I am American.

But you're absolutely right about everything else. I believe the US should not have inserted itself in European affairs, policed the world, and it is culpable for all of which you mention. Its cultural imperialism has rendered the EU into an overtaxed woke tyranny, a state of affairs which many seek to defend. For a while Europeans were too busy enjoying their freedoms to want to defend them. Who knows where you'd be if the Americans hadn't infiltrated the European psyche? I'm not sure. All I know is it needs to end, and that time might be now.

I've always questioned the theory of life which underlies modern education. It seems geared towards vocation, the development of mechanical faculties for the service of the mechanical organization of society, the primer for drudgery. I feel like it assumes the mistaken anthropology that man is little more than Aristotle's zoon politikon, a state animal, and one ought to be trained in the maintenance of these kinds of institutions.

I suppose the rise and fall of classical education is indicative of the trust and belief in these institutions because it isn't necessarily connected to the maintenance of any of them. I know for myself that I've learned more from how classical writers viewed the world than any bureaucratic curriculum. It's just a shame that I hadn't known of them earlier.

JD Vance’s speech to Europe’s elites was a dressing-down of the old establishment for their totalitarianism. In it he reiterated what he thought were the shared values of freedom, the ones both purported to fight for in the latter half of the last century, all of which seems to have disappeared in the next.

But we ought to remember that Europe was the cauldron of not only the politics of freedom, but also of repression and absolutism. Now, at this moment, it’s difficult to discern which spirit prevails on that continent.

In Germany you can be arrested for insulting a politician online. 60 minutes just did a little show on it, revealing to millions of Americans the political state of that country.

In the same episode the CBS crew follow around German stormtroopers as they raided people’s houses in the middle of the night and steal their laptops, phones, and other properties, for allegedly posting online things the state does not approve of. What appears to be routine in that country is anathema to the bill of rights in the United States, so-much-so that Americans ought to wonder why their tax-dollars go to defending the Old World from outside enemies when perhaps they should look at the ones within.

We know that the current European establishment is averse to so-called political strongmen, and perhaps rightfully so, but the political weakmen (to coin a term) have proven themselves to be not much better. They appear similar in method and lust for control and power, differing only in rhetoric and style. Vance mentioned that the Romanian courts annulled the election and upended democracy when the populist candidate won, on the premise that Russian misinformation promoted him. Democracy and the free-flow of information becomes a hurdle when their side loses, and never themselves are to blame.

All of this should promote one to wonder: Why are we in NATO? And why are American tax-payer dollars supporting this illiberal order?

A typical example of a political weakman would be German diplomat Christoph Heugsen, in response to Vance:

What is bad about this advice?

The whole premise is bad. Misinformation and “false beliefs” is not a threat, never has been, and their constant wolf-crying only empowers the most powerful governments, institutions, and corporations to seize control of what is true or false. So not only is it a waste of money, their works puts a chilling effect on press and speech freedom all around the world.

They had a hearing the other day, the “Eliminating Waste by the Foreign Aid Bureaucracy”. Journalist Michael Shellenberger testified before the senate that CEPPS is a part of the global censorship complex, basically a deep-state foreign election-meddler.

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Shellenberger-2025-02-13.pdf

A bipartisan bill was introduced last fall to end the funding of international censorship, using your worthy cause as an example of its worst excesses, when it discussed censorship strategies with the government of Brazil as it went about dissenting voices on Rumble and X.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/hr9850/text

Nice and friendly ancronym s and copy from a website just isn’t enough for me, nor anyone else who can see beyond their own skull.

The latter isn't going to be addressed AT ALL by Trump. He's already said entitlements are off the table. So the couch cushions are pulled, DOGE rearranges some deck chairs more efficiently, and the Titanic steams on.

At any rate, the state will be slimmer and tax-payer dollars should be redirected to cover the cost of those areas.

The war will work out great for Putin and Trump if they manage to divvy Ukraine's assets and leave the locals with nothing. That, is a lack of diplomacy.

How else will they pay back their loans?

This is couch cushion stuff. Politicians who ignore entitlement reform are not serious about debts and deficits. Wouldn't you agree?

This is stuff spent in other countries on boondoggle projects that have nothing to do with the American tax-payer. Entitlements, on the other hand, are designed to benefit the tax-payer. The former needs to be addressed before the latter.

Sides have been engaged, which is a far cry from what Europe and NATO has done. It’s a shame because it appears the Euros just sat around, having expensive summits, and let the war continue. It must be difficult to sit around and watch neighbors die. But hey, at least they have the comforting rhetoric and sabre-rattling to help them sleep at night.

Oh sorry, I mean the United States of America. You are living in Canada, right, so it's not your country.

It’s my country wherever I go, pal. I can still vote if I wanted to. Canada might even be the 51st state.

Jesus. No wonder the country is broke.

US taxpayer dollars were going to be spent on the following items, all which have been cancelled:
- $10M for "Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision"
- $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop "a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills"
- $2.3M for "strengthening independent voices in Cambodia"
- $32M to the Prague Civil Society Centre
- $40M for "gender equality and women empowerment hub"
- $14M for "improving public procurement" in Serbia
- $486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” including $22M for "inclusive and participatory political process" in Moldova and $21M for voter turnout in India
- $29M to "strenghening political landscape in Bangladesh"
- $20M for "fiscal federalism" in Nepal
- $19M for "biodiversity conversation" in Nepal
- $1.5M for "voter confidence" in Liberia
- $14M for "social cohesion" in Mali
- $2.5M for "inclusive democracies in Southern Africa"
- $47M for "improving learning outcomes in Asia"
- $2M to develop "sustainable recycling models" to "increase socio-economic cohesion among marginalized communities of Kosovo Roma, Ashkali, and Egypt"

It’s called diplomacy, a skill European’s seemed to have misplaced. Look how well all the silly war-mongering and war-profiteering has worked out until now.

Or like giving NATO what it wants. Finally some leaders willing to grasp the reality of the situation and compromise.

And that guy has done more to stop the war in his first month than Europe and the previous administration have done in years.

Are you under the impression that his "lesson" was well-received by his "students"?

Not at all. He dressed them down as the enemy within, and their countries as totalitarian shit-holes.

JD Vance schools Europe’s overlords.

Thanks for the breakdown.

That would be true of all borrowing and spending. But it appears the debt to GDP ratio was falling in the decades following the enacting Medicare, so I suppose there are far greater drivers of the debt.

Depends on the entitlement. I think out-of-control and unnecessary spending is the main culprit.

Important and damning info regarding the debt from DOGE. The debt spiral might not be able to be stopped. (It’s nice to see some transparency as opposed to the opaque secrecy the usual suspects prefer and defend.)

I know you like The Washington Post.

Traumatized? Gaslit? How to know if you’re misusing therapy words.

RFK Jr. Confirmed.

Aah yes, manufactured talking points. Projection is one of the biases I was speaking of.

Like I said, the usual suspects.

I'm guessing @NOS4A2 doesn't want either, wants there to be nothing, just people doing...their thing.

Do you need laws to teach you how to behave, Jorn?

So why do people freak out like they're losing something? Why the lamentations in this thread?

There is no principle at work, as far as I can tell. For instance when Biden defied the Supreme Court for his illegal student loan forgiveness, the usual suspects, here, in congress, and elsewhere, didn’t care. Imagine if Trump defied the Supreme Court and he said “the Supreme Court blocked it, but that didn’t stop me”. I wouldn’t attribute to them malice, either, so my guess is there are a number of cognitive biases at work, like a band-wagon effect, fundamental attribution error, projection, and so on.

So it doesn't make any difference to you if you live in a democracy or a dictatorship. It's the same thing either way.

Pretty much.

But most people don't really want to be out in the woods trapping rabbits. They want to live more sophisticated lives of the kind that can only be found in society. So isn't the idea that you buy-in to the laws with some assurance that you're contributing to them, if not 100%? No?

One doesn’t need to live in the woods. He can live in a city if he wants.

By buy-in and contribute to the laws, do you mean he doesn’t violate them? Personally, the only reason I don’t violate any laws is because I do not want the authorities to have a reason to punish me. So I don’t drive through red lights. Other than that morality is the only thing that guides my behavior.

The will of a "faction" is a "general will". It is not a "particular will". So in one sentence after the other, you have granted what you explicitly denied.

According to Rousseau the will of a faction is a particular will, not the general will. I was using his terms. What have I granted by using them?

Let's get this straight. By your own words, there is no general will. He is carrying out what is wanted by the president, not what is wanted by the people. By your principles, there is no such thing as "what is wanted by the people". (Incidentally, those are the principles commonly exploited by the strategy known as "divide and conquer".)

Yes, there is no such thing as the general will. That’s not a principle. It’s just a fact.

You don’t think people wanted DOGE? I mean, Trump and Musk both campaigned on it.

Remember when Biden cancelled the border wall then two years later his own party begged him to restart it again? I bet life was a breeze not having to pay attention back then.

By “people” I mean those who voted for him. Not everyone voted, and not everyone voted for Trump. I figured that would be obvious.

He needs no congressional approval. He’s a special government employee, in this case appointed by the president to carry out the president’s mandate.

He works for the president of the United States. The people voted in the president to get Musk to do just what he is doing. Those offices are executive branch offices.

Every illegal alien has committed a crime. That’s a 100% crime rate.

If a bunch of tools barge into an office, would the office not require a warrant?

It’s not their office. They just work there, or used to.

But why was he wrong? Why does democracy fail to bring about what he hoped?

Rousseau takes great pains to distinguish between the particular and general will, but I think he failed. There is no general will, and thus no Sovereign. In practice the “general will” always turns out to be the will of some individual or faction or other (a particular will), namely, the rule of those who claim to know and represent the “general will”. The rule of this group or any other can never be the rule of the people. A republic or any other state is necessarily an oligarchy, and no one living in one can ever free.

So could a society be constructed so that the laws are the general will of the people? If we could, then wouldn't people finally be free?

I fear we should limit the term “society” to what it used to mean: a companionship, alliance, or fellowship, rather than taking it to be a nation-state. A State or country is not a society because we can’t know or interact with all members of any given nation, and therefore there can be no natural and social allegiance between countrymen as there would be between family, friends, and others we commonly deal with. I suppose only those kinds of societies ought to be constructed and nurtured, and only there can the rule of the people be found.

To be fair it is a free for all in this thread, so go nuts and remind us of Vietnam. I don’t care. I just think it’s stupid to insult people for writing about the topic of a thread. Maybe start a new one.

Well, we could test it. Go out and incite someone to do something. You can try it on me if you wish. You might find that it’s actually quite difficult to incite people to do anything, let alone something illegal.

That’s because the whole theory of incitement is magical thinking top-to-bottom. It is physically impossible to animate someone with your words and to suggest that one can is tantamount to sorcery.

Do want us to add a little addendum that excoriates the Vietnam War after each comment, in a thread that has nothing to do with the topics you mention?

If you want more anti-American threads go check out Reddit.

He literally said the election was stolen in that speech. How can that be anything but inciting?

The history of first amendment jurisprudence. He has to first advocate for criminal activity, and second, that his advocacy was directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action. None of that occurred, I’m afraid. In fact he advocated the opposite, that they act “peacefully”.