From: gary@isis.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand)
Subject: Re: WORLD GOVERNMENT
Organization: Climate and Global Dynamics Division/NCAR, Boulder, CO
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 04:41:13 GMT

km> Ken Mcvay
gs> Gary Strand

gs> Again, I ask, what's to prevent the WG Army from using it's power to run
gs> roughshod over the weaker nations? Absolute power corrupts absolutely, as

km> What's to prevent the American military from using it's power to run
km> roughshod over the civilian population? Answer: Absolutely nothing..except,
km> <perhaps> that nebulous concept you Yanks call democracy. 

  You forgot millions of gun owners and tens of millions of guns. Anyway, the
  US had a long tradition of not having a large standing army, until after
  WWII. Also, US local police forces have never been under the control of
  the central government. Lastly, the country is sufficiently homogeneous in
  its culture and beliefs that most soldiers would realize that their job
  would be to kill fellow Americans, and most would avoid doing so, I hope.
  Contrast this with the XUSSR or China, where there are many different and
  disparate cultures. Both countries have used troops from distant areas to
  quell uprisings. For example, the Chinese troops who massacred the Tianen-
  men Square protestors weren't local troops, they were from far away. I
  suspect the same lack of restraint would hold if Turks were told to kill
  Thais, or Germans were told to kill Zaireians, or Americans were told to
  kill Vietnamese. There are too few common strings of culture to attach the
  above groups, thus enabling dehumanization. Not that being familiar with
  one's enemy doesn't preclude killing him, but it's made much easier when
  one can call the enemy a "gook" or a "Kraut" or a "Nip." Basically, there
  would have to be a great deal of work done towards getting everyone to
  accept and adopt common values, and I just don't see that happening, at
  least not anytime soon, and not within 30 years as Alex Bunker believes.

km> Do you really have so little faith in your own government process that it's
km> ultimate failure is accepted as a matter of course?

  Actually, I'm counting on it. Governments don't last forever anyway. Also,
  modern democracy has been around too short a time to judge its ability to
  handle major crises, of the sort that WG advocates say WG is capable of
  solving.

  Again, I ask, will the WG Army have nuclear weapons?

gs> Who will control this mass media? What about censorship? Freedom of opinion
gs> leads to difference of opinion, which is the definition of disagreement.

km> You're right - democracy is an outmoded concept, and it just won't work...

  For large culturally-disparate groups, I suspect the answer is yes. For
  smaller units, it works just fine. Remember, we are talking uniting more
  than 5 billion people here. That's an awfully big bunch of folks.

km> For ten points, illustrate how your lack of faith is supported in the 
km> United States, where little, if anything, works.

  Simply look at how the US Bill of Rights has been "progressively" stamped
  out. It's been done under democratic principles too. I don't think there's
  anything about democracy *per se* that prevents it from becoming corrupt
  and dysfunctional.

km> Add thirty points if you can prove that "Zionists" control the media.

  Take your thoughts about me being some neo-Nazi and shove them. Why don't 
  you ask leftists how they can prove multinationals control the media?

gs> Name one subject that tens of millions of *randomly-selected* people agree
gs> upon. Americans can't form one opinion on something as narrow as abortion;sgs> why do you believe 5+ billion people (and increasing) will ever agree on
gs> the substantive issues?

km> By your logic, America can't work, because folks just can't agree on
km> anything... who said that they have to in order to make WG work?

  Forget the little details. Name one common political belief that a majority
  of the world's peoples agree upon, *and* are willing to let others share a
  different belief without feeling the need to kill, imprison, or hassle
  them for their belief. The biggie, that all humans are equal, certainly
  isn't held by anything close to a majority, and until you get enough people
  to agree to that, the WG doesn't stand a chance.

km> Everything you say is equally true of the western democracies, which
km> obviously cannot work, given your logical assumptions about their flaws...

  Nope. By the fact that they are "Western", and are democracies, mean that
  there are core cultural beliefs that the vast majority of the people share.
  Are the Chinese "Western" and democratic? Not by a long shot. 

gs> How much force is this nascent WG willing to expend on 10,000 Bosnias?

km> What do you Yanks do about states that won't go along? (Show how that 
km> proves that democracy cannot function, and get ten more points).

  We have a civil war. Remember reading about what was going on in the US in
  the 1860s? There was a large cultural gulf between the USA and CSA, and
  war resulted when the CSA decided it could strike out on its own. Such a
  war would be minor compared to what a WG could to do an entire region that
  decided to quit the game.

km> I give up. You're right - we're all too stupid to co-operate with each
km> other, and the failure of the western democracy proves it.... 

  Perhaps what I've said above will make my position more clear, since you
  were operating from an incorrect set of assumptions to start.

km> either that, or what we are really talking about here is the worst sort of
km> western paternalistic racism, i.e. we believe in democracy as long as it
km> isn't so democratic we can't control it anymore.

  I don't doubt that any and all nations and peoples are capable of creating
  a democratic system. Ascribe your beliefs to someone else. However, there 
  needs to be so much work done to overcome ethnic, religious, tribalistic
  and other means of basing hate that I don't see a true WG coming to be for
  a great long time. And, like I said, you can't force people to become dem-
  ocratic. They have to develop it themselves.


--
Gary Strand                      Opinions stated herein are mine alone and are
strandwg@ncar.ucar.edu            not representative of NCAR, UCAR, or the NSF
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc