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Not letting your citizens leave the country is a very VERY unique horror with very few precedents. And one I am very fucking sensitive to having just lived through the Canadian lockdowns.
It's not unique at all, it was standard fare for half of my parent's lifetime doe to them being born in People's Republic of Poland, a vassal state of the dearest USSR. The standard fare for getting a passport was to become an informer for the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service), spying on your family and friends. And that was during cold "wartime", not war-wartime. While I'm not much a fan of Zeleński, calling wartime conscription of males a very rate precedent show only one's narrow historical and geographical perspective.
And "Ukraine's government is corrupt, therefore their cities getting shelled and their people getting warcrimed in a manner typical to Red-- I mean Russian army is just business as usual in the region" is an embarassing non sequitur.
No for most of human history there was no effective means to enforce border controls and people could just leave if they wanted, except for totalitarian states for which literally any violence is justified to end their existence. It remains a horror to the average American that any soviet countries could have existed without the populace flaying the flesh from their tyrants in the night.
that a "democracy" equipped with the technology and surveillance tech to actually prevent its citizens from leaving, has chosen to restrict mass cross-sections of the country from exercising basic freedom of travel, and has done so that they might be imprisoned and fed into the war machine is a very unique fucking horror and one no westerner has EVER tolerated in a democracy.
At the height of the Vietnam War the US did not control americans leaving. That's how draft dodgers got to Canada, they just fucking drove. If the US had set up checkpoints on the other side of the road and started interrogating anyone trying to leave the country, there would have been armed insurrection and those guards would have been firebombed in their homes with their children inside.
The fact you treat a totalitarian country like Soviet Poland as an at all acceptable comparison as if its very existence wasn't an insult to the human race, says a whole lot about those willing to support the Zelensky regime.
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Live free or die. Any regime that gets remotely close to these restrictions demands endless armed insurrection until the populace is free of it or until no one is left alive within it.
In the post above, you write
which implies that you're a Leaf, so I don't see how stealing USA's hypothetical 60s valor, or speaking about "average American's" horror is of any use here. But more to the point: how come you're still alive, then? Why didn't you live up to your proclaimed ideals, why didn't you take up arms against Trudeau regime, or died trying?
The difference between Vietnam and Russia's 'special military operation' is that the latter is fought on Ukraine's home soil. I thought that this was obvious, but apparently it needs pointing out. No western country had a war on their turf since 1945. If they did, the just-so-stories about how their superior civil liberties flow flow their citizens' moral superiority would melt rather quickly.
Also, there's no such thing as "Soviet Poland", Poland (along with Czechoslovakia, etc.) was not a soviet republic, but a separate state. Authoritarian, not totalitarian, and you having two factual errors in one sentence makes me think that you're getting it wrong on purpose, although I fail to imagine what it might be.
But it the American soul is truly as pained by my country's predecessor's existence as you claim, I'm afraid they have mostly their former president to blame. FD Roosevelt mad a deal with Stalin, and so the iron curtain landed to the west of Poland, instead of to the east. I guess "live free" only goes so far, and sacrificing entire countries' freedom as a bargaining chip was acceptable to 40s Americans.
Also, while great men theory of history is probably wrong. Thousands of above-average men can make a dent, at least in the short term. As it happens, some 22000 of Poland's cream of the crop were murdered in the early stage of WWII, which made mounting a successful resistance to the Soviets rather difficult. And the culprit was... would you look at that, Russians! I mean, Soviets! But surely, my antipathy towards Russia must only be because of the Western propaganda.
First, LOL if you believe this as if the poles weren't 100% a conquered people and your administrative status mattered. Sure. And the East German stasi was ethically better than the pre-45 Stasi... absolutely a free republic.
Second FDR 100% deserved the gallows for destroying American freedom and bringing about the administrative state. Fascism in all but name. I reccommend reading Herbert Hoover's Hsitory of the second world war Freedom Betrayed
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Third, something big happened in Canada in response to the lockdowns, rebellions, blockades of the worlds busiest bridge, violent confrontations with the police, and occupation and encampment in -20 to -40... I neither confirm nor deny my involvement in any illegal activity. And BTW the truckers won. The government blinked, almost all restrictions were dropped across the board, and half the political spectrum of Canada is being purged of those who supported lockdowns.
Forth, English Canadians are a made up people. There is no cultural difference between us and the US. Its like Germany and Austria, but without even a significant history of cultural difference or conflict. Hell I've lived in apartments that looked into the US.
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Finally, I'm not some pro-Russia shill. You hate Russia? Good you probably should, as far as I can tell almost everyone in europe is 100% right to want almost everyone else in Europe dead. What I loath is the North American elite sending our money to support centuries old ethnic conflicts, treating violent authoritarian states as if they're some moral exemplars everyone over hear should admire, and risking an escalation to world war over a third world country and its conflict with its second world neighbor.
I want the US and Canada disentangled from Europe.
How would you feel if your government was sending billions of your dollars to prop up regimes in the South Pacific? How would you feel if you were edging closer to nuclear war over some bullshit conflict in West Africa? It does not concern us, we have no meaningful economic or geopolitical interest tied up in it, and there's no way the Ukrainian moral claims hold up to the slightest scrutiny compared to any other global conflict, especially on costs.
I don't really care whether Russia or Ukraine wins in the abstract, I care that my government is trying to get us further entangled in geopolitical conflicts that don't concern us and could end with nukes landing in our cities.
Canad-Anschluss when?
I feel more at home in Toronto, or even in Quebec, than I do in many parts of the United States. Canadian independence is mostly hypothetical anyway in the field of foreign policy, and our conflicts on trade et al are less aggressive than internal conflicts in Canada or the USA.
Well there's been an observed trend that the most fanatical adherrents of any national ideology come from the perrifery of the Empire... Napoleon was a Corsican, Hitler a Austrian, Stalin a Georgian, Trotsky and Lenin both German-Jewish-Russian mixes, hell even the Duke of wellington was raised in Ireland
So its been widely theorized American Hitler will be a Canadian... and Australian Hitler a Kiwi
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Understandable, but it would also be understandable if this intensifies your passion on this issue beyond what is reasonable.
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Universal conscription is pretty common in small countries with bigger and more powerful neighbors. Finland, Israel, South Korea for examples that would generally be considered free countries. Russia too as it happens, though they have apparently loosened up on their terms of conscription.
Of those three Finland is the only one I'd possibly consider free or non-horrifying... and I suspect that's probably just my ignorance and it actually is horrifying in some way I haven't yet heard of, given it feels entitled to enslave its male population... and largely not even give them a vote on the matter since conscription begins at 18 and voting only occurs 1/4 years.
Most conscripts who've die in wars of "Democracy" die for a country they were never eligible to vote in.
This probably deserves its own thread to explore properly, since it's a tricky question. Technically it's true that it could be seen as a form of slavery. But on the other hand, if you aspire to live in a country with any political freedoms, don't you basically have to take some level of responsibility for physically defending it from hostile aggressors who would crush that freedom? Feels pretty abstract in a country like America, but not so much in places like the above where powerful and far more numerous adversaries are only a short distance away, could invade at any moment and crush any illusion of liberty you might have had.
Political freedom is not a function of the state but the individuals ability to commit violence against the state. Knights were free and serfs were slaves not because of some deriliction or philosopgical disposition of the king, but because the knights could rebel and offer violence to the king but the serfs could not even offer violence to the knights.
Likewise the North American colonists were able to gain so much more freedom than their European counterparts because they were armed and could murder government officials... Even Canada has had more rebellions in the past 200 years than Brittain.
Making oneself subservient, even in an armed role, to the state does nothing to gain one liberty Ask all those russian concripts who died with no political freedom under communism.
One does not gain freedom by fighting the state's enemies. One gains freedom by making the state your enemy
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If the government can unilaterally send you to die in the trenches then your freedom is already crushed
Likewise if a country cannot raise enough people who care about it enough to fight for it on their own volition, then perhaps it ceasing to exist as an independent entity is not such a bad thing
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Universal mobilization means you are now an element of the war machine, and leaving is desertion. It has happened everywhere at different times for different reasons, and exists as an option for all developed nations in the world as we speak.
A principled stand for freedom here is worthwhile, but probably only if your particular set of borders has a bunch of nukes/is part of a nuclear alliance.
Universal mobilization means you are now an element of the war machine, and leaving is desertion. It has happened everywhere at different times for different reasons, and exists as an option for all developed nations in the world as we speak.
I have written about concription several times on the motte... In every instance I've argued it demanded lethal violence against thos administering it. Up to ands including killing the volunteer members of the draft boards
If we are indulging in fantastical arrangements for society, I think we should all just get along, man.
The french revolution pulled the cork this particular bottle, and Napoleon smashed it and fired the remains into the sun. Until technology removes the need for mass participation of humans on the home front and the war front, any state that elects to leave this particular option on the table is tying it's hands for principles sake.
we can abandon chemical weapons because they don't really work on organized first tier militaries; we cam restrain ourselves from Nukes and Bio 'cause of MAD and escalation. You can't have a war without people, though.
I don't care if the hands are tied. I want free people to exist not states.
I'd rather A country be reduced to Afghanistan and lose a chunk of its territory and free people exist somewhere in the uncontrolled territory than no free people exist anywhere because the state propped up its own existence by enslaving them.
Yes this goes for WW2. Yes this goes for the civil war. I have not seen a single faction in a single war in any moment of human history where i thought their propping up their war efforts by resorting to litteral slavery was at all an improvement.
the 20 million who died fighting for the soviet union might have lived had they murdered their commissars and officers instead of being fed into the Soviet Unions horrific efforts at self preservation.
The worst enemy you have no matter what is the man who has you at gunpoint and is issuing orders... he is always the first person you need to kill. And if a nation and a people... even call themselves your people are standing behind him demanding your death, then they are your enemies too.
There is no one more sympathetic in WW2 than the soviet citizens who volunteered for the Nazis, or the German citizens who volunteered for the soviets or allies... They accurately assessed who their greater enemy was: Their own governments.
I also want a stateless classless society where property is abolished and all receive according to their need, hail Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.
We need to advance a touch more as a society in a variety of ways before we get there though.
Again, if you want to stand by your principles hell or high water, you have to accept that what is going to happen to you when the floods come is that you will drown.
I'm an Anarcho-capitalist.
I only want no government.
Private property, class, want, hunger, struggle, danger, dying young.. that's all fine with me as long as in the interim I'm free. Live free or Die.
But being ruled by another, especially these totalizing dystopian regimes of mediocrity and lies, is completely unacceptable, and any chaos would be tolerable to them.
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The idea these gloriffied pozi schemes with armies and propaganda departments get to kidnap young men in the prime of their lives and kill them em mass so they can keep the retirement accounts of old school marms going another year... that's an unacceptable horror.
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Hardly. The Nazis weren't asking nicely. They were asking far less nicely than the Soviet government demanded, by all accounts known to me. It wasn't "accurately accessing that their own government was the greater enemy", it was accurately accessing that Stalin and the Red Army were far and the Wehrmacht and the SS were very, very close - close enough to have them at gunpoint and issuing orders.
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