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The General Crisis of the 17th Century

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Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#81

Post by tsotha »

michaelvkpdx wrote: post #41
lkrubner wrote: post #12

There are some interesting comparisons between (what the economist Tyler Cowen refers to as) The Great Stagnation Of 1973-now, and The Really Great Stagnation of 1650-1740. Restraining the comparison to the English speaking nations, we can say: 1.) Both episodes begin with a cultural revolution that has no precedent (the arrival of militant Protestantism versus the arrival of the counter-culture of the 1960s) 2.) Bot…

Replacing staring at screens with experiencing life. Teaching our youth how to learn for themselves from experience, rather than Wikipedia and Facebook and social media du jour. Talking to people in person rather than through screens and wires.

Good luck stuffing that particular genie back into the bottle.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#82

Post by wavefunction »

derefr wrote: post #20
pluma wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually exactly how I've recently heard the Peace of Westphalia[0] described (which ended the Thirty Years War in Germany): it established the idea that nations are independent "wholes" with their own laws, religion and politics, and that that's okay. The ideas encoded in the agreement are basically the reason we think of events like the Crimean secession[1] as an unconstitutional Russian annexation regardle…

> even if there was a referendum and even if that referendum was formally valid and the outcome was in favour of the secession, the constitution of the Ukraine forbids the secession and therefore renders the referendum invalid by definition. That's kind of weird. What does it take to peacefully annihilate/void a constitution, then? I would assume that if every citizen revokes their citizenship to the original country…

Either a constitution provides some mechanism to amend/replace itself or politically devolve, or the entire populace has to be very lucky and agreeable at the same time, I suppose.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#83

Post by fineman »

anigbrowl wrote: post #73
dragonwriter wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 g…

I think you're exaggerating the difficulty. We have more than sufficient documentation of many facts to make definitive statements about them, and where we are not sure abou ttheir provenance we can qualify our statements as being limited to a sinlge source or being controversial. We could, for example, dispute the historical causes of the Battle of Waterloo all day, but there's widespread agreement that it took plac…

Matters of fact (even if wrong) can be linked together into a web of evidence and assumptions and would serve at least to illustrate what we know and don't know.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#84

Post by arandomafrican »

ghaff wrote: post #61
mikeash wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Somaliland did and is not recognized by anybody.

The actual assumption is that if a region of a country holds a legitimate vote that is recognized as so by the rest of the country, then it should be allowed to do so.

Votes in Quebec, Scotland, South Sudan, Erythrea, Timor Leste were recognized by the main country before they happened.

The only exception is Kosovo where Serbia opposed the vote.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#85

Post by pluma »

arandomafrican wrote: post #84
ghaff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>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. Somaliland did and is not recognized by anybody. The actual assumption is that if a region of a country holds a legitimate vote that is recognized as so by the rest of the country , then it should be allowed to do so. Votes in Qu…

Scotland is in a different position because the UK already has varying degrees of constituency (e.g. compare crown dependencies, "countries" and so on). Over the past century the UK has effectively paved the way that enables votes like the one in Scotland in the first place (contrast this with Ireland a century ago).

But you are right: what matters isn't whether the vote is legitimate but whether the sovereignty of the seceding territory is (internationally) recognized. This is certainly not the case in the Ukraine, nor is it the case in Spain (Catalan) or Turkey (Kurdistan).

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#86

Post by ghaff »

arandomafrican wrote: post #84
ghaff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>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. Somaliland did and is not recognized by anybody. The actual assumption is that if a region of a country holds a legitimate vote that is recognized as so by the rest of the country , then it should be allowed to do so. Votes in Qu…

As another poster said, Scotland is sort of a unique case for historical reasons but in general you're right that a key criterion is recognition by the rest of the country. Otherwise, the international reaction is (for the most part rightly) that whatever dispute exists is really an internal matter and other countries shouldn't get involved my recognizing breakaway provinces/regions. There are exceptions but it's a sensible default.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#88

Post by agumonkey »

tsotha wrote: post #81
michaelvkpdx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing staring at screens with experiencing life. Teaching our youth how to learn for themselves from experience, rather than Wikipedia and Facebook and social media du jour. Talking to people in person rather than through screens and wires.

Good luck stuffing that particular genie back into the bottle.

It might happen if the current trend for digital and virtual prove detrimental enough. Just like newspapers not dying, or vinyl discs. Some properties stand the test of time, and I'm sure that nature complexity and our deep link to it will be valued again in the future. Right now people are still worshiping technology, until they realize it's a lot of commercial crap wrapped around a tiny beautiful core of knowledge.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#89

Post by agumonkey »

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.

Same here, but a lot of people, teachers and kids seem to love the story of how their (when they feel native enough) ancestors lived. How much time is wasted learning dates and false truth about societies. Also how much people do remember when adults ?

I too would have loved deeper ideas in history classes. Only recently I've realized how subtle historian's work can be, very interesting investigations, but maybe it's too often open questions rather than answers, something kids and schools don't like until college I guess.

Re: The General Crisis of the 17th Century

#90

Post by panglott »

tomjen3 wrote: post #42
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?

Did the states vote on the issue? Either way I cannot reconcile saying no to them not being allowed to secede with Wilsons 14 points (and, on a personal point, I very much enjoyed my childhood in Southern Jutland, which was one of the areas that voted to join another country after WWI) or even the American revolution. I also can't argue against going to war with them to end slavery but that shouldn't necessarily mean…

Secession had been a topic of politics in the South for decades, and was was unpopular for a long time. After the South Carolina Fire-Eaters forced the issue in 1861, a wave of secession fever swept the South. Most seceding legislatures passed secession with large majorities, except for edge cases like Kentucky (where the state government rejected secession then basically collapsed).

None of this was democratic, of course, because many Southern states had large black majorities. IIRC, More than 80% of Mississippi and 65% of South Carolina, by population, was black. Nearly all those people were enslaved and/or disenfranchised. These were not nations of the people, but states run by and for the slaveowners. The only reason that contemporary Southern states had a majority-white population is because the wave of state terrorism and terroristic violence caused a massive exodus of black Southerners, the Great Migration.

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