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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   28805 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

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So to be clear, since the deployment of the 101st Airborne wasn't just about a cut in federal funding, it clearly crossed the line into proving that the US is not a laboratory of democracy, right?

The 101st is an internal force relative to the united states. So long as its application is democratic, the united states remains a laboratory of democracy.

Remember: everything the state does is backed by acts of violence. Whether or not the 101st is an actual, literal presence within a state, the existence of the power to deploy units like the 101st backstops every federal declaration to the states. Demanding "no violence whatsoever" is just the end of the american experiment period.

So the Soviet Union was not a laboratory of democracy relative to Czechoslovakia, but was one relative to itself, correct?

Aside from that, your definition of a "labiratory of democracy" sems to have clearly changed. Originally you said one state try one thing and the other can try the opposite. You are now telling me that preventing the opposite from being tried through the use of the military is completely fine. You can hold that view, but your original description of the concept does bot fit your current one.

Depending on one's view of the soviet union, it could be categorized as either a hostile jungle or a laboratory, but in any case it is not a laboratory of democracy. America's special status, and special success, comes from the fact that both the experiments and the laboratory at large are managed under democratic principles.

If democratic principles include sending in the military to crush dissent, no system isn't democratic.

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