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You are very wrong about anarchy being the best form of government. Probably the best form of government would be a compassionate dictator..but..even that has some serious problems…(guess.)
Pertinax is a perfect example of a compassionate dictator and he only lasted 90 days. Why? Because he was TOO GOOD for the people and the scum of Rome had him murdered.
What makes a democracy the best form of government for humans is the built in check and balance system that prevents any one group from having too much power. As the pigs (politicians) feed at the trough—the average person (us) is left pretty much alone. That’s as good as it gets.
As a wiser person than I once said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Another great saying, "Divide and conquer." With a democratic government we--the people--can do that. Divide politicians and keep them at each other's throats and leave us alone.
The reality however is just the opposite.
It's the political/corporate elite which divide society and orchestrate infighting amongst the masses through media misinformation and thus increasingly divert public attention away from scrutinising the real actions of their elected leaders. Sadly the vast majority are typically too apathetic to dig into the issues and what lay behind them, preferring to accept what is beamed into their homes all neat and tidy and packaged for easy consumption.
Voila, the status quo remains unscathed.
You make a good point Clandestine but the "masses" pretty much are happy with their lot as long as they can fill their basic needs. But then again when we switch over to our national intelligentsia where all of the "good ideas" are supposed to be generated we find some very "strange" characters. A visit to any university campus will produce some extremely eccentric individuals among the professors once tenure is granted.
I agree with you on one point—freedom of the press and our First Amendment have caused some serious problems for us and most of them come from Hollywood. Having lived in Malibu, California for a couple of years, I’ve had the opportunity to observe the decadence first hand. Those running our media do not believe in basic Christian values, traditional families or a high moral code.
So if not democracy—what?
We’ve done the monarchy route. Most of my ancestors left northern Europe (Prussia) because they were tired of loosing their sons to petty rulers wars. WWI was nothing more than a family fight between Queen Victoria’s children and grandchildren that cost us “commoners” 30 million lives. I don’t think a royal was scratched after the Grand Duke was assassinated.) I don’t like royals—then or now. They rarely earn their own pay.
Communism? It may be right for some—but it isn’t my cup of tea. I like my basic freedoms.
Dictatorship? Saddam has shown us what dictators do. They are worse than the worst royals. So far more than 300,000 mass graves have been uncovered in Iraq. (Who says stopping that butcherer wasn’t worth our losses?)
All the other forms of government aren’t even worth mentioning. When two or more people form together for security, common interest, etc., some form of government must be designed to keep the peace.
In keeping with the point ive made repeatedly about spin and the sanitisation of any necessary historical context, might I remind you that most of those graves (including the vicitms of Halabja) were more than likely according to our own military rhetoric (used to excuse our own "petty wars") "collateral damage" from the Iran-Iraq War, which he fought at who's behest and for who's geo-political benefit? (I suspect you know the answer to that as well as I if youve been politically conscious since before the Reagan era.)
So why then - if this be the stuff that incites our masses with righteous anger and unquestioning accord with the militancy of our current governing band of political privateers - are we not rounding up those inside the beltway who armed, financed and spurred on Saddam to fight such a monstrously genocidal proxy war? That is a matter that our corporate media won't go near, too many vested interests riding on our unilateralist application of might.
As said before, the rule of law applies to all (even the mighty) or it is but a hollow concept.
Hmmm. Now America is being blamed because Saddam and Kommani decided to butcher each other’s people?
If I am not mistaken at that time all of Iraq’s weapons were supplied by the soviets and the Iranian arsenal was supplied by the USA before they decided to invade our embassy.
Did American policy makers encourage Iran and Iraq to fight each other? Who knows but from my position if they could pull off two enemies of the USA fighting each other—it was a good political move.
There was a time when Belgium was involved in it’s little expansions—The Congo is a good example with half of it going communist and the other half turning into a monarchy-dictatorship under Mombuto.
I had the pleasure of being part of a secret Special Forces unit that went into the Congo during 1964-65 to save Belgians from having their white children thrown to the crocs.
All nations have their darker sides, but in the case of the USA—we have a habit of turning our enemies into our friends through compassion and support (Germany, Japan and now Russia and the Eastern bloc nations.) We are doing the right thing in Iraq for the people of Iraq. Will some people make a lot of money in the process? Yes but in the long un the people will be much better off living in a free democracy.
Right now—on this earth democracy is the best form of government. I’ve seen close up and personal other forms of government and none of them come close to supporting their people as a democracy does.
In the USA we have brought down presidents who failed to obey the law of the land. Not many other nations ahve even attempted to do that.
Currently in Iraq the French and the Germans do not support our effort there because ,expecially in the case of the French, they have lost numerous very lucrative contractas with the Bathist government that fell. It's all about money. The French want Europeans to believe America was wrong in defeating Saddam on moral grounds when in fact it has always been about money and oil with them. How much of the money the French were recieving from Saddam's governemnt went back to the peopel fo Iraq? (None!)
The USA is taxing us to give Iraq 85 billion dollars in funds to rebuild their country--how many nations would do that for another nation?
That si a pathetic excuse because you can't think of one isn't it?
Hmmmm, most of that money is going to the military I believe and the US has also opened up the entire iraqi economy to be bought up by mainly US corporations so the 'generosity' is a bit dodgy........
Don’t teach me anarchist theory!
*I *am the expert in anarchy on this board!!
No offence, just kidding. But I must say cause I’m an convinced ancap since my toddler age ( I mean 15 y.o.) I read works by
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Frederic Bastiat, Petr Kropotkin, Herbert Spencer, Lysander Spooner, Gustave de Molinary, Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and others so I know a bloody lot about the stuff. ( Aren’t you suppressed by my erudition? Yes this was my goal).
ToOldDog
You say “You are very wrong about anarchy being the best form of government ”.
*sigh *…please, anarchy IS NOT a form of government! Anarchy is no governments! ( I think you are a pure neo-conservative. Am I right? )
To giantno1 (“Democracy is anarchy.”, “Democracy is not the opposite of anarchy “),Blagsta (“It means that everyone has a say in how things are done. Democracy at its purest") and others.
All this is wrong.
Your common mistake- you confuse the system where everybody can rule everybody and the system where nobody can rule anybody ( but himself). The former is democracy, the latter is anarchy. So anarchy is the opposite of democracy (dictatorship is closer to democracy of course)
This is quite obviously foolish, if you took away govt then there would still arise powerful people who would control others, this is a certainty of human society.
What then would prevent these people abusing this power, misusing it?
Given the certainty of power structures and the necessity of rule then the best system would be the one that best limits the misuse of this power, this system is democracy.........
btw the name here is Clandestine, not "Mr. Brussels".
Tell us, are you by any chance a fundamentalist Christian zealot?
Both liberals and conservatives use PC as a weapon against their opponents.
But the bad thing with PC is not its ‘correctness’ but its ‘political’, the fact that govt CAN use violence to force one group to obey standards of other group.
Liberal, liberal, liberal. :rolleyes: Change the fucking record.
It is so close to reality like WTO to free trade.
Can I explain a couple of things? Don’t want don’t read, please.
My understanding of Anarchism.
Anarchism appears in later 18thand early 19th centuries, at the same time as socialism and due the same reasons, as a negative reaction on capitalism and classical liberalism. But their fates were quite different. While socialism was adopted by states quickly ( in its ‘legal’ as in UK, pre-WWI Germany, Roosevelt’s America and ‘illegal’ as in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Pol-Pot’s Cambodia etc forms), Anarchism was a marginal movement. Two greatest attempts to establish a socialistic brand of anarchy were made during civil wars in Ukraine and Spain. Both failed.
That old classical Anarchism is a kind of social philosophy based on denying rights of state to rule people. Early anarchists like Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin believed in a society based on cooperation of workers and denied private property that from their point of view is a main reason of exploitation and inequality. This unites them with socialists. But in contrary to socialists left-anarchists didn’t believe in ability of State to create a just society.
Modern free-market anarchism ( aka anarcho-capitalism aka radical libertarianism) is relatively new movement. It appears in its pure form maybe 30-40 years ago. And to judge it by criteria of left-wing anarchism is a huge mistake. However Ancap is not anything diametrally opposite to that old-fashioned left anarchism. It rather widens the field of anarchy and eliminates mistakes of old anarchists.
You can say I’m wrong but please don’t say I’m ignorant. I read not only popular rambling boards, I read serious books of serious writers. The thick books full of philosophy, history, economics. That was not easy reading but I must say I enjoyed them. And I’m sure I understand some little things.
Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs. I was involved in anarchist politics when you were still wearing nappies.