed WWI and almost erased it from public memory.
When it comes to politics, in particular, WW1 is remembered precisely because it led to a revolution, and it was very obvious and explicit in the revolutionaries' rhetoric; one of the most famous slogans was "штыки в землю", literally "bayonets into the ground".
It's mostly forgotten in the US, for that matter. I think the last living veteran of that war died recently. Peter Jackson's recent cleaning up of the movie footage for "They Shall Not Grow Old" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7905466/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1 was heart-rending.
Even I hear of Women's Death Batallions for the first time. Need to google.
> by labour action: the October Revolution in Russia
Calling Russian revolution a "labour action" is like calling WWI "a brawl between some German and British lads". Technically, part of it fits this description, but one can't but notice it doesn't exactly paint the correct picture. Also, Russian revolution didn't really end the war - rather, Russia was losing badly, which in part led to the regime collapse, which made Russia sign the peace and get out of the war which it could no longer fight. The war didn't end by it though.
They also would instruct the pastors of churches to disseminate messages and those that didn't were on the list as well. This is before mass communications took hold. Most folks got their news through word of mouth or gatherings.
Revolutionary War propaganda famously included various pamphlets, editorials, and self-published periodicals (Thomas Paine, The Federalist Papers, etc.).
Incidentally, the incoming president of Brazil is also an ex-con.
Then they're democratic in name only. If the previous leader has the effective, practical ability to fuck with the transfer of power, it ain't democracy.
Nothing about that should stop them from running and winning. But running and/or winning shouldn't get them out either.
Then you're disenfranchising the majority of democratic voters, millions of citizens, in preference of ossifying so-called criminal justice against a mere one human. Why would you do that? What hallowed value does that serve?
The question of what's a crime and what's valid is a democratic question fundamentally, and is and should be mutable.
We're in this thread, remember, because pretentious ideologues once imprisoned an anti-war protestor for bullshit reasons that were framed as "crimes".
Sure, and the question of the legality of a given action can also be on the ballot. Implying that someone who wins an election should automatically get out of jail is nonsense. One of the pillars of the bureaucratic rule of law is making it so that no individual has autocratic power. We already have too much of powerful politicians and other agents of the state being effectively above the law.
If anything, to me, "convicted criminal winning an election by majority vote" strongly pattern-matches "effective check against autocracy". Again: look at what the OP is, what fact patterns we're discussing in this thread!
No it's not. The two concepts are orthogonal, and treating them as a single quality is a dangerous fallacy. The first is about how someone gets elected to an office - one of the cornerstones of our society is that leaders are elected by the people. The second is what someone in an office can legally do once they are there - another cornerstone is that nobody is above the rule of law. Equating the two effectively throws out the latter.
The distinction is very clear when it comes to a narrowly-scoped office, or even a general executive at a low level like the mayor of a city. It only gets fuzzier as you go up in scale, as those charged with enforcing the law are better poised to not enforce against themselves. But the proper term for that is "corruption".
It seems pretty clearly undemocratic to me to say that you get out of jail if you win an election (or that the justice system somehow applies less to you if you’re an elected official).
Democracy is root.
Of course, the UK is a monarchy, not a republic, so its relevance to the subject at hand is somewhat dubious.
This is a common claim, but I can't say that I agree. The House of Lords holds real power, as does the king in his role as head of state. The UK is not an absolute monarchy by any means, but the king is far more than just a figurehead [1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/how-archaic-...
Honestly I the existing and proposed age limits (e.g. that you can't serve as President over 80) are addressing symptoms of a deeper problem. If your country's population wants to elect a senile 90 year-old or dumb 18 year-old or Russian traitor, your democracy is deeply flawed. A law preventing the people from doing so won't save them, as they can just elect someone else incompetent. If voters know what they're doing we shouldn't need requirements for people to run for office.
The Chamber of Commerce tried earlier to specifically institute a term limit for FDR, but it didn't work out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
The current democracy-worship afoot in the US ignores the fact that almost every progressive aspect of the US state sprang from a counter-majoritarian institution: Roe and Brown, plus the administrative implementation of civil rights law.
The incoming president of Brazil had his convictions thrown out because the process was fraudulent. IIRC election regulators went after Bolsanaro for calling Lula an ex-con.
That aside, I don't think enough people explicitly hold popular sovereignty (expressed as democracy) over the rule of law. Law that isn't subject to popular sovereignty is obviously subject to some other kind of soverign. You shouldn't be jailing people who have a reasonable chance of being elected as the head of the executive, because if the public would elect them, the public doesn't think that they should be jailed.
A better argument is that it is a check/balance against laws that are not democratic putting people in prison that provide a good opposition the current president.
Writing the law may be part of the popularity contest, but upholding the law most certainly is not.
A power hungry intolerant federal government mandating War-fervor & jingoism, suppressing all outside voices (largely liberal & progressive), clamping down on how people think & what they say. passing the Sedition Act & charging many under these wartime powers, before it's repeal.
This book supposedly makes quite the case for this being one of thr darkest times in America. Excited scared/sad to start reading it.
:)
It’s a viscous cycle. It sucks.
It's also the case that in many modern wars both sides will claim to be the side with no choice though. Also that having entered a war by choice doesn't necessarily imply that it's still possible to exit the war by choice.
I think this is untrue... unless your invaders are the assyrians, surrender and losing the war isn't really that bad. Even the Mongols would just collect some extra taxes.
The inevitability of war beyond a certain point is a terrifying prospect.
Many socialists said the same thing during WW1. Why should the working class people fight each other? Turn the guns on your masters etc.
Would be nice to post links here to European versions of this.
Today’s libertarians view modern wars with the same skepticism. Are they really necessary, and if so, can our governments have a referendum by their people before starting one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_Man_Under_Socialis...
Before the show starts, jingoism is emergent and it ought to be illegal to rattle sabres and call for blood where peace is still possible. That changes quickly, there is a definite threshold.
Once the game is on, one has to move with the crowd. To not support the war is demoralising, treacherous even. And this rises as the first body bags come home and mothers weep.
In the middle phase, people are stoic and quiet. Soldiers have "a job to do" and we must "grin and bear it".
Without swift victory, then comes the point of fatigue and economic pain. Too many dead children on the TV. But the protestors are in a minority and need great courage to point the way to an exit. That's when tactical silencing of dissent can happen. The idea that opposing the war is the same as siding with the enemy comes to the fore.
As the tide turns, even millions on the streets (Vietnam, Iraq), or the advice of generals (Afghanistan) cannot overcome the pride of miscalculating leaders. But at that point public opinion has passed the threshold the other way.
By the end it is shameful to still support a lost war (and sometimes, depending on the cost, even a victorious one).
Long before it ended WWI was universally seen as "insane" by all sides.
Perhaps my historical education is wanting, but only the second world war seems to have a clear narrative of victory over evil, with a constancy of support for Allied triumph which I think even the exhausted Germans and Japanese felt toward the end. That "just war" model is wheeled out and is still active apropos Ukraine.
I thought you were being ironic up to here.
Irony isn't a particularly useful concept when dealing with speech on the internet, which is fragmented and in ambiguous contexts.
And it goes against HN guidelines to proffer the most generous and sincere writing/interpretation possible.
There's a difference between irony and sarcasm, prevalent here, and both definitions are largely abused or misunderstood these days.
Look for words like "seemed", which invokes the concept of appearance and therefore implicitly casts doubt on appearances.
What I am conveying here, by "narrative" (story/account) is that as a mature person, with some experience of the matters, I have many reservations about the way things were told to me growing up by "authority" figures from my past.
That's not really irony. More of a sceptical tone. Sceptical about the whole way that "war narratives" and public opinion is spun.
Let's not forget that Britain worried about the loss of its colonies, that the Soviet Union started and ended the war as an invader, that France was as worried about the socialists at home as they were about the Nazis at the border, that Paris was liberated by colonial troops, but it's the Europeans who got a parade on the Champs Elysées, that everyone bombed civilians, that victors made immoral concessions in preparation for the next war, that the faith of entire nations was decided on a napkin in Potsdam.
War is messy. Geopolitics are rarely a history of good guys and bad guys.
I know your reply will be along the lines "But those aren't communists" Truth be told, there never was any communist.
Also the communist parties everywhere support them in their war against Ukraine.
I guess it all depends on you considering communism an ideology or just a faction.
The thing that people should understand is that wars are strategic. Any moral justification is just propaganda. The paradigm is "might makes right" and has been for millennia. The American Empire is a great example, and the Chinese Empire that comes after it will be the same. But that will be even shorter-lived than the Americans because AI will probably take control soon after. On a large scale, humanity operates at a moral level similar to that of ant colonies.
Ooh look! A squirrel! <scrolls>
As I said, the bottom line for the world order seems to be deployment of force. Right now the most relevant force paradigms as far as I can tell are mass information control and bio-warfare (nuclear has largely been tabled.) The authoritarianism has given China an advantage in terms of controlling information and infection and that has been strongly proven out.
If you think Covid was a lab escaped bio weapon then prove it or get off this site.
But regardless of what caused it, if you look at the effects, military strategists almost have to treat it as the Hiroshima of bio-warfare. Because it proves that such a thing is both extremely effective and also very hard to prove one way or the other.
Authoritarianism by itself doesn't explain the extreme lockdowns in China. But if the Chinese military sees Wuhan as evidence of the effectiveness of bioweapons and the start of an era, then the lockdowns can be seen as key to effectively defending against (or using) them. So tight pandemic response is now a core national security issue,
Another way to interpret all of it is as overall strengthening "society's immune response" to pandemics and so you could see that as a good thing in perverse way.
But that doesn't really change the military interpretation or brutal paradigm of global power that we seem to be stuck in.
>...While Wilson's tenure is often noted for progressive achievement, his time in office was one of unprecedented regression in regard to racial equality.[1] He removed most federal officeholders who were African Americans, his administration imposed segregation policies, and instituted a policy requiring a photo for federal job applicants.
Even if you don’t change your mind, it’s still a great read for those fascinated with panics and depressions.
Because that name is also used to describe the event, wasn’t sure if you meant a specific book or article.
https://www.amazon.com/Panic-1907-Lessons-Learned-Markets/dp...
For example, the Iraq War really was related to oil - Saddam had no WMDs, no ties with Al Qaeda, but he was moving his oil money out of the petrodollar recycling system, which was a huge threat to global dollar hegemony and the balance-of-payements issue (see capital accounts vs. current accounts). Plus, it was a huge cash cow for government contracts and the military procurement system, which always gets hungry during peacetime. GW Bush and the neocons of course sold this in their preferred manner.
The same thing happened with Libya and Syria, only now it was the other set of talking points - although again, Qaddafi was promoting pan-African unity, an alternative currency, independence from Europe and the USA on oil sales, closer ties to Russia and China, etc. Assad backed out of a Saudi-USA-Israeli pipeline deal in 2009 and went for the Russia-Iran pipeline instead (plus lots of electricity integration with Iran), so Obama signed off on the CIA overthrow/regime change directive. If you want more strong evidence that their 'humanitarian democractic' rhetoric was nonsense, look at how they treated the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain (crushed by Saudi tanks) or the Saudi assault on Yemen.
It's all pretty farcical. Just admit that maintaining a global financial empire is pretty difficult without engaging in covert regime change and military dominance, already. Stop pretending it's about self-defense or good works - I mean Ukraine is all about control of natural gas sales to Europe, plus another multi-billion injection into the domestic weapons manufacturing complex.
Not to say no one was speaking out about it, but the vastly dominant narrative was to support the war effort and ignore the corruption.
Geo-political power games (Gulf War I) and outright stupidity (Gulf War II) seem like the more likely catalysts for the Iraq war (And you noted a few of the causes of the Libyan one).
But of course, American leadership will never break the facade of doing “good.” The propaganda is too effective. It’s way easier to maintain false narratives that keep the population looking the other way than to come out and say why you really want to invade other countries.
The taboo is a feature, not a bug.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Informatio...
But ultimately I think the oil was a secondary goal. The goal was, and is, endless military conflict as a means to funnel public funds into the military industrial complex. It doesn't matter if "we win" or not, hell we haven't won a war in decades. The point is to maintain persistent instability as a motivator for continued military budget increases. Ukraine is a prime example. All NATO member spending has increased, as has India, China, Iran, and Brazil. The media and politicians just use the "spread democracy" type rhetoric as a sales pitch for the public.
Iraq War II was bullshit and probably a strategic mis-step, and I'm proud to have been among the minority (in the US, anyway) who opposed it and the even smaller minority who actually got out and protested against it, but we didn't need their oil. The US has plenty. We only really care about foreign oil supplies for market-stabilization reasons—it's not worth the effort and various costs to steal it from other countries by force.
Now, there was a lot of corruption and it sure is weird how a bunch of Bush-admin-connected companies landed so many giant contracts related to the war and it 100% does look like "we should invade Iraq ASAP the first time we have even the flimsiest excuse" was indeed one of those actual-in-fact-real conspiracies (multiple top-level Bush admin folks literally signed their name to such sentiments in the late 90s—I'm not even sure you can properly call it a conspiracy given how out in the open it was) but we didn't attack for the oil.
As or why the ones who pushed the war wanted it, I think there was a selfish motivation given that a lot of them were situated to make money off such a war, but also a genuine desire to improve the US position in a much longer-term realpolitik great powers game. Oil in the near term was a pretty minor concern—to the extent it was really about oil, I'd say future ability to strangle larger opponents by controlling access to oil was what they had in mind. Maybe a bit of a message to OPEC states, too.
The problem is that oil is sold into a global market, so even if a nation produces as much oil as it consumes, if there is a shortage of oil, the global prices go up, and then your own oil prices go up. So your economy can be thrown into a recession and your standard of living will decline due to Iraq's oil being taken out of the world market even if you don't need to import any oil from Iraq.
For this reason, the US sought to control all global oil suppliers, wherever they may be, and whomever they sell oil to. Yes, it's an unsustainable, insane, geopolitical strategy -- but in the heady days of post cold-war hegemony, US foreign policy became controlled by neocon ideologues who thought that absolute control over the middle east was an achievable and moral goal. The result of this policy is millions of dead civilians, functioning secular societies that have been destroyed and handed over to warring religious clans, and global chaos from Libya to Afghanistan.
Did the US start the Libyan civil war? No, in fact the US was one of the last of the western militaries to get involved, after Canada, France and the UK. The US initially played a minor role.
Did the US instigate the Syrian civil war? Again, no, the US only involved when IS got involved.
I watched an interview with Tulsi Gabbard where she said the Ukraine War was caused by US corporations that profit from selling weapons. I mean what’s the theory, that Lockheed persuaded Putin to invade Ukraine? It’s absurd. I get that she hates the military industrial complex, and maybe she has many valid reasons, but in this case she’s delusional.
I’m not at all saying there aren’t factions in the US that do advocate military adventurism, and profit from it. That’s a real thing. The second Gulf war is an example, I’ll give you that one, but even in that case that was just one of many factors and I don’t think it would have been decisive by itself. Also yes, the west absolutely compromises principles for geopolitical and economic interests. But this idea that all foreign conflicts are a plot by the military industrial complex is a bit absurd. It’s not always all about you, guys.
The intervening 20 years has made clear that there’s no realpolitik rational decision making at play here. Take Ukraine for example. Is there oil in Ukraine? No, it’s Russia that has the oil. So why do we give a shit about Ukraine? Because Americans really are just that childishly idealistic when it comes to foreign policy. They believe in good versus evil and that America needs to intervene on the side of good.
Oh, bollocks. In what universe did the US go to war with Assad's regime? The US tepidly tried arming a few of the (non-fundamentalist) rebel groups once they appeared, but nothing more than that. (Presumably you think the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt were caused by the CIA, too, for some unfathomable reason.) And how, exactly, has the US profited monetarily from what happened in Libya and Syria?
(Gaddafi was actually getting closer to the US and Europe; in 2004 he gave up his nuclear weapons program in return for better relations with the West. As for "pan-African unity" -- sure, from the guy who invaded Chad to steal land from it. No one took his bombast seriously.)
(2008) "Russia agreed to cancel $4.5 billion of Libyan debt on Thursday, unlocking big military and civilian export orders in the face of fierce Western competition for the former outcast state’s booming market."
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/world/europe/03iht-03russ...
> "Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the leader of Libya, visited Moscow over the weekend for talks on oil and natural gas deals, just two months after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was his guest in Libya. The visit here suggested that Qaddafi, a onetime pariah, is maneuvering to play Russia and the United States against each other for commercial and political favors."
There's plenty of similar stories, if you care to look up the historical record. If the House of Saud tried (for whatever unlikely reason) to pull all its oil money out of the US banking system and play similar games with Russia and China, a CIA-run regime change operation would be a real possiblility, right?
He's also dropping barrel bombs and killing a lot of children...But, sure..let's ignore that because they're Syrian children..
The issue is that such claims are typically made with no actual, direct evidence. I don't doubt, for instance, that "the domestic weapons manufacturing complex" is making money off of aid to Ukraine. But there's no actual evidence that this profit motive is what caused the US to support Ukraine.
Conscripts are enslaved. What some may call a mutiny of conscripts others might call a slave rebellion. Let's just take that axiomatically for now. Obviously not all agree. But many accept that argument completely. Arguing it does not infringe free speech to call for people to free themselves, because it's only prohibiting the encouragement of a crime rings similarly hollow, from that perspective.
What if I urge people, in a riveting call to action speech, to kill X celebrity?
I think the former is specific enough to be legally problematic, but I was actually under the impression that the second one is technically legal? (morally awful, but legally unprosecutable)
Well, it should be.
As a general rule? News to me. Citation?