Fact check, Plz.

[Thurnez Isa]

The problem is MMIX is the argument is not from the point of debatable history. Obama's statement is a political argument about history... those are two different things that require two different standards

[Cain]

In Oslo, Obama said, "America has never fought a war against a democracy."

I'm thinking this isn't quite right.

If we exclude states with rigged voting and dubious election practices, however, are there any instances?

LMNO
-Military history fail.

Does subversion count as a war?

Also, define democracy.  Most women didn't have the vote until this century, for example.

[Thurnez Isa]

Also, define democracy.  Most women didn't have the vote until this century, for example.

my reading is media definition

[MMIX]

I understand your disagreement but *you can't base a definition of democracy on what seems to be an equitable sharing of power in contemporary society.  I would disagree that the definition I gave means that everything is "democracy", but it does mean that you need to be aware of what kind of "democracy" you are looking at in any given situation. * that's generic "you" btw not you personally

so explain to me how there was any suffrage in Britain at 1812

I'm just saying that while I agree that there was nothing even remotely approaching what in the modern world would be accepted as universal suffrage there was a class of people who were  entitled to elect members to a Parliament which represented the political power in the country. That, limited or not, is suffrage.

I didn't say universal... just enough of the populous that you could safely say that that a good portion of the decision making progress is out of the nobility's hand, at least in theory.

You know what? That's not a theory I would want to try to prove . . . you know what I'm saying?

However I would also say that the nobility actually didn't have a monopoly on power before the Civil Wars and increasingly less after the Civil Wars had decimated their numbers and bankrupted many of them. It was money and bloodlines that ran through the political classes but increasingly urban businessmen and entrepreneurs got their feet under political tables and their arses on the benches of Whitehall. They in turn represented  the solid middle classes, you had to own land or have a decent income, to have a vested interest in the decisions which PArlaient took. And to a great extent their decisions were about a fairly limited range of State business. Who shall we tax/jail/declare war on, and how much/how long/ and when?

You also seem to be setting the bar rather high for what constitutes "democracy" are you related to Obama in any way, I hear his Dad may have looked towards Canada one day . . .

[Thurnez Isa]

I understand your disagreement but *you can't base a definition of democracy on what seems to be an equitable sharing of power in contemporary society.  I would disagree that the definition I gave means that everything is "democracy", but it does mean that you need to be aware of what kind of "democracy" you are looking at in any given situation. * that's generic "you" btw not you personally

so explain to me how there was any suffrage in Britain at 1812

I'm just saying that while I agree that there was nothing even remotely approaching what in the modern world would be accepted as universal suffrage there was a class of people who were  entitled to elect members to a Parliament which represented the political power in the country. That, limited or not, is suffrage.

I didn't say universal... just enough of the populous that you could safely say that that a good portion of the decision making progress is out of the nobility's hand, at least in theory.

You know what? That's not a theory I would want to try to prove . . . you know what I'm saying?

However I would also say that the nobility actually didn't have a monopoly on power before the Civil Wars and increasingly less after the Civil Wars had decimated their numbers and bankrupted many of them. It was money and bloodlines that ran through the political classes but increasingly urban businessmen and entrepreneurs got their feet under political tables and their arses on the benches of Whitehall. They in turn represented  the solid middle classes, you had to own land or have a decent income, to have a vested interest in the decisions which PArlaient took. And to a great extent their decisions were about a fairly limited range of State business. Who shall we tax/jail/declare war on, and how much/how long/ and when?

You also seem to be setting the bar rather high for what constitutes "democracy" are you related to Obama in any way, I hear his Dad may have looked towards Canada one day . . .

yes for reasons explained before

[Requia ☣]

Also the Utah war, not terribly violent but they removed the elected governor* of Deseret (now Utah) at gunpoint in order to install one of the president's cronies.

*Also cult leader

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I love how this turned from a simple question into a mad brawl.

[Halfbaked1]

So, to sum up ,for anyone who would care to actually look at facts.

The United States has attacked other Democracies in the past, will probably do so in the future if they disagree with us, and the President has lousy fact checkers and speech writers.  Oversimplification it is, but at least i am not being a pedantic whiney baby.

On another note, the good news is that everyone at the speech probably had no fucking clue about any history that either did not directly involve their country/family or self, so Smiley will get away with his attempt at belaying peoples fears that we would like to have their land for mini-malls.

[Cain]

There is a correlation between democracy and lack of overt war, generally.

The problem is the causes.  Neoconservatives and naive liberals would have you believe it is all because democracies love each other, and when it fails, it is not a Really Real Democracy anyway.  Realists (and some Marxists, what an odd combination) believe it is because democracies are usually technologically advanced, culturally similar and are economically interdependent, making war a losing proposition.  Constructivists believe it is because we have built up a myth of liberal democracies versus totalitarianism of varying forms (central European monarchies, fascism, Communism, Islamist theocracies) that makes us act as if its true.

I fall somewhere between two and three, myself, because the exceptions have mostly involved covert action or have been undertaken to stop a percieved democratic shift towards those ideologies, or was done against nations too small to fight back.  When you consider that the UK and USA have mostly acted in "the national interest" for the past century and a half, all pieties about ethics aside, and that most government elites believe their own propaganda, two and three make the most sense.

[Triple Zero]

If we exclude states with rigged voting and dubious election practices, however, are there any instances?

Of democracy, you mean?

[Cain]

You'd probably have to ask LMNO.  Since he wrote it.

[BabylonHoruv]

I'm going to go with the example Roger offered (the Phillipines)  as a pretty clear case of Obama being wrong.  That means that whether or not Britain was a Democracy in 1776 or 1812 is irrelevant.

We were also at war with the People's Democratic Republic of Vietnam.  Maybe not the best example of a democracy, but they do have the word Democracy right there in their name.  People's Democratic Republic of Korea too.

[Requia ☣]

North Korea is a democracy now?   

[Thurnez Isa]

Dictators are people too

[MMIX]

Dictators are people too

you know the old joke
"One man One vote - its a great system so long as you are the one man with the vote"