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In 1776, Thomas Paine made the best case for fighting kings −and being skeptical

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Re: In 1776, Thomas Paine made the best case for fighting kings −and being skeptical

#101

Post by tim333 »

devilbunny wrote: post #69
rwmj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am British. I think QE2 made a good job out of this cursed tradition. Charles is a crank, but a crank that I happen to agree with, so fine. But I suspect things are going to go off the rails with his failson William. > I would much rather see the House of Lords reformed than the monarchy ended. I'd be very careful about that one. Making it elected would be a terrible idea. There are some reforms that are possible,…

American and curious: why do you think William is a fail? Because Charles looked that way to us.

Brit here - I think William is fine. I had doubts about Charles but he's doing ok. The worry is you get someone like the king of Thailand - https://www.tattoodo.com/articles/thailands-king-maha-vajira... Or MBS.

Re: In 1776, Thomas Paine made the best case for fighting kings −and being skeptical

#102

Post by tim333 »

terminalshort wrote: post #56
rwmj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am British. I think QE2 made a good job out of this cursed tradition. Charles is a crank, but a crank that I happen to agree with, so fine. But I suspect things are going to go off the rails with his failson William. > I would much rather see the House of Lords reformed than the monarchy ended. I'd be very careful about that one. Making it elected would be a terrible idea. There are some reforms that are possible,…

What power does the king of England have to make things go off the rails?

Technically he's the head of the armed forces, and also can dissolve the government.

In practice with a Hitler type he could dissolve the government and there'd be new elections. I guess if the people voted the same guy back that might be the end of it but it's a bit of a failsafe to this kind of thing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973

Re: In 1776, Thomas Paine made the best case for fighting kings −and being skeptical

#103

Post by IAmBroom »

RickJWagner wrote: post #94
beej71 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about King red or blue. It's about what the current president is doing right now that is completely unprecedented.

Please explain what it is that has you so upset. I am confident I should be able to find some equally disturbing atrocities from the other side of the aisle. If you study a little history ( from outside your personal media bubble ). You’ll find that no party has a monopoly on shockingly bad behavior.

BSABSVR?

Re: In 1776, Thomas Paine made the best case for fighting kings −and being skeptical

#104

Post by Lio »

tim333 wrote: post #99
exasperaited wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, president boris, stamer or farage is just a humiliation I can't really cope with. I always tell people I don't actually want to risk an elected presidency until Jeremy Clarkson is too old to run for it.

I think prez Jezza would be quite entertaining.

That's entirely the problem.

Re: In 1776, Thomas Paine made the best case for fighting kings −and being skeptical

#105

Post by FrustratedMonky »

Why would an article about Thomas Paine be flagged?

Can we not even talk about the most basic history now? Regular old history from text books is now to controversial? No longer true?

What's next? Can't talk about electromagnetism, because some people think magnets are magic?

Re: In 1776, Thomas Paine made the best case for fighting kings −and being skeptical

#106

Post by KaiserPro »

BrenBarn wrote: post #78
KaiserPro wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it would have been sold off by a previous government. (see virtually every other money making asset.)

But this seems like the fallacy of comparing a benevolent and somewhat reasonable monarchy to a malicious or foolish non-monarchist government. Any system can wind up with stupid people doing stupid things. The difference is if you get one stupid person in as king they could sell everything off or cause who knows what damage, whereas with a more diffuse government one person can't do as much harm. (The current situat…

> if you get one stupid person in as king they could sell everything off

Thats the point, its not trivial to sell it off, because it was set up to counteract a fooling king in exchange for a stipend.

This system was explicitly designed to take an asset from the crown and place it in trust so that the king could get a steady income, ostensibly from assets that had unpredictable income.

Thus the crown estate was born, which has a bunch of rules, most notably about taking on debt.

Re: In 1776, Thomas Paine made the best case for fighting kings −and being skeptical

#107

Post by beej71 »

RickJWagner wrote: post #94
beej71 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about King red or blue. It's about what the current president is doing right now that is completely unprecedented.

Please explain what it is that has you so upset. I am confident I should be able to find some equally disturbing atrocities from the other side of the aisle. If you study a little history ( from outside your personal media bubble ). You’ll find that no party has a monopoly on shockingly bad behavior.

If you give me blue examples that are bad, I'll condemn them. So go for it all you want.

You perhaps think that doing so would make Trump's behavior more acceptable to me, but that is untrue and certainly doesn't logically follow. Or maybe you think you can get me with some kind of hypocrisy, but that won't work because I'm not loyal to any political parties, nor am I registered into one. I'll rip on them all.

But if you want to know what I don't appreciate:

* Saying it's allowable to terminate the articles of the Constitution.

* Deliberately trying to undermine confidence in the election system.

* Sending the National Guard to Portland under false pretenses when they're not wanted there.

* Using the DOJ as the president's personal attack organization.

* Deporting people without hearing.

* Arresting people based on their racial backgrounds.

* Controlling what people at universities are allowed to say.

* Controlling what people online are allowed to say.

* Controlling what websites are allowed to publish.

* Controlling Republicans in Congress.

* Potentially controlling SCOTUS. (I don't have evidence, but SCOTUS is behaving irrationally exactly like a corrupt SCOTUS would behave. I would say the exact same thing if the parties were reversed.)

* Controlling what the media is allowed to publish.

* Using Army Talk Orientation Fact Sheet #64 as a playbook.

And I'm sure plenty more.

I'm unaffiliated, but come out strongly on the Constitution and civil liberties. And, frankly, I've never seen it remotely this bad. My gut feel is that we have about a 70% chance of ending up in a Hungary-style dictatorship within 5 years. And my further gut feel is that a very significant portion of conservative America ill-advisedly wants exactly that.

And that has me, a strong proponent of the Constitution and liberty, just a little upset.

Re: In 1776, Thomas Paine made the best case for fighting kings −and being skeptical

#108

Post by jfengel »

BrenBarn wrote: post #95
jopsen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does doing away with the monarchy also mean confiscating their property?

If not then it's still the same question: how does the UK benefit from having the royal family allowing this rather than just some other entity that owns the land and rents it out at low cost? Why does that entity need to be a monarchy?

Mostly: tourism. The royal family is widely thought to bring in a lot more than it costs.

Also, they provide a lot of face-time for the government. They show up at a lot of events, the kind of thing for which you might hire a celebrity to give it a sense of occasion. The actual dollar value of that is hard to estimate, and it's less valuable than the tourism, but the fact that people still want it suggests that it's providing something of value.

Re: In 1776, Thomas Paine made the best case for fighting kings −and being skeptical

#109

Post by n4r9 »

beej71 wrote: post #107
RickJWagner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain what it is that has you so upset. I am confident I should be able to find some equally disturbing atrocities from the other side of the aisle. If you study a little history ( from outside your personal media bubble ). You’ll find that no party has a monopoly on shockingly bad behavior.

If you give me blue examples that are bad, I'll condemn them. So go for it all you want. You perhaps think that doing so would make Trump's behavior more acceptable to me, but that is untrue and certainly doesn't logically follow. Or maybe you think you can get me with some kind of hypocrisy, but that won't work because I'm not loyal to any political parties, nor am I registered into one. I'll rip on them all. But if…

9 days and waiting for the "equally disturbing atrocities" from RickJWagner.
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