Are we "Lambs heading to Slaughter"

Great Debates
141

So what? Why should having “almost equal resources” to the Union make the Confederacy easier to defeat?

Because that’s what it was. Why would having a governmental organization in place make it easier for the Confederacy to be defeated?

If guerrilla forces are absolutely invincible, why shouldn’t the Confederate Army simply have disbanded and headed for the hills? That surely would have guaranteed the Union would eventually be defeated.

Your excuses for why the Confederacy doesn’t qualify make no logical sense.

142

It doesn’t. What are you talking about?

again, what are you talking about? How is the Civil war even remotely related to what we’re talking about.

how so? you’re talking about a completely different dynamic. In the American Civil War you’re pitting one half of the population against another. this is not the same as pitting the majority of the population against a single government. It presumes those representing the government are immune to it’s abuse and would side against their own people. The Soviet Union could not maintain control of it’s satellite countries when they revolted. It folded in the face of reality. They could easily obliterate those countries but that’s not really the same as control is it?

you’re premise makes no sense. We can’t stop gang activity in this country. What makes you think that would get better if the majority of people refused to cooperate with the government. It would be chaos.

143

Why did you bring up the Civil War as being a "division down the middle’? What exactly was your point?

You used the Continental Army as an example of “armed citizens in an uprising.” The American Revolution and the Confederacy are very similar cases. If the Confederacy doesn’t represent an armed uprising, then the American Revolution doesn’t represent one either. You keep dodging this, and haven’t produced any logical reason why the Continental Army was invincible while the Confederacy wasn’t. You’re cherry-picking examples you believe to be in your favor, and making up spurious objections to cases that are not.

Other armed uprisings that have failed are many in Latin America: the Guatemalan Civil War, the Contras against the Sandinista government (despite outside assistance), the Tupameros of Uruguay, the Montoneros of Argentina, the Sendero Luminoso in Peru, and on and on.

144

were the uprisings you mentioned relatively universal among the people?

It’s a simple yes or no question. If the majority of citizens were unhappy with the government of the United States do you think the government could exist as a functional agency?

145

I think a majority an be made into a minority.

146

Address my points about the Continental Army and the Confederacy first.

147

I answered your questions so again, it’s a simple yes or no question. If the majority of citizens were unhappy with the government of the United States do you think the government could exist as a functional agency?

148

No you didn’t. You clearly can’t address them. Since you persist in dodging them, there’s no point in further discussion with you.

149

OP, I was going to say something to you, but I see that there have been more posts here after you’ve gone, then when you were still participating. I haven’t read this whole thing -yet-, and I couldn’t even say what it is that’s being discussed now. Give me a few minutes, if I don’t come back, then I’m with you…this thread sucks!!

150

This thread certainly is coming to suck: there are some very grievous apples-to-oranges comparisons being made, and a pronounced reluctance upon the part of at least one participant to help clarify the confusion.

In one sense, Magiver’s principle is trivially true, even tautological: if everyone revolts against the government, the government must fall, since this would mean that even those in the government have defected from it and are also revolting. The revolution in Syria would be over very quickly if the entire army and civil service switched sides.

So, okay: you have a proportionality slider – a setting that goes from zero to one hundred per cent. At zero, there’s no revolution. At 100, the revolution is glorious and bloodless. In between? I’d agree, by the intermediate value theorem, that there is some proportion of the populace, greater than zero and less than 100%, such that a revolution involving that segment will be beyond the government’s ability to subdue.

Magiver implied the limits of this parameter by noting that Tibet cannot successfully revolt against China, because the numbers are too small. Three million cannot rebel against a billion. So the key value for a revolt to succeed must be greater than 3/10 of 1%. Fair enough.

The narrow success of the American Revolution, and the Confederate failure in the American Civil War, suggest that the key value must be fairly large. These wars also highlight the value of having an external superpower on one’s side. The Revolution would have failed (or been prolonged, anyway) without French assistance, and the Confederacy sought vigorously to obtain British or French assistance. Failing, it could not succeed.

Magiver’s only real sin was to have made an universal declaration which lacked nuance; “There is virtually no way a country could stop it’s own armed citizens in an uprising. It’s how this country was formed.” The first sentence is only true once the proportion of people in revolt passes the key value; the second sentence is ambiguous, as the structure of the Revolutionary War was not “citizens in an uprising,” but a revolutionary government with a formal military. The word “uprising” is infelicitous.

Everybody’s happy. Let’s deep-fat-fry this thread and give thanks.

151

Well said.