M.2

I was going to slam you for being intellectually lazy, and for not reading my very first post thuroughly, but then I thought maybe you are simply a victim of honest ignorance. Therefore, I decided to explain. You do have a point, since REPUBLIC = REX + PUBLICA = RULE OF THE PEOPLE, and DEMOCRACY = DEMOS + KRATOS = RULE OF THE COMMONERS. These two words mean ethimologically exactly the same thing, except ine is in Latin and the other in Greek. However, in today's usage in politology, these do not mean the same thing. Example: Athens was a pure democracy, whereas Rome was contemporarily a pure republic. Athens was ruled directly by the citizenry, but Rome was ruled by a group of men who were not accountable to the citizenry. But yes, most of the world today takes from both of these systems. Please read the following for the full picture: Pleshttp://www.diffen.com/difference/Democracy_vs_Republic To your comment on Monarchy... no.

I know it is simplistic, but I think you will get what I mean in time. Actually, I would be happy to have a chat/skype discussion with you about this. Or even better, you could have a discussion with Mr.Molyneux. You know he loves this stuff. The reason why so many christians tune in to FDR is that we sense his inner Christian trying to get out. Christians have always considered Aristotle a great thinker, but one who did not get to the end of his journey. We quote him pretty often. Particularly St.Augustine likes to. What I am really curious about is: What gave you the kick to want to explore Morality? What event, what person? And where are you cureently in your journey?

Ah, now I see where you are coming from. I have just checked out your post on How to Live a Good Life. Would you mind me asking how old you are? ...because a lot depends on where you currently are in life. I wouldn't want to seem condescending or preachy in any way, just trying to help... as all skilled philosophers know, the first thing to clear up are Definitions. When it comes to morality, the key question is "what is Good?". That is however a rabbit hole that if you go down, you will either find relativism or christianity. I firmly believe there is no alternative. Anyone who thinks otherwise, has not finished their journey. Even though I was born Catholic, I spent a good 2 years of my life exploring this question.

Wow, ok. Here we go... The first person that comes to mind is Ayn Rand. She was born in the USSR. She could give you a good idea of the Nature of Communism from a secular perspective. If you are interested in how Christians experienced everything, Walter Ciszek is a Jesuit priest who spent decades in the USSR. "With God in Russia" is the book I recommend, but any work of his is brilliant in detailing the rotten nature of the USSR. I am going to have to get back to you on the Christian Revival in Europe. I don't know any good books on that yet. I have written about it on the forum however: Here is the Cathecism of the Catholic Church. Literally everything is in here, so have a blast: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM Anything else I can help you with? What made you so interested in such topics anyway?

Well, I could suggest books, but for that I need to know what exactly you are interested in, and where you are from. Otherwise, any questions you have, Catholic Answers can help you.

A good example are the thousands of Indonesian and Bangla people who moved to the Middle-East as foreign workers, and who now are stuck as effective serfs. The Arabs did not defraud them, nor did they breach contract. It is simply that these poor souls were stupid. Now the arabs would not renegotiate the terms, and they are free not to. It was not rare that monarchs met up at parties and hunting trips. Here again, Napoleon is an excellent example. You can read about how the Habsburgs, the Tsar, the Kaiser, and the British treated him at encounters. The only Monarch who treated him as an equal was the Russian Tsar, since he was an Eastern Monarch, and his measure of legitimacy was not the same as that of Westerners..

With the fall of the Communist block, there was a gigantic "Moral Vacuum" left behind, which had to be filled by something. A massive (sadly immeasurable) resurgance of christianity was seen in Eastern-Eu, with Russia being an extraordinary example. Westerners cannot imagine the thirst that people in non-christian countries have for Truth and Morality. The Orthodox and the Catholics have what we call Sacred Tradition, with the Bible being a part of it. Many people join the Church because they find the Protestant community very lacky without the Tradition, and they don't like the idea that everyone can interpret the Bible the way they please. It causes much disunity and confusion. But the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, having only trivial differences between them, offer great security and unity. Further Reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_tradition

Hi, Plato! I grew up in an atheist country, but I have seen literally hundreds of people convert to Christianity. In fact both my parents grew up atheists, so I get where you are coming from. The biggest issue one may face while researching various religions is that very few religions actually have centralised doctrine. This is why the phrase "not all Muslims" has some truth to it, as there is absolutely no way to know what Islam currently teaches. Same goes for Buddhism, and most denominations of Christianity, and don't even get me started on animism. This is important because certain forms of religion, and within that Christianity, do not exclude atheism. If it is specifically Christianity that you are interested in, your best bet would either be Orthodox Christianity or Catholicism, since they do have a centralised set of doctrine and canon law. I would like to direct you to Catholic Answers. They are the best I found in English who deal with simple questions: https://www.catholic.com/ Pertainig to your question about Jesus: https://www.catholic.com/qa/was-jesus-the-son-of-god-or-just-a-holy-man-and-a-prophet About atheism in mainstream Christianity, yes, there are many who openly state they deny the existence of God, and that they only go to church for the cookies and quality men. And then they wonder why we used to burn heretics.

Remember that a hundred years ago, the terms that the leftists use today used to mean something wholly different. Much like the term "liberal". Luxfelix has covered the Swiss question very thuroughly. Please do not mix up Catholic, Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Greek Catholic and all the rest. Eastern Europe is mostly Roman Catholic and Orthodox. It seems to me that you would have fared very well in the Prussian empire. Or even more so in the Teutonic Order States. I would say that the Order lost its way when it turned into the Prussian Kingdom. They departed from the Church, they ran a military government, and they centralised everything. They invented conscription, public schools, state hospitals and all the rest that we all hate. Or am I misreading something? There used to be an agreement in the olden days between European Monarchs and the Pope that they all have veto power over each other. Meaning that a Pope could only be picked with the full approval of all the Kings and vice versa. This gave an ease of mind to the subjects of the Monarchs, knowing that their ruler was in essence approved by God. About the models, I don't know. There are a million ways to set up a system, as I have made it clear at the very top of the thread. But what a good system does ideally, is to make sure that the Will of God prevails. Or in the case of a republic, the Will of the People. The reason why I don't feel comfortable with a Lassaiz faire state, is that, if I understand the theory correctly, we put too much faith in a "thing" that is supposedly self-correcting. Now that may work, please point me to good examples, but we must acknowledge that it will not work in all cultures. People have a weird tendency to sell their freedoms on the free market, paradoxically making the market not free. A country, and a people is governmed by willpower. A man with a strong will can play any system, as we have just witnessed with Donald Trump. And the will of the "People" will be as unreliable as ever, no matter how free the market is. But please correct me if I am missing something. I love to learn and I live to learn. About Napoleon, yes, with joining the House of Habsburgs, his descendants would have been legitimate royal blood. However, the Pope still could have denied his son the crown of France.

I was inspired to start this thread by the last conversation with Bill Whittle. I would like this to be a thread on which people share movies and TV series that give an accurate depiction of a culture, so that we can learn about them. By "accurate" however, I do not necessarily mean "historically accurate", but rather something that accurately portrays the mentality of the culture. For some reason, such movies are very underrated. I am currently looking for good movies that accurately represent China, Germany, France, Iran, Turkey. If anyone has any ideas, please post. My suggestions: Japan: Outrage and Beyond Outrage. Japanese Yakuza films, directed by Takeshi Kitano. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462667/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1724962/ Russia: The Admiral. Russian Civil War era about White Russian admiral Kolchak. (not the 124 minute version,but the 500 minute version) Most beautiful movie ever. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1542498/ North Korea: The Crossing . About North Korean dissidents who escape through Manchuria to Mongolia. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1133922/ WW2 Japan and Korea: My Way. Most accurate ww2 movie ever. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1606384/

I am thuroughly enjoying this discussion, as you are making me do some serious homework. I hope to hear your full opinion on the topic. Yes, the best examples of democracy invoke the Authority of God in their constitutions. USA, Switzerland, San Marino. In fact, the guarantour of San Marinese sovereignty were the Papal States. And here is an excerpt from the Swiss Constitution: "In the name of Almighty God! The Swiss People and the Cantons, mindful of their responsibility towards creation, resolved to renew their alliance so as to strengthen liberty, democracy, independence and peace in a spirit of solidarity and openness towards the world, determined to live together with mutual consideration and respect for their diversity, conscious of their common achievements and their responsibility towards future generations, and in the knowledge that only those who use their freedom remain free, and that the strength of a people is measured by the well-being of its weakest members, adopt the following Constitution1: " Noteworthy that some post-comminust coutries like Poland and Hungary reincluded the Name of God in their constitutions. About France: France is a mess, and it has been so since the revolution. Napoleon may have been a murderer, but he was a very smart one, as he made great efforts to obtain legitimacy from the Pope. (locking up popes may not have been the best way to go about it) Although he failed to get the blessing of the Pope, he knew very well that his crown would not last long, were not backed up by the Church. As I mentioned above, there are indeed very agreeable democracies in the West. There are of course big differences between, and perhaps we could discuss those in another thread. I don't like talking about AnCap because it hasn't really been tried yet. Maybe I am wrong, but I think we should not go too deep into theoretics. Would you say that your ideal form of government would be an elective, constitutional monarchy? What are the branches of government? What role does religion play? Could you also clarify how you imagine the army would function is said state? Which existing country is the closest to your ideal? I saw you mentioned Pinochet a lot. I love Chile myself.

- San Marino. I wish I could point you in a direction to seek info, but I don't really have a go-to source on this. I started looking into the country in the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia. I have a certain fascination for these tiny, rich, catholic, freedom-loving countries such as San Marino, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Luxembourg, Monaco, Malta, but San Marino is especially interesting since it has kept its national sovereignty employing extremely witty political maneuvering for 1700 years... Like they did against Napoleon, the Pope and during WW2. I respond to the legitimacy question below... I mentioned my background to give a sense of where I am speaking from. My father is mongolian, my mother is hungarian, and I have lived many years in both countries. Although Mongols are something like the 6th on the World IQ list, a liberaly democracy is not a system that works (same with Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, Taiwan). There are a ton of reasons for this. One being that cult of personality is very important to us. We despise our dumb elected officials, who in the end are not accountable for their mistakes anyway. We much prefer to see a visible strong-man whom we are free to love and free to hate. The Americans were wise to know this at the end of WW2, which was why they let the Japanese keep their Emperor. Note: For a brief time, Mongolia used to the only country in history to have a communist dictatorship and a king simultaneously. Legitimacy is anything but a state of mind. It is not for you, nor me to decide. The gods are the arbiters of legitimacy. For something that used to be so self-evident since the beginning of civilisation until a hundred years ago, it is pretty funny that we even question that today. Who gave us the 10 Commandments? God! Where do our rights from the US constitution come from? God! Who gave us the Tenno? The gods! Who gave us the Crown? The Pope! Who gave us the Pope? God! Who gave us the Khagan? The Sky (god)! Who is the Pharaoh? A god! There used to be a certain level of humility in humans a while ago, as we all knew that there are some things that maybe the masses should not decide. You can argue that "god" was invented by big bad dictators who wanted the masses to conform, but quite frankly I am much more comfortable with that lie than the one that says that it is the "people" who rule the nation. In my own humble 20 years old opinion, the closer a government stands to the Church the better. Despite all its sinners, the Roman Catholic church is the only structure on the planet that has actually got its ship together... for 2000 years at that. I cannot trust Islam, as they have no Sultan anymore. I cannot take protestants seriously due to their factional infighting. And I cannot take libertarianism, objectivism, communism seriously either, since all these ideologies were invented by some guy named Joe. I mean... who the heck is Joe?! ...Well exactly! I want my king to get his crown from the Pope, not Joe. All that said, I quote my wise brother: Europeans dethroned their King and abandoned God, hence they don't deserve a legitimate Monarch. At least the Americans kept God.

Rationality is merely a tool, much like language. Do not speak rationally to someone who does not understand it. People who understand rationality are in the minority on this planet. Just looking at IQ distribution, only 40% are above 100. I get error messages in my brain arguing with people at 110. So expecting people to understand rationality would be like demanding that everyone spoke Arabic. Also noteworthy that nobody is truly fluent rational... We aren't machines. There are however countless other ways to get a point across. Emotions, "lizard brain", idealism, sentimentalism, power, force, money, food, music... As Mother Theresa said, "a kind word changes more minds than a smart one." This is how the world works. For good or bad, I don't know.

Hi, Cryptolized! I see this is your first post ever on FDR. Could you explain your position and why you chose to start with this? Could you also answer the following: Is killing always murder? Why or why not? In watching many debates on abortion, I have noticed that in the end the disagreement does not come down to personhood, but to the morality of murder.

What version of Islam are we talking about? And what is it about it that you find in need of fixing? What do you mean by "fixing"?

Although the US was not a monarchy, the founders very much made efforts to make their state "legitimate", by basing the Constitution on the inherent rights of persons bestowed upon them by God. What I am saying is that it is not impossible to have a good system without a monarch. Some of the best years of Hungary was a time period when we had a crown without a king (1919-1945). What many countries did in the past, as you also pointed out, was to import a monarch. Examples: Greece, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Sweden, UK... Not because they did not have competent people of their own in their country, but because a monarch has to be "legitimate", meaning a successor to the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, or to some other papal crown. It is extremely hard to get a population "on the same page" so to speak, and a divided nation always fails, which is why Mr.Molyneux emphasises homogenity so much. There have been however glaring examples when a country was united under clear ideology and strong consensus, namely...Freedom. San Marino and Switzerland being the best examples. I have been studying San Marino for a while now, and I highly recommend reading about it. San Marino is a country that simply should not exist by laws of nature, and for 1700 years at that. Mr.Molyneux has made a presentation on Lincoln, and how he changed the US: Chile, Uruguay and Ireland are countries that got rid of monarchy, but somehow still managed to not go full retard... for now. Why they are exceptions, we can theorise about that. Not sure. Chile is by the way one of those countries that are anything but homogenious, but are still pretty awesome, with a tiny government. Road to monarchy... well, to be honest, I don't know. There is still so much anti-royalist and anti-clerical propaganda to undo.

The branches of government in a democracy are pretty... bull, to be honest. Because the persons in those branches are of the exact same cloth... politicians elected by the mob. The question of whether a monarchy is good or bad is not really about how much power the monarch weilds. Rather who they answer to. Being accountable to the "people" is not a good system, because as we know, the priority of the mob is hardly ever self-preservation. It is the sad reality that the mob is not well versed in geopolitics, economics, and philosophy, therefore a horrible arbiter. (San Marino being the exception) As far as "freedom" goes, it is hard to measure that. I mean... it is clear that the USSR was very low on the freedom scale, but quantifying and comparing the level of freedom among similar countries is not so easy. And it is also noteworthy that some highly developed societies do not care much for freedom anyway, such as Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea. It is however pretty clear that as Western countries systematically began stripping their monarchs of power, their freedom level went down. Examples being Sweden, Germany, France, USA (see Abe), UK, Italy, Mexico, Brasil... with exceptions being Switzerland, Chile, Uruguay, Ireland... You make an excellent point bringing up the family structure. I too like to bring up family as an analogy to government. As far as my meagre experience goes, couples who say things like "we are going to be partners and we will be basing decisions on concensus" tend to become the most disfunctional ones, since democracy in marriage cannot work. Whereas conservative christian couples who accept the primacy (not superiority) of the man, tend to have many happy children, they usually stay together until death....and they vote for less government. Monarchism springs from a deep distrust for the mob, for secular power, and for people who call themselves smart. So...yes...I think.

Is there no third option? If not, why?

Ok, got it. Well, see if this makes sense: Some people, when we look at our politicians, representatives, presidents of today we say ... - Who the hell put them in charge? Why are they telling me what to do? What do you mean the "PEOPLE" put them in charge? Who the hell is the PEOPLE? I don't trust the PEOPLE! Aren't the "People" the ones that caused the rise of Communism, the Nazis, the French revolution, etc? - It is no accident that most democracies in history have failed. If everything is decided by the "people", there are no checks in place. In a traditional monarchy however, there was the Sovereign, who was approved by the Pope, and the Nobles. There was the council of Nobles, who were approved by the Sovereign and the People. ​Then there was the Priesthood, who were approved by the People and the Pope. Whenever Monarchies become unstable, it is when one of the branches of Government, either the Sovereign, the Nobles, the Priesthood, or the People try to overthrow another. In contemporary democracies, every branch of government is controlled by the "people". And that makes some of us feel pretty uneasy.

Thanks for the reply, Crazyi! Yes, as I said at the top of the thread, indeed rarely anything turns out as expected. It is a good hypothesis that homo sapiens outdid the neandarthals because of ideology, but sadly we have no proof of that. I can truly appreciate that you brought up the Mongols, since I happen to be one myself. It is indeed true and respectable that the Mongol empire was tolerant of religions, but in time that proved to be something that contributed to the downfall. Every time Tengrism comes into contact with either Christianity or Islam, it simply collapses as a viable ideology. Now to be fair, there is in fact an ideological warfare going on between the Shamans and the Christians in Mongolia. These two religions have been skyrocketting in numbers since the fall of the Communist regime. Hard to say who would win, but I would not bet on Tengrism. Theoreticals aside, Tengrism/Shamanism is a very very very toxic religion. I cannot stress this enough. It has ruined many families right before my eyes, and my family had a lot to do with it as well..

The other thread was getting crowded, so I decided to comment here. I agree with your case, Iggydad82. Wuzzums made an excellent case on the other thread as well. ​​We would all love it if the US were not in Syria, but the fact is not so. The US has allies in the vicinity, plus they have Marines on the ground as well. And any spark of a war crime cannot be tolerated, and every UN member is obligated to act against it. We can all be wise guys in hindsight, but the POTUS only had a day to respond whilst handling negotiations with China. That is like a milisecond in geopolitics. He acted on the iformation he was given at the moment. If he wouldn't trust his military intelligence, then would he be a bad president. ​I think it was a terrible mistake, but it was the best move he could have made in at that time. If only someone had been so trigger happy during Benghazi...

Sorry, I am not quite sure how you "missed the mark", nor am I sure what you mean by "other countries". I personally would prefer to be under a monarch, and that is why I am a monarchist. When it comes to specific countries, I am open to discussion. Just to be clear, in case anyone missed it, I am from Mongolia and Hungary. I think Mongolia should have dictator, but Hungary should have a monarch.

- I find it a bit of a long shot to equate ideology to species. Can you support that quote with examples perhaps? - If you would like to see the return of Tengrism, you probably have no idea what you are talking about. I shall leave it at that until you make a good case. - It is not that it is low on the charts. I was highlighting the tendency. If an ideology has been dropping double digits in percentage consistently for a couple hundred years, it is most likely failing.

I checked out the site as well. You know, it is usually such thinking that causes messes like Iraq, Pakistan, and the entire continent of Africa. I would never say that a particular form of government is right for everyone. Switzerland is quite well off with its democratic confederacy, San Marino is very well off with its democratic republic, Singapore is doing especially well with its own authoritarian dictatorship, and the USA simply has to be a republican meganation of codependent sovereign states. There is no one-size-fits-all form of government. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile discussing.