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Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

nytimes.com

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Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#181

Post by neximo64 »

Houshalter wrote: post #174
neximo64 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 'no real power', This is often said but its not true. There have been occasions the monarchy have used their power but it goes largely unreported. One such occasion is 1975 in Australia where the government was thrown out using the monarch's power. The monarch hardly uses this power but it does if things go awry. Also the 'consuming public tax dollars' argument is incorrect. The monarchy of the UK pays net…

I'm familiar that some monarchs technically still have some ability to influence government. But they use it very rarely, because they know if they overuse it, it will be taken away. You mention Australia, but Australia did try to leave the commonwealth in 1999, perhaps in response to that. The only reason they didn't is because the vote was split on exactly what system of government to replace it with. I've heard th…

The 1999 vote wasn't to leave the Commonwealth, it was an explicit referendum on whether Australia should become a republic (and it would remain part of the commonwealth). Australia is a 'Commonwealth' in itself. Australia's movement away as a reaction of the monarch's use of power in 1975 was the 1984 Australia act where the references to the UK were removed from the constitution (Queen of the UK -> Queen of Australia).

It's hard to argue using the popularity argument. In Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand the monarch is near universally popular.

The argument for a sovereign head of state is a complex one, the Queen isn't considered as an ordinary family inheriting a lot, its a family which is essentially the head of state and the 'inheritance' goes towards running the country and the benefit of all.

I would understand the disdain from an American perspective, but there's a lot more to it than what is conveyed - the constitutional monarchy system of today isn't like the one 300 years ago, its a wonderful system - to many better than the US system of government, admittedly myself included (I'm an American Politics major if you think there's any bias).

Keep in mind the monarch is there by choice - through democratic vote. As for Australia the 1999 referendum wasn't the first one of its sort either.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#182

Post by gozur88 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #84
gozur88 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. The president of the US has a lot of power. More than the framers of the government allotted to the office.

and yet they find it surprisingly difficult yo make things happen.

What they say they want and what they really want are sometimes two different things.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#183

Post by repsilat »

cheiVia0 wrote: post #129
cgriswald wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your little factoid is an example of the definition of factoid you're describing. But there are other definitions of factoid and I suspect the most common one is along the lines "small tidbit of information".

Actually, that's the factoid. According to Wikipedia [1]: > The term was coined originally in 1973 as a neologism by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a "piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it’s not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." Since its creation in 1973 the term has evolved from its original meaning, in common usage, and has ass…

>> So it is a factoid that "factoid" means something that is true

This is a little clever: it's true by whichever definition you choose, and the preceding text does not clearly prefer one or the other.

Like http://bash.org/?10958 -- it's funny when you know C, but it's funnier when you also know UNIX.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#184

Post by CamperBob2 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #84
gozur88 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. The president of the US has a lot of power. More than the framers of the government allotted to the office.

and yet they find it surprisingly difficult yo make things happen.

I'm sure 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians take great comfort in that.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#185

Post by Camillo »

pastProlog wrote: post #151
Camillo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have the 1948 elections which the communist/socialist coalition won but which was fixed the other way The left-wing coalition (which was actually missing a piece of the socialists) didn't even get close to winning. It got 31% of the vote.

In East Germany in 1949, you had a left coalition like in the 1948 Italian election. It gained 66% of the vote to the 34% of the opposition. In the 1947 Hungarian election, the communists got the most votes. So how come we never hear that Eastern Europe became communist democratically? After all, they can point to election numbers as you do. Well, the Red Army occupied them some say. But the US armed forces occupied…

The US did not "fix" the elections. They did finance the DC campaign, just as the Soviet Union financed the FDP campaign.

In the preceding 1946 elections, the Communists got 19% and the Socialists got 20%, for a total of 39%.

In the 1948 elections, FDP (Communists + part of Socialists) got 31%, while the rest of the Socialists (including the man who was the leader of the Socialists in the previous elections) got 7%, for a total of 38%.

In the following 1953 elections, the Communists got 23%, the Socialists (who broke out of the failed FDP alliance) got 13%, for a total of 36%.

So we have 39% -> 38% -> 36%. You are arguing that the expected mid-point of that series would have been 51%, had it not been for the US fixing the elections. That is a Reptilian-level conspiracy theory.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#186

Post by Alterlife »

repsilat wrote: post #183
cheiVia0 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that's the factoid. According to Wikipedia [1]: > The term was coined originally in 1973 as a neologism by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a "piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it’s not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." Since its creation in 1973 the term has evolved from its original meaning, in common usage, and has ass…

>> So it is a factoid that "factoid" means something that is true This is a little clever: it's true by whichever definition you choose, and the preceding text does not clearly prefer one or the other. Like http://bash.org/?10958 -- it's funny when you know C, but it's funnier when you also know UNIX.

I feel dumb :-/ ... Could you explain why it's funnier if you know UNIX?

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#187

Post by geofft »

Alterlife wrote: post #186
repsilat wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> So it is a factoid that "factoid" means something that is true This is a little clever: it's true by whichever definition you choose, and the preceding text does not clearly prefer one or the other. Like http://bash.org/?10958 -- it's funny when you know C, but it's funnier when you also know UNIX.

I feel dumb :-/ ... Could you explain why it's funnier if you know UNIX?

The convention is for UNIX processes to return 0 on success and a non-zero value (often 1) on failure. This means that the UNIX shell "if" statement tests to see if the return value of the program it runs is zero. Therefore, the UNIX "true" command is int main() {return 0;} and the "false" command is int main() {return 1;} -- despite the C convention being the exact opposite.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#188

Post by gumby »

simonbyrne wrote: post #114
gumby wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynical you may be, but your case doesn't apply to Australia (I can understand your perspective though!). The Australian constitutional referendum was cleverly constructed to keep the monarchy. TWO republican options were offered in order to split the republican side, and both were engineered for short-term aggrandizement of politicians rather than give the country a sound constitution. So a "first, do no harm" strat…

Actually, only one option was offered at the referendum [1] (president selected by 2/3 majority of parliament). Various options were considered at an earlier constitutional convention, but only 1 was on the ballot. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_republic_referendum...

Thanks, I should be more careful about posting in the middle of the night.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#189

Post by neximo64 »

zeveb wrote: post #178
twblalock wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Good for tourism" is another one. Nobody goes to Australia to see the Queen.

Maybe Australia should add a hereditary upper house, then. Frankly, I think we could do worse then to add some hereditary peers to our republican government.

You do know the upper house in the UK is made not only of Hereditary peers but professionals or experts in their respective fields. They are of course nominated and appointed instead of being elected - but that sounds silly to have actual professionals & scientists in the decision making process of making laws.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#190

Post by abandonliberty »

dragonwriter wrote: post #162
abandonliberty wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, Canada's female PM wasn't democratically elected, was only in power for 2.5 months, and came to power after the current PM stepped down due to unpopularity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Mulroney#Retirement This has parallels to the current UK situation. I understand the response to perceived American ethnocentrism, but I wouldn't minimize the significance of Hillary/Trump.

> In fairness, Canada's female PM wasn't democratically elected Like US Presidents, Canadian PMs are elected by others who are directly elected; unlike US Presidents and many Canadian PMs, Kim Campbell was not chosen immediately after the election of the body by whom she was chosen. Characterizing this as not being "democratically elected" but the usual election of US Presidents being one that is "democratically elec…

You could have clarified my point, yet chose to go in the other direction. Interesting. I'm curious why you interact with the world in this way.
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