On Aug 26, 2004, at 6:40 AM, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
--- Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:I still feel (so far) that, all things being equal or equivalent (population, power, etc) at the beginning of a contest, if you have two evenly-matched nations, one of which is totalitarian and the other more liberty-oriented, the totalitarian system will ultimately, eventually collapse. I don't believe totalitarian systems are flexible, innovative or robust enough to survive that kind of competition.
This is an argument first made my Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy. Tocqueville also suggested in _Democracy in America_, although, oddly enough, he didn't apply it to the US. In both cases, though, they believed that this was something that could happen only after a democracy had a long time to develop.
I suppose the question then becomes how long a long time is. And one could argue that any government, at inception, is vulnerable; but it's probably fair to say that democracies tend to be more vulnerable for a longer time initially than, say, a dictatorship or theocracy. (But I repeat myself. ;)
The point Dan and I are making, though, is that historically, things usually aren't equal.
Very true. Which is why a democratic superpower is an interesting concept.
There are lots of highly plausible scenarios you can spin where the most powerful country in the world is a fascist dictatorship (Nazi Germany), a totalitarian Communist dictatorship (the USSR), or any number of other options. For example, had the North lost the Civil War, it's arguable that democratic reform in England would have been far less successful - certainly, that's what Gladstone thought, and he ought to have known.
Well, maybe. IIRC France had already taken up the banner by then as well, so possibly that could have been a factor. My European history is, however, nowhere near sufficient to let me speculate in anything like useful depth.
If any of these things had happened, we wouldn't even know about this hypothetical advantage democracies have. The argument that "good" governments win their wars is based on events that could very easily have gone other ways, suggesting that such an advantage, if it exists, is so small that it's hardly sufficient to use to justify the superiority of liberal governments.
I'm not so sure. Yes, the South was disadvantaged industrially in the American Civil War, and that could have just been an accident -- I mean if the North had been pro-slavery and the South against it, things might have gone quite differently. Of course another thing to consider is that agriculture might have been better suited to supporting slavery to begin with.
But that's dipping back awfully far to try to counter an argument discussing events which are, in truth, historically unprecedented. For that reason I;m not entirely certain that looking at the history of Greece (example) can tell us much about what we'll have to deal with in the next 50 years, nor can it tell us much about the whys and wherefores of our current apparent position of success.
It's a little weird, really, almost like trying to divine the present moment by scrying the past. Nostradamus would love it.
-- WthmO
I don't need a luxury yacht. A bare necessity yacht will do just fine, thanks. --
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