Rules by which a great empire may be reduced to a small one (1773)
founders.archives.gov
founders.archives.gov
What would be an example of someone with a personality they didn't deserve?
The "rules" - the constitution, the law - must apply to everyone equally, otherwise it loses legitimacy.
If Trump believes that the means of deporting US citizens to CECOT without a trial (unconstitutional) is justified by his end goals, does that make him right to circumvent the judicial system, violating the laws established by the legislature in the process?
The system of checks and balances exists for a reason. It sets a dangerous precedent when any president treads astray of those constitutional guardrails, no matter what party, no matter what policy, because it empowers future presidents to do the same.
Maybe if more people did sympathize with these values, we wouldn't have the president shipping American citizens to prisons overseas without trial.
Trump is making things worse by instituting oppression - Lincoln was making things better by dismantling institutionalized oppression. Trump is committing acts of racism, Lincoln was preventing acts of racism. It’s not the same thing.
The president - and any moral person - is absolutely honor-bound to break the rules, when the rules themselves are unethical, when the rules enforce mistreating others, and protect the perpetrators of injustice.
Human rights are always worth having a war over.
Here's some laws:
In an isolated system, entropy increases.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted.
An object at rest remains at rest unless it's acted upon by outside forces.
Law is a great word to describe these things. They're immutable facts of the universe.
Now here's some things humans call "laws":
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
> No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Well that's just orders of magnitude difference in scope! How can we use the same word to describe immutable facts of the universe as we do to describe how we think people should behave in order to create the kind of society we believe we want to live in? We can't even say for certain that perfect adherence to those "laws" would create that society we want to live in nor can we agree what that society should look like!
Not to mention these "laws" are easily violated, and sometimes it's good to do so, as when Lincoln did so in his fight against slavery and to maintain the State.
I think it's silly to pretend human law is law. Step into any courtroom and watch your law and due process at work - the overwhelmed court system plays so fast and loose and the results of any given case are so dependent upon the judge and their mood at the moment you'll be sick!
Trump violates due process, yes indeed, but due process barely ever existed in America. The same country that secretly infected black soldiers with veneral diseases, bombed its own citizens, threw Asian Americans indiscriminately into concentration camps, that country has "due process?" The same country where cops gun down unarmed civilians, or if you're lucky merely extrajudicially beat the shit out of you, that country has due process?
It's the same in every State throughout all of history. Laws are never laws, they're regulations applied when convenient to serve the needs of the State or those in power. When a law doesn't serve the needs of the State or its bureaucrats, even if its enforcement would benefit the people, the law is ignored or "temporarily suspended." Trump just does this quiet thing out loud.
The word "law" is used to trick people into thinking that these rules are as immutable as the first law of thermodynamics, when in reality the ones who write the laws and ostensibly enforce them flaunt them at every turn. I've just read a story about a USA politician who modified an age of consent "law" when it was being used to convict his cousin who was on trial for raping a child. Now the cousin gets off with time served and community service. Now that's a "law" alright!
I understand where you are coming from, but you've got it backwards. Natural sciences adopted the word "law" to describe some "immutable" principles (that's obviously a descriptive use, ie. our descriptions of our understanding of some observations).
The word "law" comes from moral philosophy ("what is right?" and "what should we do?") and jurisprudence ("what is law?" and "what should be law?") of the ancient Romans ("lex") and is deeply rooted in the idea of norms (as in "normative", ie. that's how it should be) we, as humans, set for ourselves. Thus it is not silly to describe a regulation a legislative body puts to paper as law. That's what it means.
Note, I'm not saying you are wrong. It's just language changing and I wouldn't worry too much.
is evidence for nothing, same as the presence of such
That was good enough for him in my book.
He didn't acted alone. He had an apparatus at his disposal. Blaming a single person for acts of hundreds is so 21 century.
That is a far more severe problem than 99% of the public realize. It is like light outside the visible spectrum, or bacteria and viruses, before we had tools to see them.
While we can detect them, unless somebody has a huge sudden exposure, so that they have clearly attributable symptoms, smaller effects can only - badly - attributed statistically, for populations. Badly, because what exactly do you measure? It's not like you get numbers naturally. More aggression, less brain-ability in general, the measurements used even for the statistical analysis is hard.
Long-term slow exposure always correlates with age, so problems can easily be attributed to "aging" instead. And of course stress. And "it's all in your head" - which funnily (or unfunnily) enough is true!
This is where we got the expression "mad as a hatter". The problem with being a hatter wasn't that you were suddenly exposed to huge quantities of mercury. It was that you were constantly exposed to it.
No! Acute exposure is not the only thing that exists!
Source: Both the official line (e.g. that the only save exposure to lead is zero - and lead is not as bad as mercury, also an official line one can found in some NIH doc), as well as my own experience, as someone diagnosed and treated with chelators (see past comments).
You have chronic and acute. Chronic small does exposure exists. It has the problem that we have no reliable ways to diagnose or to treat that case, which is why I do not fault the medical system to be blind there. They just can't really do much or anything. If they did, it would be very inefficient, because there is no quick fix pill or surgery.
Just like Trump trying to stop reporting on things does not mean they don't exist, just because we don't try too hard (or at all) because we don't have a practical solution even in case of an assured diagnosis, if such were possible with current means, does not mean that only acute exposure problems exist.
It is why it is believed to be “well-deserved” as it is a function of his behaviors, actions, and words.
It isn't possible for your character to differ in any direction from your behaviors, actions, and words, since it consists of nothing other than those things.
It reminds me of something my grandfather would say “You can tell people a lot of things… you just can’t tell them the truth!”
The introduction also explores this theme with the explanation of how it was only the “biting” nature of the satire he was aware would not persuade, but would outrage in different ways… possibly intentional ways.
I tell people this a lot, because especially regarding historical events, the actual start dates of those events far precede the recorded date that is usually associated with martial actions.
The American Revolution had its origins starting in 1730. The American “Civil War” had its origins starting in 1820. The dates of the starts of most historical events don’t just happen on that day. It’s always bothered me immensely, because it’s so myopic and rather stupid in many ways. The lead up to and the planning of anything is always the far more important part than the execution, and if you don’t know that, you will fail under anything but the most advantageous circumstances.
The first identifiable steps of the assembly of the myriad (and exponentially increasing the further back you go) of necessary key preconditions that come together to result in a thing that happened does not mean that that's when that thing started happening. We are all sitting at the tail end of an incomprehensibly long line of specific events that were in no way pre-ordained and ultimately depend upon a lot of chance and individual whims.
The american revolution could have been prevented in the 1770s and maybe we'd have turned out like Canada or Northern Ireland. The civil war could have been prevented as late as 1860 and we'd have probably got rid of slavery in the 1870s or 80s like Brazil.
It’s perfectly reasonable to say that an event was caused by earlier events and also that different actions in the intervening years could have produced different outcomes.
The ceramic bits on the floor were caused when I dropped the bowl, even though they could have been prevented had I managed to catch it.
If you have something to say say it like a man. This is an internet comment section, not a bunch of mean girls pretending to run a parent teacher association.
>It’s perfectly reasonable to say that an event was caused by earlier events and also that different actions in the intervening years could have produced different outcomes.
The problem is that it's a meaningless statement. Everything "has its origins" or "was caused by" the prior situation which has its origins (or whatever comparable verbiage you prefer) in a nearly infinite set of things that created the immediate necessary preconditions. Like if the middle east didn't suck you might not have got Colombus when you did and the resultant effects. Or if the middle east sucked a little more you might not have gotten Marco Polo when you did having the resultant effects. But this all just devolves into a stupid "look how smart I am" exercise where we're all just basically listing things that came before and circle jerk about the ways they put their metaphorical thumbs on the scale of the future.
There are three ways to make a living:
1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.
In German, we've got words like "dass". Back in the day, every s that wasn't at the end of a word was written as long s, so "dass" would've been written like "daſs", which got turned into ß.
That's why until the recent orthographic reforms of 1996 and 2006 "dass" was written as "daß".
Aside: in some regions, "dass" would've been written like "dasz" / "daſz". That's why the letter is called Eszett (S-Z) even though it's capitalised as two consecutive "s".
I entered school in Germany the very same year that the orthographic reform came into force, so I never learned the legacy spelling, but I certainly found it weird how much adult people at the time detested the rules that six-year-old me considered to be very reasonable (esp. the ss/ß reordering and the ban on fusing tripled consonants in compound words).
This is my very personal perspective. If you're interested in a more complete picture, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_der_deutschen_Rechtschr... looks like a good summary (through translation if necessary).
It's also worth noting that by this point in time the monarch was not really the decision maker for most affairs of state. While he was likely the most politically powerful monarch after the Glorious Revolution, Parliament was nevertheless still calling the shots.
"English" may mean a subset of British people, a language, or sometimes a restaurant MacGuffin, whereas "english" refers to only vertical spinning of a billard ball.
> in Order to form a more PERFECT UNION, establish JUSTICE, insure domestic TRANQUILITY, provide for the common defence, promote the general WELFARE, and secure the BLESSINGS of LIBERTY to ourselves and our POSTERITY…
Of particular note is China, which made falling and then regaining territorial extent a practical sport.
But in slightly more detail, not every empire has ended, yet, if you count Russia and the Chinese as empires. Also, some empires have had declines that reversed again for a while, such as Byzantine Empire.
It might be argued that the relative peace in Europe and Asia is already cracking up, given the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Either way the world is a completely different place than it was in 1949 or 1989, and as the global situation evolves it makes absolute sense to adapt with it.
The U.S. doesn't set arbitrary laws for Europe
The great empires of old, dating back to at least Alexander the Great and almost certainly before, all learned a simple truth. The way you create a stable empire is by giving those under your control so much as freedom as possible to maintain their own ways. We simply took this to the next logical step and created an empire no longer defined by borders.
How do you define "sovereignty" here? Because (for example) many European countries have made it crystal clear that they will continue to support Ukraine whether or not the USA continues or not. That's not something they could do if the US had taken over their sovereignty. There are plenty of other demands that Trump makes which the EU is going "lol nope" about, like adjusting its own taxes, selling Greenland, or lowering food safety standards so American foods could be sold here.
Does the US have a lot of influence? Sure. So does the EU over the USA, though the EU has long preferred soft power over military presence. China has a lot of influence over the USA too, simply by having to power to meaningfully harm its economy (although at significant cost to itself too). Does that make the USA "not sovereign"? The US has a lot of influence over Russia's economy too, but nobody would argue that Russia is "not sovereign" because they're under sanctions. By that logic even the USA is not fully sovereign because it's "forced" to spend time and money to counteract the countries out there defying its will. Defining sovereignty is very tricky in a globalized world.
And what does the EU get out of this? Local economies that are already headed into recession now expected to pay dramatically more for Ukraine to the US, skyrocketing energy costs owing largely to being compelled to purchase US natural gas, getting to deal with jacked up tariffs to the US, and eventually being the ones that get to take the L over Ukraine. This is not "influence" - this is countries being dictated to act in a way that runs completely against their own self interest.
- Europe chooses to fight a war it wants to fight;
- with the weapons it has decided are the best choice available at the moment (even though many of those are not yet produced domestically and so need to be imported);
- while hugely increasing its own weapons manufacturing;
- paid for by its own money. (aka the factories built and new weapon systems introduced will not be controlled by the US)
You seem to argue (but correct me if I'm wrong) that this is somehow a huge win for the USA and proves the European states have barely any sovereignty as in your previous post. But the more logical result of all this would be that the European countries come out of this war with a significantly larger defense-industrial base. In addition this bigger DIB will be used to shift away the composition of EU armed forces away from American systems and towards domestically produced systems. Like you mention the USA will not pay for anything anymore, but as the saying goes "the one who pays is the one who gets to decide". Pulling support also means you no longer get a say in decision making. Finally, the USA not helping in Ukraine makes it much easier for politicians to say "no thank you" when the US wants help in a future Taiwan conflict. None of these things improve US influence over Europe.
Tariffs are completely separate and are mainly a US thing being paid for by US importers to the US government. Natural gas imports are Trump overstating his dealmaking skills: countries do not buy gas but companies do, and the global energy companies are not bound to this trade deal.
Finally this:
> Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want.
Yes he did. He proposed a peace deal to Putin in which Ukraine would basically surrender, then tried to pressure Zelensky and the EU leaders into going along with this. This very much included Ukraine giving up the fight and EU halting support. Obviously, this didn't happen and now Trump tries to pretend he meant this occur all along.
There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia.
You do realize that EU support and weaponry is completely insufficient to fight Russia, right? Their military is far stronger than anything you've got. The only reason Ukraine has been doing as well as it has is because of American training, intel, weaponry, drones, etc. If America walked away, Ukraine would collapse quite quickly, regardless of empty pledges by the EU.
I think you've been watching US propaganda? This "deal" explicitely happened, there was a lot of "wtf" moments at that. It was a thing that sparked protests.
The relative strength of the combined armies in Europe is also something that we apparently think very different about. There are certainly strategic deficiencies: we'd prefer to have a more robust domestic nuclear umbrella for example, and the US has an advantage in things like intel satellites. In terms of regular weaponry though, we have more than enough "stuff" to win, especially with Russia severely depleted by several years of attritional warfare in Ukraine. The numbers gap is already big enough, but most of the Russian stuff is decades old by now while the European countries are mostly rocking up with extremely modern equipment.
[1] - https://kyivindependent.com/eu-to-produce-2-million-artiller...
[2] - https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-weapons-shells-european-unio...
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US gets:
- EU investment of $600 billion in the US, invested at Trump's sole discretion
- guaranteed sales of $750 billion in US energy resources at a nice fat premium
- guarantee sales of an unstated other than "significant" amount of US military equipment
- elimination of all EU tariffs in many sectors, including on all US industrial goods
EU gets:
- Pay new and increased tariffs to the US, ranging from 15-50%.
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Claiming anybody is choosing this is simply unbelievable.
[1] - https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-th...
- The mentioned EU investment is not at the discretion of Trump. Not even the White House statement says that. In addition, for one party to invest the other has to be selling. It's not a gift. The EU buying factories etc in the US (and shipping the profits back home) is hardly being dominated. Neither is it guaranteed: there are hundreds of ways to delay or cancel such investments. In most US places, just encouraging the local NIMBYs will be enough.
- Energy imports from the USA over the last 2 years already stood at ~30 billion per month. The 750 billion is over the remaining term of Trump, so very roughly 3.5 more years. That means the EU committed to spend ~215 billion per year, which is actually less than it has been spending on average anyway over the past two years. No premium was agreed in regards to energy prices. Don't know where you get that from, the linked publication does not mention anything like that.
- As stated before there are plenty of things we'd actually want to buy from the US, such as weapons for which we're still building our own factories. The Patriot missile factory under construction in Germany is one such example. While it is not yet done, we want to buy missiles to send to Ukraine. So this is a "concession" to do what we were already going to do. Also note that almost any amount can be construed as "significant" if you're a politician.
- The EU commits to "work to address a range of U.S. concerns" regarding tariffs. Quoting from that White House publication, we'll even provide "meaningful quotas". What does that mean? Which timescale? How high will the quotas be? Does "supporting high-quality American jobs" mean 5 jobs or millions of jobs? This is just a thing negotiators stuck in there so both parties could claim victory.
Finally tariffs are a big nothing burger when it comes to this discussion. It clearly has nothing to do with the EU being a US vassal because every country in the world is being tariffed, up to and including those poor penguins in the pacific. Unless you claim that China and Russia are also not sovereign countries? They have tariffs too. The phrasing of "Pay new and increased tariffs to the US" is also incomplete. The importer of the goods pays the tariffs, and most big companies have already indicated they will raise prices in the US to compensate. In effect US consumers will simply be paying an extra tax to their own government for the privilege of buying goods produced abroad.
In short, the EU negotiators got some of the lowest tariffs in the world in exchange for things they were already doing, were going to do anyway, or will not have to do. The negotiators did a rather splendid job I'd say.
By contrast you're throwing out numbers and claims without sources, which are wrong. For instance the entirety of all EU imports from the US are less than $30 billion per month [4], of which energy is but a fraction. Them meeting his demands there will be a dramatic increase in imports, to the point that it's not clear if this is even possible.
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[And this mess is part of the reason I don't cite everything. This is just ugly]
[1] - https://www.barrons.com/articles/trump-tariffs-trade-u-s-inv...
[2] - https://ycharts.com/indicators/henry_hub_natural_gas_spot_pr...
[3] - https://ycharts.com/indicators/europe_natural_gas_price
[4] - https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/imports/united-s...
LOL yes we can and we will. I can state this confidently because the entire agreement is exactly that. A bunch of terms with definitions too vague to matter.
If Trump wants to be an unreliable ally again, then everybody knows he will do so anyway. It'll be based more on what kind of breakfast he had than whether the EU sticks to the terms or not.
wut? It was Trump[1] who invited the Taliban to Camp David, negotiated with them sans-Afghan governenment, and started the process of withdrawal with troop reductions, a deadline and everything.
1. https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal...
> They're going to do what he says
Except they ... did not. He is loosing influence. He is getting face saving deals for himself, but that is about it.
I think the party in the USA has ended. And I'm definitely not investing there again until there is some clarity about the next regime.
Is it? I'm (somewhat shockingly) not really seeing any willingness to detach from US Big Tech or even consider thinking what's behind the curtain. The collective delusion is surreal (or should I say hyper-real).
Do you mean the people? They don't matter, the EU is not a democracy that has to answer to its people.
Do you mean the leaders? They just signed a treaty to agree to 10x tariffs for their goods, 0% tariffs for the USA's good, and to buy a trillion dollar's worth of energy and arms. Doesn't sound like "bye bye USA".
It's essentially just describing hubris, which those who find themselves in power - particularly power that they themselves did not build, can never seem to escape.
Even accounting for hyperbole this is just not at all historically accurate.
Military conquest and failures, economic decay, succession problems, and weather are responsible for at least as many cases and probably more.
At worst it would be a mild rebellion which would be shut down in due order with a bit of good old fashion drawing and quartering. Empires grow out of touch with reality, and base their decisions on this false reality that they create. The outcome is not hard to predict. So for instance the exact same followed the Brits all the way to their collapse. Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary and effectively bankrupted them. The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2, and that was essentially the end of their empire.
They likely couldn't. The US independence war was part of a larger war between the French empire and the British empire. The british empire was also at was with Spain and the Netherlands at the time.
> Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary
Britain didn't start WW1.
> Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary
It effectively was necessary. They were drawn it via a pre-existing treaty with Belgium; it also does not seem like a good long-term plan for them to allow Germany to dominate the entire European mainland. The whole thing was a mess, but not because Britain was out of touch with the reality of the situation. They were very aware but felt they had no choice.
> The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2
It was, but that's a perspective that's very clear in hindsight, and at the time it arose more from ignorance of the consequences (and possibly some vindictiveness) than hubris.
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"Few historians would still maintain that the 'rape of Belgium' was the real motive for Britain's declaration of war on Germany. Instead, the role of Belgian neutrality is variously interpreted as an excuse used to mobilise public opinion, to provide embarrassed radicals in the cabinet with the justification for abandoning the principal of pacifism and thus staying in office, or - in the more conspiratorial versions - as cover for naked imperial interests."
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Similarly many people were fully aware that Treaty of Versailles was foolish as it was being drafted. Its excessively punitive nature essentially precluded any sort of peaceful reconciliation, which should always be the goal at the end of war. You never know who your allies, or your enemies, will be in a few decades. History loves a plot twist.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_declaration_of_war_upo...
It was clear at the time at least to people like Keynes who wrote a book on the subject: The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
"My purpose in this book is to show that the Carthaginian Peace is not practically right or possible. Although the school of thought from which it springs is aware of the economic factor, it overlooks, nevertheless, the deeper economic tendencies which are to govern the future. The clock cannot be set back. You cannot restore Central Europe to 1870 without setting up such strains in the European structure and letting loose such human and spiritual forces as, pushing beyond frontiers and races, will overwhelm not only you and your "guarantees," but your institutions, and the existing order of your Society."
I think you could also argue that one of the reasons the Roman empire persisted so long was that their existential close calls (Hannibal being the most prominent one), became embedded into their cultural DNA.
like imagine at some point roman empire and china is co-exist together and 2000 years later only 1 survive
I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level, and the people in them always had strong differences, language, values, religion, beliefs, writing, philosophy, and so on.
Qin conquered the other Chinese states and the ensuing dynasty flamed out immediately. The work of creating an empire was done by the following Han dynasty.
> There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
分久必合，合久必分
https://ctext.org/sanguo-yanyi/ch1
Often given as "the empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide", but your translation is much closer to the text, which doesn't mention empires except in that it follows this statement ["They say that across the course of history, what has long been divided must unite, and what has long been united must divide"] with a discussion of Chinese governments schisming and unifying.
The shared values, religion, language, and writing preexisted the Qin. So much was shared that the state of Qin considered it a problem - Qin propaganda (before the conquest) tended to emphasize how different they were from the other Chinese states.
It sounds like a joke but that is exactly how it works and many people have forgotten it.
Yeah but the empire is still in fact china, like you cant change that
1. does they identified some sort of "chinnese" ???: Yeah
2. does they still speak some form of "chinnese language": Yeah
"buttt it iss different eeeerrr" before you talking about whats different, BRO ITS 2000 YEARS, what do you expect ???? like do you expecting people not changing anything for two millenia????? like cmon bruh, use your critical thinking
"china proper" as whole is always referring to "whole region" not just this empire or dynasty or anything
but you can ignore the satirical part and focus at bullet point
also: https://web.archive.org/web/20250102025407/https://nces.ed.g...
The point was a glib response to an assertion that China is somehow especially unified as a matter of policy or politics. And, yeah, no; no it is not. At all.
What I said was that the Chinese civil war is technically ongoing, as evidence for deep and persistent Chinese political disunity, and I stand by that 100%.
You're arguing with someone else, I think. And in particular you seem to be arguing from the perspective of the PRC with regard to Taiwanese independence, which I find distasteful.
You continue to make mistakes. The people of Taiwan have no desire to be autocratically ruled by either the winners or the losers of the Chinese civil war and are no longer ruled by either.
I do not. There is no ongoing civil war. The vast majority of Taiwan (except for the small minority composed of the fleeing KMT) had nothing to do with the civil war, so it is incorrect to say that the people who fought that civil war make the chips produced in Taiwan.
> you're just going blue in the face yelling about a technicality regarding what you perceive is my alignment with whoever your enemies in domestic Taiwanese politics are
No, I am fully aware (and have been since the beginning) that you have no conception of Taiwanese politics. I'm correcting your incorrect statements about China and Taiwan's relationship to it.
You have a mistaken belief that Taiwan is mostly descendants and supporters of the KMT. It is not, even after the suppression of other political groups during martial law. Unlike the KMT, the current dominant parties have never aspired to rule China.