RelexCryo said:
Constitutional laws can be abolished at will, if the Majority demands it. In the US, there was an amendment outlawing liquor, the 18th amendment. It was repealed. Granted, that has nothing to do with discrimination against minorities, I simply quoted that to demonstrate that constitutions can be altered, not just by adding laws, but by taking them away.
You have stated that laws which inhibit the abilities of the majority are necessary. If the majority chose to abolish constitutional laws, they could easily do so.
No, the majority can only overturn constitutional precepts when they have an extremely qualified quorum which is deliberately calculated to never be composed of a single party under normal circumstances, meaning that constitutional changes can't happen with a large scale agreement across majority and minority groups. Which is one of the devices in place to curb majority rule and my point all along.
Keep in mind, I never, at any point in time, argued against having laws that prevent bar owners from being able to throw out gays or discriminate against people. I pointed out that trying to inhibit the Majority, rather than random bigots, is a pointless task in a Democracy.
But it's not! It's the whole point of the entire legal and electoral system! It works! It's been working for ages, which is the only reasons we have any rights left! How do you not see this! I'm running out of exclamation marks here!
Actually, you explicitly said that the majority outnumbered the government so much that even with their bare hands they would still win.
No. You make it sound like a crazy person is saying that the moment 51% of the population is angry they can just go and win a punching brawl against the other 49%. What I said, in much more cogent and less insane terms, is that when a minority group in power strongly oppresses the entire population a revolt is not heavily dependant on being equally armed and organized as the government they seek to overthrow. And I only said this after you grossly misinterpreted my original point about kings needing the support of nobility, as made obvious in your next statement:
Civilian revolts can succeed. You earlier argued that it was impossible for a well armed and organized military to oppress the majority, literally stating that Monarchies inherently depend on the support of the majority, due to the difference in raw numbers. I simply pointed out it is not impossible for well armed and organized militaries to oppress the average person.
Because that's not at all what I stated. I said that kings still needed the support of the network of noblemen and knights that provided him with armies and funding. I did this because you claimed that monarchy was some sort of 1984-like system in which a single person somehow managed to retain the loyalty of a huge army and rule on his own an entire country. I merely pointed out that political support was a thing before democracy and many kings were dethroned when a sizable chunk of their own nobility got positioned against them, violently or not.
You, on the other hand, took that notion and ran with it all the way to crazyland into some ridiculous diatribe about armies and roman rapists and who knows what else.
I never stated it was a binary choice. By stating that Monarchies inherently have the support of the majority, as they are doomed to be destroyed if they do not have it, you however, inherently did imply that same binary nature.
No I didn't, see above. Also stop latching on to throwaway comments you semi-deliberately misunderstand to try to wring any sort of dialectical victory out of this. It is both pointless and annoying.
I apologize, I meant other cultures. I apologize for failing to clarify. My point was they were heavily imperialistic, and their culture had a long history of attacking and oppressing other civilations. That, combined with their heavy emphasis on sex, is part of why they have a strong association with rape.
They... don't have a strong association with rape. I've studied roman history quite a bit and I've never heard of a strong association with rape. They have a strong (and somewhat unwarranted) association with slavery, but rape? Not so much. It was a crime then, as far as I know, outside of wartime. In wartime it was frequent, but not more common than in other cultures of the time. I guess the common mistranslation of the latin word "rapere", which meant "to kidnap" rather than "to rape" might have originated that, if it's even a thing, as they would at times abduct and marry the women of the people they conquered, but you could make the case that this was no more forced than any other arranged marriage at the time. In fact, roman soldiers moving to the places they conquered and starting a family seems to have been a relatively frequent thing (getting some land in the conquered area was probably a common reward) and it certainly helped integration between romans and their conquered.
The same goes for "attacking and oppressing" other cultures. Again, no more than the rest. They just did it more successfully, and most historians would say that they were better at being vicious in war but remarkably open to negotiation. They treated conquered cultures pretty well and allowed a high degree of autonomy, which is why they could keep control of a larger area: less need to revolt.
I really don't know where you're getting all that stuff from. I guess the fact that romans bothered to write down what they did, including their wartime exploits might help consider them more brutal or... eh... rapist than other cultures, but they really weren't.
It was a real dick move. Somehow in the minds of men lesbians=hot, gay men=not. Although they are technically the same thing. But yeah as John Marcone mentioned earlier there are too many things into play here.
