I don’t think that’s the logical conclusion to his claim. It’s more like the Germans crying “we were just following orders” after WWII. As a people, the Germans allowed Hitler to rise to power, build huge armies and conquer most of Europe while persecuting minorities like Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals.
The United States OTOH reached a point where we felt that owning other humans was so egregious, we were willing to fight a war against ourselves to rectify it.
** EVERYONE!**
No more charges of bigotry. It does nothing to promote the actual discussion.
Stick to the actual points you feel you must make without resorting to personal comments about other posters.
Ibn Warraq, the next time you have to make a point that has nothing to do with race or ethnicity, then don’t use an analogy that relies on race or ethnicity to be useful.
[ /Moderating ]
Nationalistic crap.
The point is the same.
The Iranian people aren’t being oppressed by “themselves” but by a ruling elite just as black South Africans were being oppressed by the ruling elite of South Africa and the Jews of Auschwitz were being oppressed by the ruling elite of the camps.
Again, based on your logic, Black South Africans could have overthrown the Apartheid government anytime they wanted to and the Jews in the camps could have thrown out the Germans whenever they want.
Look, does anyone think that the East Germans of 1986 wanted to live under a dictatorial rule while the East Germans of 1994 wanted to live in a democracy?
No, the East Germans of 1986, along with most Central and Eastern Europeans were oppressed by an elite who ruled by force.
Hell, do you think my grandparents or the Iranians I’ve met tortured by Savak wanted to be ruled by the Shah?
No, they didn’t have any choice because they lived in a country where really horrible things happened to people who objected to the Shah and where they were monitored by a secret police force that was on the look out for the slightest threat to the Shah’s regime, and, if anything, the Islamic Republic, while in many ways granting more freedom, are even more rutheless when it comes to dealing with those they see as threats to their rule.
Edit: Sorry Tom, I was typing this up when you put up your mod note.
Well, they’ve had over 30 years of self-rule to re-establish democracy, if that’s what they wanted. Shall we wait another 30 to give them time to get their act together?
Good for you. With your bilateral perspective, I’m sure you can assure me that message boards like this one where atheism, gay marriage, abortion, women’s rights and so forth are routine fodder would be protected by law in Iran, as it is in the U.S. I’m sure you can tell me with bold and honest confidence that if the issue was put to a vote, the Iranians would never even consider muzzling this board and the people who post here.
You can do that, right? Iran, bastion of freedom and democracy, right? If someone starts a “Ask the guy who was born into Muslim family but abandoned them and their religion when they wouldn’t accept his gay marriage” thread, he should feel just as safe and free to talk in Iran as he would in the U.S., right?
Perhaps you misunderstand my objection. I don’t want them voting away my rights, out of the understandable concern that the people in these countries don’t have the concept of individual rights to any useful degree. Let them establish democracies and keep them for 20 years, and get used to the idea that individuals have rights that governments cannot take away, and I’d consider sharing a vote with them on some issue that concerned their country and mine.
Assuming, of course, that such votes are useful. That hasn’t been established as yet.
Truth be told, I don’t much care what happened in Iran that led up to the 1979 revolution. I see that since 1979, Iran has not become a democratic state in any meaningful way. Quite the contrary, in fact.
If it’s your contention that each of these countries has established democracy, I point out that:
East Germany was unified with the democratic West in 1990.
Poland held its first post-Soviet-era election in 1990.
South Africa’s electorate voted for a negotiated end to Apartheid in 1992.
Iran had a decade or more head-start on all of these. Are you calling Iran a democracy? If you are not, what’s holding them back?
In any case, to pick Poland out as an example, they (tentatively) earned my trust when they got membership in NATO and the EU. Let’s see Iran do something like that. Let’s see them establish and maintain a democracy of their own before I’d consider sharing any aspect of the future of my democracy with them.
Since it’s only been about five years since an Iranian was stoned to death for adultery, I’m not holding my breath.
You clearly have no idea what I feel.
That assumes that all cultures are equal and compatible. Democracy doesn’t work across cultures, only within cultures. To have a reasonably democratic global state, we would have to have a global monoculture–something which could only be achieved through the most brutal repression imaginable, assuming it could ever be achieved at all.
Now, this is interesting. Are you finally waking up to the fact that multiculturalism is a threat to gay rights?
Ok, I’ll drop it, but please don’t tell me that Bryan’s point had nothing to do with “ethnicity”.
When he very specifically claims that he doesn’t want people from “slug-brained theocratic and/or dictatorial backwater with no traditions of freedom”(which as Grumman pointed out is pretty clearly code for 3rd World Muslim countries) it very clearly involved ethnicity which is why both myself and AK(who differ in quite a few ways) objected to the idea that because of where we were born and where our families were from the votes of our parents shouldn’t count.
If someone started screaming about the idea of the US giving the vote to refugees from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam and that by doing so the US was “devaluing my vote by making it the same as that of someone from some slug-infested third World shit hole” no one would hesitate to say he was making a bigoted comment.
Note, I am not accusing Bryan of being a bigot, but merely making a bigoted comment.
Miller and Grumman certainly felt that Bryan was making comments about Muslims I don’t see why it’s surprising that I and others did.
Nationalism isn’t “crap”. It’s one of the dominant forces of the world, one that can be used for good as well as for evil.
A ruling elite, whose power comes from the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, policemen and civil servants at their command, people who are no different from the Iranians being oppressed - people who could stand up tomorrow and say “no more”. Just like their brethren did in Egypt.
Blaming the leaders is the coward’s way out. Leaders only lead because someone consents to follow them.
I don’t trust my country but I trust the world even less.
Well, just to throw a monkey wrench into Warraq’s calculations:
Turkey (majority Muslim) gets a tentative yes (I have some misgivings regarding their occasional military coups).
North Korea (majority distinctly nonMuslim) gets a definite no.
As for Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (and any number of African and Central/South American nations), I’d have to do some reading on their recent histories (say, 25+ years) and make a judgement call on whether or not they look like they’ve established or are establishing something akin to a stable democracy. Heck, I’m concerned about Mexico, and they’re way ahead of Iran and Saudi Arabia.
For now, I’d be provisionally comfortable with a democratic federal organization of some sort (with VERY limited powers) that included NATO and EU members, since much of the democratic vetting has already occurred. Even then, I’d have to wonder what benefit such an organization could be to Canada.
How can you claim that? How do you know if rest of the world, or even the majority of the world, doesn’t care about cruelty, etc.?
One of the problems in the world is lack of education in underdeveloped countries. With a global government, we may be able to dramatically increase the quality of education in these areas, thus making those areas more ethical and civilized. I think one of the reasons unfair practices and ideas originate is due to the lack of education leading to less civilization and less sense of ethicality. A global government may be able to fix these problems and make the world in general more civilized, which as a result are more likely to vote to abolish unfair and unethical practices and ideas.
What if the (hypothetical) global government made free education mandatory across the world?
I am not exactly sure how you can assume that the other world doesn’t care about such problems, and I think that if the education problem is taken care of, then we will have a more civilized and ethical world in general resulting in an increased likelihood that people will care about those unfair and unethical practices and ideas. A global government may (notice how I am saying “may” a lot because very little is nearly certain at this point) be able to do this.
By the standard you’re setting it took Poland and East Germany almost 50 years of “self-rule” to “establish democracy”.
I do think it’s quite interesting that you see Iran under the rule of the Ayatollahs as an example of “self-rule” but you clearly don’t seem to feel the same of Russia, Poland, and East Germany under the Communists.
I’m also a bit puzzled because earlier you listed North Koreans citizens as a group that you wouldn’t trust with the vote.
Why is it that you don’t seem to blame East Germans, Poles and Bulgarians for being ruled by Communist dictators, but you feel that about North Koreans.
Er, you claimed that you could point to “actual events” that proved that the citizens of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea would immediately vote away their rights.
So far you haven’t come up with anything other than to show that they’re ruled by brutal elites who use the secret police and the military to enforce their rule.
You also seem spectacularly ignorant of the Green Revolution which probably would have succeeded had the Iranian government been as weak as South Africa’s Apartheid government or various European communist countries in the 1980s.
What the fuck are you talking about?
How has the government of Iran had “a decade or more head-start than all of these three”.
World pressure managed to topple the brutal elites who ruled East Germany, Poland, and South Africa.
If world pressure does topple the Ayatollahs you’d have a point, but it hasn’t so you don’t.
The Iranian people have no more say over who rules them than South African blacks or East Germans or the 1980s and to pretend otherwise is asinine.
No. It has nothing to do with ethnicity and you wanting to be does not change that. Several “3rd World Muslim countries” share ethnic associations with countries (both heavily Muslim and mostly non-Muslim) that are democracies.
He was discussing culture, you changed it to race.
Now drop it.
Are you describing Iran, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, or Apartheid South Africa.
I ask because you could just as easily be describing all of them.
By this logic Black South Africans, East Germans and Bulgarians of the 60s and the 70s were cowards because they “consented” to their rule.
And if the Iranian government was as weak and incompetent as Mubarak, had, like Mubarak, no access to oil money, and was under the kind of pressure Mubarak was, then they’d have been thrown out a few years earlier during the Green Revolution.
Let’s say, as a scale experiment, we joined the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China into a single democratic political entity. We’d have a country with about 1,669,423,000 people. One of the first issues we’d address would be setting up a new government to run our country. And about 75% of the population would vote to have a legal system based on the Chinese model rather than the American model.
I wouldn’t see this as an improvement. And I think it’s a valid example of the problem you’d face if you expanded the experiment to cover the entire world.
“ethnicity” is all about “culture”. In the examples I used, people justified taking away the votes from California blacks because their “culture” was so homophobic.
I don’t see how that’s dramatically different.
You’ll notice he’s making his feelings about Iranians quite clear and displaying massive hypocrisy between his judgements about them and about East Germans and others.
I am no longer accusing him of making bigoted comments but he is continuing on his crusade to somehow prove that Iranians are culturally inferior and not deserving of the vote.
I don’t see why I shouldn’t be offended by such comments.
Once again, if someone was complaining about the US taking in so many “immigrants from third world South East Asian shit holes with no tradition of freedom” would you object to someone using the term “bigoted” to describe such claims?
For the record, out of respect to you and the other mods who are giving me room and(I wish to make it clear I’m not accusing of bias) I’m no longer using that term to describe his posts.
Then respectfully, you’re a huge hypocrite, because they grew up in regime vastly more brutal than the Iranian one with no tradition of freedom or democracy.
Based on your logic, they shouldn’t have gotten the vote.
Personally, I don’t think Earth has a chance in hell of establishing a world government until we have somebody else to fight. I think having a “them” is an important factor in establishing an “us.” So as soon as we make contact with a hostile alien race, world government here we come!
50 years ago, Poland and East Germany were under Soviet domination. What are you talking about?
Okay, I blame the Soviets for having self-rule and not using it to establish freedom and democracy. I’m willing to cut some slack to their various conquered/occupied nations.
You’re not grasping the important distinction. As far as I’m concerned, these countries can have “the vote” regarding their own affairs to their hearts’ content. From my outsider’s perspective, it looks to me like their exercise of “the vote” (when they have it at all) isn’t increasing or safeguarding freedoms within their own countries. Rather, for them “the vote” is a pretty corrupted process offering the negligible fiction that they don’t live under a theocracy/autocracy/dictatorship/whatever.
I have no confidence their use of “the vote” is meaningful in their own countries - should I not be concerned at the idea of making their votes apply to my country?
Well, because the East Germans, Poles and Bulgarians stopped being ruled by Communist dictators 20 years ago. If North Korea overthrows Kim today, I hope they’ll be in far better shape 20 years from now.
Well, I guess I should be sorry that that’s not sufficient for you but… I’m not.
You’re using a failed attempt to establish democracy as evidence of democracy, or… something? Anyway, I look forward to the Iranians trying something like that again, and it sticking, and it lasting… to the point where twenty years from now, Iranians have freedoms and a strong resistance to anyone, especially other Iranians, who would try to take them away.
Right backatcha. What do you think “world pressure” is? Iran has certainly been subjected to it, in the form of economic sanctions. Poland and East Germany got their freedom because the imperial power controlling them collapsed and enough of their citizens wanted it (not all of them, mind you, even now) and were willing to work for years to maintain it.
Iran’s chance started more than a decade earlier, but okay, let’s ignore the head start and see Iran put in similar sustained effort over the next 20 years. Saudi Arabia, too. Lots of places, really. Personally, I figure 20 years is a bare minimum standard for democracy - one election or one summer of uprisings isn’t going to do it - democracy takes a sustained effort and a lot of maintenance. It gets fumbled away pretty easily. Even more so, I expect, if you get to vote on something that benefits your country but fucks over someone else’s, which is a valid concern on matters of “world government”.
Is it your contention that only world pressure can bring about change in Iran, that the Iranians themselves aren’t the critical element? They overthrew the Shah (who had support from a superpower), but can’t overthrow the Ayatollahs (who has the support of… well, pretty much nobody outside Iran)?
At what point am I supposed to start feeling confident about sharing a ballot box with them?
Come on, Alessan. You’re a lot smarter than that. Iran is a pseudo-democracy where the Council of Guardians (unelected clerics) pick and choose which candidates can run for office. Sure, the Iranian people (ie, those actually opposed to their form of government, which isn’t anywhere near 100% or even 75%) could rebel, as the Syrians have been doing for 2 years now, but it’s unclear that they would win.
The Iranian people don’t have any real say in what the government does, short of open, armed rebellion.