Very true, and a mistake many make in considering (including the US and UK in Iraq). One of the classic problems of any tyranny, is that its not just power that's in the hands of the privillaged - its knowledge.

Take South Africa and Zimbabwe - Its not the political change per se that's f**ked these countries, its the pander to their supporters (like the murder of farmers to give the farms to people who had no idea how to run a farm). In situations like this, its more important to keep things running, than to be popular.

You can't just hand over the management of a power station to a crony, and expect it to work - You have to have the knowledge that makes it work - and in South Africa especially, the failure of the ANC to realise that they would have to work with White South Africans to achieve a functioning country, meant a brain drain, as those white South Africans left, because a) they were endangered b) they could see the writing on the wall c) they had the kind of skills that appeal on immigration forms.

The problem of revolutionaries is that they don't really have a plan for what comes next (usually because they're to focused on staying alive long enough to have a punt at running things).

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

Just to clarify a few things on "free speech" protections:

- You have them in the U.S. but not in, say, the U.K or Germany where racist and/or pro-Nazi speech is banned.

- In the U.S. you have constitutional protections from censorship by the government only. If you came into my home chanting "Blood and Soil" then I am well within my rights to kick you out. Also, the silencing of deliberately inflammatory speech has been upheld by the Supreme Court - so not all speech is protected (although I doubt Nazi chants would rise to the level of censorable speech).

- In the U.S. you have a constitutional right to free assembly. Again, this is only protection from the government, so you can't freely assemble in my living room. And, of course, because anyone can freely assemble in public spaces, that means that everyone can freely assemble in public spaces. So, if you want to hold your Nazi rally without interference from counter-protesters, find a private venue that will let you in (Mar-a-Lago has some openings in its calendar that came available very recently). Otherwise, in a public space like Emancipation Park, Charlottesville or the Boston Common (it's in the effing name) everyone is allowed to show up and speak their minds.

We don't do possession; we do defense and attack. Everything else is just wa**ing with a football.

Right, I am now going to say this bluntly.

It is you and one other person that has ruined Nick's posts for the rest of us. By constantly blindly attacking 'the left', whatever that means, you have become a damned nuisance. Get a life, think independently and lay off with all this party political nonsense. Stop forcing others into defending their positions ad nauseum.

This is not a political forum, it is a site to debate all sorts of things.

You are sufficiently boring to have really started irritating me. You hijack almost every post and are totally one-dimensional. Perhaps I am on my own in this case.

Edited by Mapletree (21 Aug 2017 8.27pm)

I don't know much about Romania but I did notice from a lot of teaching of eastern Europeans that the dynamic between male and female was more traditional than the UKs. Kind of like being in the eighties again....I prefer it to the dour asexual PC parade of currently approved British culture.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

And you don't think that the reverse is equally true.

Constant insinuations of racism. Blinkered ideological nonsense justifying every position.
Constantly claiming the moral and intellectual high ground.

You get what you give.

So what you are saying is that the government can't shut you up, but that private citizens can?

Are you sure that's how it works in practice?

As for the 'banning' of 'racist and/or pro-Nazi speech'....on the surface in the UK and elsewhere I see grounds where some speech touches on race within an 'incitement to violence' context and I agree with action being taken on those grounds.

However, the problem is that once you have these realities on the books it's open to massive abuse....political agendas work to identify all speech they can crowbar in as 'racist' or 'Nazi' speech as a method of intimating people and closing down opposite opinions.

You have people in the US doing this now....that guy standing up and saying that 29 percent of America are Nazis and that it means that we can fight them and win.

It's loony tunes central in parts of America.

Edited by Stirlingsays (21 Aug 2017 9.17pm)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)