Rusty Shackleford

You being good for people is secondary, less important parameter.

Based on what?

I guess if your country managed to survive for 74 years before collapsing on its own, then we can conclude you were not effective.

What country are you talking about?

It doesn’t mean their cars are good.

Exactly my point.

Basically, if you or a group say “I’m in control forever because I’ve always been in control and my goal is to always be in control forever.”, at the very least, your reasoning on why you have to be in charge has no bearing on whether you being in charge is good for people, effective at the tasks of governance, or even objectively good for yourself.

A similar argument to what you’re saying would be, “Ford makes the best cars because they have been making cars the longest.” It’s demonstrably false, to use your words.

A dictatorship may last for millennia, but the duration of a system of government’s continuity is not the sole, nor most important, attribute when judging its legitimacy, utility, merit for all its citizens.

You’re taking a teenage edgelord’s, or if serious, a sociopath’s dictator’s position, as if that’s something to aspire to be.

Evidence I was talking about were links to books about primary historical sources that I could read.

If the Roman Republic, isn’t democratic enough for you, then, as I said, we could talk about the Athenians. Or perhaps the Iroquois League.

But what was your point again? The merit and utility of a system of governance is measured by how long it lasts, or something to that effect?

In your words,

2. Democracy is shit.

and,

Demonstrably false.

in response to (paraphrasing), “other systems of government other than democracy are worse.”

So, educate me and everyone else, then. What are you talking about, and send some links to back up whatever that is.

Suprisingly to everyone, happily married, brah.

FilthyHookerSpit

Discount for you, but on one condition:

You gotta spit on all of my tankie “friends” over at lemmy.ml, hexbear, and lemmygrad and say, “This service was prepaid, and I made a handsome profit, ultimately at your expense and exploitation.”

So you were there and knew everything about it?

Look, Mr./Mrs. iAmATotallyReasonablePersonAndNotAnInsufferableCunt, are you going to provide some evidence of whatever point you’re trying to make, or should we do this tit-for-tat some more?

Either way, no sweat. Happy to yell at the clouds with you until the heat-death of the universe.

The argument is that they were a democratic republic.

several popular assemblies of all free citizens, possessing the power to elect magistrates from the populace and pass laws; and a series of magistracies with varying types of civil and political authority.

If you’re referring to direct democracy, I suppose we could consider the Athenian democracy, though I think there are other examples from different regions on the planet through antiquity.

The ancient Roman Republic, lasting from the overthrow of the kings in 509 BC to the establishment of the Empire in 27 BC. This constitution was characterized by a Senate composed of wealthy aristocrats wielding significant influence; several popular assemblies of all free citizens, possessing the power to elect magistrates from the populace and pass laws; and a series of magistracies with varying types of civil and political authority.

• 482 years

There may be longer ones (e.g. Ancient Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese dynasties), but the Habsburg’s rule is listed from 1282-1918. The Habsburg monarchy, also known as Habsburg Empire, or Habsburg Realm (/ˈhæpsbɜːrɡ/), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities that were ruled by the House of Habsburg.

• 636 years

If the question is “What’s the difference?”, then, as is tradition, we must figuratively clear our throats before such discourse with the well-worn adage, “It depends.”

As a disclaimer, much of this content was copied from Wikipedia and arranged in a way to support my opinion; none of this should be taken as Gospel. This is not financial advice. And please accept my apologies for the tedious length.

If we limit our terms’ definitions to their etymological roots, then:

Democracy

• The term democracy first appeared in ancient Greek political and philosophical thought in the city-state of Athens during classical antiquity. The word comes from dêmos ‘(common) people’ and krátos ‘force/might’.

• In a direct democracy, the people have the direct authority to deliberate and decide legislation. In a representative democracy, the people choose governing officials through elections to do so. The definition of “the people” and the ways authority is shared among them or delegated by them have changed over time and at varying rates in different countries.

Republic

• The term originates from the Latin translation of Greek word politeia. Cicero, among other Latin writers, translated politeia into Latin as res publica, and it was in turn translated by Renaissance scholars as republic (or similar terms in various European languages). The term can literally be translated as ‘public matter’. It was used by Roman writers to refer to the state and government, even during the period of the Roman Empire. The term politeia can be translated as form of government, polity, or regime, and it does not necessarily imply any specific type of regime as the modern word republic sometimes does.

• A republic, based on the Latin phrase res publica (‘public affair’ or ‘people’s affair’), is a state in which political power rests with the public (people) through their representatives—in contrast to a monarchy. Although a republic is most often a single sovereign state, subnational state entities that have governments that are republican in nature may be referred to as republics.

• Representation in a republic may or may not be freely elected by the general citizenry. In many historical republics, representation has been based on personal status and the role of elections has been limited. This remains true today; among the 159 states that use republic in their official names as of 2017, and other states formally constituted as republics, are states that narrowly constrain both the right of representation and the process of election.

• The term developed its modern meaning in reference to the constitution of the ancient Roman Republic, lasting from the overthrow of the kings in 509 BC to the establishment of the Empire in 27 BC. This constitution was characterized by a Senate composed of wealthy aristocrats wielding significant influence; several popular assemblies of all free citizens, possessing the power to elect magistrates from the populace and pass laws; and a series of magistracies with varying types of civil and political authority.

Plutocracy

• A plutocracy (from Ancient Greek πλοῦτος (ploûtos) ‘wealth’ and κράτος (krátos) ‘power’) or plutarchy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income. The first known use of the term in English dates from 1631. Unlike most political systems, plutocracy is not rooted in any established political philosophy.

• Some modern historians, politicians, and economists argue that the U.S. was effectively plutocratic for at least part of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era periods between the end of the Civil War until the beginning of the Great Depression.

• President Theodore Roosevelt became known as the “trust-buster” for his aggressive use of antitrust law, through which he managed to break up such major combinations as the largest railroad and Standard Oil, the largest oil company. According to historian David Burton, “When it came to domestic political concerns, TR’s bête noire was the plutocracy.” In his autobiographical account of taking on monopolistic corporations as president, Roosevelt recounted:

…we had come to the stage where for our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.

On paper, we (the U.S.) are a not a direct democracy, though we do vote directly about some issues via referendums; our constitution codifies the extents and limitations of legislation, enforcement, and jurisprudence of our laws and our rights as citizens.

We directly elect representatives to carry out the business of governance from local, state, to the federal level as our country’s political union is a federation of States that simultaneously retain their autonomy via the parameters outlined within the constitution and cede ultimate authority of jurisprudence to our bicameral national assembly (in our case, Congress) and Supreme Court.

In practice, due to regulatory capture, political expedience and corruption, and the realities of our global economic expansion, our country is effectively ruled by 2 factions of a political class of wealth that use faux-populism to maintain their power and influence.

What a sad and absurd irony of history.

My favorite president, Abraham Lincoln, was a Republican. I think a secular federal republic is a pretty decent form of democratic governance. The “Radical Republican” wing of the antebellum Republican Party were the most ardent and vocal supporters of abolition in Congress.

Now the very word is tainted by association by these scumbags.

We await patiently for your demonstration.

Required reading in my history class at a public school.

we’re a constitutional federal republic, with democratically elected representatives, but a plutocracy, in practice

• me, a political science pedant of highest/worst order

In this sense,

As long as there continues to be people willing to stand up to authority, question orders, reject capital as their God or master, think for themselves, for their community, and not embrace hatred as an ideology, punk will not die.

… I agree.

I don’t like the music anymore, though.

goFuckYourself(Microsoft)

deleted by creator

Hi! For context on why I’m speaking to this, my blood is Indian; specifically, from a Śrīgoḍ Brahmin clan that migrated from present-day Kashmir to present-day Gujarat, India. As I was typing out an explanation from what I learned as a child, I realized the Wikipedia abstract does a far better job than what I could do:

Aryan (/ˈɛəriən/), or Arya (borrowed from Sanskrit ārya), is a term originating from the ethno-cultural self-designation of the Indo-Iranians, specifically the Iranians and the Indo-Aryans. It stood in contrast to nearby outsiders, whom they designated as non-Aryan (*an-āryā). In ancient India, the term was used by the Indo-Aryan peoples of the Vedic period, both as an endonym and in reference to a region called Aryavarta (Sanskrit: आर्यावर्त, lit. ‘Land of the Aryans’), where their culture emerged. Similarly, according to the Avesta, the Iranian peoples used the term to designate themselves as an ethnic group and to refer to a region called Airyanem Vaejah (lit. ‘Expanse of the Arya’), which was their mythical homeland. The word stem also forms the etymological source of place names like Alania (*Aryāna) and Iran (*Aryānām).

Although the stem arya may originate from the Proto-Indo-European language, it seems to have been used exclusively by the Indo-Iranian peoples, as there is no evidence of it having served as an ethnonym for the Proto-Indo-Europeans. In any case, many modern scholars point out that the ethos of the ancient Aryan identity, as it is described in the Avesta and the Rigveda, was religious, cultural, and linguistic, and was not tied to the concept of race.

In the 1850s, the French diplomat and writer Arthur de Gobineau brought forth the idea of the “Aryan race”, essentially claiming that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were superior specimens of humans and that their descendants comprised either a distinct racial group or a distinct sub-group of the hypothetical Caucasian race. Through the work of his later followers, such as the British-German philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Gobineau’s theory proved to be particularly popular among European racial supremacists and ultimately laid the foundation for Nazi racial theories, which also co-opted the concept of scientific racism.

In Nazi Germany, and also in German-occupied Europe during World War II, any citizen who was classified as an Aryan would be honoured as a member of the “master race” of humanity. Conversely, non-Aryans were legally discriminated against, including Jews, Roma, and Slavs (mostly Slovaks, Czechs, Poles, and Russians). Jews, who were regarded as the arch enemy of the “Aryan race” in a “racial struggle for existence”, were especially targeted by the Nazi Party, culminating in the Holocaust. The Roma, who are of Indo-Aryan origin, were also targeted, culminating in the Porajmos. The genocides and other large-scale atrocities that have been committed by Aryanists have led academic figures to generally avoid using “Aryan” as a stand-alone ethno-linguistic term, particularly in the Western world, where “Indo-Iranian” is the preferred alternative, although the term “Indo-Aryan” is still used to denote the Indic branch.

Okay, I think I get the comment now; thanks.

Got it.

Sorry, just trying to curate my feed; nothing against you specifically.