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From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Democracy  & Peace
Message-ID: <593@whuts.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Mar-86 09:31:16 EST
Article-I.D.: whuts.593
Posted: Tue Mar 25 09:31:16 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Mar-86 09:17:53 EST
References: <7801138@inmet>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 44

> Democracies are not warlike. If they were, they'd sometimes fight
> each  other. By implication, if they fight someone else - or have
> an arms race with someone else - the OTHER side's the problem.
> 
> 
> In history, there is a counterexample  for *almost* everything.
> Rarely  a clear, unequivocal rule emerges. When it *does*, it
> shouldn't be passed by.
> 
> This is such a case: a huge sample, no exceptions. (Well, just to
> help you out: there have been two *very* marginal cases: the "Cod
> War" between Britain and Iceland; and accidental sinking by Isra-
> el of an American ship. That's *all*).
> 
> 		Jan Wasilewsky

Jan, you don't know your history very well at all.
As I have pointed out before, the history of Imperialism by democracies
goes all the way back to ancient Athens, which had as democratic
a government as one could find in the Ancient World.
It continued with the early Roman Republic, which had a nominal
degree of democracy, and onto modern times with the British, French,
Dutch, and other European empires.
 
One must distinguish between *internal* stability and peace, which
*HAS* been the undeniable product of national democracies and
*external* relations with other states, be they democratic or
otherwise.
 
I make this important point *NOT* to criticize democratic government
within nation-states  but to point out that such is no guarantee
of peace *between* states.  The point then is to try to extend
the internal peace and stability enjoyed by democratic nation-states
to the world as a whole.  The best way to do that I believe is to
extend the principles of representation and compromise which achieve
domestic peace in democracies to the whole world.  This means
establishing a framework of international law enforced by international
agencies just as domestic laws and constitutions provide a rule of
law rather than the jungle for democratic nation-states.
 
I suppose I shall have to provide lengthy quotations from historical
sources to back up my claims, since you do not seem to have the
most basic understanding of history.
            tim sevener   whuxn!orb