There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford
My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.
Examples of succesful multicultural states of enormous size are Italy, Germany, the UK.
150 years ago nobody spoke Italian, the only pan-Germanic law was Roman Law, and the UK had more time zones than Russia. Yet the impossible happened, massive countries of sixty million evolved.
The strenght and dynamism of Europe has always been the tension between diversity and unity. Full unity will be the death of Europe, we'll become the China of old, stagnant and dormant. Too much competition and we become the Europe of the first half of the 20th century, of the Dark ages.
Indeed, the very definition of Europe requires a common culture, with supernational structures, over a fragmented political landscape. It has been like that since the birth of Europe fifteen centuries ago.
There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford
My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.
delete
Last edited by gaelic cowboy; 03-26-2011 at 19:42.
They slew him with poison afaid to meet him with the steel
a gallant son of eireann was Owen Roe o'Neill.
Internet is a bad place for info Gaelic Cowboy
And yet the state can be a great homogeniser. The modern period has seen the centralisation of both states and populations, and there is no reason to assume that this process will not continue.* What is the "natural level", and why are we at it right now?The reality is that a state functions best when it has a relatively homogenous population. I think its funny to see a Frenchman like Louis arguing otherwise, given the roots of republicanism with Rousseau, when he thought France at his time was far too big and diverse to function as a republic. Of course, over the centuries with centralisation etc this has changed, and IMO now the nation states of western Europe are the natural level at which the state should exist.
You are describing a dysfunctional democracy, and probably one without adequate constitutional protections.Anyway, the problem with democracy is that is fails to represent the nation as a whole. It almost always represents a single class, or prioritieses one ethnic group or religion or whatever over another. Given that minority rights in democracies only exist to prevent an outright tyranny of the majority, minorities will never be ideally represented in an a democracy. They will have basic rights, but they won't have a real voice.
Or, it's simply the levelling out of political power, with the erosion of the immense privilege** white working class men have enjoyed in this country throughout the 20th Century.One classic example of this today, especially in Britain, is what you see with the white working-class. Democratic institutions completely fail to represent them, because the growing middle class suffocate their voice in a democratic system. IMO we need a more direct way to represent their interests, screw democracy. If you don't like that, just remember that the vote is not really valuable in itself, it is simply a means to an end - representation. If democracy fails to deliver that, it's not serving its purpose.
* Of course, political devolution may occur, e.g. UK, France, (hopefully not) Italy etc., but rather the centralisation of population and the erosion of regional differences.
**By privilege, I do not mean economic privilege such as wealth or living standards, but the privilege of political power as a group. And yes, I'm still a socialist.
niceThat's what mediumpowers such as China and the US tell themselves to cope with being second rank.
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