How do you justify Germany's existence in the first place?

Great Debates
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Right. I in no way justify what happened in America. But, the simple fact is that the people who carried it out are long gone. In Israel, the same problems are still occuring. Same goes with the Kurds. The issue is pressing because they are being slaughtered and oppressed. You don’t hear nearly as much about the Sikh independence movement because there aren’t attrocities being commited against the Sikhs (more or less)

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Not debating the right of Jews to live there or move there. Just debating the right to set up a Jew only state (letting others live there if they are nice)

Well. In Israel it wasn’t just done through buying land. Many of the Palestinians were forced off or scared off through terror tactics. In fact that still goes on with settlements. For more on my views go read everything I posted in the Israel thread.

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warriner: *Of course, Iraq didn’t exactly deliver a diplomatic note. Iraq invaded Kuwait. I hope you can see the moral distinction. *

Sure, of course. I just used “competing claim” to indicate some vigorous and formal challenge to sovereignty. My point is just that once such a vigorous challenge is mounted to any nation-state, the loyalty of outside observers to the existing UN-approved national boundaries can start to disintegrate.

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oldscratch wrote:

Vatican City was a byproduct and reaction to Italian unification in the 19th century. Various Italian governments of one stripe or another have resented it at times.

Switzerland? Hardly, it’s composed of three distinct linguistic and national cultures (Swiss German ~75%, French ~15% and Italian ~10%). Switzerland picked up extensive French and Italian holdings in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. Switzerland had to quell separatist movements in the Francophone areas in the 1840s. They still don’t get along particularly well.

England? Or do you mean the United Kingdom? Ever heard of ‘devolution’?

Australia? The political struggle between the aborigines and the newcomers ain’t over yet.

Japan? Probably the best of your examples, but Japan has played at ethnic expansion. Okinawans weren’t particularly eager to be annexed by Japan.

Was this in 1948? The British for good reasons and bad tightly restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. The Jewish population of Israel wasn’t created as a consequence of its creation as a state.

And as for post-1948 immigration, Israel controls its immigration policy as does any other state. Remember that original quote on German immigration policy:

Is Germany any less legitimate because it encourages ‘alien’ people not born in the area for hundreds of years to immigrate?

Andrew Warinner

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This thread is obviously an outgrowth of the thread I started called “How do justify Israel’s right to exist in the first place?” Therefore, I feel I have a certain amount of authority, at least in regard to the intended nature of the debate. It was never, as some have implied, a question about the dissolution of Israel. I was merely asking, as I tried to clarify later in that thread, what would be the ethical/utilitarian justifications for Israel’s creation in 1948 (or 1917, the time of the Balfour Declaration). I got a few useful answers, but just a few out of well over a hundred. It’s a purely theoretical excercise, one which I had hoped wouldn’t offend anyone. Well, that’s out the window.

To answer the OP: the place called “Germany” has, for as long as people can remember, been occupied primarily by ethnic Germans. In the 19th century, the many principalities in the region were joined together, with the general support of the populace. Very simple.

CKDextHavn has “inquired” as to why the question of existence is only asked of Israel. First of all, it has been asked of several countries; I think that South Vietnam was the most appropriate comparison given so far. Second, one would have to admit that Israel’s would be a unique situation with any religious/ethnic group. It’s the only nation created largely before a significant portion of it’s intended populace got there, and on a spot that was heavily populated with the non-intended populace beforehand (people who, as it turned out, would become second-class citizens on what was once their land). To top it off, this all happened within relatively recent memory. That’s why the question gets raised regarding Israel.

On a more personal note:

Since it was I who first raised this question here, using the word “existence”, I can’t help but feel targeted by this attack. In effect, I’m being called an anti-semitic, bigoted, wanna-be Hitler.

Well, CK, I have only one reply: You and your ignorant sophistry can go fuck yourselves.

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Also, the Ainu. The Japanese only came over to the islands from China relatively late in the game. Some stories have them as gasp a lost tribe of Israel, who migrated through Asia. When the Japanese got to the island, IIRC, they repressed the indigenous peoples there, the Ainu.

Before this degenerates into MPSIMS or the Pit, I think it would make it a great thread :

“Which nation on the planet is the most guilt-free?”

I’d start it, but I don’t think I have that much to contribute.

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An interesting thought, but sadly mistaken. Having started an earlier thread on the same subject doesn’t give you any particular “authority” in this or any other thread.

Then the question you should have asked was “Why was Israel created in the first place?”, not “How can it justify its existence?”

And an “ethnic German” is somebody from Germany, right? A perfect circle.

Good point, well made. I find angry outbursts much more persuasive than cogent arguments.

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Tom,

Regarding Germany: You know what I meant, and I think you know that mine is a valid answer. The people in that region, who eventually formed a unified country, share a common language and cultural history. They are “Germans,” not because they are from Germany, but because of this shared language and heritage. We refer to them as Germans because it is the most universally recognized way to refer to the group of people who happen to live in Germany. If they were all in front of us and we could point to them, “those people” would substitute nicely. Another, broader, phrase would be “teutonic peoples.” (sp?)

Regarding the thread: Granted, “authority” was a poor choice of words. Even if this were still in the “Israel” thread, I wouldn’t have “authority” over the debate (not in my mind, at least). Still, there’s no denying that this thread is an extension of the same debate that sprang up in my thread. Since I was being implicated, indirectly, as supporting the dissolution of Israel (and, further, as being a Jew-hater), I thought it only prudent to point out what was originally intended. Despite the title of my thread (which, by the way, was ambiguous; it wasn’t, “How do you justify Israel’s continued existence?”, and the inclusion of “in the first place” certainly alluded to what I meant), I think my posts within (all two of them) make what I was asking asking clear.

Regarding my uncouth message to CK: I think he deserves it. I’m fully aware that it won’t contribute anything to the debate or to the pursuit of knowledge in general. Others had already tried to dissuade him from his paranoid, illogical position using sound logic, but he refused to see their side of it. That’s fine, but to me his position was offensive, not just paranoid and illogical. In retrospect, I should have relegated my criticism to the Pit, but it was a spur of the moment sort of thing. So,

To CK: I stand by my choice of words, but I admit that this was not the place for them.

To everyone else: My sincerest apologies.

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I’m starting to wonder whether I am the only one taking the topic of the thread at face value (after all, there is an Israel thread already, and one is probably more than enough.)

Anyway, it is perfectly valid to call the pre-Germany Germans Germans, since they were called that back then as well. This, btw, once included the Austrians, who also speak German, albeit with their own accent and peculiar words. The fact that Austria is a separate country today is a fluke of history dating back to the power struggle between the Prussian Hohenzollerns and the Austrian Haspburgs in the 19th century.
Germany thus has plenty of validity as a nation state. A more controversial question is the “right of return” for “ethnic” Germans scattered across Eastern Europe. Most of them cannot even speak German (well), and have a very hard time when they arrive in Germany. On the other hand, there are many second- and third-generation Turks (and others) who are not given the German citizenship without difficulty.

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Varlos,

Fair comment on the thread and your uncouth message to CKDH, but I think that “in the first place” is open to a number of interpretations, one of which is “before we proceed to consider anything else”. As in “Israel must justify its continued existence before the Israeli interest can legitimately be considered in the peace process”.

Regarding Germany, I know what you mean (or what I think you think you mean), but I genuinely disagree with the use of descriptors like “ethnic German”. There are a number of reasons, both moral/political and logical:

If you are going to use the description “ethnic Germans” to justify the existence of Germany as a state, you need some concept of German ethnicity which is independent of the German state, otherwise the argument is circular. I think you would be very hard-pressed to come up with one. Religion is out, since the Germans don’t share one. Language is out, since a lot of first-language German speakers are not Germans (a fair proportion of the population of Strasbourg, for example).

I know this is not the sense in which you intended it, but the distinction between “ethnic Germans” and others was one of the main drivers of the Nazi Holocaust. It was also behind Hitler’s justification of the invasion of the Sudetenland.

I think if you scratch the surface of these concepts of ethnicity, I think they fall apart pretty quickly.

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Trying to group people into categories using anything other than strict geography is very difficult. Race and ethnicity work horribly. Language works better, but not perfectly. Let’s use that, just for this example, with the proviso that it will work less precisely with most other nations/languages.

If we just take “Germans” to mean: “those who speak, as a first language due to their place of birth, German,” we get a group of Germans with two pertinent characteristics: (1) They have occupied, for as long as history records, the area that lies more or less within current German/Austrian borders, and (2) due to their lack of a language barrier, they have more in common culturally* with each other than they do with non-Germans. That is, they have the same bedtime stories, they watch the same television shows, they read the same popular books, etc. This is not universally the case (Hogan’s Heroes is a popular TV show in Germany, for example), but it is generally the case.

People tend to form nations around this very sort of cultural/language organization. If one assumes government to be valid in the first place (I’ll be using that phrase more carefully from now on), then this would seem to be a perfectly valid justification for nationhood. There are others, to be sure, but I think this works; if it doesn’t, then Britain, France, Spain, Italy, India, etc. have lost their claims to sovereignty (soveriegnty?) as well.

  • = “Culturally” is another one of those tricky words that can mean the wrong thing. We’ll just keep it to “shared history/oral tradition” for our purposes, yes?
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Yes, that is the whole concept of a nation-state. Of course this concept can be taken ad absurdum, and demogogues have been able to arbitrarily use “ethnic” criteria to keep people out of these states, and ultimately to attack them. Keep in mind when discussing Germany that until 1933, some of the most ardently patriotic Germans were Jewish. Then the definition of being German was changed by the Nazis.

Certainly, the nation-state creates just as many problems, if not more problems than it solves. I have little sympathy for that system at all. But if the ethnic nation is to serve as a guideline for creating independent countries (think about the name “United Nations”) then Germany certainly qualifies, and much more so than Switzerland, Belgium, Nigeria and practically all other African states.
As for Strasbourg and Alsace, there are indeed many German dialect speakers there, but many (most?) of them think of themselves as French these days and are bilingual, if not French-only speakers. At least that was the impression I had when I was there last.

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Varlos,

I can see what you’re getting at, and it has some intuitive merit, but I don’t think it holds up to scrutiny. For example, by your argument Germany should include the whole of Austria, most of Switzerland, parts of the Czech Republic and Polanmd and the Alsace.

The Thill,

If by “that”, you mean Vardos’s concept of ethnicity, this is arrant nonsense. The USA is the most obvious example of a nation state with no coherent internal ethnicity, but there are others (Belgium, South Africa, China, arguably the UK). If you mean something else, I’m not sure what it is.

That is exactly my point: they were both Jewish and German.

Again, this is exactly my point: they are German speakers who are actually French. This challenges Vardos’s concept of a nation state based on language and territorial contiguity.

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Tom,

Well, these are particulars you’re talking about. I never said that language barriers were the end all be all of where borders should be, merely that being bunched together and sharing a common language is pretty good justification for sovereignty. Strasburg, parts of Switzerland, Austria etc. are not part of Germany for various, also legitimate reasons. If I were really arguing what you imply that I am, I would have to argue that the U.S., Australia, and Canada should still be part of England. There are other legitimate ways to justify nationhood (the U.S. story is that it was escaping British tyranny), which means there are legitimate reasons for redrawing borders after the fact. Like I said, language is not perfect in this case or any other, but it works pretty well. We can start with that and move on to the specifics (Austria, etc.)

I’m still confused as to what you think the answer would be. How would you justify Germany’s existence (or any nation’s)? Are you just an anarchist giving me a hard time?

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Basically, I wouldn’t. I don’t think that nations should have to justify their existence (nor should people). I am happy just to accept that Germany is a nation, with the borders it has, the political system it has, and so on. Same goes for Israel. As the OP points out, this is not a question that is ever seriously asked of any nation other than Israel, and it seems absurd when you do. How would you justify the USA’s existence? After all, it was originally established as a haven for slave-owning tax dodgers.

I realise there are problem cases where it’s not clear whether something is a nation or not (parts of the former USSR, the Balkans), but Israel is clearly not one of those cases, it is a de facto nation state by any objective standard.

If you’re going to create a new nation (USA, Israel, Pakistan, Republic of Ireland) then I recognise that at that point you need some justification for what you’re doing, and I believe that the debate was had at the time when Israel was created. But once it’s been done, there’s no point in going over it again and again unless you’re proposing that the nation should be destroyed.

As a historical question, “Why was the State of Israel established?” is perfectly legitimate. As a moral / political question, “How do you justify its continued existence?” (though I realise that isn’t what you meant) implies that ending its existence is an option and is therefore mildly offensive.

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Alright then. There’s not much for me to say, since all I was talking about was a theoretical/historical excercise. There may not be any point in going over it again and again, but I don’t see any harm, either. In the German case, I think there was a justification for it’s creation at the time, for example. That’s all.

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I think there’s no harm if you ask the question in general terms, but as CKDH pointed out it is pretty much uniquely asked of Israel. There’s nothing wrong with an employer asking his employees what right they have to keep their jobs, provided he doesn’t only ask the Black people or the women.

Also, I think that it can be pretty offensive since it carries the underlying assumption that the country’s right to exist is in question. I’m sure there are plenty of Americans who would take offence to somebody seriously asking what right the USA had to exist. Look at all the fuss over flag burning. For that matter, look at the overwhelmingly vituperative response to any poster on this board who makes any negative comments about the USA (try doing a search for a poster called Mary Hart’s Legs, or bj0rn)

I’m not saying the question should never be asked, I’m saying that, as a moral / political question it is totally pointless (unless you’re seriously talking about abolishing the State of Israel) and as a historical question it has to be handled sensitively.

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(1)

Hardly. At least no more or less pointless as all of political theory. Questioning the creation of Israel and other countries, if we can come up with some answers, helps us to avoid repeating our mistakes, as well as showing us how we achieved our successes. To call it pointless is to say that Plato, Hobbes, Locke, etc. just frittered their lives away on meaningless twaddle. If that is what you’re getting at, then I guess we’re just going to have to disagree.

(2) Also, I really should reitterate that the question is not asked only of Israel. Several examples of other countries were given throughout this thread. Besides, Israel’s is a unique case (for reasons I pointed out 3 or 4 posts ago). To use your own analogy, you can’t ask just the women to justify how they got their jobs, but you can ask the guy who appears to have gotten his job because he’s the boss’ son. Hardly a perfect analogy, but neither was yours.

(3) Finally, there’s no point in people getting all jumpy about this (not that I’m the picture of tranquility, but still). It’s not like a bunch of angry Poli. Sci. majors are going to march into Tel Aviv and hand it over to the Arabs. The same goes for those who take their American citizenship just a bit too seriously. There’s defending one’s viewpoint and one’s country, and then there’s being a hyper-sensitive jerk (By the way, “vituperative”: great word). I’ve never seen the posters that you mentioned, but I’d be willing to bet that even they didn’t accuse the America-bashers of wanting to commit genocide.

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Agreed. I was talking about questioning its continued existence. As I said in my earlier post, I don’t see anything wrong with asking why it was created in the first place.

Not at all. Philosophy is not about asking random questions for the sake of it, and the kinds of questions addressed by most of the great philosophers were rooted in the political realities of their day. Leviathan is a case in point (the contingent right of kings in the middle of the Civil Wars), as are Locke’s arguments about private property at the time of the Enclosures.

In both cases they were arguing for or against something that was genuinely on the political agenda. It strikes me as disingenuous to question Israel’s “right” to exist and then to say that you are not seriously entertaining the idea that it should be destroyed. It would be like Locke adding a final chapter that said “Of course, all this is purely theoretical and I’m not really proposing that the Commons should be enclosed. It’s just an intellectual exercise.”

This is essentially the difference between philosophy and an intellectual parlour game.

IIRC, that was about the only thing they didn’t accuse them of. For the record, I don’t share CKDH’s view that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism and I haven’t accused anybody of anti-Semitism in this thread.

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[qoute]It strikes me as disingenuous to question Israel’s “right” to exist and then to say that you are not seriously entertaining the idea that it should be destroyed.
[/quote]

On a larger scale, we’re not really discussing Israel for Israel’s sake. Israel, or rather the grounds for its creation, is being considered as an examplein statehood, in nation-making. Since it is a unique case, it serves this puropose particularly well. How many historical examples did Machiavelli (or anyone else) use to support their ideas? In doing so, were they necessarily speaking of present day pragmatic solutions to germane issues? Of course not; in most cases, whether or not their example was still a relevant one was largely irrelevant, in as much as it was only an example.

I think we’re gettng closer to common ground. I can feel it.

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Moses led a group of Jews through the desert for 40 years. Moses dies. The Jews become a very effective army. They did not just inhabit the promised land, they conquered it by wiping out entire villiages. Their own version of genocide.

I certainly do not mean to be down on the Jews, but lets not think they have a squeaky clean past.