I was going to correct your misunderstandings, but they are too thoroughgoing to do easily in a forum post. Overall, your understanding is not far off, but it is off by a little bit at a lot of different points.
Look up the concept of "interposition". Interposition was a term used to describe the concept of states going against the "Alien and Sedition Act". You really need to do a little bit of research on nullification. The "Nullification Crisis" occurred during Andrew Jackson's Presidency, so this pre-dates Buchanan's Presidency. The Republican Party was formed as an explicitly anti-slavery party. It was not formed in response to secession. The Republican Party was formed in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was seen as an attempt to expand slavery. The Republican Party was not formed in response to secession. The Republican Party was formed as an anti-slavery, pro-free market Party. The slogan of their first Presidential candidate was 'Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men.' This slogan was taken from the Free Soil Party (which was absorbed by the Republican Party).
The Republican Party got its name because they considered free market labor to be the basis of republicanism (which was viewed as the essence of American political values).
As I said, you really need to do a little research on the concepts you are discussing. You aren't off by much, but the details you have wrong make a significant difference as to the meaning of various things.
I have not studied the issue, but I have seen credible arguments that the leak of the Pentagon Papers was ultimately destructive of the best interests of the American people. I do not have an opinion one way or the other at this point and the event happened far enough in the past that I am not going to do the study needed to decide. I will say that those who at that time promoted the idea that publishing the Pentagon Papers was a good idea were pushing a destructive political agenda.
Basic law and order is dealing with those who physically abuse others and fail to respect other's property rights.
I'm not quite sure where libertarians have objected to being expected to behave like a responsible human being. I think you may be mistaking libertarians for anarchists.
So when a libertarian's house is on fire and the firefighters show up, do they say "No, that's ok, I'm a libertarian."?
Why should they? Where I live the firefighters are all volunteers working with equipment that was purchased with donations. What does that have to do with not wanting the government to do more than the basics (maintaining basic law and order, enforcing contract law, etc)?
Yes, and the Lancet surveys worked by asking people in a particular area (I do not remember which area of Iraq anymore, but I believe it was one of the areas of more intense fighting) if they knew anyone killed or injured by the war, assuming that each of those was a separate, actual event and then extrapolating to the entire country.
Your "perfect" time in history is prehistoric Anatolia? A time and place that we know next to nothing about? You say that they didn't have any weapons, yet this article talks about men being ceremoniously buried with weapons made of obsidian. Other references I came across suggest that there is no sound basis for concluding that they had a matriarchal society (or that they didn't. There is insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion one way or the other).
Basically, your knowledge of Scandinavian history is much the same...mostly propaganda with little basis in actual observable fact. As for where the positive traits of Western Civilization come from, they come from Christianity. I won't go through the Bible showing how the positive elements derive from there since that is clearly pointless.
You are so thoroughly misinformed that correcting that on this board is not practical.
Actually, I can think of someone who in the last 70 years dedicated their life to changing our political system who succeeded: Ronald Reagan.
It is not enough to feel strongly about the need for change, you have to convince enough people that the change you propose is a change for the better. As for George Carlin, he talked about it a lot in his comedy, but I cannot remember him ever suggesting and campaigning for a solution to the problem he talked about.
Can you point to a time and place in history that had a society more to your liking than current Western Civilization?
Overall, having exchanged several comments with you, I have to conclude that you are either incredibly naive about human nature, or just plain stupid.
I hope you never learn firsthand what a real totalitarian society looks like. However, you should look at historical examples of real totalitarian governments. The current U.S. government (nor those of any Western European country) looks nothing like them. If you lived in a true totalitarian society, you would expect the secret police to show up at your door just because you talked about Julian Assange in public. In totalitarian societies, people like Julian Assange are just disappeared and nobody ever talks about them again (except maybe in hushed whispers by the very, very brave).
So, when did the Automobile Era end? I'm sure the number of PCs that shipped each year long ago outstripped the number of Automobiles that ship each year. I guess that means that the car-centric era is over.
While that comparison is slightly more absurd than the point of the article, it still gets at something important: smartphones and PCs are different devices with different uses. When the number of PCs shipped this year is less than the number shipped last year, you can start to talk about the end of the PC Era (of course even then you might be wrong).
How do you suggest "fixing" a government that is corrupt? Do you honestly believe that you could get elected into a corrput system and be allowed to change it? Do you think the majority of people would do something to change it as long as they believe that it works for them?
I am not going to directly answer your questions because they make assumptions that I do not agree with. I do believe that if people wish to fix problems with the government in the U.S. (and most European countries) they can do so if they are willing to take the time and effort necessary to accomplish it. This is not something that can be done by spending a couple of hours deciding which candidates to vote for every couple of years.
As an example, in 1787, William Wilberforce became convinced that slavery should be abolished. He started working towards that end. He did not get slave trading abolished until 26 years later in 1807. He didn't stop there. He continued to work towards the abolition of slavery. Slavery was not abolished in England until 1833, three days before his death.
If you want to fix what is wrong with the government, that is what it takes. Don't tell me, "Nothing can be done. I voted for change in the last two elections and it's no better now." Things are the way they are now because some people spent years on making them that way. If yu want them to be different you are going to have to dedicate a significant part of your life to changing them.
I did not say that you had. I gave a dictionary definition because you were using a definition of totalitarian that was inconsistent with historical usage. The key thing is that even you admit that totalitarianism involves the masses being "made to conform", not convinced to conform. Totalitarian governments have certain things in common. One of those is that the masses are afraid to not conform, not afraid in the, "People will think badly of me if I do that" way, but in the "People from the government will come and do bad things to me if I do that" way.
You are misconstruing the OP's argument. They were responding to a post that said that if a significant number don't see something that is illegal as wrong, there is something wrong with the law. They were pointing out that a lot of people didn't see anything wrong with the things that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made illegal and that that doesn't make it a bad law.
However, if a significant number of people see nothing wrong with doing something that is illegal, there is a serious problem that requires open and frank discussion. It may be that this situation exists because the law is a bad law that should be repealed. It may be that a significant number of people do not fully understand the consequences of violating this law (not counting the legal consequences). Most likely it is a varying degree of some of both.
How about the situation where the Poles were privately looking for anti-missile defense against the Russians, while the U.S. and Poland were saying these anti-missile defenses are to protect against the eventuaity of Iran getting nuclear armed missiles that can hit Europe? Do you not see how making that public makes the world a less secure place? By making this public the Russians must take offense and take retaliatory action against Poland or admit that they were attempting to use their missiles to intimidate the Poles into concessions they would not otherwise make.
I guess if you want to be like Humpty Dumpty and make up your own definitions of words. However, if you want to have a discussion with people, then you need to use the generally accepted definitions of words.
Totalitarianism: Form of government that subordinates all aspects of its citizens' lives to the authority of the state, with a single charismatic leader as the ultimate authority. The term was coined in the early 1920s by Benito Mussolini, but totalitarianism has existed throughout history throughout the world (e.g., Qin dynasty China). It is distinguished from dictatorship and authoritarianism by its supplanting of all political institutions and all old legal and social traditions with new ones to meet the state's needs, which are usually highly focused. Large-scale, organized violence may be legitimized. The police operate without the constraint of laws and regulations.
http://www.answers.com/topic/totalitarianism
Just because you don't like the way a government works, doesn't make it totalitarian. There is a reason that the term totalitarianism was coined in the 20th Century. While it may be legitimate to refer to certain government policies as containing the seeds of totalitarianism, as long as you can refer to the government from within its geographic control as totalitarian (and mean that as a serious criticism) without being arrested or worse, it isn't totalitarian.
You are making a mistake that many people make, by considering any act that is illegal to be a criminal act. However, most people veiw a "criminal act" as one that should be illegal, and anything that they think should not be illegal is not a "criminal act", regardless of what the law says.
When any society has too large of a discrepancy between what the law says is a criminal act and what the majority believe to be a criminal act that society has a problem. If the problem is not addressed, the society will descend into either anarchy (laws are not obeyed) or totalitarianism (laws are enforced with draconian punishments, regardless of the society's perception of their criminality...this is not complete description of totalitarianism, merely the part relevant to my current comment). Part of the solution to this problem is an open and public discussion of why said act should or should not be considered criminal.
This is a discussion that the **AA doesn't want to have on copyright because they know that they would lose more than they they think they would gain. I believe that if the **AA (and other groups with similar interests) would enter into this discussion, the result would be shorter, reasonable copyright terms (20-50 years, probalby on the shorter side of that) and much greater respect of copyright by the general population (and greater disdain for those who violated it). However, you can't get the latter without the former and the **AA think that is price not worth paying. I, personally, think that they would be surprised by how much more money they would make under such a situation than they make currently.
The problem is that Assange's goal is to cause them to be more secretive and limit the number of people in government that are allowed to know things than the number that is necessary to be effective. This means that he releases things that are embarassing and disruptive, not necessarily things that are useful for the people to know. If he had a strategy whereby he was releasing those things in order to gain access to more important things, that would be one thing, but he is releasing those things in order to embarrass and disrupt. I can laud someone for doing something that acomplishes more harm than good (although I will point this out) if their goal is one I agree with, but when someone does more harm than good in order to do even greater harm, I am not going to praise what little good they have done (which is also contrary to their stated goals).
I didn't say that he hates the U.S., I said that he has a stated goal of causing the overthrow of the U.S. government. If his goal was to cause all authority to be used in a more responsible, responsive manner, I would applaud that. However, his goal is to damage/destory the system, not fix it. That makes him as much the enemy as terrorists, although not as dangerous (at least at this point).
I used the quotes because I fully understand that while there are aspects of the U.S. government that I find objectionable there is still a very large gap between the current nature of the U.S. government and actual totalitarian governments. If I needed any further evidence of that, the 2010 election would be proof of that, a totalitarian government would not have allowed so many of its legislative branch to have been selected outside of the "Party" hierarchy.
If Assange's role in Wikileaks was just to provide a place for whistleblowers to reveal aspects of their government that the general public would be concernd to know existed (and wish to take action to change), he would be a hero. However, Assange views Wikileaks as a tool to bring down Western governments (the U.S. in particular) that he views as "totalitarian". His stated goal is to cause the overthrow of the U.S. government. The main purpose of the latest Wikileaks data dump was to cause Western governments to institute greater compartmentalization of information, making said governments less efficient and more heavyhanded (the first part is something Assange has stated as one of his goals, the second part is a natural result of that).
The charges have obviously been used as an excuse to try to catch the guy though, it's all very dodgy and basically wouldn't have happened to anyone else.
Actually, it is probable that if he was an unknown, once he was outside of Sweden, the authorities would have left it on the backburner. Yes, the warrant would have been issued by the Swedish authorities, but they probably would not have gotten an Interpol warrant and if they did, the authorities in other countries would probably only enforced it if he was picked up for some other reason. However, anyone with the level of fame/notoriety that Assange has would have seen the same process followed. Whether or not they were picked up on the warrant would have depended on the nature of their fame/whether or not the authorities local to where they were had some personal grudge against them or not.
The thing is that people are arguing that these things are violations of basic rights and they have little or no effect on something that is low risk to begin with. They aren't arguing that this shouldn't be done solely because the risk is low.
I'm sorry, I didn't take the time to list all of the economic indicators that were positive for most of George W. Bush's eight years and have been negative and getting worse in the two years Obama has been in office.
Actually, unemployment is a very good proxy for most economic indicators, especially when you have large swings in unemployment. Additionally, while occasionally there have been times where unemployment was low but the economy was otherwise weak, they are always short and I don't ever recall a time when unemployment was high while the economy was otherwise strong (except when the economy was just starting to recover and even then unemployment wasn't this high). When unemployment is high with no expectation of significant improvement, the economy is in very bad shape. Currently, the Administration is saying that unemployment is likely to stay at over 9% for the foreseeable future.
Slashdot Mirror
I was going to correct your misunderstandings, but they are too thoroughgoing to do easily in a forum post. Overall, your understanding is not far off, but it is off by a little bit at a lot of different points.
Look up the concept of "interposition". Interposition was a term used to describe the concept of states going against the "Alien and Sedition Act". You really need to do a little bit of research on nullification. The "Nullification Crisis" occurred during Andrew Jackson's Presidency, so this pre-dates Buchanan's Presidency. The Republican Party was formed as an explicitly anti-slavery party. It was not formed in response to secession. The Republican Party was formed in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was seen as an attempt to expand slavery. The Republican Party was not formed in response to secession. The Republican Party was formed as an anti-slavery, pro-free market Party. The slogan of their first Presidential candidate was 'Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men.' This slogan was taken from the Free Soil Party (which was absorbed by the Republican Party).
The Republican Party got its name because they considered free market labor to be the basis of republicanism (which was viewed as the essence of American political values).
As I said, you really need to do a little research on the concepts you are discussing. You aren't off by much, but the details you have wrong make a significant difference as to the meaning of various things.
I have not studied the issue, but I have seen credible arguments that the leak of the Pentagon Papers was ultimately destructive of the best interests of the American people. I do not have an opinion one way or the other at this point and the event happened far enough in the past that I am not going to do the study needed to decide. I will say that those who at that time promoted the idea that publishing the Pentagon Papers was a good idea were pushing a destructive political agenda.
Basic law and order is dealing with those who physically abuse others and fail to respect other's property rights.
I'm not quite sure where libertarians have objected to being expected to behave like a responsible human being. I think you may be mistaking libertarians for anarchists.
What better way to get people excited about science by showing a man a lot of people respect excited about it?
OK, that's a good argument. So, why is Obama on the show?
So when a libertarian's house is on fire and the firefighters show up, do they say "No, that's ok, I'm a libertarian."?
Why should they? Where I live the firefighters are all volunteers working with equipment that was purchased with donations. What does that have to do with not wanting the government to do more than the basics (maintaining basic law and order, enforcing contract law, etc)?
Yes, and the Lancet surveys worked by asking people in a particular area (I do not remember which area of Iraq anymore, but I believe it was one of the areas of more intense fighting) if they knew anyone killed or injured by the war, assuming that each of those was a separate, actual event and then extrapolating to the entire country.
Your "perfect" time in history is prehistoric Anatolia? A time and place that we know next to nothing about? You say that they didn't have any weapons, yet this article talks about men being ceremoniously buried with weapons made of obsidian. Other references I came across suggest that there is no sound basis for concluding that they had a matriarchal society (or that they didn't. There is insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion one way or the other).
Basically, your knowledge of Scandinavian history is much the same...mostly propaganda with little basis in actual observable fact. As for where the positive traits of Western Civilization come from, they come from Christianity. I won't go through the Bible showing how the positive elements derive from there since that is clearly pointless.
You are so thoroughly misinformed that correcting that on this board is not practical.
Actually, I can think of someone who in the last 70 years dedicated their life to changing our political system who succeeded: Ronald Reagan.
It is not enough to feel strongly about the need for change, you have to convince enough people that the change you propose is a change for the better. As for George Carlin, he talked about it a lot in his comedy, but I cannot remember him ever suggesting and campaigning for a solution to the problem he talked about.
Can you point to a time and place in history that had a society more to your liking than current Western Civilization?
Overall, having exchanged several comments with you, I have to conclude that you are either incredibly naive about human nature, or just plain stupid.
I hope you never learn firsthand what a real totalitarian society looks like. However, you should look at historical examples of real totalitarian governments. The current U.S. government (nor those of any Western European country) looks nothing like them. If you lived in a true totalitarian society, you would expect the secret police to show up at your door just because you talked about Julian Assange in public. In totalitarian societies, people like Julian Assange are just disappeared and nobody ever talks about them again (except maybe in hushed whispers by the very, very brave).
So, when did the Automobile Era end? I'm sure the number of PCs that shipped each year long ago outstripped the number of Automobiles that ship each year. I guess that means that the car-centric era is over.
While that comparison is slightly more absurd than the point of the article, it still gets at something important: smartphones and PCs are different devices with different uses. When the number of PCs shipped this year is less than the number shipped last year, you can start to talk about the end of the PC Era (of course even then you might be wrong).
How do you suggest "fixing" a government that is corrupt? Do you honestly believe that you could get elected into a corrput system and be allowed to change it? Do you think the majority of people would do something to change it as long as they believe that it works for them?
I am not going to directly answer your questions because they make assumptions that I do not agree with. I do believe that if people wish to fix problems with the government in the U.S. (and most European countries) they can do so if they are willing to take the time and effort necessary to accomplish it. This is not something that can be done by spending a couple of hours deciding which candidates to vote for every couple of years.
As an example, in 1787, William Wilberforce became convinced that slavery should be abolished. He started working towards that end. He did not get slave trading abolished until 26 years later in 1807. He didn't stop there. He continued to work towards the abolition of slavery. Slavery was not abolished in England until 1833, three days before his death.
If you want to fix what is wrong with the government, that is what it takes. Don't tell me, "Nothing can be done. I voted for change in the last two elections and it's no better now." Things are the way they are now because some people spent years on making them that way. If yu want them to be different you are going to have to dedicate a significant part of your life to changing them.
nowhere i have given a dictionary definition
I did not say that you had. I gave a dictionary definition because you were using a definition of totalitarian that was inconsistent with historical usage. The key thing is that even you admit that totalitarianism involves the masses being "made to conform", not convinced to conform. Totalitarian governments have certain things in common. One of those is that the masses are afraid to not conform, not afraid in the, "People will think badly of me if I do that" way, but in the "People from the government will come and do bad things to me if I do that" way.
You are misconstruing the OP's argument. They were responding to a post that said that if a significant number don't see something that is illegal as wrong, there is something wrong with the law. They were pointing out that a lot of people didn't see anything wrong with the things that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made illegal and that that doesn't make it a bad law.
However, if a significant number of people see nothing wrong with doing something that is illegal, there is a serious problem that requires open and frank discussion. It may be that this situation exists because the law is a bad law that should be repealed. It may be that a significant number of people do not fully understand the consequences of violating this law (not counting the legal consequences). Most likely it is a varying degree of some of both.
Did I say that? What I said is that many people got elected in this last election who were opposed by the establishment of the Party they are part of.
How about the situation where the Poles were privately looking for anti-missile defense against the Russians, while the U.S. and Poland were saying these anti-missile defenses are to protect against the eventuaity of Iran getting nuclear armed missiles that can hit Europe? Do you not see how making that public makes the world a less secure place? By making this public the Russians must take offense and take retaliatory action against Poland or admit that they were attempting to use their missiles to intimidate the Poles into concessions they would not otherwise make.
Totalitarianism: Form of government that subordinates all aspects of its citizens' lives to the authority of the state, with a single charismatic leader as the ultimate authority. The term was coined in the early 1920s by Benito Mussolini, but totalitarianism has existed throughout history throughout the world (e.g., Qin dynasty China). It is distinguished from dictatorship and authoritarianism by its supplanting of all political institutions and all old legal and social traditions with new ones to meet the state's needs, which are usually highly focused. Large-scale, organized violence may be legitimized. The police operate without the constraint of laws and regulations.
http://www.answers.com/topic/totalitarianism
Just because you don't like the way a government works, doesn't make it totalitarian. There is a reason that the term totalitarianism was coined in the 20th Century. While it may be legitimate to refer to certain government policies as containing the seeds of totalitarianism, as long as you can refer to the government from within its geographic control as totalitarian (and mean that as a serious criticism) without being arrested or worse, it isn't totalitarian.
You are making a mistake that many people make, by considering any act that is illegal to be a criminal act. However, most people veiw a "criminal act" as one that should be illegal, and anything that they think should not be illegal is not a "criminal act", regardless of what the law says.
When any society has too large of a discrepancy between what the law says is a criminal act and what the majority believe to be a criminal act that society has a problem. If the problem is not addressed, the society will descend into either anarchy (laws are not obeyed) or totalitarianism (laws are enforced with draconian punishments, regardless of the society's perception of their criminality...this is not complete description of totalitarianism, merely the part relevant to my current comment). Part of the solution to this problem is an open and public discussion of why said act should or should not be considered criminal.
This is a discussion that the **AA doesn't want to have on copyright because they know that they would lose more than they they think they would gain. I believe that if the **AA (and other groups with similar interests) would enter into this discussion, the result would be shorter, reasonable copyright terms (20-50 years, probalby on the shorter side of that) and much greater respect of copyright by the general population (and greater disdain for those who violated it). However, you can't get the latter without the former and the **AA think that is price not worth paying. I, personally, think that they would be surprised by how much more money they would make under such a situation than they make currently.
The problem is that Assange's goal is to cause them to be more secretive and limit the number of people in government that are allowed to know things than the number that is necessary to be effective. This means that he releases things that are embarassing and disruptive, not necessarily things that are useful for the people to know. If he had a strategy whereby he was releasing those things in order to gain access to more important things, that would be one thing, but he is releasing those things in order to embarrass and disrupt. I can laud someone for doing something that acomplishes more harm than good (although I will point this out) if their goal is one I agree with, but when someone does more harm than good in order to do even greater harm, I am not going to praise what little good they have done (which is also contrary to their stated goals).
I didn't say that he hates the U.S., I said that he has a stated goal of causing the overthrow of the U.S. government. If his goal was to cause all authority to be used in a more responsible, responsive manner, I would applaud that. However, his goal is to damage/destory the system, not fix it. That makes him as much the enemy as terrorists, although not as dangerous (at least at this point).
I used the quotes because I fully understand that while there are aspects of the U.S. government that I find objectionable there is still a very large gap between the current nature of the U.S. government and actual totalitarian governments. If I needed any further evidence of that, the 2010 election would be proof of that, a totalitarian government would not have allowed so many of its legislative branch to have been selected outside of the "Party" hierarchy.
If Assange's role in Wikileaks was just to provide a place for whistleblowers to reveal aspects of their government that the general public would be concernd to know existed (and wish to take action to change), he would be a hero. However, Assange views Wikileaks as a tool to bring down Western governments (the U.S. in particular) that he views as "totalitarian". His stated goal is to cause the overthrow of the U.S. government. The main purpose of the latest Wikileaks data dump was to cause Western governments to institute greater compartmentalization of information, making said governments less efficient and more heavyhanded (the first part is something Assange has stated as one of his goals, the second part is a natural result of that).
The charges have obviously been used as an excuse to try to catch the guy though, it's all very dodgy and basically wouldn't have happened to anyone else.
Actually, it is probable that if he was an unknown, once he was outside of Sweden, the authorities would have left it on the backburner. Yes, the warrant would have been issued by the Swedish authorities, but they probably would not have gotten an Interpol warrant and if they did, the authorities in other countries would probably only enforced it if he was picked up for some other reason. However, anyone with the level of fame/notoriety that Assange has would have seen the same process followed. Whether or not they were picked up on the warrant would have depended on the nature of their fame/whether or not the authorities local to where they were had some personal grudge against them or not.
The thing is that people are arguing that these things are violations of basic rights and they have little or no effect on something that is low risk to begin with. They aren't arguing that this shouldn't be done solely because the risk is low.
I'm sorry, I didn't take the time to list all of the economic indicators that were positive for most of George W. Bush's eight years and have been negative and getting worse in the two years Obama has been in office.
Actually, unemployment is a very good proxy for most economic indicators, especially when you have large swings in unemployment. Additionally, while occasionally there have been times where unemployment was low but the economy was otherwise weak, they are always short and I don't ever recall a time when unemployment was high while the economy was otherwise strong (except when the economy was just starting to recover and even then unemployment wasn't this high). When unemployment is high with no expectation of significant improvement, the economy is in very bad shape. Currently, the Administration is saying that unemployment is likely to stay at over 9% for the foreseeable future.