The General Crisis of the 17th Century • Hacker News Board

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#61

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 10:06 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #50

ddlatham wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Confederate States of America held a public vote to secede - do you think it would have passed? If it passed, do you think the United States should have let them secede?

I think it all hinges on what "a public vote" is. The problem most people have with Crimea, as far as I've seen, is not that there was a vote to secede. It's that the vote was heavily rigged and in no way reflects the popular sentiment of the people living there. Similarly with the Confederates, I'm sure a public vote on secession would have passed, if you had limited it to people who were already eligible voters. Bu…

>I think it all hinges on what "a public vote" is.

While true, it's somewhat of a red herring. If Texas held a vote today and voted to secede, I imagine the position of the federal government would be "Nope, you can't do that." Of course, it's hard to say how that particular scenario would play out given that--whatever wild rhetoric occasionally floats out of Austin--there is approximately zero likelihood such a vote would take place. So one would have to assume a significantly different political and cultural landscape than actually exists.

That said, it's fair to say that there's a widespread presumption in western democracies that if a region of a country holds a legitimate vote to split off, they should be allowed to do so. If Quebec decides to leave Canada at some point, I'd expect Canada would have little real choice but to let them.

In the case of the Confederacy though, I doubt it would have made much difference even had there been a hypothetical vote in which a majority of the entire population voted to secede. The North would almost certainly still have gone to war to preserve the Union.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#62

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 10:11 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #52

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of our era, 9/11, the beginning of the end of the Westphalian state-based order and signaling a new world order of overlapping authorities and loyalties, from multinational corporations to terrorist organizations. "The Modern Mercenary" by Sean McFate is a good book based on this idea.

9/11 isn't even close to the beginning of the end of the Westphalian order. The increasing domination of multinational corporations, labor organizations, political movements, terrorist organizations, etc., was widely observed and pointed to as evidence of the progressive decline of the nation-state order for many decades prior to 9/11.

While I don't disagree, it's still true that much (though not all) of trans-national activity still takes place within an overall Westphalian state framework. (And one of the big exceptions--the Middle East--is essentially a result of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire post-WWI.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#63

Post by anigbrowl » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 10:14 PM UTC

aaronem wrote: post #15

DubiousPusher wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When studying history, there is utility in developing and understanding frameworks for grouping historical events. It's also important to understand that these models are often flawed. If you are interested in history as a series of facts, then this notion isn't particularly useful. But if you are curious as to how our modern societies came to be, you will endlessly scour history for patterns demonstrating how our er…

> developing and understanding frameworks for grouping historical events This is called "historiography", and were it more commonly taught in US primary and secondary schools, fewer Americans would think of "history" as being dull -- an endless stream of bare facts lacking context is indeed dull as dishwater; it's in the drawing and analysis of narrative that all the interest lies.

I too would like it taught in schools, but I also think its important to have reliable sources for the bare facts. It depresses me when I go to the history section in a bookstore and see how much of it is given over to conflicting viewpoints of the same events, so there's (almost) different versions of history available depending on what you already like to believe - conservative history over here, liberal history over there, progressive history in this corner and so on.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#64

Post by meatysnapper » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 10:19 PM UTC

woodpanel wrote: post #34

btilly wrote: post #2

Regardless of what you think about whether these crises were connected, they did give rise to a rather important idea. At its heart, the idea is that, "I won't kill you for your beliefs if you aren't going to kill me for mine." This may seem like common sense today, but historically we only arrived at it after having plenty of opportunity to deal with the aftermath of people being willing to kill each other for havin…

I can echo the dissent to this view. Not one european nation came out as a turf for religious freedom. Quite the opposite, most nations came out as religiously cleansed. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationhood are different things. Todays meaning of "nationhood" was probably formed in this time of wars. But most of Europe's nations of present day are culturally dominated by one the belligrent religions: Catholic: Italy, B…

Swiss history can be thought of periods of peace and war. By peace, I mean sending mercenaries to go fight, and burning jews and witches instead of invading the neighboring cantons with a slightly different version of Christianity and pillaging them.

Fortunately, the invention of the portable Raclette oven calmed down religious tensions, though it did not lessen the zeal for witch and jew burnings.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#65

Post by selimthegrim » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 10:23 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #35

amyjess wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US was fundamentally no better, and in practice worse despite the Bill of Rights You also have to remember that until the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, the Bill of Rights only applied to acts of Congress ("Congress shall make no law...") and not to state legislatures.

You have oversimplified the history. After the Fourteenth Amendment arrived, there was considerable confusion about what it actually meant for state laws. And it took a long time for the very complex details to get ironed out. That is why the case I pointed to was nearly a century after the 14th amendment was passed. See http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2012/03/12/the-14th-amendmen... for a detailed (and admittedly so…

Google 'Slaughterhouse cases', and 'Colfax massacre', and then curse Louisiana for being the rock which incorporation stubbed its toe on.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#66

Post by selimthegrim » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 10:26 PM UTC

woodpanel wrote: post #34

btilly wrote: post #2

Regardless of what you think about whether these crises were connected, they did give rise to a rather important idea. At its heart, the idea is that, "I won't kill you for your beliefs if you aren't going to kill me for mine." This may seem like common sense today, but historically we only arrived at it after having plenty of opportunity to deal with the aftermath of people being willing to kill each other for havin…

I can echo the dissent to this view. Not one european nation came out as a turf for religious freedom. Quite the opposite, most nations came out as religiously cleansed. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationhood are different things. Todays meaning of "nationhood" was probably formed in this time of wars. But most of Europe's nations of present day are culturally dominated by one the belligrent religions: Catholic: Italy, B…

I highly recommend Gellner's Nations and Nationalism on this topic. While not Gospel, it might at least be a good start.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#67

Post by paganel » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 10:59 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #49

btilly wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Roman Empire was traditionally willing to tolerate you if you were willing to worship the Emperor as a god. This version of tolerance famously didn't work out very well for Jews and Christians. Particularly since they were OK with private human sacrifice and public executions for entertainment. We owe a lot to the Roman Empire. But I wouldn't romanticize it too much.

Owe? A thousand years of stagnation? A repressive regime that enslaved half the world for the benefit of a handful of their own rich?

What did the Romans ever do for us?

In all seriousness, though, we tend to ignore how advanced the Roman civilization was compared to the "barbaric" ones outside of its borders.

For example, when the Romans invaded Dacia around year 106 they created a new capital, at Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulpia_Traiana_Sarmizegetusa), which became a proper Roman city, with an amphitheatre, a forum, several temples, Roman-built villas. The Romans evacuated Dacia and its capital around year 270, and then everything collapsed. Around Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa writing just vanished, for the next 800 years or so there are no archaeological finds involving written texts (either in stone or on the buildings' walls). Stone churches started to get built around year 1100-1200, many of them using stone from the Roman ruins. Theater as an art form would only return to the region around year 1600-1700, that's almost 1500 years after the Romans had left.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#68

Post by aaronem » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 11:03 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #63

aaronem wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> developing and understanding frameworks for grouping historical events This is called "historiography", and were it more commonly taught in US primary and secondary schools, fewer Americans would think of "history" as being dull -- an endless stream of bare facts lacking context is indeed dull as dishwater; it's in the drawing and analysis of narrative that all the interest lies.

I too would like it taught in schools, but I also think its important to have reliable sources for the bare facts. It depresses me when I go to the history section in a bookstore and see how much of it is given over to conflicting viewpoints of the same events, so there's (almost) different versions of history available depending on what you already like to believe - conservative history over here, liberal history ov…

> reliable sources for the bare facts

A laudable goal, but one I'm not sure can be achieved. It's often difficult or impossible to obtain accurate reporting of today's events, and, at least in my experience, the passage of time does nothing to simplify the task.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#69

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 11:09 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #63

aaronem wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> developing and understanding frameworks for grouping historical events This is called "historiography", and were it more commonly taught in US primary and secondary schools, fewer Americans would think of "history" as being dull -- an endless stream of bare facts lacking context is indeed dull as dishwater; it's in the drawing and analysis of narrative that all the interest lies.

I too would like it taught in schools, but I also think its important to have reliable sources for the bare facts. It depresses me when I go to the history section in a bookstore and see how much of it is given over to conflicting viewpoints of the same events, so there's (almost) different versions of history available depending on what you already like to believe - conservative history over here, liberal history ov…

> I too would like it taught in schools, but I also think its important to have reliable sources for the bare facts.

No such thing is possible. Facts are inferred unreliably from physical evidence and (at best) primary sources which are written by people who (claim to have) direct experience, but who also write with agendas.

> It depresses me when I go to the history section in a bookstore and see how much of it is given over to conflicting viewpoints of the same events, so there's (almost) different versions of history available depending on what you already like to believe

I don't know how you'd expect it to be otherwise; if you look at first-person accounts of current events, its clear that agendas and biases shape them, and history is largely what is pieced together from those kinds of accounts (often fragments of those kinds of accounts!) plus fragmentary physical evidence. Even if historians didn't have their own biases, there's multiple self-narratives that can be reconstructed to explain the evidence historians work from and no foolproof way to choose the right one from among those.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#70

Post by pdonis » Tue, Jun 16, 2015, 12:12 AM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #21

btilly wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deliberately stated a very mild form of the idea because that is what actually seems to have been accepted relatively early on. The stronger idea that we should actually treat people with different beliefs as we would like to be treated in turn took a lot longer. For instance the lot of many faiths in the UK started improving with the toleration act of 1668. Why were Catholics excluded? Because there had been actua…

> The US was fundamentally no better, and in practice worse despite the Bill of Rights You also have to remember that until the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, the Bill of Rights only applied to acts of Congress ("Congress shall make no law...") and not to state legislatures.

> the Bill of Rights only applied to acts of Congress ("Congress shall make no law...")

That specific language only appears in the First Amendment. Other amendments were taken to apply to the states well before the Fourteenth; for example, there is case law from state courts from the first half of the 19th century dealing with how states interpret the Second Amendment, which would be meaningless if that Amendment were not held to apply to the states.