71–77 of 77 posts
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> Quebec has repeatedly voted to secede from Canada. I believe your point may be refuted by the fact that you state outright lies like this whopper here.
seriously? it took me 1 second to google and confirm its truth. or is 1995 too long ago for kids these days? also, refuting one argument does not shoot down unrelated arguments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_referendum,_1995
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What difference does it make to the common people, or to political activists, that power is spread out among the leaders of dozen CCP committees, versus a single man? The police will continue to repress, the press committees will continue to censor...
There's a case to be made that a government by a large number of committees and other institutions tends to be more benevolent. Many of the worst actions of repressive regimes have usually been motivated by emotions, not expediency. As more people get involved, the chance of any single personal obsession resulting in crass harm to, for example, a certain group of citizen is lowered. Competition for power among people…
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seriously? it took me 1 second to google and confirm its truth. or is 1995 too long ago for kids these days? also, refuting one argument does not shoot down unrelated arguments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_referendum,_1995
They did not vote to succeed and there was only one referendum.
and i'm not sure i understand you correctly, but the very first sentence in the wikipedia link says that the 1995 referendum was the second one... this [1] was the first.
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Downvotes (or name and shame) is censorship the same way or even worse than governmental censorship because it is socially accepted.
Oh, in that case, I'm all for people getting thrown in jail instead of down-voted when they claim the US is run by a vast conspiracy no better than China. And I won't accept it, even socially, I promise.
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There's a case to be made that a government by a large number of committees and other institutions tends to be more benevolent. Many of the worst actions of repressive regimes have usually been motivated by emotions, not expediency. As more people get involved, the chance of any single personal obsession resulting in crass harm to, for example, a certain group of citizen is lowered. Competition for power among people…
Sure, when you've got an incredibly paranoid sociopath like Stalin, who sees traitors and enemies of the revolution in every shadow, you're going to have serious problems. Xi does not strike me as one. (But I could, of course, be proven wrong.)
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Sure, when you've got an incredibly paranoid sociopath like Stalin, who sees traitors and enemies of the revolution in every shadow, you're going to have serious problems. Xi does not strike me as one. (But I could, of course, be proven wrong.)
How about the guy after Xi? After that? The power, once concentrated tends to remain so, and eventually you roll a Hoxha, Stalin, or Pol Pot.
Comrade Stalin didn't become Vozjd because the Bolshevik party wanted to instill an all-powerful dictator. Like Xi, he decisively won a power struggle in a government which was originally composed of a number of powerful committees.
The revolution had ~30 fathers - yet, 13 years after Lenin's death, all but one of them - Stalin - were dead, in a GULAG, or in exile (And soon to be dead).
The only way to protect against despotism is to have relatively frequent turnover in government. If US presidents and congresscritters were elected for 20 year terms, the US would have long ago become a dictatorship.
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They might take over the world (I think it's unlikely), but in my opinion, the main reason isn't their political system: it's human capital (1/7 of the world population) and homogeneity (very cohesive culture due to China's history). Western countries lack the former, India and others lack the latter.
The Muslims have both, they're sure taking over the world.