While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

[Crezth]

One wonders, if monarchies were such awful things, why they have managed to survive for so long and why so many people have went to all that trouble to defend or reinstate them.

You must not be familiar with the concept of "inertia."

As for the other point, that is one of the obstacles that we are not going to be able to overcome here, hence my termination of the argument yesterday. If you really cannot see the difference between a king and a tyrant or the difference between law and tyranny, or how a law does not need to be devised or acknowledged by democratic means to be a law, then there is no point to discussing this further.

My point is not that kings are identical with tyrants, but that people have little to no recourse in the event of a tyrant king. They must suffer the king's tyranny until such a time as he is content to die.

This isn't to suggest that democracies can't turn up tyrants, but that a democratic government is fundamentally extant based on the pleasure of the people. If a leader or his cabal is considered undesirable, he can be removed in the next election. No such luxury with a king. With a democracy, unlike monarchism the bottom line of all policy is not "like it or lump it."

Worst-case scenario, you get slavers not wanting to free their slaves, and concomitant barriers to righteousness. But it is still better to give people the freedom to choose poorly than no freedom at all. And we have 8 centuries of European mischief as testament to that. For all the good your European monarchies got up to, that a great many of them ended bloodily and permanently does not exactly speak to their virtue. And despite America's civil war, which ended in the best way possible vis a vis freedom and liberty, and which since has spawned no further questions as to whether men should own other men or separate unilaterally from the union, the US is still standing strong in only the most marginally changed of forms since its inception.

 

[das]

You must not be familiar with the concept of "inertia."

You must not be familiar with the concepts of "fanaticism", "extremism" and "short-term thinking".

We can continue this for a long time. My point is that "millions of Jacobins can't be wrong" is not an argument at all.

As for the rest, so long as you acknowledge that a monarchy's laws are still laws, that is all I currently want from you. If you believe that there is a moral high ground to allowing a society to be screwed over by the actions of demagogues and those they have deceived, or that the American Civil War (especially remembering what followed soon afterwards in the South) had the best possible outcome from the viewpoint of freedom and liberty, then... any disagreements I may have with that would be ideological and not practical, so fair enough.

 

[Crezth]

You must not be familiar with the concepts of "fanaticism", "extremism" and "short-term thinking".

Freedom is a hot-headed b*tch, it must be said.

As for the rest, so long as you acknowledge that a monarchy's laws are still laws, that is all I currently want from you. If you believe that there is a moral high ground to allowing a society to be screwed over by the actions of demagogues and those they have deceived, or that the American Civil War (especially remembering what followed soon afterwards in the South) had the best possible outcome from the viewpoint of freedom and liberty, then... any disagreements I may have with that would be ideological and not practical, so fair enough.

Of course a monarchy's laws are still laws. Legitimacy is a complex folder like that. But if you want to believe that there is a moral high ground to allowing a society to be screwed over by the actions of unelected unaccountable tyrants and their dogs, well, that's your prerogative, I guess.

I do not oppose violence. I think it is often necessary to ensure the reign of righteousness with violence. That is why I do not consider the Civil War to be evil as much as tragic - it had to be done. And I think the way it happened is superior to if everyone was simply commanded by an unelected unaccountable overlord, and that was that.

Ideological differences, then. Fair enough.

 

[das]

Alright then.

Regarding the Civil War though - I agree that it had to be done if there was no other way, but I am not convinced that its outcome was all that good if you consider the failure of the Reconstruction and the laws that were introduced in southern states afterwards. It may be hypocritical of me after my earlier statements, but I do think that if so many contemporaries, blacks among them, decried the fate of the blacks in the south after the Reconstruction as worse than slavery, then something likely had gone wrong - not that it was actually worse than slavery, but that a great injustice had resulted nonetheless. Which of course does not deny the possibility that maybe this was as good an outcome for freedom and for liberty as was possible in those specific circumstances.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

I suppose the fundamental argument for democracy would be that it allows for peaceful revolutions every few years. I don't think anyone will make the argument that democracy frees a society from said society's fundamental challenges (such as the fact that groups of humans tend to treat each other poorly). However, I would make the argument that democracies allow for the regular expression of the popular will of a nation. The popular will can be, and often is, flawed. However, when a nation spreads the responsibility for choosing the government over a large proportion of the population, it helps to avoid the various shortcomings of centralizing control of the government in a single individual or group.

 

[das]

It seems to me that all established democracies still end up concentrating much of their political power in a more or less narrow political elite, de facto - people from a very similar socio-economic background with a higher education largely limited to a select number of universities. I am not sure if a democracy has ever successfully managed to overthrow its political elite - but it has been able to expand it and make it broader and more inclusive at times, not that this achievement is at all exclusive to democracies. What democracy does provide is a) relatively stable and transparent constitutional mechanisms for political turnover and b) legal levers that the population can use to influence its government. My problem with this is that the People is hardly a flawless political actor; it can be quite irrational and easy to mislead, and the pressure that it exercises on the government is often not for the better. Crezth would contend that it is still better to let people make their own choice, even if it is a poor one; to me this does not seem at all obvious, but as I said, fair enough - we are clearly proceeding from different ideas on what is better.

 

[Perfectionist]

Democracy's a lie, you know. It's just the dressing that the people in charge use to justify being in charge. It's closer to the doctrine of divine right than anything: instead of 'I'm in charge because God says so and so you must obey' it's 'I'm in charge because The People say so and so you must obey.' And consequently the people in charge answer only to The People, which is to say they answer to no one at all.

 

[das]

I prefer the analogy of Good King Demos and his humble courtiers/evil and deceitful advisers, but that works too.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

'The People' are probably better at decreeing that the current government has to go than the deity of any divinely-justified autocracy, Perfectionist.

 

[ChiefDesigner]

Quand le dernier des rois sera pendu avec les boyaux du dernier prêtre célibataire, le genre humain pourra espérer être heureux.

 

[Crezth]

'The People' are probably better at decreeing that the current government has to go than the deity of any divinely-justified autocracy, Perfectionist.

Well, it's not a 100% guarantee, so better just ignore the people forever.

 

[Lord of Elves]

Quand le dernier des rois sera pendu avec les boyaux du dernier prêtre célibataire, le genre humain pourra espérer être heureux.

5char

 

[Dachs]

Freedom is a hot-headed b*tch, it must be said.

And she must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.

Regarding the Civil War though - I agree that it had to be done if there was no other way, but I am not convinced that its outcome was all that good if you consider the failure of the Reconstruction and the laws that were introduced in southern states afterwards. It may be hypocritical of me after my earlier statements, but I do think that if so many contemporaries, blacks among them, decried the fate of the blacks in the south after the Reconstruction as worse than slavery, then something likely had gone wrong - not that it was actually worse than slavery, but that a great injustice had resulted nonetheless. Which of course does not deny the possibility that maybe this was as good an outcome for freedom and for liberty as was possible in those specific circumstances.

The fact that certain individuals sabotaged Reconstruction as it was happening doesn't really make the Civil War itself a failure. A lot of the suckitude had to do with the Johnson administration, managed by one of the single worst presidents in this country's history, who pulled the old trick of relaxing pressure enough to make die-hard Lost Causers think they could get away with anything (and they could, or nearly so) while simultaneously employing harsher rhetoric to increase feelings of persecution and opposition. It was basically the worst possible outcome. Radical Republicans obviously knew what was going on; discontent was widely spread and Johnson only avoided impeachment by a single vote. By the time a president who actually gave a damn about the rights of black Americans came around again in 1869, much of the damage had already been done. Grant spent most of his two terms undoing the catastrof*ck that Johnson left him, and he couldn't handle it all. And then the Republican Party started to split and the Supreme Court started to roll back legislative and executive power...yeah. Nightmare scenario.

Johnson's failures after 1865 were in no way preordained by the course of events from 1861 to 1865. It was just the way that stuff broke.

And, you know, things like the Tuskegee Institute and the Combahee strike were happening, too. Wasn't all doom and gloom for black Americans: it was just a different kind of doom and gloom. The state of affairs wasn't really as awful as a "second slavery", although it was pretty awful.

 

[Symphony D.]

Regarding the Civil War though - I agree that it had to be done if there was no other way, but I am not convinced that its outcome was all that good if you consider the failure of the Reconstruction and the laws that were introduced in southern states afterwards.

What Dachs said. Also, considering Reconstruction as it played out was essentially revenge—both for the Civil War and for the assassination of Lincoln—that Lincoln himself would likely not have condoned, the blame for this can be placed rather squarely on the defeated CSA and their man Booth as much as it can on the subsequent Union government. Neither really has much to do with the Civil War proper, which admittedly could've gone "better" in so far as the USA could've squashed the CSA faster, but also could've gone worse.

I would suggest that "Democracy" as it currently exists is usually oligarchy with some safety valves attached, but that nonetheless does allow for more freedom and generally more contented situations on the part of The People and Government than equivalent forms of rule that are "less free."

 

[das]

Hmm, fair enough. It does seem to me that if the war had been won faster, there would've been more chances to pull the Reconstruction off properly, and also, that not all the blame belongs to Johnson - he was unpopular, but not exactly alone in the political establishment. Mainly I think that such a prolonged and bloody war increased bitterness on both sides and possibly squandered the political capital that would've come in handy after it was won - the political outcome post-war was not preordained by the wartime events, but it certainly was influenced by them to some degree. But I agree that the situation did not have to unfold the way it did even after 1865.

 

[Angst]

Democracy is ideally institutional necessiation of broad popular support to oligarchic rule and I have no problem with that. Monarchy's power relied heavily upon the stripping of popular institutional power. Monarchy's duration is to me a meaningless measure of its strength as the broad bulk of the population suffer relatively less under a demoratic institution.

That's not to say I don't wish for "elite" or "enlightened" input from eg a small subset of the population when making specific choices. If you are going to rearrange a city's sewer systems, you're better off asking environment consultants, traffic experts and engineers than farmhands, communications workers and philosophers. If you want the proper experts to solve the proper problems, you sometimes have to weigh in the words of the experts more.

Succesful democracies usually mix the two. It's a delicate balance. And it's at least institutionally possible enough that the succesful democracies haven't really imploded upon themselves yet. And the crises that've happened -those I'm thinking of right now at least - are mostly happening because of institutional mismanagement, not because of a bad institution in itself.

edit: i srsly have to learn how to read up on pages, we just entered the murican civil war and i don't have any idea baout the murican civil war
only saw symphs post and felt like spewing unenlightened nonsense
best regards the musicologist-to-be

 

[Daftpanzer]

Seems like if you never have absolute monarchs, you never have meaningful nations emerge in Europe. Unless you go back and have some very big changes to European history?

 

[mrrandomplayer]

Starting today, I will be gone without Internet until the 16th, so I won't be able to do anything then. Thanks!

 

[Masada]

I'm looking at ch. 7 of Corruption and Good Governance in Asia (ed. Tarling, Nicholas: Routledge, 2006, ebook at http://www.untag-smd.ac.id/files/Per...0in Asia.pdf) which casts PAP corruption in a distinctly political form.

I'm well aware that PAP makes extensive use of patronage to retain political control. But nowhere in that reading does it establish that the PAP is hopelessly corrupt or that Singapore's economic success comes in spite of [Singapore's] governance model.

 

[Angst]

Seems like if you never have absolute monarchs, you never have meaningful nations emerge in Europe. Unless you go back and have some very big changes to European history?

What is this "meaningful nations" thing you talk of?