Internet quiz

By -
“There are just eight states on earth which both existed in 1914 and have not had their form of government changed by violence since then.” -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan

What are the eight? (No googling the quote.)

Comments

  1. Olivier Braun3:14 AM

    I think that there is no such state in Asia nor South America nor Africa. Europe's map has changed a lot and had 2 wars, a lot of coups.

    Let's say :
    - Switzerland
    - Great britain
    - Norway
    - United States of America
    for sure.

    Maybe also Sweden. If you count the british dominions (were they States ?) I would add Australia, New-Zealand and Canada.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gcallah8:38 PM

      No, Norway had a fascist puppet state in the 1940s! The one you missed is a bit of a surprise: South Africa! The apartheid regime was not violently overthrown.

      Delete
    2. Olivier Braun3:21 AM

      I knew I could have a problem with Sweden, but obviously I made a confusion with Norway.

      About South Africa (I lived in Pretoria from 2011 to mid 2014) I was thinking about it, but since the ANC waged a peoples's war for 2 decades with tens of thousands of casualties, I couldn't think it was non violent.

      By the way, I wrote an article after Mandela's death on that topic, for the french Institut Turgot.

      Since I know you learned French, I give you the link, I hope you won't mind.
      http://blog.turgot.org/index.php?post/Braun-Mandela

      Delete
    3. gcallah6:09 AM

      Yes, I thought South Africa was a little problematic as well, but those were Moynihan's answers, not mine. Thanks for the link!

      Delete
  2. Nick Rowe7:14 PM

    UK, Canada, US, Australia, NZ, Sweden, Switzerland, Iceland?? (I failed history.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gcallah8:36 PM

      Iceland was not a state yet! The rest you got.

      Delete
    2. Nick Rowe9:19 PM

      Didn't know Iceland wasn't a state in 1914. And we sort of invaded Iceland in the 1940's too, I think, though didn't really change its government.

      The anglosphere predominates in the list, is the lesson I draw.

      Delete
    3. gcallah2:43 AM

      Nick, it struck me too, how dominant the Anglosphere is in this list: even South Africa!

      Delete
  3. Ken B9:07 PM

    Before peeking at the others ...

    Canada
    USA
    Gr Britain(? Ireland might be a problem here)
    The better neutrals in ww2 Sweden, Switzerland, Monaco.
    Mexico(?)


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gcallah2:44 AM

      I thought Ireland was a problem for Moynihan's list as well, but I guess cleaving off part of a country by violence didn't count.

      Delete
  4. Ken B9:09 PM

    Doh! Oz and NZ of course! Stupid to have missed those.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Josiah Neeley9:31 PM

    US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Sweden, Liechtenstein.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gcallah2:46 AM

      I would guess with Liechtenstein, the issue was the post WWI settlement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein#20th_century

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In ancapistan, if you have no property, you have no rights

By -
Ancaps often declare, "All rights are property rights." I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of running into libertarians online who insisted that libertarianism supports "the freedom of movement," and realized that this principle actually entails that people without property have no rights at all, let alone any right to "freedom of movement." Of course, immediately, any ancap readers still left here are going to say, "Wait a second! Everyone owns his own body! And so everyone at least has the right to not have his body interfered with." Well, that is true... except that in ancapistan, one has no right to any place to put that body, except if one owns property, or has the permission of at least one property owner to place that body on her land. So, if one is landless and penniless, one had sure better hope that there are kindly disposed property owners aligned in a corridor from wherever one happens to be to wherever the...
Read more

St. Paul and I Agree...

By -
Taxation is not theft: "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves." -- Romans 13 The key idea implicit here, and the one that turned me on the subject of whether or not taxation is theft, is that "every soul" owes obedience to the "governing authorities." Now, if that is a debt I truly owe , then, when those authorities levy the taxes they need to do the job of governing, I owe them those taxes, and attempts to collect them certainly do not constitute acts of theft. And obviously it doesn't matter at all, from this point of view, whether or not I "signed" any sort of "social contract." (In fact, the history of political thought since the Reformation can be read as an attempt to find a secular rep...
Read more

Libertarianism and Violence, II

By -
I decided to move some discussion from this post up to the top level here. Specifically, Watoosh wrote: "Well, if violence is defined as initiation of force (which, of course, presupposes certain property rights), then I think Rockwell is correct..." Well, if we define cats as elephants, then many people keep elephants in their house. More seriously, firstly, violence is not usually defined that way. It's defined as, you know, violence, so that, say, someone may respond violently or non-violently to someone who aggresses against them. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say, for instance, "He punched me, but I did not stoop to violence in response." And, secondly, the libertarian usage of "initiation of force" is very offbeat. If I wander onto someone's meadow, most people would not say I had "initiated force" -- I mean, sure, I used "force" against the earth to push off walking, but that's not force directed against...
Read more