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from the When-in-the-course-of-human-events... dept.
Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, described the horror of the authoritarian regime of Gilead. In this theocracy, self-preservation was the best people could hope for, being powerless to kick against the system. But her sequel, The Testaments, raises the possibility that individuals, with suitable luck, bravery and cleverness, can fight back.
But can they? There are countless examples of past and present monstrous regimes in the real world. And they all raise the question of why people didn't just rise up against their rulers. Some of us are quick to judge those who conform to such regimes as evil psychopaths – or at least morally inferior to ourselves.
To answer this question, let's start by considering a now classic analysis by American organisational theorist James March and Norwegian political scientist Johan Olsen from 2004.
They argued that human behaviour is governed by two complementary, and very different, "logics". According to the logic of consequence, we choose our actions like a good economist: weighing up the costs and benefits of the alternative options in the light of our personal objectives. This is basically how we get what we want.
But there is also a second logic, the logic of appropriateness. According to this, outcomes, good or bad, are often of secondary importance – we often choose what to do by asking "What is a person like me supposed to do in a situation like this"?
The idea is backed up by psychological research. Human social interactions depend on our tendency to conform to unwritten rules of appropriate behaviour. Most of us are truthful, polite, don't cheat when playing board games and follow etiquette. We are happy to let judges or football referees enforce rules. A recent study showed we even conform to arbitrary norms.
[...] A small number of us, however, would rebel – but not primarily, I suspect, based on differences in individual moral character. Rebels, too, need to harness the logic of appropriateness – they need to find different norms and ideals, shared with fellow members of the resistance, or inspired by history or literature. Breaking out of one set of norms requires that we have an available alternative.
Would you stand up to an oppressive regime or would you conform?
Do you agree with this analysis? What would you do in such situations?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @12:54AM (30 children)
Looking at the results after 2+ centuries, I doubt that was a Good Thing™
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @01:25AM (28 children)
First democracy of any size since Rome.
Brought the rest of the world the model for a republic based on a written constitution with a democratically elected President who served only 4 or 8 years and a Congress and Judiciary to keep each other in check, plus a written Bill of Rights.
No king, no dictator, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press to criticize the govt.
This was copied by newly independent countries the world over. Not a bad legacy for that alone.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @01:37AM (9 children)
Explain why the President rules by Executive Order while ignoring Congress, ignoring Judiciary, ignoring Constitution, ignoring Bill of Rights, and all the while tweeting propaganda on Twitter just like a dictator.
Maybe you should consider how your precious American Republic became an American Empire instead. The same happened to Rome, did you notice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @01:48AM
I used to think that my life was a tragedy. But now I realize it's history.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @02:32AM (7 children)
Maybe you should consider what an empire is.
No, because the two are very different. For example, the Roman Republic and Empire grew in territory when it was healthy and growing in power, and shrunk when it was in decline. The territory of the US with the minor exceptions of Hawaii and the territories, was at its present territorial extent in 1867 with the purchase of Alaska from Russia. What empire achieves its maximum power more than a century after it has stopped expanding in territory? You won't find it.
I imagine you are instead referring to the global trade/treaty network as the US "empire" even though these benefit other powerful states than just the US, such as the EU, India, and China, all which are comparable or larger in size and population to the US.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @03:03AM (1 child)
You're just proving American Exceptionalism, buddy. Greatest empire the world has ever seen wields power on a global scale without conquering any new territory at all. Cultural empire, economic empire, military empire, legal empire. American law is world law enforced by banana republics and constitutional monarchies alike. American government is the closest thing to one world government that the world has ever seen. America is all.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 11 2019, @03:23AM
But "globalism, yay", right? Be careful what you ask for in government, it's going to be of the monkey's paw variety every single time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 11 2019, @03:26AM (4 children)
The US is an empire though. It was since day one. The word "state" does not mean "territory within a nation". It means "nation". It did when we formed this more perfect union and it still does in every relevant context except when you're speaking with federalists and those they've deluded.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @04:00AM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:04AM (1 child)
Shut up, khallow, you are in over your head, out of your depth, you know not of what you speak, you are embarrassing yourself in front of all the Soylentils, again. Just stop, khallow. Before it gets worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:09PM
If, as the saying goes, one can tell a good idea by its detractors, I think that you've done some good boosting of khallow's words.
Solid job. 8/10. Could have used a bit more frothing.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 11 2019, @06:12PM
Sounds like the US to me. I mean we're three times the size of the Roman Empire at its peak and we most definitely have enough geographic cultural differences to qualify.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ilPapa on Friday October 11 2019, @01:54AM (1 child)
You don't follow the news, do you?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @07:24PM
You suffer from a myopic obsession with Trump and poor reading comprehension.
Reread my post. Trump will not be president forever. That's how China and Turkey work, not the US. Never.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Friday October 11 2019, @02:15AM (2 children)
When one talks about the glory of Rome the Republic was already a thing of the past. It was gone, at the height of their (roman) power the Republic had not been a thing for 150-200 years, depending on when you consider them to be at their height of their power and such. No dictator? They invented the title, they appointed lots of them. Gaius Julius Caesar was appointed dictator two or three times and they found him so great at it that they eventually just made him dictator for life. As dictator they would attained the full authority of the entire state to resolve an issue as they saw fit, once completed they resigned or gave said powers back. Until that wasn't cool anymore and Gaius being so great and all, that is until they assassinated him and then decided to have a good old civil war and then transform into an Empire instead.
So the US republic is or was not the Roman Republic, unless of cause you subscribe to the train of thought that the USA is a brutal military imperium spanning large parts of the known world.
(Score: 3, Touché) by coolgopher on Friday October 11 2019, @03:44AM
Funny you should mention that...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @02:57PM
Yes, that criminal oligarchy failed due to the feudal corruption within it's aristocracy that escalated into outright war. Caesar was the most corrupt and psychopathic member of the political class but also a populist. We've progressed so much that we now call bread and circuses "liberal democracy".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday October 11 2019, @03:35AM (4 children)
The Presidential system is crap, and the Constitution should be rewritten. I'll give the founders the benefit of the doubt: they didn't have a lot of great models at the time, and thought they were designing a good system with healthy checks and balances, but it hasn't worked out that way in practice, and has really fallen apart in recent decades.
Sure, England and the rest of Europe were a little slow to eliminate the monarch as head-of-state, but the Parliamentary system is objectively better (though not perfect, as the Brexit debacle is showing, but it's not as bad as what's going on in the USA). The problem with Presidential systems like in countries such as El Salvador, Honduras, Turkey, Russia, and the USA, is that the President has too much power, and is elected separately from the legislative body. In the US, this results in massive gridlock when the different election cycles and the way the system works results in the executive and the legislative branch being at odds with each other, which has been normal for a couple decades now, and is why nothing seems to get done. By contrast, in Parliamentary nations, the executive is elected by the legislature, so there's rarely any big conflict between the two. And the parliament is elected by the people, by allowing them to vote for various different parties (not just 2), so many different parties get seats in parliament, giving proportional representation instead of the winner-takes-all type system we have here. And when there is a giant conflict between Parliament and the prime minister, they end up calling a vote of no confidence and having new elections (unlike the US where we're stuck with everyone until their term is up). Government shutdowns lasting a month simply *do not happen* in a parliamentary system, but they're increasingly normal in America.
The US can be proud of being an early adopter, yes. But everyone else has already leap-frogged us, and it's time to catch up. We're like some elderly person who was an early adopter of touch-tone telephone, but now refuses to give it up while everyone else has a 3-camera OLED smartphone.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @04:36AM (2 children)
How?
And that differs from parliamentary systems how? They have gridlock too - the rival political factions don't go away just because someone puts together a majority for a time.
What's supposed to be objectively better about that? It's naive to assume that a legislature that does something is better than one that doesn't. Part of the power of the US system is the conflict between legislature and executive reduces the power of a faction to cause problems or undermine democracy. It's a feature not a bug.
This genuine problem has nothing to do with the Presidential versus Parliamentary systems.
Not the only source of problems. Parliamentary systems are notorious for turning over government leadership at unpredictable times. Societies already have a considerable amount of uncertainty, particularly in capitalist economic systems and democratic political systems. One doesn't need to artificially introduce it.
With what? Let us keep in mind that these "leap-frogged" systems often don't last more than a few decades. France and Italy, for example, have gone through a number of parliamentary systems in the past couple of centuries. And the EU is starting to show the cracks that'll lead to an EU 2.0.
My take is that the few genuine problems of the US approach are things like first-past-the-post and the growing complexity of law and regulation. The first could be fixed (though one would have to get the changes past the present two party system), but the second is a universal problem of all governments. There isn't that much that can be fixed by changing the present Presidential system approach.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday October 28 2019, @01:55AM (1 child)
>How?
I already explained how. Read the post.
>And that differs from parliamentary systems how? They have gridlock too
No, not like ours. Again, I already explained this. Did you read the whole post? Parliamentary systems do not have gridlock that results in the whole government shutting down for a month. It's almost impossible; in those systems, they'll have new elections, which will clear the gridlock. Our gridlock is caused by the fact that our executive is separately elected, and on different cycles, plus the stupid Electoral College system (so the President can be elected by a minority, while the majority elects a different party in Congress).
>What's supposed to be objectively better about that?
You think having a government shutdown for a month is "better"? I don't know about you, but in my world, a government that isn't operating and providing the services it's supposed to is a broken system.
>It's naive to assume that a legislature that does something is better than one that doesn't.
This sounds like some kind of stupid "small government" mentality. I'm sorry, a legislature that's not actually doing the job of governing is broken; the whole reason to have a government is to govern. A government that isn't doing that is broken. I don't know how to make this any more clear, when it's entirely self-evident.
>Part of the power of the US system is the conflict between legislature and executive reduces the power of a faction to cause problems or undermine democracy. It's a feature not a bug.
This makes no sense whatsoever. If a minority faction is causing gridlock, that's not "democracy" at all, it's a "bug". A properly designed government will have proportional representation so different factions can all have votes in the legislature, proportional to the number of votes they get in the elections. But minority factions shouldn't be able to stop government because they don't like something; that's not how a functional democracy works.
>Parliamentary systems are notorious for turning over government leadership at unpredictable times.
Why is that a problem? How is it better to have government shutdowns? Healthy democracies are by nature unpredictable; they're supposed to answer to the people. If you want predictable, maybe China's system would be more to your liking. The wishes of the electorate changes as times change and as they get new information or want to do things differently. This is a feature, not a bug.
>And the EU is starting to show the cracks
And the US isn't? I don't see any armed militias forming in the EU and calling for a new civil war. I do in the US.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:15AM
What actually is the consequence of such a shutdown? It only lasts a month. Now compare that to the decades of problems of the PIGS of the EU.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @08:05PM
you're fucking moron.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday October 11 2019, @05:02AM
Wow! Just, Wow! I guess I should add more since last time I did not, and was spam-modded for "Wow".
Democracy? Rome? Are you ignorant, just American?
Which is why England has a Congress and a President Boris right now. (See above, ignorant) And you do realize that originally there was no term limit on American Presidents? It was only after FDR was elected four times that the Republicans realized the only way they could ever get back in was to raise tax rates on the wealthy to 90%, run a General, and limit the president to two consecutive terms. They have regretted it every time one of their own has had to step down. Remember all those people calling for "Four More Years" for W? Or was that "Impeach the torturer!"?
Yes, would be, if in fact any of it were correct. You are too stupid to be a member of an actual democracy. Obviously an American, where they pride themselves on being stupid, and electing stupid presidents. Trump is so stupid he referred to Nepal as "Nipple", and Bhutan as "Button", and Ukraine as "get me some dirt on Biden." True story!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @07:27AM
Term limits are undemocratic. Most of the arguments for Term Limits are basically the same arguments you can use against letting people vote for whoever they want instead of an undemocratic "blessed few". :)
If your country or elections are so screwed up that the elections are significantly rigged then term limits won't help either.
With term limits more of the power tends to move to nonelected people/groups.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @07:46AM
false [wikipedia.org]
Too bad it had to die to let this legacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @12:14PM
This is an interesting discussion since right now the Rojavans, Kurdish, Assyrian, and many others who banded together under the triple threat of Assad, Erdogan, and Daesh, are right now being, at best, occupied, and at worst, massacred. I don't have boots on the ground and there are limited active Rojavan/Kurdish sites on web search (half are parked pages now.)
It's time to think about what kind of future we really want and what we are willing to do to get it there. If we wait much longer it will be too late.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 11 2019, @02:27PM (2 children)
*cough cough*
The US is not a democracy. It is a republic.
Note that Benny didn't even say "democratic republic", he said, without any qualifications, that we had a "republic".
We could end democratic elections, and still retain the republic.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Friday October 11 2019, @03:58PM (1 child)
The United States is a democracy, we are also a republic. Neither one invalidates the other.
I have never understood this argument, what exactly are you trying to prove here? Other than a penchant for pedantry combined with a lack of understanding of the terminology.
Why would this anecdote, be definitive of our government?
In contrast the constitution explicitly states that "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States" later the 17th amendment added "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, ..."
Our federal legislative branch is a representative democracy. As are the majority of state and local governments, the only exceptions I am aware of are when you get local enough to be discussing direct democracies, which have been part of American governance from the beginning.
You could NOT end those processes and retain THIS republic, they are baked into the foundational documents, they are neither optional nor accidental. And your statement otherwise is flat unsupportable.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 11 2019, @04:40PM
This article sums it up better than I can - https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/7631-a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it [thenewamerican.com]
We are a republic, with democratically elected representavies. We most assuredly are not a democracy.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday October 12 2019, @10:30PM
looks like a nice place, where is it?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday October 11 2019, @03:10AM
Compared to what? The British appear to be having enough trouble ruling their own island at the moment.