Politics Pros and Cons of modern western civilisation

[Jibroni]

Interesting discussion.

Pros would have to include advancements in competition, science, democracy and medicine.

Cons: The increase in consumerism and removal of spirituality will continue to leading to an decrease in social behavior, Humans do not seem to live happier lives without a moral authority.

 

[quotemokc]

"Brought slavery back in vogue "

Care to elaborate?

Was it ever not in vogue historically?

The ancients Romans etc had slaves, Vikings took slaves, West Africa had slaves (hint that is where the blacks were bought from prior to coming to America) was there some lull in people having slaves slightly prior to the Atlantic slave trade or is that just the most publicised time period that comes to mind?

 

[its free real estate]

Correlation does not imply causation. For example, an alternative explanation could be that the peace in Europe was due to the nations forming an alliance in fear of the Soviet Union. Or that democracies don't go to war with each other.

There's a point that needs to be emphasised here, in response to the idea that WW2 was a triumph of liberalism. It wasn't.

Immediately in the post-war settlement the allies settled on something extraordinarily illiberal to ensure it would never happen again: the mass ethnic cleansing of Germans from cities and lands that had for 1000 years been their homes (Danzig + Koenigsberg), the erasure of Prussian identity and the demise of the Junker class.

Places like Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, which for centuries had substantial German minorities, were made ethnically pure for Czechs, Slovaks, Magyars and Poles.

The reality is that instead of a pluralistic multiculturalism being seen as the solution to WW2, rigidly enforced ethnonationalism was.

 

[Number37]

Arguably both pros!

And of course, if you're a right winger, arguably both pros in the 'positive' sense.

Also, if the pro in pic 1 was arrested, that would make her a con.

Also, my old hairdresser's name was Con.

I forget where I was going with this.

One of them said he would sell his arse...turns out quite a few of them have.

 

[Frank Bunn]

And the EU is a democratic alliance. It's a more integrated Europe than what came before it.

If it's a case of dozens of sovereign nations with nationalist agendas and historical gripes (what came before the EU) or an integrated Europe reliant on each other for trade and with free movement of citizens and a shared economic interest, I know which of those two scenarios is less conducive to war.

One of the selling points of the EU and its main reason to be was the argument that by opening up free movement and creation of shared economic interests (and a shared European identity) wars in Europe between member States would be a lot rarer.

If the EU breaks apart and falls back into the hands of far right wing Ultra nationalists re-establishing borders, then we have a problem.

Like I said, correlation does not imply causation. Just because peace in Europe has coincided with some of the time the EU has been in existence does not mean the EU caused that peace. Britain didn't join until 1973, Spain and Portugal in 1986. Switzerland, Norway and Turkey are still not members. Yet those sovereign nations haven't been to war with the other European countries.

Also, as I said, several of the causes of what is on your list of worst achievements of the West are behind us. There are no European families feuding for power and territory. There's negligible racial elements to the nationalist movements.

Nationalism does not entail fascism. And Europe can survive one or more counties leaving the EU. Many sovereign nations around the world coexist and trade peacefully without the imposition of a superstate over them.

 

[Number37]

There's negligible racial elements to the nationalist movements.

bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahhaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

You cannot be serious.

 

[Frank Bunn]

There's a point that needs to be emphasised here, in response to the idea that WW2 was a triumph of liberalism. It wasn't.

Immediately in the post-war settlement the allies settled on something extraordinarily illiberal to ensure it would never happen again: the mass ethnic cleansing of Germans from cities and lands that had for 1000 years been their homes (Danzig + Koenigsberg), the erasure of Prussian identity and the demise of the Junker class.

Places like Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, which for centuries had substantial German minorities, were made ethnically pure for Czechs, Slovaks, Magyars and Poles.

The reality is that instead of a pluralistic multiculturalism being seen as the solution to WW2, rigidly enforced ethnonationalism was.

WWII was a triumph of military power. The events in the immediate aftermath of the war were quite chaotic, with a fairly large element of reprisals. Considered (liberal) responses to the war of several years would have come later.

 

[its free real estate]

WWII was a triumph of military power. The events in the immediate aftermath of the war were quite chaotic, with a fairly large element of reprisals. Considered (liberal) responses to the war of several years would have come later.

True, but the reprisals weren’t random. At Potsdam it was agreed that Germans would no longer form a significant bloc of people anywhere outside Austria and the much reduced German borders, and that each resultant state in Central Europe would be as ethnically homogeneous as possible.

 

[Frank Bunn]

True, but the reprisals weren’t random. At Potsdam it was agreed that Germans would no longer form a significant bloc of people anywhere outside Austria and the much reduced German borders, and that each resultant state in Central Europe would be as ethnically homogeneous as possible.

How long did the compliance to ethnic homogeneity last?

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

Pros :
Paying lots of money for childcare.
Flushing toilets
Too lenient on the economic refugees coming via boat


Cons :
Childcare not expensive enough
The internet
Live export of animals
Not tough enough on economic refugees coming via boat

 

[its free real estate]

How long did the compliance to ethnic homogeneity last?

Until today arguably. This is a good article on the subject:

https://www.thenation.com/article/brutal-peace-postwar-expulsions-germans/

Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary are more ethnically homogenous today than they ever were pre-1939.

 

[Malifice]

Also, as I said, several of the causes of what is on your list of worst achievements of the West are behind us. There are no European families feuding for power and territory. There's negligible racial elements to the nationalist movements.

What 'European families feuding for power and territory' caused WW1 and 2 (or the Napoleonic wars before them?)

They were all caused by Nationalism.

 

[Malifice]

Compare the most populist of right-wing governments with just about every form of government prior to the 1700s and they are a veritable nirvana of enlightenment and freedom. Perspective is important.

Context is important and you're not comparing apples to apples.

Yes the Nazis were 'more enlightened' than some 9th century Feudal despotism where people were owned as Serfs by their Lords, but come on.

 

[Malifice]

There's a point that needs to be emphasised here, in response to the idea that WW2 was a triumph of liberalism. It wasn't.

That weird. Pretty sure the Liberals (USA, UK and the Commonwealth, France, Western Europe), with the aid of the Communists (Russia) won WW2.

Or did I miss something and did the Fascists win?

Also pretty sure the Liberals also won the Cold war that followed against the same Communists.

 

[its free real estate]

That weird. Pretty sure the Liberals (USA, UK and the Commonwealth, France, Western Europe), with the aid of the Communists (Russia) won WW2.

Or did I miss something and did the Fascists win?

Also pretty sure the Liberals also won the Cold war that followed against the same Communists.

Missing the explanation of ethnonationalism and ethnic cleansing across Central Europe after WW2 as the solution by the allied powers to the causes of the war.

Typical Malifice.

 

[Malifice]

Missing the explanation of ethnonationalism and ethnic cleansing across Central Europe after WW2 as the solution by the allied powers to the causes of the war.

Typical Malifice.

By 'Allied' you mean 'Communist'.

The areas affected included the former eastern territories of Germany, which were annexed by Poland[7] and the Soviet Union after the war, as well as Germans who were living within the prewar borders of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic States.

The removals occurred in three overlapping phases, the first of which was the organized evacuation of ethnic Germans by the Nazi government in the face of the advancing Red Army, from mid-1944 to early 1945.[15] The second phase was the disorganised fleeing of ethnic Germans immediately following the Wehrmacht's defeat. The third phase was a more organised expulsion following the Allied leaders' Potsdam Agreement,[15] which redefined the Central European borders and approved expulsions of ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944–50)

The Postdam agreement was drafted by not only Liberals, but also by Stalin remember?

Stalin wanted the Germans out of (what was to become) the USSR.

Yes, the Liberal powers (US, UK, France) agreed. I mean, they also let him have all of Eastern Europe as well of course, so it was probably considered 'humane' or the lesser of two evils. Move the Germans to [West] Germany rather than leave them behind at the mercy of Communist Russia under Stalin and at the mercy of the Red Army.

Remember; the Liberal powers (Churchill in particular) saw the Nazis as being a useful buffer against Stalin/ Communist expansion into Western Europe. Russia was always the main threat, right up until Hitler invaded Poland and then France. Russia became the main threat again, immediately after WW2.

At the time of the Postdam agreement, these were the troop dispositions in Germany alone:



Is it any wonder why the allies had to bend over to Stalin a bit?

While the Allies (or the US) were feverishly working on the Manhattan project (which would have nullified the Soviets numerical superiority via nukes) they had little option at the time of the Postdam agreement other than to placate Stalin.

Its the main reason Japan was nuked (twice). It had little to do with Japan (they were already knocked out of the war). It was a message to Stalin (who had just declared war on Japan, and taken and annexed Manchuria) that 'numerical superiority doesn't mean s**t anymore because of these weapons, which we have, and are not afraid to use. Back down.'

 

[its free real estate]

By 'Allied' you mean 'Communist'.

No, I mean Churchill, who announced to the House of Commons in 1944 that all the ethnic Germans in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were to be forcibly relocated at the end of the war.

 

[its free real estate]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3528506.stm

​

"Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble," declared British prime minister Winston Churchill. "A clean sweep will be made."​

​

doesn’t sound very liberal does it Malifice.

 

[Malifice]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3528506.stm

​

"Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble," declared British prime minister Winston Churchill. "A clean sweep will be made."​

​

doesn’t sound very liberal does it Malifice.

No, Churchill does not sound very liberal. The man was a renowned bigot and imperialist:

Africa was quite a playground for young Winston. Born into the privileged British elite in in 1847, educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, brought up believing the simple story that the superior white man was conquering the primitive, dark-skinned natives, and bringing them the benefits of civilisation, he set off as soon as he could to take his part in “a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples,” whose violence was explained by a “strong aboriginal propensity to kill”.

In Sudan, he bragged that he personally shot at least three “savages”.

In South Africa, where “it was great fun galloping about,” he defended British built concentration camps for white Boers, saying they produced “the minimum of suffering”. The death toll was almost 28,000.

When at least 115,000 black Africans were likewise swept into British camps, where 14,000 died, he wrote only of his “irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men”.

(On his attitude to other races, Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran, once said: “Winston thinks only of the colour of their skin.”

Churchill found himself in other British dominions besides Africa. As a young officer in the Swat valley, now part of Pakistan, Churchill one day experienced a fleeting revelation. The local population, he wrote in a letter, was fighting back because of “the presence of British troops in lands the local people considered their own,” – just as Britain would if she were invaded.

This idle thought was soon dismissed however , and he gladly took part in raids that laid waste to whole valleys, destroying houses and burning crops, believing the “natives” to be helpless children who will “willingly, naturally, gratefully include themselves within the golden circle of an ancient crown”.

But rebels had to be crushed with extreme force. As Colonial Secretary in the 1920s, Churchill unleashed the notorious Black and Tan thugs on Ireland’s Catholic civilians, making a hypocritical mockery of his comment:

“Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men’s passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccination.”​

His fear-mongering views on Islam sound strangely familiar:

“But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness.”​

“On the subject of India,” said the British Secretary of State to India: “Winston is not quite sane… I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s.”

When Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign of peaceful resistance against British rule in India, Churchill raged that Gandhi:

“ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back. Gandhi-ism and everything it stands for will have to be grappled with and crushed.”​

In 1931 he sneered: “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer of the type well-known in the East, now posing as a fakir, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.”

As Gandhi’s support increased, Churcill announced:

“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”​

In 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused by the imperial policies of the British. In reply to the Secretary of State for India’s telegram requesting food stock to relieve the famine, Churchill wittily replied:

“If food is scarce, why isn’t Gandhi dead yet?”​

Up to 3 million people starved to death. Asked in 1944 to explain his refusal to send food aid, Churchill jeered:

“Relief would do no good. Indians breed like rabbits and will outstrip any available food supply.”​

​

https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/28/winston-churchill-the-imperial-monster/

Churchill never sounded 'very liberal', because he was a populist right wing Tory who made Tony Abbott or Margaret Thatcher look like reasoned moderates.

 

[ShanDog]

Context is important and you're not comparing apples to apples.

Yes the Nazis were 'more enlightened' than some 9th century Feudal despotism where people were owned as Serfs by their Lords, but come on.

It wasn't a comparison.

For tens of thousands of years societies have been ruled by the few with the means to do so, and it has rarely been a picnic for those under the thumb. But here we are some 250 years into recognisable forms of democracy and the subsequent individual agency (or perhaps even as close to political equality for all that is possible) and it's only been around for the human existence equivalent of a blink of the eye. I'll take the advancements in values, rules of law, technology and lifestyle of the last few hundred years than the 80,000 prior. Gotta be doing something OK.

We all get that Nazis are bad. Nobody but the .01% of Nazis out there disagree. And just to throw a grenade and leave, not every right wing nationalist movement is a few beers away from becoming the Fourth Reich. You can be a racist without being genocidal.

 

[its free real estate]

No, Churchill does not sound very liberal. The man was a renowned bigot and imperialist:

​

https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/28/winston-churchill-the-imperial-monster/

Churchill never sounded 'very liberal', because he was a populist right wing Tory who made Tony Abbott or Margaret Thatcher look like reasoned moderates.

OK, but then you said the "liberals" triumphed. Which one was liberal, Stalin, Churchill, or FDR who interned ethnic Japanese en masse during WW2?

(which was done as a means of confiscating their property FYI)

 

[Malifice]

It was one of Churchill's darkest hours when, at the Summit of the Big Three in Tehran in 1943, he picked up three matchsticks, which were meant to represent Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union.c He had already agreed to Stalin's demand that part of Poland was to go to the Soviet Union. Now he placed the matches together to illustrate the consequences: By pushing the Soviet match toward the West, he was also shifting the positions of the other two matches. Stalin found this depiction of Poland's westward shift amusing.

Of course, the Germans would have to vacate the territory that fell to Poland. As a result, several million people were ultimately rounded up, robbed and expelled, and tens of thousands died during the forced marches.

Churchill later criticized the brutal behavior of the Poles and Soviets, calling it "a tragedy on a prodigious scale" -- as if ethnic cleansings had ever been anything but tragic.

http://www.spiegel.de/international...n-churchill-stopped-the-nazis-a-712259-9.html

You need to understand, WW2 wasnt just won by liberal capitalist nations.

The Communists were also involved in defeating Fascism along with the Liberal west, and indeed the Soviets made the biggest contribution. The Postdam agreement was one where we (the liberals) agreed to allow the Soviets all of Eastern Europe, and they let the Western Liberal powers have Western Europe.

Part of that deal was the expulsion of Germans from the East. Yes Churchill agreed to it, and he probably even supported it (if he didnt support the way it was carried out) but it's harsh to say it was solely his doing, and not as part of the agreement re Europe with the Russians and Stalin.

If I were to read into Churchill, I would say the man probably thought that moving the Germans into Germany was the lesser of two evils, rather than leave them under the yoke of Stalin and Communism.

Also, better to have the Germans on our side of the Berlin wall, than on the side of the Communists.

OK, but then you said the "liberals" triumphed. Which one was liberal, Stalin, Churchill, or FDR who interned ethnic Japanese en masse during WW2?

By Liberal I mean the States, not the leaders.

Both the UK and the USA were at all material times during WW2 Liberal nation States. The USA remains a liberal republic today, notwithstanding it's currently led by a populist right wing President (Trump), just like the UK remained a Liberal State when it was led by a populist Right wing leader (Churchill).

While they might have bent over to the Soviets (appeasement mainly, and to stave off Wold War 3 starting almost immediately) and implemented some individual policies that could be considered (sans context) harsh, the UK and USA were (and still are) Liberal democracies.

Britain in WW2 was not a Fascist State, and neither was the USA. They were Liberal democracies, and trying to sell them as anything else undermines your argument.

 

[Malifice]

not every right wing nationalist movement is a few beers away from becoming the Fourth Reich. You can be a racist without being genocidal.

What 'far right wing ethnically nationalist' nation State hasnt been genocidal?

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

Context is important and you're not comparing apples to apples.

Yes the Nazis were 'more enlightened' than some 9th century Feudal despotism where people were owned as Serfs by their Lords, but come on.

We'll never know unless we could transplant those 9th century lords into the 20th century and give them access to all those methods of killing en masse.

 

[Seeds]

Pros :
Paying lots of money for childcare.
Flushing toilets
Too lenient on the economic refugees coming via boat


Cons :
Childcare not expensive enough
The internet
Live export of animals
Not tough enough on economic refugees coming via boat

Not tough enough on refugees? How tough would you like us to be? Would you prefer us to use gas chambers?