Dealing with ultra-libertarian idiocy?

[Patrick Degan]

In combination, they most certainly were sufficient to bring down the government, and the whole manner of monarchy is up for condemnation because it is a very inflexible institution precisely for the reasons you so love it: reliance on tradition and a fixed group of rulers inheriting the throne. That always results in fossilisation, and even if a "reform" king finally manages to ascend, it is often far too late for him to reverse decades or even centuries of misrule by his predecessors.. I'm sorry if the way things actually played out in the real world doesn't suit your theories, but there it is.

A few good generals would have preserved the monarchy, so I again would say that doesn't invalidate my theories.

Bullshit. It doesn't matter how many good generals you might have if things have gotten to such a pass that not only are the people in rebellion but a significant portion of the military are ready to defect to the rebels or simply to desert or stay in barracks and refuse orders to deploy. The best general on Earth can't do anything if his troops are in mutiny.

Battlefield failure is never a precondition. The revolt could have been suppressed by main force, just as it succeeded only by main force, in the same way that Austro-Hungary did not collapse because of its government, but because entente forces breached its defensive entrenchments along the Isonzo.

Once whole regements began deserting the Eastern Front, the writing was on the wall for the Czar and the Kerensky government.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Question does that mean that Lincoln had failed because a certain percentage of the population believed that they had the right to keep others in human bondage, and weren't going to accept the changing of times. Face it, monarchy's started to fade during the rennissance/industrial ages for a reason.

[Adrian Laguna]

Face it, monarchy's started to fade during the rennissance/industrial ages for a reason.

It's not entirely out of the question that they may have faded due to bad luck. For example, a Central Powers victory in the Great War would have a direct effect in preserving Germany, Austro-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire as monarchies. Different post-war conditions could have likely preserved other monarchies throughout Europe. Communism failing would certainly have helped, as the rise of fascism was partially aided by strong anti-communist sentiment. Given good luck, it is entirely possible that many monarchies that no longer exist would, and that some of those that still exist might have more power.

[K. A. Pital]

Bullshit. It doesn't matter how many good generals you might have if things have gotten to such a pass that not only are the people in rebellion but a significant portion of the military are ready to defect to the rebels or simply to desert or stay in barracks and refuse orders to deploy. The best general on Earth can't do anything if his troops are in mutiny.

Indeed. The troops in the Russian revolution mutineed for good reasons, and no number of "good generals" could stop that from happening. Google "Centrobalt" and you'll get a clue on how hapeless the officers are without their soldiers. Ship sailors killed their superiors who treated them brutally, then captured the ships and used them in the Revolution. No amount of "good generals" could have prevented that.

Besides, it's a common trait of monarchic armies to have thoroughly corrupt, brutal nobility thugs as officers, who are not either very qualified, but also rather highly thinking of themselves, and brutally treating their underlings.

The RJW was a perfect example of that, and examples such as Potemkin, etc. proved that the Tsar's officers didn't have much time to last.

[Patrick Degan]

Face it, monarchy's started to fade during the rennissance/industrial ages for a reason.

It's not entirely out of the question that they may have faded due to bad luck. For example, a Central Powers victory in the Great War would have a direct effect in preserving Germany, Austro-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire as monarchies. Different post-war conditions could have likely preserved other monarchies throughout Europe. Communism failing would certainly have helped, as the rise of fascism was partially aided by strong anti-communist sentiment. Given good luck, it is entirely possible that many monarchies that no longer exist would, and that some of those that still exist might have more power.

Not really. Even if the Central Powers had "won", it would have been on terms that would have left them economically exhausted. Nor would have communism failed. The Central Powers would have been in no shape to participate in attempting to win the Russian Civil War for the Whites. Monarchy, by 1916, had become an anachronism that would not endure in the modern world. If you're down to basing your analysis on a different outcome to events on good luck, you're pretty much conceding the argument.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Bullshit. It doesn't matter how many good generals you might have if things have gotten to such a pass that not only are the people in rebellion but a significant portion of the military are ready to defect to the rebels or simply to desert or stay in barracks and refuse orders to deploy. The best general on Earth can't do anything if his troops are in mutiny.

And yet proper generalship can enamour the soldiers with their generals to the point that they're immune to this. The British Army never mutinied despite suffering far worse than the French Army, which did, because of its character as a force of rigid discipline. Men of 17 languages and 6 confessions fought in the Austro-Hungarian Army right up to the bitter end, and the Slovenians, Slovakians, Tyrolians, etc, remained loyal to the Empire right up to the last moment despite being of differing ethnic nationalities than the Kaiser. The Army is always drawn from the most traditional and loyal segments of society, anyway, and certainly in the French revolution was more fittered away than ever mutinied as such.

Once whole regements began deserting the Eastern Front, the writing was on the wall for the Czar and the Kerensky government.

The Germans never actually penetrated into Russia during the reign of the Tsar. The troops revolted because they were being asked to fight to defend Russian rule over an area which had never been strongly held by the Tsar and which they did not disagree with; furthermore, they mutinied when they had been forced to do that continuously for two and a half years in the face of ridiculous casualties. They were, in fact, in some places still on Austrian territory at the time. If the Germans had been deep in Russia, I expect that the Russian Army would have rallied exactly as the Soviet Army did for a far more brutal dictator, even in the face of the considerably less threatening German aims of WW1.

Certainly had the Tsar chosen to seek a separate peace at any time before he was overthrown, he could have preserved his throne. The Germans had no desire to see him overthrown, just to shave the western lands of Russia from the country to remove it as a threat, and the Kaiser had no desire to hurt the tradition of legitimist rule.

[Patrick Degan]

Bullshit. It doesn't matter how many good generals you might have if things have gotten to such a pass that not only are the people in rebellion but a significant portion of the military are ready to defect to the rebels or simply to desert or stay in barracks and refuse orders to deploy. The best general on Earth can't do anything if his troops are in mutiny.

And yet proper generalship can enamour the soldiers with their generals to the point that they're immune to this.

So what happened to the Russian Army then, Duchess?

The British Army never mutinied despite suffering far worse than the French Army, which did, because of its character as a force of rigid discipline.

The officers and men of the British Army also came from a society which was in no danger of suffering revolutionary pressures. And don't try tossng up King George V as an example of anything, since by that time the real power was in Parliament and not Buckingham Palace.

Men of 17 languages and 6 confessions fought in the Austro-Hungarian Army right up to the bitter end, and the Slovenians, Slovakians, Tyrolians, etc, remained loyal to the Empire right up to the last moment despite being of differing ethnic nationalities than the Kaiser. The Army is always drawn from the most traditional and loyal segments of society, anyway, and certainly in the French revolution was more fittered away than ever mutinied as such.

Please. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was starting to dissolve under the pressure of nationalist movements and it's last battlefield successes were essentially under German direction. It was all the House of Hapsburg could do to keep that ramshackle little dual kingdom together while fighting a major war in the bargain. The empire was already in the process of breaking up when October of 1918 rolled around and Foreign Minister vonRacjez petitioned for an armistice based on Wilson's 14 Points.

Once whole regements began deserting the Eastern Front, the writing was on the wall for the Czar and the Kerensky government.

The Germans never actually penetrated into Russia during the reign of the Tsar. The troops revolted because they were being asked to fight to defend Russian rule over an area which had never been strongly held by the Tsar and which they did not disagree with; furthermore, they mutinied when they had been forced to do that continuously for two and a half years in the face of ridiculous casualties.

No, Duchess. They mutinied because the army took 9 million casualties for a war Russia had no real stake in except to satisfy the egos of an incompetent Czar and his thoroughly corrupt court while starvation was looming at home.

They were, in fact, in some places still on Austrian territory at the time. If the Germans had been deep in Russia, I expect that the Russian Army would have rallied exactly as the Soviet Army did for a far more brutal dictator, even in the face of the considerably less threatening German aims of WW1.

The German Army had even less chance of making it deep into Russia in 1916-17 than they did in 1941. The two fronts drained each other and made it impossible for Germany to really achieve any of its strategic aims either in France or on the Eastern Front.

Certainly had the Tsar chosen to seek a separate peace at any time before he was overthrown, he could have preserved his throne.

For a while. Only for a while. But then, the very reasons why Nicholas chose to plunge his country into war would have prevented him from seeking a separate peace to drop Russia out of the conflict. As it did with the Kerensky government.

The Germans had no desire to see him overthrown, just to shave the western lands of Russia from the country to remove it as a threat, and the Kaiser had no desire to hurt the tradition of legitimist rule.

Irrelevant to the turn of events as they played out in actual history.

[The Yosemite Bear]

after all, revoluion is to society like earthquakes are to plate tetonics. They come when population friction create too much pressure. Authoritarian governments can suppress it for a while, but when they do happen it gets very ugly. When it's a gradual and progressive release, it comes about more bloodlessly. The last internal revolution the United States faced was over human bondage. It had been a guerilla war for some time before (jayhawks, john brown, nat turner) but when it broke hot it went all the way.

furthermore Marina you have yet to properly despute my statement that Monarchies have been on the decline, and being phased out ever since the late rennisssance. Florance was the first crack in the dam, but it wasn't until the later age of reason that it started really gaining steam. This is observable historical FACT.

[Junghalli]

You know, I just thought up a pretty good way to sum up the problem with feudal monarchy.

Imagine George W Bush with a lifelong appointment, the office passing to Jeb or one of his daughters when he dies, and absolute dictatorial power checked only by an elitist junta of fifty Governor-Generals with similar hereditary lifelong appointments and the power of life and death in their own dominions.

How does that sound to you folks?

[Pablo Sanchez]

Even the most brilliant of individuals can be undone by luck and circumstance when the guns begin to fire, and that's as true is violent revolutions as in wars, and let's make it clear that pretty much every one of the traditional monarchies of Europe which fell, fell because of military defeat, and for no other demonstratable reason.

Not only are you flat wrong (Louis XVI of France and Charles I of England both defy battlefield explanation), but you're founding this on another conceit, that being that a government which engages in a war can't be held accountable for the results, as if war was utterly extraneous to the business of government. A man who paints himself into a corner can't blame Sherwin Williams.

I simply disagree with that, and see periodic insurrections as an unavoidable occurrence in the life of a state. They only become matters of import when they succeed.

Wow, the way you say it, it almost seems as if it isn't something I said in the first place.

The assertion that a government has "failed" by allowing a revolution to take place implicitly suggests that the government should have such a total control over its country as to render revolution impossible, which is, itself, impossible with modern technology, let alone in the 18th century.

Let's not play ridiculous games about what I "implicitly" suggested, I said nothing of the sort. I said exactly

Popular discontent and violent disturbances of the peace are fundamental conditions, which it is the duty of a government to minimize.

full stop.

Some number of people will always be dissatisfied with their governments, and these people will occasionally be dissatisfied enough to rise in revolt. A government has failed in the utilitarian sense when it allows the angry opposition to become large enough to overthrow it. A successful revolution isn't some kind of historical aberration that occurred only because of chance, as if a butterfly in Shanghai beat its wings and brought down Louis XVI. We know the causes, we know what led to the problems, and we know how the government failed to act.

If the government is unable to act, as in the case of German in WWI viewing it as impossible to seek honorable terms of armistice before the final collapse had become inevitable, then we're still talking about a structural flaw.

Unlike other people in this thread I'm not making a value judgment on monarchy, I'm just saying that as conditions changed it was no longer a viable form of government. Fantasies about a utopian monarchy where everybody knows his place and is directed from on high by some kind of idealized Frederick the Great or Sun King belong in the ivory tower.

[Uraniun235]

Question does that mean that Lincoln had failed because a certain percentage of the population believed that they had the right to keep others in human bondage, and weren't going to accept the changing of times. Face it, monarchy's started to fade during the rennissance/industrial ages for a reason.

Lincoln wasn't really in a position to fail or succeed; the rebellion began as soon as (or really, even prior to) the moment Lincoln was elected (not inaugurated!) President.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

after all, revoluion is to society like earthquakes are to plate tetonics. They come when population friction create too much pressure. Authoritarian governments can suppress it for a while, but when they do happen it gets very ugly. When it's a gradual and progressive release, it comes about more bloodlessly. The last internal revolution the United States faced was over human bondage. It had been a guerilla war for some time before (jayhawks, john brown, nat turner) but when it broke hot it went all the way.

furthermore Marina you have yet to properly despute my statement that Monarchies have been on the decline, and being phased out ever since the late rennisssance. Florance was the first crack in the dam, but it wasn't until the later age of reason that it started really gaining steam. This is observable historical FACT.

The vain and narcissistic flattery of historians and theorists alike that broad historical "laws" can be determined from the cycles of immense passages of time, from the actions of individuals and from the upheavals and collapses of fortune, and recovery thereof, which comprise the historical record, is obscene in its amusing value. Monarchy could also be declared "dead" when the Athenians were at the height of their reign of terror over the Mediterranean; it could also be declared "dead" when England, Scotland, and the Netherlands were all republics, as was the vast majority of Italy, and innumerable cities of Germany and the Baltic, and Russia, in the 17th century, just hours, as it were, before the dawn of the Sun King, and yet of especial irony is that England, Scotland, and the Netherlands are countries which retain monarchies to this day, even in the most crude and vestigial of forms. To presume that the days of the Florentine republic signaled the doom of the monarchy would scarcely have seemed more than the natterings of a madman to the assembled at the Congress of Vienna, and to presume today that the form of government which governed the lives of 80% of people who have ever lived in human history was only swept aside in the industrial era shall remain in perpetuity a relic when that self-same industrial era is on the verge of precipitous collapse as energy sources are lost, is itself a narcissistic assumption of American power.

[Patrick Degan]

after all, revoluion is to society like earthquakes are to plate tetonics. They come when population friction create too much pressure. Authoritarian governments can suppress it for a while, but when they do happen it gets very ugly. When it's a gradual and progressive release, it comes about more bloodlessly. The last internal revolution the United States faced was over human bondage. It had been a guerilla war for some time before (jayhawks, john brown, nat turner) but when it broke hot it went all the way.

furthermore Marina you have yet to properly despute my statement that Monarchies have been on the decline, and being phased out ever since the late rennisssance. Florance was the first crack in the dam, but it wasn't until the later age of reason that it started really gaining steam. This is observable historical FACT.

The vain and narcissistic flattery of historians and theorists alike that broad historical "laws" can be determined from the cycles of immense passages of time, from the actions of individuals and from the upheavals and collapses of fortune, and recovery thereof, which comprise the historical record, is obscene in its amusing value. Monarchy could also be declared "dead" when the Athenians were at the height of their reign of terror over the Mediterranean; it could also be declared "dead" when England, Scotland, and the Netherlands were all republics, as was the vast majority of Italy, and innumerable cities of Germany and the Baltic, and Russia, in the 17th century, just hours, as it were, before the dawn of the Sun King, and yet of especial irony is that England, Scotland, and the Netherlands are countries which retain monarchies to this day, even in the most crude and vestigial of forms. To presume that the days of the Florentine republic signaled the doom of the monarchy would scarcely have seemed more than the natterings of a madman to the assembled at the Congress of Vienna, and to presume today that the form of government which governed the lives of 80% of people who have ever lived in human history was only swept aside in the industrial era shall remain in perpetuity a relic when that self-same industrial era is on the verge of precipitous collapse as energy sources are lost, is itself a narcissistic assumption of American power.

What sort of horseshit non-answer is THAT?! He's not talking about "laws of history" but observed phenomena. One of which, being, that monarchies have all but disappeared from the face of the Earth. Those remaining are entirely ceremonial and it's a mere question of time before those are simply dissolved altogether as not only redundant but a waste of taxpayer monies. Whether you like the idea or not is wholly irrelevant to anything.

[Adrian Laguna]

Not really. Even if the Central Powers had "won", it would have been on terms that would have left them economically exhausted.

Depends entirely on how swift the victory was. The lengthy war of attrition we got was by no means guaranteed, though certainly likely given the technology. Furthermore, if they're economically exhausted, so what? They'll recover. The Germans were economically exhausted and had lost the war in real life. Yet their recovery was outpacing that of France until the French and Belgians occupied the Ruhr out of sheer frustration at that fact and their non-payment of reparations.

Nor would have communism failed. The Central Powers would have been in no shape to participate in attempting to win the Russian Civil War for the Whites.

Communism almost failed on its own. The chief supporters, hell the only real supporters, were in the cities. Once the peasants got their land reform they stopped giving a fuck about revolution, it got to the point that the Bolsheviks had to take grain from the countryside, at gunpoint, in order to feed their people. The whites could very well have been victorious given some better generalship and political manoeuvring.

In any case, I see no reason why Germany and Austro-Hungary couldn't spare some high-ranking officers to help the Whites. On top of that, they would have tons of rifles, artillery, and ammunition just laying around with no purpose after demobilization. That sort of support costs little and can accomplish much.

If you're down to basing your analysis on a different outcome to events on good luck, you're pretty much conceding the argument.

I'm basing it on the fact that things could have easily gone very differently given only the change of a few factors. A lot of things in history are almost inevitable, such as Japan losing once they declared war on the United States. Others aren't, a couple of Union scouts could have very well not stumbled unto a certain pack of cigars back in 1863. Some things could very well have been decided on a coin toss. You would need only one unlucky bullet or shell in 1915 and Turkey the modern state we know simply wouldn't exist. Then people might scoff at the notion that the survival of some Colonel, gifted though he may be, would have saved it.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

What sort of horseshit non-answer is THAT?! He's not talking about "laws of history" but observed phenomena. One of which, being, that monarchies have all but disappeared from the face of the Earth. Those remaining are entirely ceremonial and it's a mere question of time before those are simply dissolved altogether as not only redundant but a waste of taxpayer monies. Whether you like the idea or not is wholly irrelevant to anything.

All of that is quite true. If that is all you are asking of me, I concede; the answer was rather the observation that the present state of affairs which Yosemite noted is simply not a permanent one, as there have been similar periods of considerable Republican inroads in the past. The references to vain flattery is the suggestion of each generation that its government is the most perfect and ideal known to Man, when successive tumults have rendered them all, in their turns, anything but.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Not only are you flat wrong (Louis XVI of France and Charles I of England both defy battlefield explanation), but you're founding this on another conceit, that being that a government which engages in a war can't be held accountable for the results, as if war was utterly extraneous to the business of government. A man who paints himself into a corner can't blame Sherwin Williams.

Oh, come on, Charles I was defeated by the New Model Army on the field. Louis XVI is a tougher argument, but an urban insurrection still involves combat.

Let's not play ridiculous games about what I "implicitly" suggested, I said nothing of the sort. I said exactly

Popular discontent and violent disturbances of the peace are fundamental conditions, which it is the duty of a government to minimize.

full stop.

Some number of people will always be dissatisfied with their governments, and these people will occasionally be dissatisfied enough to rise in revolt. A government has failed in the utilitarian sense when it allows the angry opposition to become large enough to overthrow it. A successful revolution isn't some kind of historical aberration that occurred only because of chance, as if a butterfly in Shanghai beat its wings and brought down Louis XVI. We know the causes, we know what led to the problems, and we know how the government failed to act.

If the government is unable to act, as in the case of German in WWI viewing it as impossible to seek honorable terms of armistice before the final collapse had become inevitable, then we're still talking about a structural flaw.

Unlike other people in this thread I'm not making a value judgment on monarchy, I'm just saying that as conditions changed it was no longer a viable form of government. Fantasies about a utopian monarchy where everybody knows his place and is directed from on high by some kind of idealized Frederick the Great or Sun King belong in the ivory tower.

And I don't hold such fantasies, but rather observe that military victories are sometimes sufficient to alter the progress of conditions. Certainly in the modern world the monarchist system is not viable; but the modern world need not have developed the way it did. And, at any rate, the ostentatious luxury of modern democratic society is likely soon coming to an end, so it is useful to consider the character of States in eras when such surpluses did not exist.

[The Yosemite Bear]

thanks degan, yes, she's getting really annoying in this Authoritarian tirade. let's face it societal pressure has killed monarchies since the need for smarter, better trained folks on the base of society required the changes that took place, a side effect of the destruction of enough of the western population as to make the belief in the power of a central "king" and his followers

[The Duchess of Zeon]

thanks degan, yes, she's getting really annoying in this Authoritarian tirade. let's face it societal pressure has killed monarchies since the need for smarter, better trained folks on the base of society required the changes that took place, a side effect of the destruction of enough of the western population as to make the belief in the power of a central "king" and his followers

I am sorry, but the past eight years have gradually worn down my prior assurances and beliefs to the point that nothing was left; I was forced to conclude that the average person was an idiot, and no sane individual wants idiots to vote and decide the fate of their country. The average American is a base and vile idiot, and I do not wish them to direct the course of my life. For the record I have no illusions about being on top, either, though a cozy position as a minor civil service bureaucrat in a country without the ludicrous "spoils system" would be a kind enough fate, I do believe.

[Adrian Laguna]

The average American is a base and vile idiot, and I do not wish them to direct the course of my life.

Hah! Count your blessings, they are leagues better than the average person from the nation the flag of which is my avatar.

[Patrick Degan]

Not really. Even if the Central Powers had "won", it would have been on terms that would have left them economically exhausted.

Depends entirely on how swift the victory was. The lengthy war of attrition we got was by no means guaranteed, though certainly likely given the technology. Furthermore, if they're economically exhausted, so what? They'll recover. The Germans were economically exhausted and had lost the war in real life. Yet their recovery was outpacing that of France until the French and Belgians occupied the Ruhr out of sheer frustration at that fact and their non-payment of reparations.

They won't recover in time to save the Whites, though. And Austria-Hungary is starting to come apart at the seams from nationalist pressures which aren't going to go away even once the peace treaty is signed.

As for the "so what" if the Central Powers are economically flat, that's a big "so what" —it affects their ability to do anything other than concentrate on trying to recover from the financial drain of the war.

Communism almost failed on its own. The chief supporters, hell the only real supporters, were in the cities. Once the peasants got their land reform they stopped giving a fuck about revolution, it got to the point that the Bolsheviks had to take grain from the countryside, at gunpoint, in order to feed their people. The whites could very well have been victorious given some better generalship and political manoeuvring.

Yes, but the brutal fact of the matter is that it didn't fail on its own, and White generals were no more competent than they had been on the Eastern Front. Nothing suggests that this would have been any different had the Central Powers achieved a favourable armistice for their side.

In any case, I see no reason why Germany and Austro-Hungary couldn't spare some high-ranking officers to help the Whites. On top of that, they would have tons of rifles, artillery, and ammunition just laying around with no purpose after demobilization. That sort of support costs little and can accomplish much.

Tons of rifles, artillery, and ammunition from Britain and America didn't do much to help the White cause as it was in real history, and as Germany and Austria-Hungary are not only facing enemies they haven't really defeated but are facing their own internal troubles, they're not really going not really going to spare the leftover arms and ammo. Military advisers aren't going to provide that much help either, as in the end it's still up to the Whites and their leadership to win the fight against the Reds. And having White armies led by foreign generals only gives the Reds a propaganda victory while not guaranteeing battlefield success for the Whites.

If you're down to basing your analysis on a different outcome to events on good luck, you're pretty much conceding the argument.

I'm basing it on the fact that things could have easily gone very differently given only the change of a few factors. A lot of things in history are almost inevitable, such as Japan losing once they declared war on the United States. Others aren't, a couple of Union scouts could have very well not stumbled unto a certain pack of cigars back in 1863.

Unfortunately for that example, George McClellan didn't do all that much with the information that came wrapped with the cigars. He won Antietam (1862, not 63, BTW) but he could have won the war outright had he acted.

Some things could very well have been decided on a coin toss. You would need only one unlucky bullet or shell in 1915 and Turkey the modern state we know simply wouldn't exist. Then people might scoff at the notion that the survival of some Colonel, gifted though he may be, would have saved it.

Except the disaster at Gallipoli would not have been averted by one lucky shot. The Ottoman position was simply too strong, the British plan was ad-hoc, and the battlefield leadership of Hamilton was incompetent. Nevermind that the whole scheme was a longshot at best and based in part on some poor intelligence as to the strength of the Ottoman forces.

[The Yosemite Bear]

yes, humans are self centered idiots, and pack cretures at their core. however as churchill had said. Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. yup, they had their moment in the sun, however, history is cyclic, and I'm a former civil servant and a cynic. however untill something better comes along I would rather have what we've been using for the last 230 years.

[K. A. Pital]

The Army is always drawn from the most traditional and loyal segments of society, anyway, and certainly in the French revolution was more fittered away than ever mutinied as such.

You meant to say "brainless conservatives who are tied by irrational loyalty devices such as religion". That's what "most traditional" segments of society are. Yes, if you can draft all soldiers from such segments, hooray. But even they can reverse views in a very bad situation.

If the Germans had been deep in Russia, I expect that the Russian Army would have rallied exactly as the Soviet Army did for a far more brutal dictator, even in the face of the considerably less threatening German aims of WW1.

Would not. The soldiers seriously doubted the need to even hold to Russian Empire territories such as Finland, etc. which were let go. Many of them mutineed to fight the Czar and nobilty in a revolutionary war, so it's hard to press them to fight _for_ the Czar.

As for rallying behind a "far more brutal dictator", said dictator also was far more competent at raising the country from an industrial crisis, and technically for the peasants I doubt it mattered anyhow whether they lingered in hunger in Tsarist times, or in Stalin's times.

[Patrick Degan]

The answer was rather the observation that the present state of affairs which Yosemite noted is simply not a permanent one, as there have been similar periods of considerable Republican inroads in the past.

Except those periods took place in a world where the fastest means of communication were by flashing mirror-light and the horse, in which hunger and disease regularly felled whole populations, and in which +90% of the human race was illiterate. That picture started to change when the steam-engine was put to wide scale practical use and literacy started to increase.

The references to vain flattery is the suggestion of each generation that its government is the most perfect and ideal known to Man, when successive tumults have rendered them all, in their turns, anything but.

Except nobody is saying democracy is the most perfect and ideal form of government known to man. It is, however, the form that has worked the best so far.

[K. A. Pital]

Communism almost failed on its own.

Epic history fail. In time of need to supply the Army with food, the Army which employs the most efficient requisition measures and centralized supply, wins. The Whites did lose because War Communism allowed to centralize grain supplies, albeit with losses.

The chief supporters, hell the only real supporters, were in the cities. Once the peasants got their land reform they stopped giving a fuck about revolution

Peasant revolts in the 20's were connected with continuing requisitions when they saw that the war was nearing an end (at least in their immediate vinicity), and not that many out of some 90 million rebelled.

it got to the point that the Bolsheviks had to take grain from the countryside, at gunpoint, in order to feed their people. The whites could very well have been victorious given some better generalship and political manoeuvring.

It got to a point, moron, where both sides had to requisite grain to feed their massive armies. The Bolsheviks did it, discounting possible antipathy to forced requisition, and won the war. The Whites lost it, period. In fact, the Whites did not have support in major population centers, as you correctly identified, and said centers were the suppliers of arms, which are also essential for war.

In the end, both rural and urban policy of the Whites failed, and they lost. "Competent generals" do jack shit here, the Whites had competent generals. But wait, a lot of competent Tsarist officers deflected to Communists! Oh noes, i guess the Whites are fucked.

In any case, I see no reason why Germany and Austro-Hungary couldn't spare some high-ranking officers to help the Whites.

Because they don't want to, moron. Russia's Civil war plays FOR them, not against them.

That sort of support costs little and can accomplish much.

The Whites had foreign support. In fact, due to the lowest levels of support in Russia proper, the Whites depended on foreign support, while Bolsheviks depended on home support. This led to the Whites' being seen as foreing interventionists and eventually brought their possible support to even lower levels.

[Junghalli]

I am sorry, but the past eight years have gradually worn down my prior assurances and beliefs to the point that nothing was left

See my post on trying to imagine life under His Majesty King Bush II the Raghead Slayer.

We've lived through seven years of a bad President, and while it was certainly not a pretty sight try imagining seven years of living under the same leader, only he has dictatorial powers the likes of which the neocons can only dream of as they touch themselves at night and you're looking at another couple of decades of the same until he croaks and his brother or his wife or one of his daughters takes over and we can start all the fun all over again.

Bad Presidents and bad monarchs are bound to happen. The difference is that a democracy with its checks and balances limits the amount of damage a bad President can do, whereas the only thing that'll stop a bad monarch is old age, a coup de etat, or a revolution. President George W Bush hasn't gone into Iran because he knows it would be political suicide, King Bush II would just have started up mass conscription and probably have a million troops scattered over six or seven Middle Eastern countries by now.