Comment by mytailorisrich
6 days ago
Actually, what has happened to Germany is exactly an expression of what I described in my previous comments.
> powerful countries too - should be subject to the law
Perhaps so but that is idealistic. Again, countries are sovereign, there is no such things as "laws" in the sense that applies to individuals that apply to them, only voluntary agreements. Practically you would also need a level above countries with its own overwhelming force to enforce it, and that simply does not exist.
I am trying to discuss the world as it is, including indeed in the legal sense, not as it might be in dreams because that's pie in the sky and totally unbounded in scope.
Yes, you're pretending to be a 'realist' who is wise because of your grounded worldview, but you totally miss the forest for the trees: if we don't want to end with blowing ourselves up then we have to depart from the might is right and 'how the world is' mentality because that stops us from changing into a future where we will not blow ourselves up.
Your worldview is essentially a pessimistic one, mine an optimistic one: I think we are capable of change. We just make the stupid mistake of putting egomaniacs in positions of power all the time and then we are surprised by the outcomes.
Some of the most powerful words ever spoken in American history were 'I have a dream'. Dreams are good, especially if they are dreams of a better world and we all should strive to create that world, not to declare it a pipe dream and get on with the business of raping each other.
I am not "pretending" anything. That's quite a personally aggressive term and I don't know what your beef against me is.
I don't have anything against what you wrote but I think that it has no discussion value in context and probably in general.
I would suggest that you take a look at the "Politics and the English Language" essay by Orwell. The person you are responding to is making a fair point that this is well trodden ground, albeit not in the most diplomatic terms. It would be helpful to engage with the arguments presented, otherwise we are just spinning our wheels here unconsciously relitigating issues from the 1930s.
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To be helpful, do you have a solution in mind?
If so, what’s the next step and how long do you think it will take for a world in which no country is above the law… but no mechanism to create and enforce such law?
Einstein had some interesting thoughts about this, I don't have a reference handy but it boils down to a UN with teeth, effectively a single world government. And I think that that is something I could get behind because countries are not stable enough over a long enough period of time to give us what we need.
Even so, there is a lot of potential for abuse there too and it will most likely never happen because human nature is what it is.
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