by Max Barry

Latest Forum Topics

Advertisement

Search

Search

[+] Advanced...

Author:

Region:

Sort:

«12. . .2,1672,1682,1692,1702,1712,1722,173. . .2,5072,508»

La france bonapartiste

First And Only Archive wrote:[. . .]he helped break down a lot of anti-Semitism that was present in France and the territories he went on to conquer.

Very true. Both Napoleons did a lot to improve the conditions of Jews in France, especially Napoleon I, who also spread reforms to other countries he conquered, for instance removing the gates of the Venetian ghetto and expanding Jewish rights in the city.

First And Only Archive wrote:In contrast the Third Republic (and I suppose democracy in general) has many villainous individuals and terrible decisions, but that core of accountability to the will of the people is so very important.

I think having hundreds of elected elites make decisions is a far less accountable system. The success of the realm is the success of the monarch. The same cannot be said of a banker or lawyer running for office. A monarch is a symbol of unity, continuity, and the people. The penultimate vessel of democratic expression. The more you put up institutions to separate the monarch from the people, the more corrupt it will be come. If the British had never gotten rid of the Stewarts, I daresay they would be in much better shape today than they are.

First And Only Archive wrote:You might of course put some of my opinion down to Britishness, and the native bias in these islands against Napoleon.

But Napoleon III was very pro-British! He was Queen Victoria's most prolific partner abroad, despite a certain degree of healthy rivalry. She even stayed at his beach house in Biarritz, in southwest France.

American antartica wrote:As an ethnically French person and a Catholic I have to say that while Napoleon wasn't perfect he was better than the revolution. The revolution killed anyone who disagreed with them, defaced Notre Dame, toppled statues of St. Joan of Arc, and killed nuns simply because they refused to stop their religious practices. Napoleon put a stop to the madness and helped preserve Catholicism and French culture within France. (Kinda) I'd say he isn't bad in that regard. He certainly was a brave and rather genius general and to the French he's probably a hero. To the British and their allies they probably hate him for taking over a huge amount of europe.

There is no contest in Napoleon > crazed, blood-thirsty sans-culottism. Still, I hardily consider "concordatism" an exemplar of stellar Church-State relations and he did a terrific amount of damage to the church including closing almost all the old church schools, destroying ancient privileges, keeping the confiscated properties, imprisoning the Pope, and constantly trying to subordinate the church to his own ends/desires (his poor Cardinal uncle...)

First And Only Archive wrote:Of course, the flaw of monarchy is not that good monarchs cannot exist, but rather that the system in itself does not especially predispose towards good leaders. Rather, it is mere accident of birth that gives power, and the only way to subvert that system is through murder and games of succession.

Your mistake here is assuming that heredity determines sovereignty whereas monarchs with no exception (yes, even the Sun King) rule with help from a managery of advisers, councilors, ministers, judicial systems, aristocrats, independent bodies, bishops (or similar), family members, and just in general an extremely complicated network of council and aide. I can go on. Thus the monarch's power was actually quite limited and can/could be constantly "subverted" on all sorts of levels without murder or succession games. There is also a lot of value in pointing out that those who are purposefully trained/raised to rule have an advantage vis-a-vis whatever imbecile the semi-democratic will shoves into power.

First And Only Archive wrote:To which I'd clarify the statements above by also pointing out I'd like to boot Queen Elizabeth out of Buckingham Palace and onto her royal backside, as there's no room for monarchy of any sort in the 21st century.

I find this rude and harsh, especially since Queen Elizabeth is a far better Head of State than either the elected demagogues of the Presidential republics or the elected Presidents of the Parliamentary republics (who serve some of the same functions with none of the history, meaning, permanency, truly unbiased ruling, etc).

La france bonapartiste

The Gallant Old Republic wrote:Suffice to say I do not support liberalism or nationalism and my conception of a good monarch is based on the Middle Ages where the actual person of the monarch and his character matters significantly more than the end result of his pragmatic administering (I'm not saying it doesn't matter, just that it is not all important). I'm not sure how being an immoral person of dubious character wouldn't effect good governance. My truly exemplar would be both a good person and a good administrator (keeping in mind that everything that goes wrong is not necessarily the fault on whoever is in charge). Magnus VII, for example, is much better than Napoleon III.

It's hard for me to compare medieval monarchs to modern, industrial era monarchs, being that the problems and challenges faced by a monarch like Napoleon were so much more complicated than those faced in 14th century Sweden. While I think some monarchs, such as Louis IX or Wenceslaus I of Bohemia can serve as sources of inspiration for the faithful and as models of good governance in general, I think that a more pragmatic ruler is generally more to the material advantage of the state and its people. My model of kingship in the Middle Ages would probably be Henri II Plantagenet or Philippe II Capet. On the more moral side, probably Matilda of Tuscany.

Numerous rulers throughout history have done "immoral" things like have mistresses and what-have-you, but have nevertheless led effective governments and increased the powers and wealth of their countries. Many more rulers who have lived morally upright lives have ended up being outmaneuvered by cleverer men, or end up consumed in family affairs or dominated by their wives. Louis XVI is an excellent example of a monarch who, despite his personal qualifications as an individual, failed where a less scrupulous man, such as his great-great-grandfather Louis XIV, would have succeeded. Governance is not an easy feat, and I think it requires a certain level of tenacity and grit that most truly moral people through-and-through would be incapable of handling.

(On the issue of Sweden and Magnus VII, specifically, I would argue that Gustavus Adolphus or Gustav III were better leaders for Sweden.)

La france bonapartiste

First And Only Archive wrote:However, he was still a tyrant, and worse still a tyrant who seized power by overturning the constitution of the French Second Republic.

I forgot to respond to this. How can someone (Louis-Napoleon) be a tyrant for overturning an illegal government (the Second Republic) that illegally seized power from another illegal government (the July Monarchy) that illegally seized power from a legitimate government (the Bourbon Restoration). It seems more to me that Napoleon III was a liberator, backed by a popular mandate and legitimized by submitting his new constitution to plebiscite, which the previous two governments did not do.

La france bonapartiste

The Gallant Old Republic wrote:I find this rude and harsh, especially since Queen Elizabeth is a far better Head of State than either the elected demagogues of the Presidential republics or the elected Presidents of the Parliamentary republics (who serve some of the same functions with none of the history, meaning, permanency, truly unbiased ruling, etc).

Considering all she does is half-smile and half-wave at people at parades for 70 years, I'm not sure how she qualifies as a good head of state, let alone a "better" head of state than even an incompetent leader, like May or Macron. She has tremendous power to help her suffering people and yet declines to use it in an effort to maintain a level of political neutrality. That appeals to neither genuine monarchists nor republicans.

The answer of course is not to abolish the British monarchy (the very idea of which I find abhorrently Jacobinist/Marxist), but to strengthen it back to pre-1688 levels.

The Gallant Old Republic wrote:Forget about policy and political swing! Let's face it: if the US is ever forced to restructure its debt, if it ever misses a bond payment, the economy (mind you the world economy) will tank overnight with the devaluation of the dollar. The current global economy is built on the dollar's stability.

It may survive a shake-up over a missed payment, but if it ever actually comes down to having to restructure the debt, absolutely. There's no way out of that without a global recession.

La france bonapartiste wrote:Roborian:
On populism:

La france bonapartiste wrote:The aggregate? That sounds like virtual representation! But in all seriousness, I think it is sufficiently impossible to form meaningful policies when society becomes fragmented and polarized to the extent that there no longer is a real majority pushing an agenda or mandate. This where a populist comes in, because someone like Trump can "awaken" issues that had been ignored, introduce them into the national conversation, and see where that takes them. A part of populism I didn't mention earlier because I didn't want to confuse things even further was the need to listen to public opinion, but also shape it. It has to be a two-way conversation. And Trump does both very well via Twitter. I would also argue that the "common man" is just as nebulous as the "ordinary man".

That's an interesting concept, that a populist ought to seek to shape public opinion. That makes sense for an idealogue who is trying to win converts, but seems a little odder for someone who is primary seeking to represent the majority/mean/ordinary man/etc. I could see the argument being that the populist leader ought to attempt to rally a greater percentage of the nation behind ideas which already have a majority, but looking to prop up a less popular one seems to go against the grain. The same for introducing new issues-would a populist not be better served spending their time addressing the issues the public has already attempted to raise themselves?

I do agree that the 'common man' is quite nebulous as well, though I think it's a little better in being more clearly about the center of the bell curve.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

As I said further beneath that comment, it's more about listening to the full conversation and following trends, and not just taking snapshots in time. It's like the difference between talking to a working class person to see how they live versus hiring a photographer to take pictures. Polls are rather one-dimensional, and you have to have a sincere desire to learn, not just nervously avoid scrambling your re-election chances when it's convenient for you. People who use polls or focus groups don't really care about the people in them, just the reactions. As you said, it is an emotional level. It's about the connection to ordinary people, whereas an elite is separated psychologically from the masses.

That's an incredibly blanket statement about people who use polls, the only real evidence behind that would be stereotype. I understand the commentary on sincerity, but this goes into what I was saying about preferring a gregarious politician to a truly populist one-you might have a nervous guy who can't string words together well and has negative charisma, but if they're spending their time looking over the responses of the public to decide what to do then they're the better populist.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

It's not about literally going out on a speaking tour and talking to people in, say, Iowa or New Hampshire in a diner. It's about listening to the mood of the nation, rather than individuals. Picking up on the trends and grievances that are shared broadly throughout the country. Beyond that, I'm not sure how you would go about that. I think mass media and social media are important, but as you it becomes an arbitrary line of how much you sample before moving on. Which is why I think it has to be a combination of mediums, including talking to real people, but not exclusive to that.

The most effective and objective way to listen to the 'mood of the nation' and not just individuals is by polling, just as a method, it is literally designed to determine exactly that. I understand that there is an emotional component to this as you said above, but that raises the question of whether a politician more concerned with looking populist than being populist represents what a true populist is.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I think that there are less of those people who are of means, so they don't really effect the average. Certainly, people who are well-off and live in nice suburbs are important, but I think they're also of sufficient means that they can weather changes in policy much easier than people who aren't. A populist must give their voice to those who have none. The elites can speak for themselves. It was not the patricians Caesar and his Populares appealed to, but the plebians.

This then would seem to be a 'common man' appeal, more or less positing that the middle X% of Americans ought to be the primary drivers. (Which I suppose could be amended to add in those at the lower end of the curve while keeping out the higher, pretty directly 'We are the 99%').

This does seem more directly economic though, and thus a bit at odds with the earlier distinction that what separated one from the 'ordinary' American was action and attitude rather than means.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Me bringing up voting behaviors being irrational was not to dismiss them, but simply to point out that political science and economics have their limits in being able to predict behavior.

Fair enough.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Because once you've obtained all those things that you want, you become detached from the people who don't, you become entrenched, and jealously guard your position in society. "I didn't want my taxes to go up!" Stuff like that.

But who does say they want their taxes to go up? As you said in the definition "I just know that Americans generally want what is best for them and their friends and family:", and for those people, that means that they don't want higher taxes. For most middle-class Americans it is arguably worse, they don't only want to jealously guard their own, they support soaking it to the ones above them and will support raising their taxes while 'middle-class tax increase' is held as a mortal sin.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

The clear cut off point is the obtainment of societal power and the psychological disconnect between yourself and the common people. You identify more with your peers than you do the nation. Take lawyers for instance. They go into the business wanting money, like everyone does. The lucky ones get money. Buy a house, a nice car, start a family, etc. But then you start to see yourself as a "lawyer" in day-to-day affairs first and foremost, rather than an American. "How is this going to effect lawyers, how is this going to effect the firm, how can I make money off of this?" Lawyers are very cliquish, just like celebrities, even though they have less power individually and less wealth. But they see themselves as different as everyone else. Their superior earning power and knowledge make them "better", elite. Everyone else is just a "lay person". Being in a special group, a profession, can be infectious.

Is that limited to them, though? Just in personal experience, how many times have you seen 'Coal Miners for Trump' as a slogan compared to 'Lawyers for Hillary'? (Or, heck, 'Lawyers for Trump'). Would you really take the group identity of lawyers and put that up against the group identity of, say, farmers, who practically have an entire culture based around self-identification with their job? And in those groups, you have a different kind of separation, but would you really say that there is not an attitude that people like lawyers and other blue-collar workers are less 'real Americans' than they are? (Also see: every Hallmark movie with a country girl and a corporate city guy ever.) The self-praising lawyer may separate themselves by thinking that they are better educated or more intelligent, the self-praising miner or farmer tends to practically ascribe themselves as higher in outright value than their white collar counterpart.

Group identities are a part of politics, really a part of human experience in general, but they are not even close to being limited to those on the upper end of the income spectrum, they're arguably strongest among the ones that might be called the 'ordinary people.'

La france bonapartiste wrote:

As I said above, I don't think listening needs to be so literal as going out and talking to 100 people here at a factory, 100 people here at the docks, 100 people in the fields, etc. It's more general than that. Following public opinion is slightly easier than talking to as many people as possible. You would also front-load it so you aren't asking people what they think while you're putting forward on policy, but before. And once you know what's important to them, it can be a general theme that drives all your actions; you don't have to survey every single action, though you could, certainly, if you were concerned enough. But once you know your "audience", your "base", you should know what they expect in general; and if you start to deviate from that and they get upset, you can course-correct.

I mean, I agree, it's significantly easier than that because of the ability to poll, it just seems like that is some kind of red line to populism, and that listening to people becomes a sign that you're a corporatist who does not care about their constituents as soon as one tries to actually get an accurate read on their constituents in a scientific manner.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Stop, you're making my mouth water! But seriously, one of the hallmarks of Bonapartism was using plebiscites to circumvent legislatures and elected officials of dubious representative value, and setting the consul/president-turned-emperor into the vessel of the national will. "The elected officials, the elites, are trying to come between us, so I appeal directly to you." I definitely think direct democracy, especially in today's world of digital technology, is more practicable and efficient than representative democracy. I'm not sure if referenda for every law is necessary (might be expensive), but certainly the option should be there whenever the leadership or the people want it. For instance, in Switzerland, if 50,000 people sign a petition within 100 days of a law being passed, they can initiate a referendum on it to accept or reject it. It can also be requested by 8 cantons. So in the United States, if we kept it proportional...1.75 million signatures or 15 states.

That's fair enough, consistent and probably not too bad an idea. I used to be a big fan of heavily referendum-based government myself, which faded as I got more cynical about the voting public, but I'd still think that moving in that direction in some ways would be a good idea.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

It depends on how they massage the issue. The issue is a higher minimum wage ($15 or $20); the trend is people wanting to make more money in low-end jobs; a flexible solution might be to employ them when they get fired when you raise the minimum wage, or it might be to simply ban part-time work and require people to have regular hours. If you have a smaller, less flexible staff, you have to pay them more. It's not what the people were demanding, but it addresses the need. Not everyone who wants higher wages is in the streets demanding a $15/hour minimum wage, so the "voices" of protests can only be given so much weight. You have to listen to the people who don't have the loudest voices, and bring them into the conversation too.

Banning part-time work would seem to only double down on the issue of increased unemployment, would it not? I raised this more as a hypothetical than to specifically debate minimum wage law, but I'm trying to suss out where the populist gavel ought to fall in a potentially contradictory situation. You note here that a populist could ignore the public will if it 'addresses the need', but that just cycles back to the earlier discussion on that point that went the opposite way. Compare these two comments.

La france bonapartiste wrote:I would argue that the populist is the one who listens to the people's demands, follows the trend, and gives them what they ask for. The one who says "no, I know best; this is not in your long-term interest, make due with what you've got" is the elitist

La france bonapartiste wrote:

It's not what the people were demanding, but it addresses the need.

It looks like what is being described as elitist in one context is being described as populist in the other. If the politician does as you suggest and bans part-time work rather than listening to the demand for a higher minimum wage, claiming that their action is the one that is actually in the people's long-term interest, what category are they falling into?

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I disagree. I don't think elitists give a damn about what people want, one way or another. They say "we'll pass this law because it's what my donors want, or it will help me make a tidy profit, etc." True, populism can sometimes be paternalistic, but as long as the basic need is being met, that's still satisfying the requirements of populism. Sometimes you have to make an executive decision; your son or daughter wants a pony for Christmas, but you know that's expensive or dangerous. You normally give them whatever they want, but sometimes a line has to be drawn. You're the parent/leader, and you do have superior access to knowledge and power, and you have to be responsible. But you can't ignore the underlying need. Do they want a pony? Yes. Do they need a pony? No. What do they need? Entertainment and exercise, perhaps some responsibility too. So get them a dog instead. If they still want a pony afterwards, then maybe you do need to look into signing them up for horse-riding lessons. But an elitist looks at their constituents less like offspring, and more like resources, like livestock.

Then there is no functional difference at this point. Both the elitist and the populist are doing the same thing, but the populist is doing it because they have a good heart and care about the people and the elitist is doing it because they think people are cattle. The distinction is basically just 'good politician' and 'bad politician'. Good politician did not give me what I wanted but it is because they care, bad politician did not give me what I wanted and it is because they do not care. One is 'thinking they know better', but the other is just an 'executive decision' It's basically defining politics based on the motivations of someone's heart, and with that obviously being an intensely subjective and unanswerable question, it boils down to "I like this guy, but not that guy."

La france bonapartiste wrote:

You can't be an inactive participant. You have to have a two-way conversation. You can convince them that war would be a bad idea, go on a speaking tour or give a national address explaining your reasoning. If they still insist on a war, and you have no viable alternatives like achieving their objectives by humiliating Prussia elsewhere, or extracting some sort of monetary or territorial concession elsewhere, then you have to make the decision of whether or not you want to ignore popular opinion. Your basis of government is popularity, and so your risk losing your base if you ignore the public completely.

It does not sound like there is any difference between the calculation of the populist and the elitist in a case like this, then. Both obviously are going to try to convince the public of their opinion, but that's framed as a "two-way conversation" for the populist and for the elitist it is just about fear of losing re-election. Then after that, both get the same choice of whether or not to ignore public opinion-which is an 'executive decision' if the populist does it, but evidence of lack of care for the people if the elitist does. It comes down to trying to judge invisible motivations that can never really be more than guessed at.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

A lot of Americans' problems are caused by global instability. If the world were stable, everyone wins. What is best for America is best for the world, and what is best for the world is best for America. What is best for people in China, though, specifically, may not necessarily be best for America, or the world. America is the engine of the global economy and the leading guarantor of world peace (even though I may not believe it should do so alone, I cannot ignore that it does), so I believe the fate of America and the world are inexorably linked, for the foreseeable future.

That's a pretty broad brush to paint with, there's gotta be some zero-sum in there. International relations can be an arena where all sides can benefit at once, but when it comes down to something like protective tariffs being put up around an American industry, then what is best for one may not be best for another, or, in what is probably actually a better example-something like NATO spending, where somebody has to carry the bulk of the load and the freeloader wins out if they avoid it. Global stability being best for most tends to be true-there are always those that lose out simply because stability means leaving them trapped in a bad position-but America's interests never perfectly align with the rest of the world-take immigration as another tension issue where somebody is losing out, on either side of the spectrum, brain-drain or refugees.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I see Boehner and Ryan as being cut from the same cloth. Ryan may have been catapulted by the Tea Party, but I see him more as an ally than a leader of that movement. The fiscal hawkishness of that movement suited his corporate agenda, so he, like many Republicans, co-opted it for his own convenience. I do not discount that Ryan initially emerged as the leading fiscal guru, but I don't really consider him a pivotal figure in Tea Party populism, while it lasted. The Tea Party withered largely because it did not have a symbolic figure, like Trump. And Ryan did not hold his party accountable, instead he became its leader in the House, and passed an omnibus bill bemoaned by fiscal hawks.

I think that's a fair enough assessment. He was arguably more effective as a Congressman than as Speaker. When it came down to it, the GOP has never been a truly fiscally hawkish party when in power, and less now then ever, and he always preferred compromise to brinksmanship, and dealt with the consequences of the same.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I wouldn't really mark those as safety concerns, either.

The car example was your example, wasn't it? Mileage and the health plan could be non-safety, though the latter is usually argued for on those grounds, but the various regulatory restrictions on what a car can and cannot have, what kinds of medicines you can or cannot by or even try on your deathbed, there's a whole lot of 'don't worry your pretty head, we'll make this choice for you' in governance.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I don't see them as being in conflict, generally. People generally want what is in the greater good. You forget perhaps that America's entire consumer safety regime was born during the Progressive era at the end of the Industrial Revolution. People were up in arms over their food having saw dust in it, about machines being unsafe for daily use. Safety is popular and it is in the common good. But just because people don't know that their food has, say, pink slime in it as a filler, doesn't mean they wouldn't want a regulation to protect them from it if they knew what it was. If a pro-pink slime grassroots movement starts fighting to repeal such a regulation, then by all means, I guess, let them eat slime.

That people agree on 'the greater good' would require people to even agree on what 'the greater good' is, which they don't. Even if they did agree-as you noted earlier, people tend to want, not what is best for the nation, but what is best for themselves, their friends, and their family. Some may have truly national thoughts in mind on political issues, but those tend to be the more ideological polarized ones who disagree anyways. Saying that safety is in the common good presupposes that government regulation inherently brings it. The TSA can be 'in the common good' despite their repeated failures and 10% approval rating because the government and politicians say that it brings safety and you can't try anything to the contrary. Mixing the three ingredients of 'we know better', the assumption that government action towards a goal automatically achieves that goal, and being able to stamp out disapproval by both gradual acclimation and fearmongering, and you get a recipe for persistent overreach that will keep on getting more persistent. Just as a low-stakes but telling example, seatbelts went from something that were largely nonexistent, to mandated to be installed, but not worn, to the first laws against their use, largely secondary enforcement (you would not be pulled over just for not wearing one) to widespread primary enforcement where the government will deploy wailing sirens and armed men to make sure that you have that strap across your chest for your own safety. The direction is always towards stricter measures. Just for the TSA, its utter lack of use in anything but delaying flights would have one think that it could be scaled back, but you only ever see it stepped up. (For COVID, they temporarily relaxed the hand sanitizer rule. Nothing happened. I'll all but guarantee they'll go back to the stricter ban anyways.)

The most politically active example of this sort of thing is obviously gun control, but that's a lengthy topic in and of itself. I would call it enough to say that a populist regulating away civil rights because they've decided that the people truly want the 'greater good' and a tyrant doing so with that as an excuse are functionally indistinguishable.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

No, those who view themselves as being separate from the whole, and organize to protect their special interests and preserve their power and wealth. An elitist does not care for the common good, only their own good.

So, again, it's just what is in their heart. Both can act in the same way, make the same decisions, decide against the public will or implement their own policy against public demands to meet a perceived 'need', but they are distinct because one actually has very good motivations and the other thinks people are cattle.

-----
Foreign
-----

La france bonapartiste wrote:

But a single country with a lot of troops would have evoked a much stronger public reaction in China, a more visceral reaction, than a bunch of different countries with smaller numbers of troops. And that public reaction could have sparked a longer-term conflict between China and the West. Compare that to the reaction in China when Japan started acting as the sole great power in the region, as the other great powers either collapsed or turned inward after WWI.

Would it have? A multinational coalition is a great way to give a people the idea that the world is conspiring against them, which can prompt a plenty visceral reaction of its own (and did, just not a successful one.) There's a case for either kind of intervention sparking backlash.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I still think there's a lot of room for most countries to grow in terms of power without becoming super powers. I would argue that there are not great powers left in the world, only regional powers. Russia, France, and Britain might be the best candidates for great power status, but I remain skeptical of their ability to consistently and effectively project power to different theatres outside of their regions. I point to Syria and Mali as examples.

I'd concur, force projection at any significant level is basically the sole domain of the United States at this point.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

The Taiping Rebellion was also an intranational event, which you had pointed out happened under a multipolar system, so I was just counter-pointing that such events have also occurred in "stabler" systems like bipolar.

I was reading just a little while ago about unipolar systems, just to see how the "literature" tracks with our discussion so far. And I read a distinction between an anarchial unipolar system and a hegemonic system. I think that if the United States was a true hegemon, I could probably agree with your support for it. But right now things look more like anarchy, with the US either unable or unwilling to settle things down and effectively utilize its power in a hegemonic way.

I meant aside from their non-incidence. As in, evidence that the United States has actually directly prevented a conflict between two regional or great powers.

My argument is that the primary benefit of a unipolar system is that they do not have to directly prevent conflicts, that the suppression is passive, and thus superior. The U.S.'s greatest strength is to loom in the background and dissuade wars between powers from coming about in the first place, obviating the need to always leap in with forces whenever something bubbles up. The U.S. could be a more active hegemon (I tend to think they're already over-active), but the strength of one is best shown in the power that they do not have to actively deploy to see it do its work.

I'll point out a critique for Napoleon that hasn't been mentioned: The foundations for "Al-Nakba" started in 1799 under him. During the French invasion of the Arab world, Napoleon issued a proclamation offering Palestine as a homeland to Jews under France’s protection. This was also a way to establish a French presence in the region. Napoleon’s vision of a Jewish state in the Middle East did not materialize at the time – but nor did it die. In the late 19th century, the plan was revived by the British. We all know what happened after that. The root cause of the Palestinian expulsion from their own lands started as an idea with Napoleon.

This connects to Pres. Wilson also. The King-Crane report went unheeded and fell on deaf ears.

Excerpt: "The Peace Conference should not shut its eyes to the fact that the anti-Zionist feeling in Palestine and Syria is intense and not lightly to be flouted. No British officer, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms. The officers generally thought that a force of not less than 50,000 soldiers would be required even to initiate the program. (Emphasis mine) That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program, on the part of the non-Jewish populations of Palestine and Syria. Decisions, requiring armies to carry out, are sometimes necessary, but they are surely not gratuitously to be taken in the interests of a serious injustice. For the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a "right" to Palestine, based on an occupation of 2,000 years ago, can hardly be seriously considered."

First And Only Archive wrote:

You might of course put some of my opinion down to Britishness, and the native bias in these islands against Napoleon. To which I'd clarify the statements above by also pointing out I'd like to boot Queen Elizabeth out of Buckingham Palace and onto her royal backside, as there's no room for monarchy of any sort in the 21st century.

1776 Part II: Minutemen Take Buckingham (Anniversary Edition)

La france bonapartiste wrote:Roborian:
On populism:
The aggregate? That sounds like virtual representation! But in all seriousness, I think it is sufficiently impossible to form meaningful policies when society becomes fragmented and polarized to the extent that there no longer is a real majority pushing an agenda or mandate. This where a populist comes in, because someone like Trump can "awaken" issues that had been ignored, introduce them into the national conversation, and see where that takes them. A part of populism I didn't mention earlier because I didn't want to confuse things even further was the need to listen to public opinion, but also shape it. It has to be a two-way conversation. And Trump does both very well via Twitter. I would also argue that the "common man" is just as nebulous as the "ordinary man".

As I said further beneath that comment, it's more about listening to the full conversation and following trends, and not just taking snapshots in time. It's like the difference between talking to a working class person to see how they live versus hiring a photographer to take pictures. Polls are rather one-dimensional, and you have to have a sincere desire to learn, not just nervously avoid scrambling your re-election chances when it's convenient for you. People who use polls or focus groups don't really care about the people in them, just the reactions. As you said, it is an emotional level. It's about the connection to ordinary people, whereas an elite is separated psychologically from the masses.

It's not about literally going out on a speaking tour and talking to people in, say, Iowa or New Hampshire in a diner. It's about listening to the mood of the nation, rather than individuals. Picking up on the trends and grievances that are shared broadly throughout the country. Beyond that, I'm not sure how you would go about that. I think mass media and social media are important, but as you it becomes an arbitrary line of how much you sample before moving on. Which is why I think it has to be a combination of mediums, including talking to real people, but not exclusive to that.

I think that there are less of those people who are of means, so they don't really effect the average. Certainly, people who are well-off and live in nice suburbs are important, but I think they're also of sufficient means that they can weather changes in policy much easier than people who aren't. A populist must give their voice to those who have none. The elites can speak for themselves. It was not the patricians Caesar and his Populares appealed to, but the plebians.

Me bringing up voting behaviors being irrational was not to dismiss them, but simply to point out that political science and economics have their limits in being able to predict behavior.

Because once you've obtained all those things that you want, you become detached from the people who don't, you become entrenched, and jealously guard your position in society. "I didn't want my taxes to go up!" Stuff like that. The clear cut off point is the obtainment of societal power and the psychological disconnect between yourself and the common people. You identify more with your peers than you do the nation. Take lawyers for instance. They go into the business wanting money, like everyone does. The lucky ones get money. Buy a house, a nice car, start a family, etc. But then you start to see yourself as a "lawyer" in day-to-day affairs first and foremost, rather than an American. "How is this going to effect lawyers, how is this going to effect the firm, how can I make money off of this?" Lawyers are very cliquish, just like celebrities, even though they have less power individually and less wealth. But they see themselves as different as everyone else. Their superior earning power and knowledge make them "better", elite. Everyone else is just a "lay person". Being in a special group, a profession, can be infectious.

As I said above, I don't think listening needs to be so literal as going out and talking to 100 people here at a factory, 100 people here at the docks, 100 people in the fields, etc. It's more general than that. Following public opinion is slightly easier than talking to as many people as possible. You would also front-load it so you aren't asking people what they think while you're putting forward on policy, but before. And once you know what's important to them, it can be a general theme that drives all your actions; you don't have to survey every single action, though you could, certainly, if you were concerned enough. But once you know your "audience", your "base", you should know what they expect in general; and if you start to deviate from that and they get upset, you can course-correct.

Stop, you're making my mouth water! But seriously, one of the hallmarks of Bonapartism was using plebiscites to circumvent legislatures and elected officials of dubious representative value, and setting the consul/president-turned-emperor into the vessel of the national will. "The elected officials, the elites, are trying to come between us, so I appeal directly to you." I definitely think direct democracy, especially in today's world of digital technology, is more practicable and efficient than representative democracy. I'm not sure if referenda for every law is necessary (might be expensive), but certainly the option should be there whenever the leadership or the people want it. For instance, in Switzerland, if 50,000 people sign a petition within 100 days of a law being passed, they can initiate a referendum on it to accept or reject it. It can also be requested by 8 cantons. So in the United States, if we kept it proportional...1.75 million signatures or 15 states.

It depends on how they massage the issue. The issue is a higher minimum wage ($15 or $20); the trend is people wanting to make more money in low-end jobs; a flexible solution might be to employ them when they get fired when you raise the minimum wage, or it might be to simply ban part-time work and require people to have regular hours. If you have a smaller, less flexible staff, you have to pay them more. It's not what the people were demanding, but it addresses the need. Not everyone who wants higher wages is in the streets demanding a $15/hour minimum wage, so the "voices" of protests can only be given so much weight. You have to listen to the people who don't have the loudest voices, and bring them into the conversation too.

I disagree. I don't think elitists give a damn about what people want, one way or another. They say "we'll pass this law because it's what my donors want, or it will help me make a tidy profit, etc." True, populism can sometimes be paternalistic, but as long as the basic need is being met, that's still satisfying the requirements of populism. Sometimes you have to make an executive decision; your son or daughter wants a pony for Christmas, but you know that's expensive or dangerous. You normally give them whatever they want, but sometimes a line has to be drawn. You're the parent/leader, and you do have superior access to knowledge and power, and you have to be responsible. But you can't ignore the underlying need. Do they want a pony? Yes. Do they need a pony? No. What do they need? Entertainment and exercise, perhaps some responsibility too. So get them a dog instead. If they still want a pony afterwards, then maybe you do need to look into signing them up for horse-riding lessons. But an elitist looks at their constituents less like offspring, and more like resources, like livestock.

You can't be an inactive participant. You have to have a two-way conversation. You can convince them that war would be a bad idea, go on a speaking tour or give a national address explaining your reasoning. If they still insist on a war, and you have no viable alternatives like achieving their objectives by humiliating Prussia elsewhere, or extracting some sort of monetary or territorial concession elsewhere, then you have to make the decision of whether or not you want to ignore popular opinion. Your basis of government is popularity, and so your risk losing your base if you ignore the public completely.

A lot of Americans' problems are caused by global instability. If the world were stable, everyone wins. What is best for America is best for the world, and what is best for the world is best for America. What is best for people in China, though, specifically, may not necessarily be best for America, or the world. America is the engine of the global economy and the leading guarantor of world peace (even though I may not believe it should do so alone, I cannot ignore that it does), so I believe the fate of America and the world are inexorably linked, for the foreseeable future.

I see Boehner and Ryan as being cut from the same cloth. Ryan may have been catapulted by the Tea Party, but I see him more as an ally than a leader of that movement. The fiscal hawkishness of that movement suited his corporate agenda, so he, like many Republicans, co-opted it for his own convenience. I do not discount that Ryan initially emerged as the leading fiscal guru, but I don't really consider him a pivotal figure in Tea Party populism, while it lasted. The Tea Party withered largely because it did not have a symbolic figure, like Trump. And Ryan did not hold his party accountable, instead he became its leader in the House, and passed an omnibus bill bemoaned by fiscal hawks.

I wouldn't really mark those as safety concerns, either.

I don't see them as being in conflict, generally. People generally want what is in the greater good. You forget perhaps that America's entire consumer safety regime was born during the Progressive era at the end of the Industrial Revolution. People were up in arms over their food having saw dust in it, about machines being unsafe for daily use. Safety is popular and it is in the common good. But just because people don't know that their food has, say, pink slime in it as a filler, doesn't mean they wouldn't want a regulation to protect them from it if they knew what it was. If a pro-pink slime grassroots movement starts fighting to repeal such a regulation, then by all means, I guess, let them eat slime.

No, those who view themselves as being separate from the whole, and organize to protect their special interests and preserve their power and wealth. An elitist does not care for the common good, only their own good.

On foreign power polarity:

But a single country with a lot of troops would have evoked a much stronger public reaction in China, a more visceral reaction, than a bunch of different countries with smaller numbers of troops. And that public reaction could have sparked a longer-term conflict between China and the West. Compare that to the reaction in China when Japan started acting as the sole great power in the region, as the other great powers either collapsed or turned inward after WWI.

I still think there's a lot of room for most countries to grow in terms of power without becoming super powers. I would argue that there are not great powers left in the world, only regional powers. Russia, France, and Britain might be the best candidates for great power status, but I remain skeptical of their ability to consistently and effectively project power to different theatres outside of their regions. I point to Syria and Mali as examples.

The Taiping Rebellion was also an intranational event, which you had pointed out happened under a multipolar system, so I was just counter-pointing that such events have also occurred in "stabler" systems like bipolar.

I was reading just a little while ago about unipolar systems, just to see how the "literature" tracks with our discussion so far. And I read a distinction between an anarchial unipolar system and a hegemonic system. I think that if the United States was a true hegemon, I could probably agree with your support for it. But right now things look more like anarchy, with the US either unable or unwilling to settle things down and effectively utilize its power in a hegemonic way.

I meant aside from their non-incidence. As in, evidence that the United States has actually directly prevented a conflict between two regional or great powers.

The partition of Poland is probably the greatest tragedy of the 18th century, along with the horrors of the early French Revolution. And only Napoleon I was strong enough to exert enough influence over Prussia, Austria, and Russia to reverse it. Napoleon III also had great sympathy for the January Uprising in 1863, but sadly he was not as powerful as his uncle and could not support the insurgency by himself, and was unable to negotiate an intervention with Austria and Great Britain.

Napoleon I was an administrator of unparalleled talent and energy, as well as a capable commander, but his greatest fault was his aggression, mania, and bullishness, which I think Napoleon III tried to distance himself from as much as possible.

I think we will be really close friends...

Lagrodia and La france bonapartiste

La france bonapartiste

Roborian:

On populism:

Roborian wrote:That's an interesting concept, that a populist ought to seek to shape public opinion. That makes sense for an idealogue who is trying to win converts, but seems a little odder for someone who is primary seeking to represent the majority/mean/ordinary man/etc.

I only say this because this how the Bonapartes governed. Their power rested on the continued support of the masses and a unified populace. I think it's getting very hard for the two of us now to debate populism because I think we have (once again) a fundamental difference in understanding of what it is. Populism =/= democracy. You can have a populist democrat, but not all populists are democrats or republicans, they can be monarchs or autocrats too (this would be our third "not all rectangles are squares" issue of the discussion). Julius Caesar, after all, did not exactly base his decisions on elections.

If my fault is painting in broad, generalist strokes, I would say (with all due respect) your fault is conflating things that don't make sense together, which puts me in awkward position of having to defend things I haven't said. I keep reiterating that an elitist is someone who is bent on preserving their own power, or that of their class, at the expense of the masses and the health of the state. There is NO overlap in my mind between that and a populist. What you are describing again and again is not elitism, it is paternalism. And I said in my last response, there certainly can be overlap between populism and paternalism, just as parent can do what's best for their children, but can either spoil them or be more of a helicopter "mummy knows best" parent. The popular will is not the same thing as popular demands; one need not fulfill the latter in order to fulfill the former. What you are describing is not populism, but mob rule.

Roborian wrote:I do agree that the 'common man' is quite nebulous as well, though I think it's a little better in being more clearly about the center of the bell curve.

I see them as interchangeable, to be quite honest. I don't see much of a distinction between common and ordinary. "Common sense isn't all that common" for instance.

Roborian wrote:That's an incredibly blanket statement about people who use polls, the only real evidence behind that would be stereotype. I understand the commentary on sincerity, but this goes into what I was saying about preferring a gregarious politician to a truly populist one-you might have a nervous guy who can't string words together well and has negative charisma, but if they're spending their time looking over the responses of the public to decide what to do then they're the better populist.

I think most politicians look at polls the way kings looked at angry peasants outside their gate. They use them as a cautionary device, more than an informative one.

Roborian wrote:The most effective and objective way to listen to the 'mood of the nation' and not just individuals is by polling, just as a method, it is literally designed to determine exactly that.

Polls are inorganic; public opinion is organic. You cannot join, listen to, or lead a national conversation by engaging in flat, static scientific polling, which can be easily manipulated.

Roborian wrote:This does seem more directly economic though, and thus a bit at odds with the earlier distinction that what separated one from the 'ordinary' American was action and attitude rather than means.

Fourth rectangle=/=square issue. Your attitude and course of action can definitely be determined by your means, because wealth is a source of power. Your desire to preserve that power influences your actions and attitude. But not all people of means necessarily want to jealously guard their power and wealth to the expense of all others. I don't think professional athletes go around lobbying legislatures for special carveouts like corporations do. Perhaps they do, but I've never heard of such a thing.

Roborian wrote:But who does say they want their taxes to go up?

No one, certainly. But there are definitely those who want someone's taxes to go up, but then want to get special government treatment. Besides, that was just an example, and probably not the best, but the only one I could think of. A better example would probably be celebrities and politicians getting a double-standard in the justice system, or getting their own private security details but wanting to impose gun control on everyone else. Just stuff like that.

Roborian wrote:Is that limited to them, though? Just in personal experience, how many times have you seen 'Coal Miners for Trump' as a slogan compared to 'Lawyers for Hillary'? (Or, heck, 'Lawyers for Trump'). Would you really take the group identity of lawyers and put that up against the group identity of, say, farmers, who practically have an entire culture based around self-identification with their job? And in those groups, you have a different kind of separation, but would you really say that there is not an attitude that people like lawyers and other blue-collar workers are less 'real Americans' than they are? (Also see: every Hallmark movie with a country girl and a corporate city guy ever.) The self-praising lawyer may separate themselves by thinking that they are better educated or more intelligent, the self-praising miner or farmer tends to practically ascribe themselves as higher in outright value than their white collar counterpart.

I think you basically answered your own question. Class or professional consciousness is not enough. The reason behind it is. Farmers and coal miners do not have a lot of political power, so they band together to make up for their lack of individual power. Wealthier professions like politicians (who set their own salaries), or lawyers, or yes even doctors, are powerful enough in their own right and band together not to redress disenfranchisement but to enhance and entrench their pre-existing power. Doctors are self-regulated. If you sue them in court, you have to get doctors to testify as to whether what they did was proper under medical standards. If you sue a lawyer, a lawyer hears your case. Politicians create the rules they live under and have the most power of all. None of those things are true of working class professions such as coal miners, or rural professions like farmers.

Roborian wrote:[. . .]you're a corporatist who does not care about their constituents as soon as one tries to actually get an accurate read on their constituents in a scientific manner.

Polls should only ever be a tool, and not the first in your kit. I consider polls to be a lagging indicator at best, and often get into circular logic: as you pointed out awhile ago, you can poll-test individual spending priorities as popular, but then find that increased government spending is unpopular. Polls are very superficial.

Roborian wrote:Banning part-time work would seem to only double down on the issue of increased unemployment, would it not? I raised this more as a hypothetical than to specifically debate minimum wage law, but I'm trying to suss out where the populist gavel ought to fall in a potentially contradictory situation. You note here that a populist could ignore the public will if it 'addresses the need', but that just cycles back to the earlier discussion on that point that went the opposite way. Compare these two comments.

It looks like what is being described as elitist in one context is being described as populist in the other. If the politician does as you suggest and bans part-time work rather than listening to the demand for a higher minimum wage, claiming that their action is the one that is actually in the people's long-term interest, what category are they falling into?

Just to be clear, I was only responding to your attempt to test the limits of populism. I was just offering a situation in which a populist can still adhere to populism without strictly adhering to the literality of public demands. And again public demands =/= the public will. You have to listen to everyone, not just the people marching in the streets. Populism is simply about catering to the needs of the wider public over the needs of the elites. How you define "public" vs. "elite" is, as you said, nebulous at best. But I think most people intuitively know what those words mean, even if defining the cut-off line may be complicated.

Roborian wrote:That's a pretty broad brush to paint with, there's gotta be some zero-sum in there. International relations can be an arena where all sides can benefit at once, but when it comes down to something like protective tariffs being put up around an American industry, then what is best for one may not be best for another, or, in what is probably actually a better example-something like NATO spending, where somebody has to carry the bulk of the load and the freeloader wins out if they avoid it. Global stability being best for most tends to be true-there are always those that lose out simply because stability means leaving them trapped in a bad position-but America's interests never perfectly align with the rest of the world-take immigration as another tension issue where somebody is losing out, on either side of the spectrum, brain-drain or refugees.

Geopolitics is comprised of innumerable transactions; what is good for anyone one country must be viewed in the aggregate, much like public policy in domestic affairs. Take "brain drain" for instance, which you seemingly set up as a net-positive for the United States. In the case of a doctor immigrating from, let's say India to the US: India has just lost a doctor and source of tax revenue (-), and the incremental weakening of the Indian healthcare system and economy will place additional pressures in the long-term for the US as the political and economic unipole (-); domestically, the US has gained a doctor (+) with whom existing doctors must now compete (-). Overall, it's a net negative. Refugees: loss of population and economic base for starting country (-), increased tension and stressed resources and labor market in host country (-). All of these issues have positive and negative consequences (and I left out some positives, sure, but I'm just using these examples rhetorically anyway). What hurts India hurts the United States, and what hurts the United States hurts everyone. NATO spending: spending less on defense is good for short-term budgetary health (+), bad for security (the state is weaker [-] and the US is further strained and less adequately able to defend everyone collectively [-]). Tariffs on American industry props up the US economy and secures it as the "arsenal (or bank) of democracy" for the rest of the world. Over time the rest of the world which competes with those industries will absorb that damage over time, adapt, and accrue additional security benefits that a weak American industrial base would prohibit. I could go on. As an advocate of a unipolar system, I'm surprised we're on opposite sides on this issue.

Roborian wrote:[. . .]but the various regulatory restrictions on what a car can and cannot have, what kinds of medicines you can or cannot by or even try on your deathbed, there's a whole lot of 'don't worry your pretty head, we'll make this choice for you' in governance.

True, though I think the public is generally detached from the day-to-day minutia of regulation. It is is largely expert driven, but apart from ideology, as a practical matter, I don't feel like this is much of a popular issue, it's more of a libertarian argument. As I think we agreed on earlier, most Americans (for better or worse) are more comfortable today with the government telling them what's good for them.

Roborian wrote:Saying that safety is in the common good presupposes that government regulation inherently brings it. The TSA can be 'in the common good' despite their repeated failures and 10% approval rating because the government and politicians say that it brings safety and you can't try anything to the contrary. Mixing the three ingredients of 'we know better', the assumption that government action towards a goal automatically achieves that goal, and being able to stamp out disapproval by both gradual acclimation and fearmongering, and you get a recipe for persistent overreach that will keep on getting more persistent. Just as a low-stakes but telling example, seatbelts went from something that were largely nonexistent, to mandated to be installed, but not worn, to the first laws against their use, largely secondary enforcement (you would not be pulled over just for not wearing one) to widespread primary enforcement where the government will deploy wailing sirens and armed men to make sure that you have that strap across your chest for your own safety. The direction is always towards stricter measures. Just for the TSA, its utter lack of use in anything but delaying flights would have one think that it could be scaled back, but you only ever see it stepped up. (For COVID, they temporarily relaxed the hand sanitizer rule. Nothing happened. I'll all but guarantee they'll go back to the stricter ban anyways.)

There's no doubt that much of what you say is true. But no one said that populism was a safeguard against overreach. Sometimes what the people doesn't produce sound policy. Efficacy and intent are, as always, two different qualities.

Roborian wrote:The most politically active example of this sort of thing is obviously gun control, but that's a lengthy topic in and of itself. I would call it enough to say that a populist regulating away civil rights because they've decided that the people truly want the 'greater good' and a tyrant doing so with that as an excuse are functionally indistinguishable.

Some measure of gun control is popular, true. But surely you can appreciate the inevitable reality that two different governments, driven by vastly different ideologies, can still enact the same policies for different reasons?

On foreign policy:

Roborian wrote:Would it have? A multinational coalition is a great way to give a people the idea that the world is conspiring against them, which can prompt a plenty visceral reaction of its own (and did, just not a successful one.) There's a case for either kind of intervention sparking backlash.

Yes, because this literally happened when Japan intervened on its own in the '20s and '30s. A global coalition intervening to protect their citizens and treaty rights is a lot different than a single power going in by itself and issuing ultimatums.

Roborian wrote:The U.S.'s greatest strength is to loom in the background and dissuade wars between powers from coming about in the first place, obviating the need to always leap in with forces whenever something bubbles up.

I just question whether or not that actually happens.

Horatius Cocles wrote:I'll point out a critique for Napoleon that hasn't been mentioned: The foundations for "Al-Nakba" started in 1799 under him. During the French invasion of the Arab world, Napoleon issued a proclamation offering Palestine as a homeland to Jews under France’s protection. This was also a way to establish a French presence in the region. Napoleon’s vision of a Jewish state in the Middle East did not materialize at the time – but nor did it die. In the late 19th century, the plan was revived by the British. We all know what happened after that.

Sounds more like a cause for praise than criticism.

Horatius Cocles wrote:The root cause of the Palestinian expulsion from their own lands started as an idea with Napoleon.

I would dispute the "their own lands" part.

Horatius Cocles wrote:Excerpt: "The Peace Conference should not shut its eyes to the fact that the anti-Zionist feeling in Palestine and Syria is intense and not lightly to be flouted. No British officer, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms. The officers generally thought that a force of not less than 50,000 soldiers would be required even to initiate the program. (Emphasis mine) That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program, on the part of the non-Jewish populations of Palestine and Syria. Decisions, requiring armies to carry out, are sometimes necessary, but they are surely not gratuitously to be taken in the interests of a serious injustice. For the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a "right" to Palestine, based on an occupation of 2,000 years ago, can hardly be seriously considered."

I don't think fear of anti-Semitism is a logical excuse to engage in yet more anti-Semitism, nor do I feel like a report from 1919 can be used to fairly characterize the granting of a Jewish homeland after the Holocaust in 1948 as "gratuitous". The report itself strikes me as ignorant and anti-Semitic. Policies of far greater reach and consequence have been undertaken under far more specious claims; therefore, I find it humorous that a US-led commission can dismiss the millennia-old history of Jews in the Levant as an issue that "can hardly be seriously considered". The United States was established by individuals whose ancestors had no claim to the land, which was forcibly taken from Native Americans. I don't suppose the commission recommended to President Wilson that he dissolve the United States and return all of its territory to the Native Americans? No, I do not take the King-Crane commission very seriously at all.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Sounds more like a cause for praise than criticism.

I would dispute the "their own lands" part.

I don't think fear of anti-Semitism is a logical excuse to engage in yet more anti-Semitism, nor do I feel like a report from 1919 can be used to fairly characterize the granting of a Jewish homeland after the Holocaust in 1948 as "gratuitous". The report itself strikes me as ignorant and anti-Semitic. Policies of far greater reach and consequence have been undertaken under far more specious claims; therefore, I find it humorous that a US-led commission can dismiss the millennia-old history of Jews in the Levant as an issue that "can hardly be seriously considered". The United States was established by individuals whose ancestors had no claim to the land, which was forcibly taken from Native Americans. I don't suppose the commission recommended to President Wilson that he dissolve the United States and return all of its territory to the Native Americans? No, I do not take the King-Crane commission very seriously at all.

That cause required the forcible displacement of the native people at minimum and their elimination at worst. From the beginning, Israel has engaged in the targeted erasure of Palestinian identity, culture, and heritage. The fact that the U.S. did much the same to the Native Americans is not a point of pride, it demonstrates that many problems can be attributed to European colonialism in general and British imperialism specifically.

The influx of Zionists to Palestine, supported by the British, was met by fierce Palestinian resistance. The purchases of land by Jews for Zionist settlement displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. The entire process was facilitated by the British. This despite the fact that Britain had no moral or political or legal right to promise the land that belonged to the Arabs to another people. Modern day Israel has created an apartheid state built by settler colonialism and the world looks at as if the original inhabitants hadn't been rendered stateless in the first place.

For "a national home for the Jewish people" is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the "civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission's conference with Jewish representatives, that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase.

In his address of July 4, 1918, President Wilson laid down the following principle as one of the four great "ends for which the associated peoples of the world were fighting"; "The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery." If that principle is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine's population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine-nearly nine tenths of the whole-are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed than upon this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted, and of the people's rights, though it kept within the forms of law

La france bonapartiste

Horatius Cocles wrote:
That cause required the forcible displacement of the native people at minimum and their elimination at worst. From the beginning, Israel has engaged in the targeted erasure of Palestinian identity, culture, and heritage. The fact that the U.S. did much the same to the Native Americans is not a point of pride, it demonstrates that many problems can be attributed to European colonialism in general and British imperialism specifically.

The influx of Zionists to Palestine, supported by the British, was met by fierce Palestinian resistance. The purchases of land by Jews for Zionist settlement displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. The entire process was facilitated by the British. This despite the fact that Britain had no moral or political or legal right to promise the land that belonged to the Arabs to another people. Modern day Israel has created an apartheid state built by settler colonialism and the world looks at as if the original inhabitants hadn't been rendered stateless in the first place.

For "a national home for the Jewish people" is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the "civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission's conference with Jewish representatives, that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase.

In his address of July 4, 1918, President Wilson laid down the following principle as one of the four great "ends for which the associated peoples of the world were fighting"; "The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery." If that principle is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine's population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine-nearly nine tenths of the whole-are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed than upon this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted, and of the people's rights, though it kept within the forms of law

The native inhabitants are the Israelis. Palestinian "nationalism" is not so much an expression of unique identity so much as it is a proxy for anti-Zionism. The term Palestine itself comes from the Hebrew word Pelesheth (פלשת). Arab settlement began after the Romans expelled the Jews from Israel and destroyed the province of Judah, replacing it with Syria Palestina. In the intervening years the area passed hands between Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Europeans. The prevailing attitude after the fall of the Ottoman Empire was Pan-Arabism, not Palestinian nationalism.

Also the notion that Israel is an apartheid state is preposterous. Arab Israelis who have accepted the reality of Israel enjoy the highest standards of living in the region, and are fully integrated members of society.

It should be "wrong to life"

Z y wrote:It should be "wrong to life"

If it’s wrong to live, I don’t want to be right.

La france bonapartiste wrote:The native inhabitants are the Israelis. Palestinian "nationalism" is not so much an expression of unique identity so much as it is a proxy for anti-Zionism. The term Palestine itself comes from the Hebrew word Pelesheth (פלשת). Arab settlement began after the Romans expelled the Jews from Israel and destroyed the province of Judah, replacing it with Syria Palestina. In the intervening years the area passed hands between Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Europeans. The prevailing attitude after the fall of the Ottoman Empire was Pan-Arabism, not Palestinian nationalism.

Also the notion that Israel is an apartheid state is preposterous. Arab Israelis who have accepted the reality of Israel enjoy the highest standards of living in the region, and are fully integrated members of society.

Accepted the reality? We took your land, your culture, your heritage, and now we condescend to let you live here is what it amounts to (at best). In 2017, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) issued a report entitled “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid.” Here's an excerpt below: (Full link can be made available, if you wish)

This report examines, based on key instruments of international law, whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Having established that the crime of apartheid has universal application, that the question of the status of the Palestinians as a people is settled in law, and that the crime of apartheid should be considered at the level of the State, the report sets out to demonstrate how Israel has imposed such a system on the Palestinians in order to maintain the domination of one racial group over others.

A history of war, annexation and expulsions, as well as a series of practices, has left the Palestinian people fragmented into four distinct population groups, three of them (citizens of Israel, residents of East Jerusalem and the populace under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza) living under direct Israeli rule and the remainder, refugees and involuntary exiles, living beyond. This fragmentation, coupled with the application of discrete bodies of law to those groups, lie at the heart of the apartheid regime. They serve to enfeeble opposition to it and to veil its very existence. This report concludes, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, and urges swift action to oppose and end it.

If you perchance don't like the UN report, here's another from Tel Aviv: Institute for National Security Studies, 2018.

The rights of Arab society in Israel as an ethnic minority have remained limited. This population is not recognized as a minority that possesses collective rights. Arab society in Israel is still excluded and discriminated against in many ways and lacks full civil equality. It suffers from institutional discrimination manifested by the unequal distribution of resources and funds, the percentage of Arabs employed in the Israeli public service, and in terms of settlement. Arab society also faces non-institutional social discrimination manifested in everyday phenomena such as the refusal to hire Arabs, opposition to Arabs moving into Jewish settlements, the barring of Arabs from places of leisure and entertainment, and the use of racist expressions toward this population.

That's not even mentioning that between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing". From its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population.

La france bonapartiste

Horatius Cocles wrote:
Accepted the reality? We took your land, your culture, your heritage, and now we condescend to let you live here is what it amounts to (at best). In 2017, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) issued a report entitled “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid.” Here's an excerpt below: (Full link can be made available, if you wish)

This report examines, based on key instruments of international law, whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Having established that the crime of apartheid has universal application, that the question of the status of the Palestinians as a people is settled in law, and that the crime of apartheid should be considered at the level of the State, the report sets out to demonstrate how Israel has imposed such a system on the Palestinians in order to maintain the domination of one racial group over others.

A history of war, annexation and expulsions, as well as a series of practices, has left the Palestinian people fragmented into four distinct population groups, three of them (citizens of Israel, residents of East Jerusalem and the populace under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza) living under direct Israeli rule and the remainder, refugees and involuntary exiles, living beyond. This fragmentation, coupled with the application of discrete bodies of law to those groups, lie at the heart of the apartheid regime. They serve to enfeeble opposition to it and to veil its very existence. This report concludes, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, and urges swift action to oppose and end it.

If you perchance don't like the UN report, here's another from Tel Aviv: Institute for National Security Studies, 2018.

The rights of Arab society in Israel as an ethnic minority have remained limited. This population is not recognized as a minority that possesses collective rights. Arab society in Israel is still excluded and discriminated against in many ways and lacks full civil equality. It suffers from institutional discrimination manifested by the unequal distribution of resources and funds, the percentage of Arabs employed in the Israeli public service, and in terms of settlement. Arab society also faces non-institutional social discrimination manifested in everyday phenomena such as the refusal to hire Arabs, opposition to Arabs moving into Jewish settlements, the barring of Arabs from places of leisure and entertainment, and the use of racist expressions toward this population.

That's not even mentioning that between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing". From its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population.

But none of that day-to-day discrimination is legal discrimination, it's all incidental. There's still no disputing they are, to the extent of my knowledge, equal before the law, and enjoy a much higher standard of living compared to other Arabs in the region, not to mention the ability to participate in the only succesful democracy in the ME.

As to the fragmentation, several wars launched against Israel are the root cause of that. An offer of Palestinian statehood was offered in 1948 and rejected, in favor of war. No one is forcing them to live there, they choose to live there because they refuse to accept the existence of Israel.

There's no doubt that there's a lot of unfortunate suffering in the areas outside of Israel's official control, but the idea they are an oppressed minority that has been deprived of their homeland has no factual basis.

Ultimately it is the responsibility of the United Nations, which created Israel, not Israel itself, which should see to the compensation and resettlement of Arabs who do not wish to live in Israel.

The Gallant Old Republic wrote:Suffice to say I do not support liberalism or nationalism and my conception of a good monarch is based on the Middle Ages where the actual person of the monarch and his character matters significantly more than the end result of his pragmatic administering (I'm not saying it doesn't matter, just that it is not all important). I'm not sure how being an immoral person of dubious character wouldn't effect good governance. My truly exemplar would be both a good person and a good administrator (keeping in mind that everything that goes wrong is not necessarily the fault on whoever is in charge). Magnus VII, for example, is much better than Napoleon III.

When Mike the progressive was around,* we occasionally discussed the political theory of anarcho-monarchism. Your post reminded me of an article, then recent, that I'd read in First Things.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/11/anarcho-monarchism

I don't agree with the sentiment, but I understand it. Medieval monarchism, as opposed to Enlightenment monarchism, was based on the principles of limited government and localism. According to monarchism's proponents, political competition (i.e., democracy) was likely to increase the size of government, diminish the importance of local institutions, and legalize the prejudices and passions of "commoners."

Of course, monarchism was always susceptible to private immoralities, such as greed and lust, but its supporters thought those immoralities could be more effectively contained (i.e., in the palace) while, in democracies, they would tend to spill out among the people.

--
* He helped me with this region, and I helped him with Westphalia in the early part of the decade.

Culture of Life wrote:When Mike the progressive was around,* we occasionally discussed the political theory of anarcho-monarchism. Your post reminded me of an article, then recent, that I'd read in First Things.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/11/anarcho-monarchism

I don't agree with the sentiment, but I understand it. Medieval monarchism, as opposed to Enlightenment monarchism, was based on the principles of limited government and localism. According to monarchism's proponents, political competition (i.e., democracy) was likely to increase the size of government, diminish the importance of local institutions, and legalize the prejudices and passions of "commoners."

Of course, monarchism was always susceptible to private immoralities, such as greed and lust, but its supporters thought those immoralities could be more effectively contained (i.e., in the palace) while, in democracies, they would tend to spill out among the people.

--
* He helped me with this region, and I helped him with Westphalia in the early part of the decade.

A good friend of mine in college was a very enthusiastic (overenthusiastic, really) proponent of that, monarchism as the freest form of government. Brilliant guy, but never could quite be convincing on the matter, though his evangelism for it was a bit of a fun in-joke that he was happy to play up.

La france bonapartiste

Culture of Life wrote:When Mike the progressive was around,* we occasionally discussed the political theory of anarcho-monarchism. Your post reminded me of an article, then recent, that I'd read in First Things.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/11/anarcho-monarchism

I don't agree with the sentiment, but I understand it. Medieval monarchism, as opposed to Enlightenment monarchism, was based on the principles of limited government and localism. According to monarchism's proponents, political competition (i.e., democracy) was likely to increase the size of government, diminish the importance of local institutions, and legalize the prejudices and passions of "commoners."

Of course, monarchism was always susceptible to private immoralities, such as greed and lust, but its supporters thought those immoralities could be more effectively contained (i.e., in the palace) while, in democracies, they would tend to spill out among the people.

--
* He helped me with this region, and I helped him with Westphalia in the early part of the decade.

Isn't that just feudalism?

La france bonapartiste wrote:Roborian:

La france bonapartiste wrote:

On populism:
I only say this because this how the Bonapartes governed. Their power rested on the continued support of the masses and a unified populace. I think it's getting very hard for the two of us now to debate populism because I think we have (once again) a fundamental difference in understanding of what it is. Populism =/= democracy. You can have a populist democrat, but not all populists are democrats or republicans, they can be monarchs or autocrats too (this would be our third "not all rectangles are squares" issue of the discussion). Julius Caesar, after all, did not exactly base his decisions on elections.

If we go back to the suggested definition I raised earlier, where populism is defined less so as a political position, and more as one of two approaches to government (Populism being making decisions based on popularity, and whatever term you want to use for the second position of making decisions based on ideology), I would be fine leaving it there, but it seems like populism as you describe it is less that (with populist leaders free to reject the will of the people, or do otherwise if they think it will ultimately be better) and more an assessment of moral status, whether they do what they do for the right reasons.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

If my fault is painting in broad, generalist strokes, I would say (with all due respect) your fault is conflating things that don't make sense together, which puts me in awkward position of having to defend things I haven't said. I keep reiterating that an elitist is someone who is bent on preserving their own power, or that of their class, at the expense of the masses and the health of the state. There is NO overlap in my mind between that and a populist. What you are describing again and again is not elitism, it is paternalism. And I said in my last response, there certainly can be overlap between populism and paternalism, just as parent can do what's best for their children, but can either spoil them or be more of a helicopter "mummy knows best" parent. The popular will is not the same thing as popular demands; one need not fulfill the latter in order to fulfill the former. What you are describing is not populism, but mob rule.

Then it is an issue of moral status. If that is in fact the case, then we're fine, but it seems like it was described differently earlier "I know better than thee" attitude is the poster of elitism." Describing elitism in that way as you did earlier is very different from this description now. I think it would be fair to consider that earlier description paternalism, but as you were the one who used it to describe elitism, the term needs to fall down on one side or the other. Elitism can either be thinking one knows better, or it can be just selfish politics, but it can't balance between both at the same time. (It's easy to see a politician who thinks they know better but believes they are doing it for the good of the people-you've described populists as such yourself, and it's easy to see a politician who acquiesces to the will of the people, but is only doing it to protect their own status for re-election, as was also referenced earlier.)

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I see them as interchangeable, to be quite honest. I don't see much of a distinction between common and ordinary. "Common sense isn't all that common" for instance.

I think that there is more of a moral or cultural weight placed on ordinary-if you were talking about people not being 'ordinary Americans' it feels like an insult, while saying that they were not 'common Americans' does not seem to have that same weight to my perception, you could be saying they are good or bad. Still, they're similar enough and subjective enough that I do not really have an issue with equating them.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Polls are inorganic; public opinion is organic. You cannot join, listen to, or lead a national conversation by engaging in flat, static scientific polling, which can be easily manipulated.

Join/lead, no. Listen, absolutely-they're the single best form of it. This seems an artificial distinction-you referenced using media earlier, is that a more organic method than polling? It's a good couple steps farther from actually seeking the public's opinion.

I've no issue with saying that one needs to join or lead a conversation outside of polling, I make no claims to that point, my case is that polling is an ideal method to discern the public will, but is being broadly dismissed in favor of better-looking but less-effective (and vague) methods.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Fourth rectangle=/=square issue. Your attitude and course of action can definitely be determined by your means, because wealth is a source of power. Your desire to preserve that power influences your actions and attitude. But not all people of means necessarily want to jealously guard their power and wealth to the expense of all others. I don't think professional athletes go around lobbying legislatures for special carveouts like corporations do. Perhaps they do, but I've never heard of such a thing.

The leadership of professional sports teams absolutely do, the 'Save America's Pasttime Act' was a ridiculous piece of favoritist legislation this last Congress, but that's beside the point and I ought not to go off on a rant about it. Veering back on topic, I'm having a bit of trouble tracking point to counterpoint, but it seems that we're not at odds with the idea that it is primarily attitude that separates rather than means, though the two can be correlated, which I suppose leaves the question as to why they are left out of the 'ordinary' group if not of that attitude, unless it is just for simplicity's sake. (Which is a fair reason).

La france bonapartiste wrote:

No one, certainly. But there are definitely those who want someone's taxes to go up, but then want to get special government treatment. Besides, that was just an example, and probably not the best, but the only one I could think of. A better example would probably be celebrities and politicians getting a double-standard in the justice system, or getting their own private security details but wanting to impose gun control on everyone else. Just stuff like that.

I won't argue for a moment that the rich and powerful love implementing double standards for themselves, but I think that is being focused on too much as a class tendency and not a general human tendency-plenty of people of any level of income want special exceptions. (I will say that it is both more visible among celebrities and the like from both their fame and broader platforms, quite possibly more frequent, and almost certainly a great deal more annoying.)

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I think you basically answered your own question. Class or professional consciousness is not enough. The reason behind it is. Farmers and coal miners do not have a lot of political power, so they band together to make up for their lack of individual power. Wealthier professions like politicians (who set their own salaries), or lawyers, or yes even doctors, are powerful enough in their own right and band together not to redress disenfranchisement but to enhance and entrench their pre-existing power. Doctors are self-regulated. If you sue them in court, you have to get doctors to testify as to whether what they did was proper under medical standards. If you sue a lawyer, a lawyer hears your case. Politicians create the rules they live under and have the most power of all. None of those things are true of working class professions such as coal miners, or rural professions like farmers.

This sort of sounds like the argument that a minority cannot be racist against a majority, because racism requires institutional power, even if both were being equally discriminatory. It's definitely not the reason behind it in that case-it's the level of effect.

I think it's totally fair to make a case based on disparate power levels, by the way, I just don't think that can be done while framing it as behavior only shown by elites. That the behavior has more significant consequences in that context is good enough reason itself without putting it in the context of a claim that they're the only ones who have group identities that they care about over national identity and hold as superior.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Polls should only ever be a tool, and not the first in your kit. I consider polls to be a lagging indicator at best, and often get into circular logic: as you pointed out awhile ago, you can poll-test individual spending priorities as popular, but then find that increased government spending is unpopular. Polls are very superficial.

I don't disagree on that point, though you can go somewhat deeper depending on the kind of poll you're running. Polls are necessarily breadth-first, not depth-first, but I think that that would still get you a better idea of the national mood than the main alternatives of high-depth, low-breadth (i.e., talking to potentially unrepresentative people) or the vague and subjective 'reading the trend'.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Just to be clear, I was only responding to your attempt to test the limits of populism. I was just offering a situation in which a populist can still adhere to populism without strictly adhering to the literality of public demands. And again public demands =/= the public will. You have to listen to everyone, not just the people marching in the streets. Populism is simply about catering to the needs of the wider public over the needs of the elites. How you define "public" vs. "elite" is, as you said, nebulous at best. But I think most people intuitively know what those words mean, even if defining the cut-off line may be complicated.

I'll raise the question of motivation here then, because that is where it seemed like the definition was starting to settle, but its plenty easy for it to be knocked off track by one based more on external effects. As I see it, and feel free to correct me if I am wrong, it seems like you have been, broadly speaking, drawing the distinction between populist and elitist on whether the politician cares about the people or cares about themselves. That fits relatively well with the effects-based description here on which group of people they are catering to, except for the lingering issue that, as I believe you have mentioned, a leader tends to need public support in order to stay in power, especially in a democratic context. The question from that would be how an otherwise 'elitist' politician without much class consciousness would be considered. If the fellow's primary or sole overriding concern is their own power and staying in office, and they're committed to amassing power and privilege for themselves, but they do that by appealing to and addressing policy towards the needs of the wider public rather than elites, given that the public has the votes, are they elitist or populist?

That's not meant to be a trap question, I'm trying to suss out the working definition here, it seems like your focus would be much more on the internal motivation and you would consider that person an elitist rather than populist.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Geopolitics is comprised of innumerable transactions; what is good for anyone one country must be viewed in the aggregate, much like public policy in domestic affairs. Take "brain drain" for instance, which you seemingly set up as a net-positive for the United States. In the case of a doctor immigrating from, let's say India to the US: India has just lost a doctor and source of tax revenue (-), and the incremental weakening of the Indian healthcare system and economy will place additional pressures in the long-term for the US as the political and economic unipole (-); domestically, the US has gained a doctor (+) with whom existing doctors must now compete (-). Overall, it's a net negative.

I'd raise issue here immediately with the idea that doctors having to compete is a negative for the country getting more doctors. An excess of high-quality healthcare providers may mean things are a little rougher for already largely wealth doctors, but it means that costs are going to go down and/or quality is going to go up for the majority of people using said doctors, which seems to set that equation as a rather clear negative for India, and net positive for the United States.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Refugees: loss of population and economic base for starting country (-), increased tension and stressed resources and labor market in host country (-). All of these issues have positive and negative consequences (and I left out some positives, sure, but I'm just using these examples rhetorically anyway). What hurts India hurts the United States, and what hurts the United States hurts everyone. NATO spending: spending less on defense is good for short-term budgetary health (+), bad for security (the state is weaker [-] and the US is further strained and less adequately able to defend everyone collectively [-]). Tariffs on American industry props up the US economy and secures it as the "arsenal (or bank) of democracy" for the rest of the world. Over time the rest of the world which competes with those industries will absorb that damage over time, adapt, and accrue additional security benefits that a weak American industrial base would prohibit. I could go on. As an advocate of a unipolar system, I'm surprised we're on opposite sides on this issue.

I think we have a fundamentally different assessment of how the pros and cons play out, more than anything. Juxtaposing brain drain and refugees was meant to give an example of one as a positive for the host and one as a negative, speaking broadly, the former being the original country losing their best and brightest and the other nation gaining them, and the latter (this is obviously much touchier given the emotions around the issue and treating humans like commodities, which one ought not to, but doing so for the moment for the sake of the example) would be (this also depends a great deal on context and I ought to have made it clearer) one nation losing economically struggling groups who require government resources to support, and the other having to expend additional resources on said new arrivals.

On NATO in particular one can argue for the very long-term effects of the policies, but with a more at-the-moment focus, X European country cutting 1% of GDP from defense and putting it into (tax relief/infrastructure/healthcare/whatever) with the knowledge that the U.S. will take up the slack is a situation that seems to plainly be a negative for the U.S., its taxpayers have to get put under a heavier squeeze to make up the difference, and plainly a positive for X European country, who gets a budget windfall while remaining under the security umbrella.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

True, though I think the public is generally detached from the day-to-day minutia of regulation. It is is largely expert driven, but apart from ideology, as a practical matter, I don't feel like this is much of a popular issue, it's more of a libertarian argument. As I think we agreed on earlier, most Americans (for better or worse) are more comfortable today with the government telling them what's good for them.

Unfortunate, but true. The relevance of this point really depends on what definition of populism we're talking about. If populism is the anti-"I know better" elitism, then it is relevant, if it is defined more in the sense of the politician having the best interests of the masses at heart, then it does not really apply to that argument.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

There's no doubt that much of what you say is true. But no one said that populism was a safeguard against overreach. Sometimes what the people doesn't produce sound policy. Efficacy and intent are, as always, two different qualities.

Agreed entirely, though now again more confused about what exactly the working definition of populism here is. We've openly talked about populist leaders turning against the public demands in order to give the policy that is considered truly most beneficial for the public, this sounds more like the idea of populism as just meaning following the majority, which I thought we had established was not your definition for the term.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Some measure of gun control is popular, true. But surely you can appreciate the inevitable reality that two different governments, driven by vastly different ideologies, can still enact the same policies for different reasons?

Absolutely-but I think that 'ideologies' is the key. One can adopt it based off a pacifistic ideology, another can adopt it on a governmental theory of force being the sole province of the state, another can adopt it on an ideology that puts more weight on actions aimed at safety over those aimed at freedom. There are a ton of roads that one can take to get to any policy outcome. The 'populist/elitist' distinction here seems to be less about that, and more about whether whichever road they took, they were taking it because they were caring about the people, or they were taking it because they were selfish and cared about themselves/the elites. I'm still fine using that as a definition if that is how it is, but if so it is and should be considered distinct from ideology.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

On foreign policy:

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Yes, because this literally happened when Japan intervened on its own in the '20s and '30s. A global coalition intervening to protect their citizens and treaty rights is a lot different than a single power going in by itself and issuing ultimatums.

That was an immensely different situation. Japan was not intervening for the sake of international stability, they were intervening with the intention of conquest and power-they fought a decade and a half war towards that end.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I just question whether or not that actually happens.

It is fair enough to. It is ultimately theory, proving it or disproving it would require mind-reading equipment. I think the theory is sound and makes a great deal of sense, but there is no way to objectively say so, with the closest one can get just comparing the lack of major wars over the decades of the unipolar system, which itself could be attributed to any number of factors (though I, not surprisingly, since I am making this argument, think this factor is a major one, correlation and causation are still impossible to truly separate in something with ten million confounding variables like foreign affairs.)

Roborian wrote:

If we go back to the suggested definition I raised earlier, where populism is defined less so as a political position, and more as one of two approaches to government (Populism being making decisions based on popularity, and whatever term you want to use for the second position of making decisions based on ideology), I would be fine leaving it there, but it seems like populism as you describe it is less that (with populist leaders free to reject the will of the people, or do otherwise if they think it will ultimately be better) and more an assessment of moral status, whether they do what they do for the right reasons.

Then it is an issue of moral status. If that is in fact the case, then we're fine, but it seems like it was described differently earlier "I know better than thee" attitude is the poster of elitism." Describing elitism in that way as you did earlier is very different from this description now. I think it would be fair to consider that earlier description paternalism, but as you were the one who used it to describe elitism, the term needs to fall down on one side or the other. Elitism can either be thinking one knows better, or it can be just selfish politics, but it can't balance between both at the same time. (It's easy to see a politician who thinks they know better but believes they are doing it for the good of the people-you've described populists as such yourself, and it's easy to see a politician who acquiesces to the will of the people, but is only doing it to protect their own status for re-election, as was also referenced earlier.)

I think that there is more of a moral or cultural weight placed on ordinary-if you were talking about people not being 'ordinary Americans' it feels like an insult, while saying that they were not 'common Americans' does not seem to have that same weight to my perception, you could be saying they are good or bad. Still, they're similar enough and subjective enough that I do not really have an issue with equating them.

Join/lead, no. Listen, absolutely-they're the single best form of it. This seems an artificial distinction-you referenced using media earlier, is that a more organic method than polling? It's a good couple steps farther from actually seeking the public's opinion.

I've no issue with saying that one needs to join or lead a conversation outside of polling, I make no claims to that point, my case is that polling is an ideal method to discern the public will, but is being broadly dismissed in favor of better-looking but less-effective (and vague) methods.

The leadership of professional sports teams absolutely do, the 'Save America's Pasttime Act' was a ridiculous piece of favoritist legislation this last Congress, but that's beside the point and I ought not to go off on a rant about it. Veering back on topic, I'm having a bit of trouble tracking point to counterpoint, but it seems that we're not at odds with the idea that it is primarily attitude that separates rather than means, though the two can be correlated, which I suppose leaves the question as to why they are left out of the 'ordinary' group if not of that attitude, unless it is just for simplicity's sake. (Which is a fair reason).

I won't argue for a moment that the rich and powerful love implementing double standards for themselves, but I think that is being focused on too much as a class tendency and not a general human tendency-plenty of people of any level of income want special exceptions. (I will say that it is both more visible among celebrities and the like from both their fame and broader platforms, quite possibly more frequent, and almost certainly a great deal more annoying.)

This sort of sounds like the argument that a minority cannot be racist against a majority, because racism requires institutional power, even if both were being equally discriminatory. It's definitely not the reason behind it in that case-it's the level of effect.

I think it's totally fair to make a case based on disparate power levels, by the way, I just don't think that can be done while framing it as behavior only shown by elites. That the behavior has more significant consequences in that context is good enough reason itself without putting it in the context of a claim that they're the only ones who have group identities that they care about over national identity and hold as superior.

I don't disagree on that point, though you can go somewhat deeper depending on the kind of poll you're running. Polls are necessarily breadth-first, not depth-first, but I think that that would still get you a better idea of the national mood than the main alternatives of high-depth, low-breadth (i.e., talking to potentially unrepresentative people) or the vague and subjective 'reading the trend'.

I'll raise the question of motivation here then, because that is where it seemed like the definition was starting to settle, but its plenty easy for it to be knocked off track by one based more on external effects. As I see it, and feel free to correct me if I am wrong, it seems like you have been, broadly speaking, drawing the distinction between populist and elitist on whether the politician cares about the people or cares about themselves. That fits relatively well with the effects-based description here on which group of people they are catering to, except for the lingering issue that, as I believe you have mentioned, a leader tends to need public support in order to stay in power, especially in a democratic context. The question from that would be how an otherwise 'elitist' politician without much class consciousness would be considered. If the fellow's primary or sole overriding concern is their own power and staying in office, and they're committed to amassing power and privilege for themselves, but they do that by appealing to and addressing policy towards the needs of the wider public rather than elites, given that the public has the votes, are they elitist or populist?

That's not meant to be a trap question, I'm trying to suss out the working definition here, it seems like your focus would be much more on the internal motivation and you would consider that person an elitist rather than populist.

I'd raise issue here immediately with the idea that doctors having to compete is a negative for the country getting more doctors. An excess of high-quality healthcare providers may mean things are a little rougher for already largely wealth doctors, but it means that costs are going to go down and/or quality is going to go up for the majority of people using said doctors, which seems to set that equation as a rather clear negative for India, and net positive for the United States.

I think we have a fundamentally different assessment of how the pros and cons play out, more than anything. Juxtaposing brain drain and refugees was meant to give an example of one as a positive for the host and one as a negative, speaking broadly, the former being the original country losing their best and brightest and the other nation gaining them, and the latter (this is obviously much touchier given the emotions around the issue and treating humans like commodities, which one ought not to, but doing so for the moment for the sake of the example) would be (this also depends a great deal on context and I ought to have made it clearer) one nation losing economically struggling groups who require government resources to support, and the other having to expend additional resources on said new arrivals.

On NATO in particular one can argue for the very long-term effects of the policies, but with a more at-the-moment focus, X European country cutting 1% of GDP from defense and putting it into (tax relief/infrastructure/healthcare/whatever) with the knowledge that the U.S. will take up the slack is a situation that seems to plainly be a negative for the U.S., its taxpayers have to get put under a heavier squeeze to make up the difference, and plainly a positive for X European country, who gets a budget windfall while remaining under the security umbrella.

Unfortunate, but true. The relevance of this point really depends on what definition of populism we're talking about. If populism is the anti-"I know better" elitism, then it is relevant, if it is defined more in the sense of the politician having the best interests of the masses at heart, then it does not really apply to that argument.

Agreed entirely, though now again more confused about what exactly the working definition of populism here is. We've openly talked about populist leaders turning against the public demands in order to give the policy that is considered truly most beneficial for the public, this sounds more like the idea of populism as just meaning following the majority, which I thought we had established was not your definition for the term.

Absolutely-but I think that 'ideologies' is the key. One can adopt it based off a pacifistic ideology, another can adopt it on a governmental theory of force being the sole province of the state, another can adopt it on an ideology that puts more weight on actions aimed at safety over those aimed at freedom. There are a ton of roads that one can take to get to any policy outcome. The 'populist/elitist' distinction here seems to be less about that, and more about whether whichever road they took, they were taking it because they were caring about the people, or they were taking it because they were selfish and cared about themselves/the elites. I'm still fine using that as a definition if that is how it is, but if so it is and should be considered distinct from ideology.

That was an immensely different situation. Japan was not intervening for the sake of international stability, they were intervening with the intention of conquest and power-they fought a decade and a half war towards that end.

It is fair enough to. It is ultimately theory, proving it or disproving it would require mind-reading equipment. I think the theory is sound and makes a great deal of sense, but there is no way to objectively say so, with the closest one can get just comparing the lack of major wars over the decades of the unipolar system, which itself could be attributed to any number of factors (though I, not surprisingly, since I am making this argument, think this factor is a major one, correlation and causation are still impossible to truly separate in something with ten million confounding variables like foreign affairs.)

Can you, um, NOT?

The kiwi ate a kiwi

Aawia wrote:
If it’s wrong to live, I don’t want to be right.

Amen to that. We're here because we are all opposed to abortion and killing in general (no I'm not saying we're all against self defense or a war incase anyone reads it that way. Personally I believe sometimes it is necessary to kill, God forbid any of us ever have to be in a situation like that, whether in self defense or the defense of another but it is never necessary and is always wrong to kill an innocent person. I pray none of us have to deal with a situation like that where we might have to fight someone because that's a tragedy.)

Babies are innocent, more than that they are the most vulnerable of society. To protect babies is to protect those who can't defend themselves.

Advocating for the defense of the right to life of a baby that can't do anything nevermind defend itself if someone tries to kill it is literally our whole purpose as a region if you boil it down to one thing. We don't care if the baby is in the womb or out of the womb it's a baby either way. The fact that the governments of hundreds of countries can go ahead and actually allow people to legally kill children just because they are in the womb is a vile thing. We aren't mean old angry white men who hate women and want them to suffer, we are concerned people of various backgrounds who are against the evils of abortion that are allowed to take place every day.

Z y wrote:Can you, um, NOT?

I can not.

«12. . .2,1672,1682,1692,1702,1712,1722,173. . .2,5072,508»

Advertisement