Classism

Not Helping.

edited 31st Oct '10 6:26:31 PM by Roman

Look for Moroccan Bread Riots.

@Roman: I mean if poor people actually try to start a revolution, well, maybe things are bad enough where we need one. That's a big part of why it's in the constitution.

And before you go OMG, the military'll curbstomp us! I don't know about hypotheticals, but Iraq could fit in a Illinois. The whole idea of a military is really powerful enough to subdue a reasonably large, spread out, armed guerilla populous, seems very far fetched.

Actually, one of the Founding Fathers - a certain Mr. Thomas Jefferson - was a big fan of armed rebellions precisely because he believed (erroneously or otherwise) that the military could curbstomp them.

Wonderful is the effect of impudent & persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independent 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure.

^ Yeah, but everyone else thought he was pretty crazy... That and "uninformed" is not something we can say about current rebels.

edited 1st Nov '10 1:43:01 AM by RawPower

Revolutions have a habit of leaving massive heaps of corpses with nothing to show for it but another oppressive regime.

So yeah, I'm not a fan. If anyone grabs the revolutionary flag then outside a few special instances I'd probably garrote him, bury him in the backyard and tell everyone to never speak of this again.

...well, after I'd tried all means of dissuading them of course.

edited 1st Nov '10 1:45:14 AM by GameChainsaw

Ah, you Anglo-Saxons and your prejudice against revolutions. You know, the French don't have nearly as bad an image of their revolution as you do. They are aware of the downsides, but, all in all, they felt it was pretty awesome, and that it marked the dawn of Liberalism and Democracy in Europe, as well as a wonderful period of military might for France itself. It's like the entire country went Hot-Blooded for twenty-five years, after the wasteful stagnation of Louis XVI and before the spineless immobilism of the Restoration. Which they ended up blowing up anyway.

The Revolution was so important to the Frech, terms like "the Republic", as in, the public thing, have taken on a strong character of secular sacrality. And, while the French Revolution didn't achieve everything it set out to do, it achieved some nifty things while it lasted, and it set the basis, the precedent, for changes that would only take place by the end of the X Xth century. Of course there is a price to pay for being so much in advance of one's own time!

For another example of awesome that is usually forgotten, see the Paris Commune.

So, where would you put the upper limits of the revolution's costs? Y'know, making it not worthwhile.

I think this is a question only The Gut can answer.

It is a question that demands very careful analysis by the revolutionaries.

Ok, maybe revolutions can pay off in the long term, but they have a habit of killing off a lot of good people in the process along with the scuzzholes. I guess reading about the Russian and Chinese revolutions has almost permanently soured me to the idea. Though admittedly the Roman revolution seems to have been the one thing Caesar got right; the system needed reform and the senate was never going to bow to it without a dictator.

And then they pulled ZA WARUDO on him...

What does this pokemon have to do with the thread?

I mean they kinda made all his efforts futile and useless, stopped time and stabbed him like seventy times over, dropping a metaphorical steamroller on history, maybe with a wry smile on their faces.

Allow me to show you the original, you meme-ignorant

[[youtube:qbArvIqZzkI&feature=related]]

edited 1st Nov '10 7:40:44 AM by RawPower

It felt to me like Caesar's reforms of the Roman government were mostly about reforming it in such a way that it had Caesar on top.

One thing does not prohibit the other.

It is a question that demands very careful analysis by the revolutionaries.

Ok, maybe revolutions can pay off in the long term, but they have a habit of killing off a lot of good people in the process along with the scuzzholes. I guess reading about the Russian and Chinese revolutions has almost permanently soured me to the idea. Though admittedly the Roman revolution seems to have been the one thing Caesar got right; the system needed reform and the senate was never going to bow to it without a dictator.

My personal preference is political evolution rather than revolution because in the long-run they both end at the same point but one has less bloodshed than the other. The only problem is that sometimes social impetus leads to revolutions and so you get that bloodshed.

But I'm more curious as to your statement about the Chinese revolutions. I mean they were all against extremely broken and corrupt regimes, what did you really expect to happen? I'm not sure how it can turn you sour to the idea, there was no other option left for the populace.

I find it rather hard to believe that the Chinese systems of the time were worse than what Mao put the country through.

You don't know much about the histoy of China, do you?

No, can't say I do to be honest. But Mao killed tens of millions. I find it rather hard to believe any previous ruler could have been even worse than that.

Actually, the An Shi Rebellion lowered census counts by 36 million people, though it's in doubt.

And if you're counting not just war but also mismanagement, well.

edited 1st Nov '10 1:18:07 PM by Tzetze

There was also the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Backward Forward, you know, things like that.

EDIT: Which feeds into my "you may end up with something worse" argument.

edited 1st Nov '10 1:21:53 PM by GameChainsaw

Yeah, Imperial China has reached Imperium Of Man amounts of Genocide By Incompetence And Megalomania.

No, I know that Mao killed a fuckton of people, but I mean, China has a long history of death.

As for who he actually replaced, I don't know much. But they had oppressive warlords in the northwest, and Taiwan was pretty oppressive itself for a while.

To be fair, when you have the largest country the really big screw ups are amplified.

EDIT: Though even with that, man, what is it with big countries and sending the death toll through the roof? Even proportional to their size?

edited 1st Nov '10 1:26:01 PM by GameChainsaw

I suspect it has something to do with the fact that bigger countries are exponentially harder to govern well.

Governments tend to have extremely poor economies of scale.