Uganda to kill all gays with US congressionals' support

[Serafine666]

No. What he means is that a government which constructs legislation that once passed becomes it a crime to seek repeal (as is the case with this law) it stops being legitimate because its accountability to the democractic process is removed.

Well then, it seems that he and I have something that we can agree on. Thanks for the assist, Alyrium.

[Simon_Jester]

No. What he means is that a government which constructs legislation that once passed becomes it a crime to seek repeal (as is the case with this law) it stops being legitimate because its accountability to the democractic process is removed.

Correct. Power comes from the people, but it has to come through a channel, rather than merely being a case of "everyone loves Bob, therefore Bob can do whatever the hell he pleases." There must be a mechanism by which the people can express their support for Bob peacefully, and remove Bob if the honeymoon ends and they decide they actually hate Bob.

Full legitimacy requires BOTH popular support AND accountability. In practice, a popular but unaccountable government will not be overthrown, but there is no overriding reason not to overthrow it. If you think you can do a better job, you might as well go for it.

Conversely, an accountable but unpopular government should be brought down through the mechanisms used to hold it accountable, not by violent overthrow. If you don't like the current President of the United States, vote against him, and encourage others to do so, but do not try to remove him from office by force. And this goes for any president, so long as that president takes election results for an answer and does not crack down on the political process to the point where removing him from office peacefully becomes impossible.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yeah, I know. I talk more about this below, but in short:

*Marcos is crushed to death by shoes*

Ah, right. Gotcha. I agree in that the locals would be justified in taking action, if they ever did or if they ever wanted to.

Yes. I've often heard the Philippines described as a Latin American nation inexplicably picked up and dropped halfway across the world; I'm sure that isn't really true, but I'm not surprised to hear that there's at least a grain of reality inside it.

It's very partially true. Yes, we do have a whole blenderized diet full of Asian customs, from even words and traditions and awesome food that can be traced to Indonesia or Malaysia, to a whole lot of Chinese stuff that's ingrained into our society by virtue of centuries of association (I am ethnically Chinese). But what's very much unlike our Asian neighbors is the loads of stuff the Spanish gave us, which you really can't see anywhere else in Asia and the closest of which you'll see is in Latin America.

So, yeah. We really are a Spanish colony inexplicably picked up and dropped half way around the world from the rest of the Spanish colonies in the Americas.

Out of curiosity, two things:
1)"Philippines" or "the Philippines?" (this may be like asking whether you say "the United States is" or "the United States are...")

The. The Philippines. And is it "the United States is" or "the United States are"?

2)For reference, if you didn't already know, "Spaniard" is an old and somewhat derogatory English word for the people of Spain; it is more polite and neutral to say "Spanish" and "the Spanish." Of course, being part of a country they ran as a colony for ~350 years and that they managed to steal the credit for having the first guy to travel around the world from, you have every reason not be polite and neutral towards Spain...

But that's what my history books call them!

Seriously!

[Duckie]

Out of curiosity, two things:
1)"Philippines" or "the Philippines?" (this may be like asking whether you say "the United States is" or "the United States are...")

The. The Philippines. And is it "the United States is" or "the United States are"?

'United States' as a plural was stamped out by the civil war. Beforehand it was shorthand for federal government vs slavery states' rights supporters.

2)For reference, if you didn't already know, "Spaniard" is an old and somewhat derogatory English word for the people of Spain; it is more polite and neutral to say "Spanish" and "the Spanish." Of course, being part of a country they ran as a colony for ~350 years and that they managed to steal the credit for having the first guy to travel around the world from, you have every reason not be polite and neutral towards Spain...

But that's what my history books call them!

Seriously!

I too was unaware Spaniard was derogatory. In fact, I've looked it up in the dictionary and online and neither wiktionary (for popular opinion) nor the Oxford English Dictionary. (which also lists some great 1700s compounds of it: Spaniardess, Spaniardising, the Spaniard = Spain as a nation, etc).

[Simon_Jester]

The. The Philippines. And is it "the United States is" or "the United States are"?

After fighting a major ground war in the 1860s that was ultimately called off on account of lack of interest in going to extra rounds of guerilla warfare, the "is" crowd won on points. And bullets. Pointy bullets. Today, the consensus is "is," even among the right wing types who put Confederate flag stickers on their pickup trucks. Saying "are" as a matter of habit is equivalent to secessionism, because it is based on the notion that the US is a collection of sovereign States, not a singular entity.

As to why you should care, aside from pure curiosity:
Had the "are" crowd won, Philippine history might well have been notably different, because the United States of America would not have been quite so substantial a power in the late 1800s. The US would have had relatively little interest in the Caribbean, which would have been a Confederate lake. The Confederates might have fought a war with Spain and annexed or vassalized Cuba, but the odds of either the CSA or the USA actually sending a fleet over to Manila would probably have gone down somewhat.

My best guess is that the Philippines would have experienced a close parallel to what happened to Indochina and Indonesia, fighting and winning independence directly after their former colonial overlords tried to regain control after World War Two. I wonder what effect the Spanish Civil War would have had on the Philippines...

EDIT: Also, with a less extensively established interest in the western Pacific, the US might well not have gotten caught up in Japan's expansion in the Pacific, or not to the same degree. Historically one of Japan's main reasons for attacking the US in the first place was to neutralize the threat of an American fleet operating out of the former Spanish possessions in the Pacific against their lines of supply down to Indonesia.

Perhaps the Japanese would simply have seized the Philippines from their colonial master, much as the Americans did, some time in the early 1900s. I have no idea what would happen then.
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2)For reference, if you didn't already know, "Spaniard" is an old and somewhat derogatory English word for the people of Spain; it is more polite and neutral to say "Spanish" and "the Spanish." Of course, being part of a country they ran as a colony for ~350 years and that they managed to steal the credit for having the first guy to travel around the world from, you have every reason not be polite and neutral towards Spain...

But that's what my history books call them!

Perhaps I am wrong. "Spaniard" is an old English term for the people of Spain, dating back at least to the Elizabethan era (also the era of Philip II, with whom you are very likely more familiar). It may not actually be derogatory. It isn't wrong in the sense of being a word for something else, but for me it would be like referring to people from sub-Saharan Africa as "negroes." It is in fact a word for the group, but it's an inappropriate one, with a long history of being used by the sort of people who think of the group as the wrong sort of people. Also sort of like the difference between calling the people of the USA "yankees" instead of "Americans."

However, that may be a function of my mid-Atlantic Coast dialect of English, or just a bizarre quirk of my own. Do not take my word for it.

Also, even if it is a derogatory word, as a Filipino you have every right to use mildly derogatory words when talking about Spain.
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I too was unaware Spaniard was derogatory. In fact, I've looked it up in the dictionary and online and neither wiktionary (for popular opinion) nor the Oxford English Dictionary. (which also lists some great 1700s compounds of it: Spaniardess, Spaniardising, the Spaniard = Spain as a nation, etc).

It may not be; see above. Or this may be an "Amurican-style American English vs. Commonwealth-style English English" thing, although I'd think Shroomy would have learned American English.