@izzythepush,
izzythepush wrote:
Democracy without social justice and a respect for human rights is meaningless. That's the same "democracy" that butchered the indigenous population and enslaved Africans.
You are thinking on a different level than I am. Democracy is a means of achieving social justice or anything else by means of civil discourse and consent and not by means of autocratic force/coercion.
Now you may claim that people are being unreasonable when it comes to listening to calls for social justice and that justifies going beyond democracy to pursue social justice using autocratic or other authoritarian means; but that is effectively a declaration of war.
The problems of war are many, but some big ones are 1) what if you don't win and you face retribution for your actions, 2) war involves perpetrating actions/violence against individuals based on collective identity instead of their individual actions. So, for example, if you decide that slavery-retribution is justified against all people identified as racially 'white' because race/color was used as a basis for granting people different rights before and following slavery, then your means of pursuing 'justice' replicates the same disrespect of individual accountability that slavery did by using collective/racial identity to designate who was a slave and who wasn't.
Yes, slavery was unjust to the extent it exempted free whites from labor responsibility. If slave-duties had been distributed without discrimination throughout the population of people who benefited from the economy, it would have been a reasonable method of requiring people to perform necessary labor, without which there would have been starvation and other deprivation.
Slavery was not new in the Americas. The Roman Empire enslaved people by conquering them, and the slaves acquired from slaving ports in west Africa were not exclusively owned/controlled by Europeans, let alone US Americans. Most slaves were brought to Brazil and the Caribbean to grow sugar. Cotton is the famous cash crop that caused the expansion and growth of slavery in the 19th century before the US Civil War, and British/European markets were largely responsible for buying/funding cotton exports, to the point that US Southerners expected to win the Civil War due to cotton being 'king.'
In recent years I have been looking at the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the US national debt and was funded by British and Dutch banks at a rate of 6%. Thomas Jefferson supposedly mortgaged slaves, which required calculating birth rates and the productivity that could be expected from future slaves. This was inhuman business that treated human beings and their offspring and labor as commodities to be mortgaged, but it was not only US Americans or British/Dutch who benefited, but really everyone who prospered and/or just survived during the time. It may sound horrible to say, but if you survive as a slave when you (and/or your family/children) would have otherwise died free, is it better to be enslaved or dead? Obviously the most ethical thing is for people to be as free as possible, and there have been people pursuing the expansion of liberty and democracy for all, including enslaved/indentured people; but it isn't necessarily because of their lack of effort that liberation hasn't been achieved faster.
Anyway, you've opened a whole can of worms by bringing this issue of slavery into the discussion. The reality is that labor economics is not black and white in terms of slavery v. freedom. Capitalism enslaves people to varying degrees with debt, housing costs, taxes, etc. so you can argue that many people are still today and always have been enslaved by labor/economic conditions that restrict liberty/freedom that they could otherwise enjoy if everyone involved was more ethical.
You cannot say that just because someone is white, or because they are otherwise identified with a majority population that they are more free and/or live a better life than someone in a minority population. There may be non-minority Turkish citizens, for example, who are living in a city and suffering worse living conditions than some Kurdish individuals. This doesn't mean that majority-minority identity aren't relevant in analysis, but that they are more complex than you might assume.
Many of your posts toss around powerful rhetoric without respecting others' right to engage in dialog/discussion without being emotionally blackmailed with accusations, etc. You can and should discuss these issues, but in a way that is more respectful and considerate of others who also struggle with these things and the historical patterns of injustice they correlate with, although maybe in a way that you don't agree with.
Quote:Your take on democracy condemns thousands of American to an early grave through inadequate health coverage.
Health insurance, providers, regulators, expensive medical schools, and many other obstructions condemn people to their/our own natural fates. Using socialism to fund more insurance is a fake solution that condemns people to even worse capitalist obstructions to health care while pulling the wool over their eyes with false hope.
Quote:You need to think very carefully before you try to imposer that on other people.
You have created false webs of causation in your mind and because you avoid critically reviewing them, you perpetuate false assumptions and accuse/blame people and institutions that don't actually cause the effects you think they cause in the ways that you think they do.
Quote:We definitely don't want democracy American style over here.
The fact that you are oriented against a foreign system of government just proves that you've been exposed to jingoistic/fascist propaganda that distracts you from thinking about solving your own problems.
You can't look at "American style democracy" as a thing that is somehow transplantable in total. Whatever has happened or not with democracy throughout the Americans and/or in US America is due to historically-specific events and patterns that have emerged and evolved.
Democracy as a principle is simply governance by consent. It means that instead of expecting people to do as they're told, you expect them to listen to what they're told, to be reasonable and accept it if warranted, and if they disagree to voice their reasoning and for authority to give consideration to their dissent. In this way, people are not enslaved but free, albeit with the need to cooperate economically to the extent the the failure to cooperate economically in some ways could result in serious problems. So, for example, it is important to have enough food to go around, but then you run into the problem of what to do when people are undernourished because they waste their money on drugs and other things instead of buying the nutritious food they should.