Democracy

[gurgen]

I didn't say there are free services by the government. All services are paid by our direct and indirect taxes.

 

With the word 'free' I meant paid in advance. Excuse me for the confusion.

 

 

By the way, writing tickets is also a valuable service and must be paid for IMO. It would be unfair and chaotic to have the cars parked wherever and as long as they wished.

 

Yes but fighting crime should have the priority right?

 

 

But I doubt 30% of your income would be enough to handle all your security concerns.

 

Here in Holland it gets as high as 50%

 

 

What about the army? Can you hire a private army?

 

Army expenses can be cut severely. I believe some countries are spending way to much on the military (US..), tax money which could have been used far mroe wisely.

Edited February 18, 2004 by gurgen

[Sasun]

Yes but fighting crime should have the priority right?

I don't know in Holland, here in the US the cops do an OK job to fight the crime. There is much to improve but a lot of areas are safe to live.

 

An army nearly always exists, no matter the government.

 

Armed people will always exist and they can form armies. The government assures that there is only one centralized army that fights the external enemies. In the absence of a government army there would be several armies very likely fighting each other like in the past principalities fought each other.

[Sasun]

We can always argue about the efficiency of the government and the amount of taxes. The more democratic participation there is, the more fair solution will be found, and the more politicians will be responsible for their actions.

[gurgen]

Problem is, once the politicians are chosen, they are largely beyond our control.

[Accelerated]

The concept of 'total war' is not because of industrializtion it is inspite of industrialization.

 

Well, I disagree. Governments/Kings/Emperors have always had the option of fielding large® armies - wether through coersion or persuasion they could always mobilise their male populations, no? They could, but who was going to feed all of them. One of the reasons why the entire male population of Western Europe did not Crusade - Im certain if modern industrial conditions existed in those days, then you would get 'total war' - but instead you have a bunch of small scale military campaigns carried out by professional soldiers.

[Anonymouse]

Well, I disagree. Governments/Kings/Emperors have always had the option of fielding large® armies - wether through coersion or persuasion they could always mobilise their male populations, no? They could, but who was going to feed all of them. One of the reasons why the entire male population of Western Europe did not Crusade - Im certain if modern industrial conditions existed in those days, then you would get 'total war' - but instead you have a bunch of small scale military campaigns carried out by professional soldiers.

Comparing Feudalism to the era of the Nation-State is illogical. Feudalism was so, exactly because of its system. It was a different political system of Kings, and Lords, in which power was distributed and evenly spread between lords, counts and dukes. Under a modern "democratic" nation-state, you have what we call "mass mindedness".

 

Do you know what total war is? Industrialization was only an indirect player of total war. Total war wouldn't exist if nation-States didn't exist. It is precisely that the State was able to mobilize people in their millions through conscription, propaganda and nationalism, that the enemy was "lesser", thus total war reaches new proportions thanks to mass mindedness and collective thinking. The "democratic" nation-states are based on mass mindedness and mobilizing the masses.

 

Increasingly order assumed a "national" character and the general tendency was toward the ethnically united state. We were faced by "Pan-Germanism", "Pan-Italianism", and "Pan-Slavism", which transcended the "minor" ethnic boundaries. Hand in hand with this evolution we see the rise of collective gymnastic movements, cultivating a violent nationalistic spirit and manifesting themselves in gigantic "syncrhonized" performances. Here we have the psychological roots of National Socialism. Communists too loved synchronized uniformed mass performances. Horizantalism asserted itself virtually.

 

Precisely from this mass mindedness we have "total war" and annihilation of entire populations and "genocides". Never before in history do we have "genocides" until the 20th century with such violent fervor. The rise of democracy and of ethnic nationalism went in hand in hand. These two mass movements easily combined in the name of the demos.

 

Whereas in pre democratic and nationalist societies you had war, it was civilized war between mercenaries and kings and armies. Now a war between entire nations developed into ideological crusades. This was the age of the armed horde. The idea was no longer to just outmaneuver your enemy and win battles, but since this was a war between peoples and ideologies, the idea was to kill as many enemies as possible whereby wars assumed an exterminatory character. There was no interest for mercenaries and armies under feudalism to engage in such behavior since there was no nationalism nor democracy. Mercenaries belonged to different nationalities, and once they "signed up" could be employed for different reasons and operations by their employer or even "traded" in to another one.

 

Since wars have evolved from between clashes of crowned heads and such to wars between ideologies and masses of people, entire nations became collectively enemies of other nations. Therefore wars couldat long last be waged against civilizans, not only against cities but against entire populations, men, women, and children. And since technology had progressed, it now made it possible to attack cillages and cities, aviation solved the trick. Technology and industrialization in and of itself is not the fault. It is the ideas that we accepted as humanity. Ideas have consequences. Feudalism had no concept of nation-states. Power was decentralized and fragmented. Furthermore, people fought for money, fief, and mercenaries were hired.

[Armat]

Anon

Please present any Democratic country which killed its own people in millions.

Democracy the worst form of government? please read this article.

 

Pravda Ru

02-17-2004 10:15 PM

 

Souls of Stalin's victims cry out for justice Russia never prosecuted mass

murders.

 

Eric Margolis

 

Foreign Correspondent / Defence Analyst & Columnist

 

THE 20TH CENTURY-S WORST CRIME GOES UNPUNISHED

 

Five years ago, I wrote a column about the unknown Holocaust in Ukraine. I

was shocked to receive a flood of mail from young Americans and Canadians of

Ukrainian descent telling me that until they read my article, they knew

nothing of the 1932-33 genocide in which Stalin-s regime murdered 7 million

Ukrainians and sent 2 million to concentration camps.

 

How, I wondered, could such historical amnesia afflict so many young

North-American Ukrainians? For Jews and Armenians, the genocides their

people suffered are vivid, living memories that influence their daily lives.

Yet today, on the 70th anniversary of the destruction of a quarter of

Ukraine-s population, this titanic crime has almost vanished into history-s

black hole.

 

So has the extermination of the Don Cossacks by the Soviets in the 1920-s,

and Volga Germans, in 1941; and mass executions and deportations to

concentration camps of Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Poles. At the

end of World War II, Stalin-s gulag held 5.5 million prisoners, 23%

Ukrainians and 6% Baltic peoples.

 

Almost unknown is the genocide of 2 million of the USSR-s Muslim peoples:

Chechen, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Tajiks, Bashkir, Kazaks. The Chechen

independence fighters today branded `terrorists- by the US and Russia are

the grandchildren of survivors of Soviet concentration camps.

 

Add to this list of forgotten atrocities the murder in Eastern Europe from

1945-47 of at least 2 million ethnic Germans, mostly women and children, and

the violent expulsion of 15 million more Germans, during which 2 million

German girls and women were raped.

 

Among these monstrous crimes, Ukraine stands out as the worst in terms of

numbers. Stalin declared war on his own people. In 1932 he sent Commissars

V. Molotov and Lazar Kaganovitch, and NKVD secret police chief G. Yagoda to

crush the resistance of Ukrainian farmers to forced collectivization

 

Ukraine was sealed off. All food supplies and livestock were confiscated.

NKVD death squads executed `anti-party elements.- Furious that insufficient

Ukrainians were being shot, Kaganovitch v the Soviet Adolf Eichmann v set a

quota of 10,000 executions a week. Eighty percent of Ukrainian intellectuals

were shot.

 

During the bitter winter of 1932-33, 25,000 Ukrainians per day were being

shot or dying of starvation and cold. Cannibalism became common. Ukraine,

writes historian Robert Conquest, looked like a giant version of the future

Bergan-Belsen death camp.

 

The mass murder of 7 million Ukrainians, 3 million of them children, and

deportation to the gulag of 2 million (where most died) was hidden by Soviet

propaganda. Pro-communist westerners, like the `New York Times- Walter

Duranty, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and French Prime Minister Edouard

Herriot, toured Ukraine, denied reports of genocide, and applauded what they

called Soviet `agrarian reform.- Those who spoke out against the genocide

were branded `fascist agents.-

 

The US, British, and Canadian governments, however, were well aware of the

genocide, but closed their eyes, even blocking aid groups from going to

Ukraine. The only European leaders to raise a cry over Soviet industrialized

murder were, ironically, Hitler and Mussolini. Because Kaganovitch, Yagoda

and many senior communist party and NKVD officials were Jewish, Hitler-s

absurd claim that communism was a Jewish plot to destroy Christian

civilization became widely believed across fearful Europe.

 

When war came, Roosevelt and Churchill allied themselves closely to Stalin,

though they were well aware his regime had murdered at least 30 million

people long before Hitler-s extermination of Jews and gypsies began. Yet in

the strange moral calculus of mass murder, only Germans were guilty.

 

Though Stalin murdered 3 times more people than Hitler, to the doting

Roosevelt he remained `Uncle Joe.- At Yalta, Stalin even boasted to

Churchill he had killed over 10 million peasants. The British-US alliance

with Stalin made them his partners in crime. Roosevelt and Churchill helped

preserve history-s most murderous regime, to which they handed over half of

Europe.

After the war, the Left tried to cover up Soviet genocide. Jean-Paul Sartre

denied the gulag even existed. For the Allies, Nazism was the only evil;

they could not admit being allied to mass murders. For the Soviets,

promoting the Jewish Holocaust perpetuated anti-fascism and masked their own

crimes.

 

The Jewish people saw their Holocaust as a unique event. It was Israel-s

raison d-etre. Raising other genocides would, they feared, diminish their

own.

 

While academia, media and Hollywood rightly keep attention on the Jewish

Holocaust, they ignore Ukraine. We still hunt Nazi killers but not communist

killers. There are few photos of the Ukraine genocide or Stalin-s gulag.,

and fewer living survivors. Dead men tell no tales.

 

Russia never prosecuted any of its mass murderers, as Germany did.

 

We know all about crimes of Nazis Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler; about

Babi Yar and Auschwitz.

 

But who remembers Soviet mass murderers Dzerzhinsky, Kaganovitch, Yagoda,

Yezhov, and Beria? Were it not for Alexander Solzhenitsyn, we might never

know of Soviet death camps like Magadan, Kolyma, and Vorkuta. Movie after

movie appears about Nazi evil, while the evil of the Soviet era vanishes

from view or dissolves into nostalgia.

 

The souls of Stalin-s millions of victims still cry out for justice.

Edited February 19, 2004 by Armat

[angel4hope]

i think this explains alot for me...about so called democracy... im sorry if i offend anyone here or if you guys think its off topic or childish or stupid--- but these words make sense to me:

 

I hear you on my radio

You permeate my screens, unkind heart

Some nights you fell asleep to find

I cut off both your wings on principle alone

On principle alone

 

Hey megalomaniac

You're not Jesus

Yeah, you're no f***ing Elvis

Special, as you know yourself, maniac

Step down

Step down

Step down

Oooooooo

 

Are we your appendages?

Hold open your eyes

So you would see

THAT ALL OF US ARE HEAVEN SENT

THERE WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE ONLY ONE

TO BE ONLY ONE

 

Hey megalomaniac

You're not Jesus

Yeah, you're no f***ing Elvis

Special, as you know yourself, maniac

Step down

Step down

[Sasun]

Angelik? are you OK?

[angel4hope]

SYLLABICATION: meg·a·lo·ma·ni·a

PRONUNCIATION: mg-l-mn-, -mny

NOUN: 1. A psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence.

 

this has to do with a democratic government--to people who are not familiar with the song...its mainly a criticism of government-- especially democracy and dictaorship...

 

to further comprehend these words...you really need to analyze every word...

[angel4hope]

Angelik? are you OK?

ayo sasunchick jan im great and okay

 

oh btw the post is a song called megalomaniac by incubus....

 

i thought it would be interesting to post it since it mainly criticises government in my opinion...

[Accelerated]

It is precisely that the State was able to mobilize people in their millions through conscription, propaganda and nationalism

 

a Feudal monarchy could do just the same - 'nationalism' in its pre 19th Century form played a cardinal role in the eventual defeat of the English in the 100 year war with France.

 

Feudalism had no concept of nation-states. Power was decentralized and fragmented. Furthermore, people fought for money, fief, and mercenaries were hired.

 

True enough, but your long post did not answer my question: Why was there NO mass mobilisation of the Western European population to Crusade against the Muslims both in the Middle East and elsewhere? after all the Muslims would have been hated as much as if not more than then Huns of 1914. Surely, the Church could have easilly conducted a mass propaganda and recruitment campaign to fill the ranks.

Edited February 19, 2004 by Accelerated