Why does everyone think democracy is so great?

[Sovaal]

Never once did I say that. I haven't forgotten the rapes, massacres, and other war crimes committed by the Nazis, but that didn't/doesn't give the Soviets the right to rape their way across Eastern Europe, or turn the countries they "liberated" into little more then vassals.

Take a moment to pause. Does any of it surprise you?

That a rapidly rising power would bully it's neighbors and allies into submission? No, not really, just standard realpolitik.

[Camicon]

Pfffft hahahahaha! No.

I'm entirely convinced Mushroom is either screwing with us for fun or a performance artist.

Or both.

Whichever it is, I'm impressed.

If that was true then they wouldn't block people who regularly call them on their shit.

[Gloriana Americana]

It's still a bit biased when people focus on Soviet war crimes and ignore the ones the Wehrmacht committed, pretending like only the SS were the monsters.

Never once did I say that. I haven't forgotten the rapes, massacres, and other war crimes committed by the Nazis, but that didn't/doesn't give the Soviets the right to rape their way across Eastern Europe, or turn the countries they "liberated" into little more then vassals.

No, you're right, and I'm not saying it does.

It just irks me to see people deliberately ignore the Wehrmacht crimes - especially on the Eastern Front - acting as if they were all like Rommel when in fact quite a lot of them were not.

It's historical revisionism. Of course the Red Army committed a vast amount of atrocities, but that doesn't excuse the ones perpetrated by the Wehrmacht which were ironically the primary driving point for the atrocities committed by the Red Army (and also because Stalin didn't give a fuck)

You're right, the USSR wasn't communist. No nation has ever been, save for maybe the Paris Commune, and even that's a stretch.

It was state socialist, just barely.

I-i never got this far before..

There, there.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

Take a moment to pause. Does any of it surprise you?

That a rapidly rising power would bully it's neighbors and allies into submission? No, not really, just standard realpolitik.

It's unreal man.

[Plzen]

-snip-

Because democracy is pretty okay at giving a lot of people a somewhat satisfactory life.

---

Some general responses for what seems to be frequent points against democracy:

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There is no objective measure of who is the best ruler, and so a subjective measure will have to do.

"Best" simply means most good. What is "good"? If my intention is to be healthy, then jogging is very good. But if my intention is to be comfortable, then jogging is very bad. You cannot determine the "goodness" or "badness" of actions or objects unless you have a purpose for which that action or object might be good or bad for, and the question of what the purpose of politics is does not exactly have a clear answer.

Because political decision making does not have an inherent optimum, and which course of action is more preferable than the others really depends on people's personal desires and preferences, it is in the public's interest to ensure that the public can affect political decision-making.

If a decision can affect me, I have a reasonable interest in making sure that somebody will represent my opinions and my desires in the decision-making process. Regardless of whether I deserve to or not (and who decides that anyways?), I will be rather angry if decisions that affect my life are made without consideration of my preferences and desires.

---

Regardless of what kind of government system is in place, the people who rise to the top are the people who wish to be at the top for the sake of being in the top. People who want to good for their nation never become national leaders in a democracy, sure, but that's also true for pretty much any other type of republican governance you care to name.

In terms of non-republican governance... do you really want your national ruler being determined by whose womb a person happened to be born from?

At least in a democratic regime you need to have some kind of approval from the general public whose lives are being put in your hands before you get to sit at the big chair.

---

Yes, empirical data tells us that democracies are more stable than autocracies.

"On average, at any given time during this century, 31% of the human population has been living in fully democratic nations."

"Consider this instead: Nothing lasts forever, and almost every nation on the planet has seen at least one violent or unconstitutional change in leadership over the past hundred years. In fact, there are only a handful of countries that have had an unbroken chain of legitimacy since 1900 -- the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, probably Canada -- all democracies."

Source.

So to summarize, democracies in the 20th century represented an average of 31% of human population but represents every single one of the 4 states that did not have an illegitimate transfer of power. 5 if you include Canada, although it's questionable how much Canada was an actual country at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Compared to other types of regimes, democracies are actually really stable. The myth that democracies are somehow an unstable mean of government is just that - a myth.

[Len Hyet]

Hm. What's wrong with a fascist dictatorship. Hm.

Hmmm.

Gosh IM you've got me there. As a Jew I obviously have no reason to dislike the idea of a fascist dictatorship.

Nazi Germany wasn't a true fascist state, it got caught up in some unrelated race war/extermination agenda. It wasn't anymore Fascist then the Cambodia was truly Communist.

A true Fascist state would have put the good of the nation, the whole nation, first.

It's not real Fascism AND it's not real Communism in the same post? Pinch me I must be dreaming

[Infected Mushroom]

Nazi Germany wasn't a true fascist state, it got caught up in some unrelated race war/extermination agenda. It wasn't anymore Fascist then the Cambodia was truly Communist.

A true Fascist state would have put the good of the nation, the whole nation, first.

It's not real Fascism AND it's not real Communism in the same post? Pinch me I must be dreaming

I'm using Communist standard debate tactics to defend Fascism.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

It's not real Fascism AND it's not real Communism in the same post? Pinch me I must be dreaming

I'm using Communist standard debate tactics to defend Fascism.

It's a stupid debate tactic.

[Infected Mushroom]

I'm using Communist standard debate tactics to defend Fascism.

It's a stupid debate tactic.

if it works for communism, then why not?

[Plzen]

-snip-

It depends on your definition. What "communism" consists of really varies. On one hand, you have the orthodox Marxist-Leninists that insist that "communism" is a stateless, communal society of which no historical example exists. On other other hand, I know at least one American (personally) that thinks Obama was a communist and modern Sweden is a communist state.

If the two of you do not agree on a common definition of what "communism" is, then obviously the two of you debating how good communism is will be utterly unproductive.

Personally, I consider a state to be "communist" if it justifies its regime by quoting Marxist literature. Whether they quote correctly is irrelevant, but the state should have some kind of socialist and/or anarchist economic structure. So by this metric the USSR and pre-reform PRC would count as communist states, even if they don't quite meet the standards set by orthodox Marxists. I think this is a viable definition, and certainly a very commonly used one (at least in the English-speaking world).

[Sovaal]

It's a stupid debate tactic.

if it works for communism, then why not?

It doesn't work for communism tho.

[Traditional Conservative Hellas]

The international resource grabbing by the American Empire ruined the meaning of democracy, that grabbing is foolishly named "Globalism"

[Plzen]

The international resource grabbing by the American Empire ruined the meaning of democracy, that grabbing is foolishly named "Globalism"

You mean, a great power has compromised the sovereignty of other countries for its own selfish gain, using the technologies and socio-diplomatic systems available at this era?

That has happened literally whenever any power has ever emerged as a great power for some time.

[Traditional Conservative Hellas]

The international resource grabbing by the American Empire ruined the meaning of democracy, that grabbing is foolishly named "Globalism"

You mean, a great power has compromised the sovereignty of other countries for its own selfish gain, using the technologies and socio-diplomatic systems available at this era?

That has happened literally whenever any power has ever emerged as a great power for some time.

Uniquely for the US, without its stealing it would never achieve such a high rate of international power, because it couldn't and it still can't, cut the international trade for a month and watch it crumble.

Like Colonial Britain, the country itself cannot produce anything because it's relying on imported goods from its colonies, one of the main reasons of its fall too,

Watch the US follow papa Britain's path

[Soyouso]

I love how I specifically specified that I don't think an ideal society should waste it's time bullying groups that are not automatically harmful (ex. the Jews), and that I am not a Nazi, and that there is no master race belief in my nationalist beliefs, and that I am not even a socialist (nazi = national socialist), yet people still act like I want to revive Nazi Germany just because I support fascism. Geez, at least disagree with the actual points I made.

It's pretty clear from both my post here and my OOC factbook which is literally linked in my signature that I'm not a Nazi, and my beliefs aren't exactly the kind of thing edgelord skinheads would take kindly to. I literally made an inb4 about that very subject and people just read the first few sentences of my post just to say exactly what I addressed with the inb4. This kind of thing gets extremely annoying after a while.

The fascists who like the political ideal without the racism, invasions, etc. really need a new name for it....

Planning on creating a new sect, actually.

[Sovaal]

You mean, a great power has compromised the sovereignty of other countries for its own selfish gain, using the technologies and socio-diplomatic systems available at this era?

That has happened literally whenever any power has ever emerged as a great power for some time.

Uniquely for the US, without its stealing it would never achieve such a high rate of international power, because it couldn't and it still can't, cut the international trade for a month and watch it crumble.

Like Colonial Britain, the country itself cannot produce anything because it's relying on imported goods from its colonies, one of the main reasons of its fall too,

Watch the US follow papa Britain's path

Hardly. The Romans relied on expansion for outside resources more then pretty much any other country, and the British lost pretty much all power with the independence of their colonies. And for the IS collapsing without trade, thats pretty much all countries.

[Crylante]

It's a stupid debate tactic.

if it works for communism, then why not?

The reason that socialists will say that the USSR, Vietnam, China, the DPRK etc aren't socialist is that socialism has always been defined as a system of economic management where the means of production are owned by the workers. Many people, me included, no not consider these regimes socialist, despite them identifying as such, because they have dictatorial governments, which place more control of the means of production in the state officials, in stead of the workers. Also, Vietnam and Cuba have opened themselves up to private enterprise, making them certainly not socialist. My aunt lived in Vietnam for a year working for a private company, I think that pretty clearly makes Vietnam not socialist.

Meanwhile, the definitions of fascism I can find often centre around the state having a central role in controlling society and a strong sense of nationalism, and I can see that in the states you are denying are fascist.

[San Lumen]

Openly calling for a fascist dictatorship

I suppose the honesty is refreshing at least

What's wrong with fascist dictatorship?

It promotes unity and progress (rather than partisan hatred). Politicians can focus on how to improve the country and not on how to win the next election through false promises.

You can't be serious. Give me an example of a dictatorship that has actually improved a country and the politicians actually care about the country.

Go look up Eritrea, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus and get back to me on how wonderful dictatorship is.

[War Gears]

What's wrong with fascist dictatorship?

It promotes unity and progress (rather than partisan hatred). Politicians can focus on how to improve the country and not on how to win the next election through false promises.

You can't be serious. Give me an example of a dictatorship that has actually improved a country and the politicians actually care about the country.

Go look up Eritrea, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus and get back to me on how wonderful dictatorship is.

To be fair, Eritrea did very well under Fascist Italy, much better than what later happened under the democratic Allies.

[San Lumen]

You can't be serious. Give me an example of a dictatorship that has actually improved a country and the politicians actually care about the country.

Go look up Eritrea, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus and get back to me on how wonderful dictatorship is.

To be fair, Eritrea did very well under Fascist Italy, much better than what later happened under the democratic Allies.

However today its a very repressive regime. Free Press and free assembly is non existent and and there are no elections. In fact they've never been held.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

It's a stupid debate tactic.

if it works for communism, then why not?

It doesn't work for communism, because it's a stupid debate tactic.

[War Gears]

What's wrong with fascist dictatorship?

It's a collectivist regime which tries to control all aspects of the citizen's life, and stifles new ideas about political governance because they conflict with the dictator's power. State corporatism was repressive and only really contributed to the increase in Italian steel production at the expense of agrarian production, for the purpose of producing armament for wars.

It promotes unity and progress (rather than partisan hatred). Politicians can focus on how to improve the country and not on how to win the next election through false promises.

No, it says that it promotes those things. In reality it encourages corruption and petty infighting due to a lack of checks and balances and the caprice of the dictator. Politicians lie, and I'm not convinced that liberal democracy is the future. But Fascist dictatorship is not either. It is a relic of the 20th century like it's brothers anarchism and communism and should remain dead.

[War Gears]

To be fair, Eritrea did very well under Fascist Italy, much better than what later happened under the democratic Allies.

However today its a very repressive regime. Free Press and free assembly is non existent and and there are no elections. In fact they've never been held.

My point stands that Fascist dictatorship improved Eritrea, you wanted an example and were given one.

[Esotana]

Because it's the only way we can have the opinion of the people represented in government, and allow the populous to truly control society. A dictatorship no matter how good the leader is, will never truly know and experience the concerns of the people. Instead of denouncing democracy for a fascist wankistan, we should work on ending the current state of fake bourgeoisie democracy for a true council democracy where the people are really under control.

[Publica]

Dictatorship isn't inherently bad. It's problem is that it needs a good person to be in charge, and that person won't be there forever. Direct democracy has a different problem, in that it is hugely inefficient as thousands of ideas all needed to be after upon. Representative democracy is a balance; it's efficient enough to work, while also preventing incompetent or malicious people from gaining too much power.