From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Jul 31 2002 - 23:08:22 MDT
Randall writes
> I understand that you will likely not waste further time on
> this argument, but I would welcome continuing discussion on
> it, in spite of the wastefulness. :)
Yes, sorry I lost my temper. Oh well, you had the good sense
to take it with grace.
> > Now what in the world are you trying to do??? I said that
> > you cannot attribute the 100 million deaths you spoke of
> > above to any democratic government. Now you're saying that
> > because Germany *ceased* to be democratic and then killed
> > millions of people, this can be attributed to a democratic
> > government.
>
> Are you saying that because the German people voted for
> something you wouldn't have voted for (I assume), that
> it wasn't really a democracy when they held the vote and
> assented to the horror that followed it? My own feeling
> is that a vote for _Mein Kampf_ is not automatically
> disqualified as a vote, even if I personally abhor the
> vote and its results.
No, I'd have to agree with you that if we are handing
out blame, then the German people deserve some for
electing Hitler. Hitler immediately dissolved democracy,
and I'm saying that you cannot blame any democratic
nation for megadeaths. In other words, I'm saying that
while a nation is democratic (in every historical example)
it does not kill millions of its citizens.
> >>Rwanda since at least 1991
> >>Serbia since at least 1992
> >>Zimbabwe since at least 1979
> >>
> >>Clearly democracy, in and of itself, is somewhat overrated.
> >
> > Yes, and so was the democratic socialist nations of Eastern
> > Europe. Again you should know damn well what is meant by a
> > democratic nation, and the above do not qualify. I'm not
> > wasting any further time here, Randall.
>
> You appear to be defining democratic societies as those in
> which widespread institutional slaughter doesn't happen. By
> that standard, I don't think the results are in yet on whether
> the US will be thought to have been democratic by historians.
No ;-) I wasn't *trying* to define democratic that way. How
decidedly ungenerous of you to suggest so :-) I meant to be
making sense. Democratic societies are those which have for
a considerable time embraced the democratic traditions of
free elections, universal or not-so-universal suffrage, and
are ruled by law (not to claim that, unfortunately, *everything*
that happens is lawful, which even in the best democracies it's
not). Without knowing the details of the history of the three
African countries that you mention, I'll bet that you won't
find any democratic institutions of long standing there, nor
much at all in the way of basic freedoms. Freedom and democracy
aren't identical, but they are linked.
Lee
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