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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (198743)	8/23/2006 1:06:53 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Where is the manual that came down from God that says: this is how you run a country and this is the only way you run it? This kind of rigid thinking would have kept the entire world under monarchy. Well, it is a long story. The "manual" didn't come from God--it was made by human beings, and they had very good reasons for it. Indeed, rather than keeping "the entire world under monarchy," in a sense it was one of the important historical markers that led to fall of monarchies, though obviously not immediately. I suggested to neolib a few days ago that he research the backgound and consequences of the Treaty of Westphalia, which was written back in 1648 in response to the several hundred years of wars that had plagued European countries until then. The proximate war that led to it was the Thirty Years War, an especially bloody period in which about 30-35% of the population of Central Europe was killed and many more maimed. Whole villages and towns were burned down and disappeared during that time. In a number of areas of what is now Poland, Germany, the Republic of Czech, Slovakia and other parts of central Europe, a majority--not just a few--of villages simply disappeared due to the devastation. It took over a hundred years for that war to dim or and another hundred years for it to almost disappear from our collective memory, but it is unfortunately gone now. I suggested reading Phillip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles for a pretty good account not only that period, but of the development of the nation state since then to the present day. The state is the shield of Achilles, which in theory protects us from devastating international wars, though, to be sure, not from civil wars or tyranny within countries--that was the Achilles Heel of the treaty. In fact, the very notion of a "civil war" in a sense comes from the political structure that the Treaty set up. At any rate, I'm sure you would rather rant on the Web than read a not particularly easy 800 page book, but please know that you are just ranting in ignorance on this score.