<still stands.....if given a bit of slack>
Your original statement was the kind of flag-waving makes-my-heart-thump-with-pride broad-brush We're-The-Best National Myth, it deserves to be dissected, and served back to you in little pieces.
War of 1812: I didn't say England was a perfect Democracy. For that matter, at the time, in order to vote in the U.S., you had to be white, male, and a property-owner. But you didn't contest my statement, that they were the most democratic nations of their day. Which, according to your Myth, should have made them the most peaceful (at least to each other).
<The U.S. vs the confederacy was an internal struggle. Not a struggle between two democratic nations.> You are splitting hairs here. Wasn't the Confederacy a nation? It sure looked like a nation (territory, government, currency, flag, laws, etc.) Wasn't it democratic? If your principle is so universal and absolute (and that's the way you stated it), then the data backing it up ought to be robust (evident in more than narrowly-defined special cases).
What you're doing here, is making the definition of "democratic nation" so narrow, there aren't any, or hardly any. So, your original statement (Democracies don't make war on each other) is true, but only true because you define every counterexample as "not really a democratic nation".
<Hitler was...well Hitler, not much democracy there after his rise to power.>
Right. But my point was, the German people chose this (autocracy and war), in a free and fair election (when they were a Democracy). Hitler was a very, very consistent man. He did exactly what he said he was going to do, and he wrote it all out in Mein Kampf (written and widely read before he was elected). His public statements before the election, constantly glorified war, and ridiculed democracy. What he did and tried to do, in the 1940s, was exactly what he had said he would do, in the 1920s. BTW, this is also a counterexample to your statement:
<I doubt there has ever been a time in human history when people have voted to relinquish democratic rights?>
More relinquishing of democratic rights: In the Roman Republic, when they went to war, they would elect a Dictator for the duration. This Dictator ruled by edict, could order executions, and could ignore the Senate. This, actually, is very similar to what happens when the U.S. goes to war. Lincoln ignored the Supreme Court, and the Bill Of Rights, during the Civil War.
<Once democracy prospers in the heart of the middle east, it will grow and eventually absorb all the nations surrounding it. >
When preparing for war, and fighting it, there is this very common exercise in Mass Wishful Thinking that nations do. When entering WWI, people really did believe (and leaders pandered to this belief), that:
1. their own nation was fighting a defensive war (everyone, including the Germans and Americans, believed this)
2. the war would be short
3. at the end of the war would be a Nirvana of peace, democracy, and prosperity.
You're doing the same thing. |
