If you think I’m making stuff up then you don’t have a firm grasp of history.
Or perhaps you are just unwilling to concede that the U.S. has had an enormous impact on democracy since 1776. Blind, uniformed, patriotism can swing both ways.
I agree that the US had universal suffrage after many Western nations. However, for ~100 years (until the French Second Republic) it was the only major nation to have a stable government where all the leaders (excepting a few senators) were democratically elected. In 1860 the Crown was still the single most influential mover in British government (although it was far from omnipotent.)
It’s only patriotism if the poster is saying that THEIR country is responsible for all things great and wonderful. Pointing out that other countries have a good track record on democracy is a different thing entirely.
Exactly. And what if Churchill had been killed at Omdurman or shot whilst trying to escape from Pretoria during the Boer War? That would have completely buggerised the course of two World Wars but no-one claims Churchill Saved Democracy.
If Hitler had been killed in World War I, or if Tsar Nicholas II had implemented some more reforms and not gotten involved in World War I in the first place, then history as we know it would be vastly different too.
And none of these changes have anything to do with Lincoln, the outcome of the US Civil War, or the US at all.
Precisely what I was going to say, but with fewer expletives.
That’s very true, but I was referring to Democracy in its entirety, as a concept; the way certain posters in this thread had been saying Lincoln Saved Democracy.
It’s not a stretch to argue that Churchill saved Western Europe from Fascism/Communism; it is a stretch to argue that Lincoln won World War II just by virtue of having been President during the US Civil War 80 years previously.
You admit your ignorance of history and show it by your belief that the monarch was the most powerful political force in the 19th century. That is simply not true. and had not been true since we started cutting off heads and certainly was not in any way arguable after the 1832 Reform Act.
The 1867 Reform Act enfranchised all male householders. It wasn’t until the 15th Amendment in 1870 that the USA had the equivalent but as we know that did not get implemented until the 1960’s for blacks and only 1824 when (apart from 6 states) the property qualification was abolished for white males.
This is the era of Gladstone and Disraeli. The former she despised but was stuck with him as Prime Minister despite her anti-democratic sensibilities.
Britain was a constitutional monarchy (with the famous ‘Unwritten’ constitution) and so her power was very limited and the power of the monarchy in even that of influence (which was all she had) waning away. Try rereading your Bagehot.
Then address the issue of the much more significant political power of the Robber Barons in 19th century US politics.
The right of the monarch was threefold:
The right to advise
the right to be consulted
the right to warn
The monarchy was the ‘Dignified’ part of the Constitution (by which he meant symbolic) and the Government is the Efficient part.
Parliament has been sovereign in the UK since the 17th century, having the right to depose monarchs.
The development of democracy is a process and one as has been pointed out to you, driven by wider social forces. In the case of England this ran from the ending of the divine right of kings via the Magna Carta to the assertion of the primacy of Parliament at the edge of an axe blade in the Revolution to the rise of the educated and wealthy middle classes that supplanted the old aristocracy with the Industrial Revolution.
As European history, specifically the history of the old empires show, these forces were irresistible. To claim that Lincoln was in any way important is simply absurd.
The Great Man theory of history died out long before he did by the way.
In the UK’s case democracy was a process that went farther and faster than the US, who due to lagging in universal suffrage and effective disenfranchisement of the descendants of slaves was not a full democracy until the 1960’s. Having a bunch of old white guys elected by another bunch of white guys does not a democracy or a democratic process make.
And you still have not addressed the issue of anti-democratic US foreign policy, which weighs heavily in the negative side. You have also demonstrated no specific instance where the USA crucially supported the development of more advanced democracies such as the UK, Canada and New Zealand.
Yet there are many, many examples of the USA intervening to depose or otherwise thwart democratic change.
Victoria was the last gasp of monarchical influence on politics but she failed in her main desire - which was to use british foreign policy to preserve the old monarchies (her relatives in effect). She could not prevent Palmerston from pursuing policies that weakened them and although she used her influence to get him sacked as foreign minister in 1851 he overthrew the government 6 weeks later and was PM in 1855, against her wishes.
So not even a monarchy as long serving and charismatic as the Victoria/Albert combo could trump Parliament - Gladstone and Palmerston. Her power was solely one of ‘influence’. The current Queen has exactly the same power and influence.
You simply do not know what you are talking about or have the understanding to make sense of random facts you’re plucking from Google.
The USA has NOT had an enormous (positive) impact on democracy since Lincoln.
Look - you are either here to fight ignorance or learn. I suggest you learn rather than fighting a corner that by your own admission you know nothing about with assertion that Queen Victoria was more important than Parliament.
All you offer, against the weight of UK constitutional history and scholarship, is well frankly - nothing.
I’m being Americo-centric because America is a pretty important country, and 20th century history would have been fundamentally different if America weren’t around in a way it would have not been fundamentally different if, say, Bhutan weren’t around.
Technically correct and yet, so very, very not relevant to this discussion.
Perhaps you could start your own thread (suggested working title: USA Pwnz0rz Teh Entire World And Ur Country Suxx0rz And By The Way We Saved Ur Ass3s) to explain your point of view in more depth.
You’re just re-iterating facts that I’ve responded to. Yes, the UK had universal suffrage before the US (which itself had influence on America’s universal suffrage movement). However, it wasn’t until the 20th century that all (practical) political power was vested in democratically elected officials.
You keep trying to make this a nationalistic dick-waving debate. To argue that European democracy wasn’t influenced by the American government is as ludicrous as saying that the American founders weren’t influenced by European thinkers and political movements; e.g. the US Constitution absolutely does not happen without the Magna Carta. The failure of the French Revolution had a real, negative impact on other democratic movements, including Britain. There can be little doubt that the failure of American democracy would have had some influence on Britain. How much (or how little) is open to speculation.
Well, first of all, if you think my argument can be summed up as “USA Pwnz0rz Teh Entire World And Ur Country Suxx0rz And By The Way We Saved Ur Ass3s” then I’m probably not doing a good job expressing my point of view. I’m certainly not making any argument for American moral superiority or denegrating any other country, and I’m not even arguing that the loss of the civil war would have meant the end of democratic government in the world, as some people in this thread have tried to argue. Obviously, as other people in the thread have pointed out, that’s incorrect. Britain was, as was pointed out, a constitutional monarchy, as were many of the states of the German confederation, for instance. Switzerland was a republic. At any rate, the revolutions of 1848 cemented political liberalism as a popular movement in Europe, and the loss of the Civil War by the US wouldn’t have changed that.
My argument can be summed up simply:
A strong and unified United States has, since 1860, had a large influence on world affairs and the world would be very different today if the United States didn’t exist.
Without Abraham Lincoln existing and taking the actions he did, a strong and unified United States would have ceased to exist.
Therefore
Lincoln impacted the world a great deal.
If you disagree with either of my propositions or my conclusion, let me know, and we can talk about it. But it seems to me that you’re attributing to me a jingoistic argument that I’m not attempting to express.
With respect, I think you are making a Jingoistic argument, and Bites’ summation of that is pretty accurate.
No-one is disputing that Lincoln is an important figure in US History. It’s the reaching to say that Lincoln Saved Democracy and Lincoln Won Both World Wars that is being disputed here, and the assertation is being made that the OP is un-necessarily US-centric, as there were other contemporary(ish) people to Darwin who had a greater impact on the world (both at the time and today) than Lincoln, without resorting to “What-If?” scenarios that involve Time Lincoln giving Freeing The Slaves, giving Kaiser Bill a wedgie, and then kicking Hitler’s ass.
You keep saying this, but can you provide an example? Bagehot, writing in the mid-1800’s, points out that the House of Lords and the Monarch is in all practical senses subservient to the (democratically elected) House of Commons (he claims that one of the main functions of the HoL’s is to provide a “reservoir” of ministers for forming Cabinets). In what way was he wrong? What practical power wasn’t in the hands of the HoC? Perhaps you’re alluding to the Parliament Act?
Again, hardly any impact, just as the failure of the French Revolution only set back the democratic cause in the UK by a few decades. The drive for British democracy came from internal social forces within the UK, started long before the American Revolution, and would have continued long after the failure of any American experiment.
That isn’t what I’m arguing, though. I’m specifically saying that Lincoln didn’t Save Democracy or win both World Wars, and I’m certainly not arguing that Lincoln was the person who had the greatest impact on the world, just that Lincoln had a greater impact on the world than Darwin. (I could make the argument, if you’d like, that Lord Palmerson also had a greater impact than Darwin)
My argument is laid out in my previous post, and I’d be interested to know which parts you disagree with.
For what it’s worth, I’m now of the belief that what you’re intending to say and how I’m interpreting it are not necessarily the same. Unfortunately, I don’t think we can resolve the problem, as we appear to be having two completely separate debates here.
Martini Enfield and I are taking the approach that the impacts should be reasonably provable and unambiguous, and (if I’m right) you’re taking the approach that the outcomes of a person’s life go beyond the obvious and can impact on a number of intangible and fluid ways upon the future. This is also a valid point of view, but if we’re arguing philosophy vs historical fact it will be impossible for us to reach common ground - and I feel that neither side is willing to switch perspectives.
I suspect it’d be a fairly lively and entertaining discussion if it were happening over coffee, but it’s not going to work in a text environment as we’ll all end up feeling we’re banging our heads against a wall. I’m happy to just move on from here and accept that there’s no resolving this one - no harm, no foul, no hard feelings. Okay with you?
I suppose. I’m taking the approach that Lincoln’s presidency was vital to the survival of the US, and had Lincoln not done the things he did, the US would have stopped existing (which, I realize is debatable). So Lincoln’s impact has to take that into account.
The methodology I’m using to measure their impact is “How would the world today be different if neither Darwin or Lincoln had been born.”, and using that, I think that if Darwin hadn’t been born, things wouldn’t be very different, because Wallace would have come up with virtually the same theory at about the same time. If Lincoln hadn’t been born, the US would have stopped existing, and that would have changed the world a great deal.
But, I’m willing to agree to disagree and just move on.
No-one could have, to use an Americanism, stepped up to the plate and done what he did?
There’s no way that the absence of Lincoln in the political world could have allowed someone else to fill those shoes?
It seems to me that the exact same arguments you used regarding Darwin could be used for Lincoln. Maybe this is absolute heresy to the ears of an American, but I in no way believe Lincoln was a unique individual that achieved things that no-one else could.
As late as 1909 the House of Lords (which was still hereditary at the time) had enough political power to veto a budget put forth by the House of Commons. They were eventually defeated but they weren’t toothless.
That’s pretty much how Government works in the UK. The Lords knew that if they used the power they had then constitutional changes would be made to remove that power. Case in point, your example. They used the power they had and two years later there was the Parliament Act of 1911 that stopped the Lords having a veto on anything.
To illustrate how the Lords really never went for this sort of thing as they knew these changes would happen, the article you linked to includes this:
I don’t think anyone makes the claim that Australia isn’t a Democracy based on the fact that the Queen’s Representative can fire the Prime Minister under some circumstances, though.
I’d argue the same thing applies to the 1909 People’s Budget. King Edward VII himself did not step in and say “This Legislation offends my Royal Sensibilities. Nobble it.” The House of Lords decided to do it on their own, largely (as I understand it) because of the new tax liabilities (that would affect the Landed Gentry, which included the House of Lords and other Peers of the Realm and Titled Persons significantly) contained in the Budget.
The House of Lords is (at least in its present form) basically an Upper House; just made up of Peers (and most Peerages aren’t hereditary anymore, AIUI). I really don’t see any difference between the situation you outline in the 1909 People’s Budget and any other instance of an Upper House vetoing important legislation from the Lower House. Based on that theory, all bicameral legsislatures are, by their very nature, undemocratic. And I don’t think anyone is going to try and argue that in the modern world.
*It’s a LOT more complicated than that, of course, but that’s what it pretty much boils down to.
