Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 June 22

= June 22 =

Regional parties in the European Parliament
What's the purpose of supporting a regional party for the European Parliament? For example, the "point" of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party appears to be the independence of Wales and Scotland, respectively (if they're significantly different from the UK-wide major parties on other big issues, this American is unaware), and neither of those is particularly relevant to Union-wide matters, if I understand rightly. And apparently The Greens–European Free Alliance includes not only these two but other regional parties, as well as Greens who obviously have Union-wide relevance. I don't really imagine this kind of thing happening in the USA (consider the Charter Committee, whose members have run as Democrats or as Republicans in elections outside Cincinnati), and I don't know much of other countries' elections, so I just don't understand why a party concentrating on a regional matter, which seemingly shares ideas on other subjects with other parties, would nominate candidates (or why people would vote for them) to stand in a supranational election. Nyttend (talk) 01:06, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Nationalist parties are not simply single-issue parties. They also have political platforms on how to run the Union as a whole; they're pragmatic in the sense that they advocate for levels of autonomy and independence, but also are still politicians who want the system they work in now to work for the people.  While in the UK, the nationalist parties have rarely had enough seats to have any sort of mandate on their own (they often caucus with the Labour party, being of the same sort of social-democratic centre-left positions) that hasn't always been true everywhere.  In Canada, which also operates under the Westminster System, the Quebec Nationalist party known as Bloc Québécois was actually the Official Opposition party from 1993-1997.  -- Jayron 32 02:48, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Bloc Québécois actually came to mind, since I remembered that they were The Opposition, but that's different, because Ottawa can make lots of decisions that are directly relevant to Québécois autonomy/independence. I don't see how this is significantly different from a local Montreal party running candidates for the federal House of Commons.  Nyttend (talk) 03:24, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the broader point is that Plaid Cymru and SNP still have platforms and opinions on how a political system (any political system, including the EU, and the UK, and their own National Assemblies) should operate, and these broader political policies, such as social democracy and the like (which both Plaid Cyrmu and the SNP espouse) are valid political philosophies in any political landscape. Thus, whether the SNP is participating in the EU, or in the UK Parliament, or in the Scottish Parliament, they still have a political position on how the State should do its business, and as such, they have valid contributions to make to the political discussion.  It's not like they believe in Scottish Independence, and haven't thought about anything else except that.  They have political platforms and philosophies which are valid and inform their position on various social and economic issues, and wish to see those positions work regardless of which political body (Scottish Parliament, UK Parliament, or EU Parliament) they are serving in.  Your mistake is in assuming these political parties are single issue parties concerned monolithically with ONLY the issue of independence, and that they don't have any other positions on governance in general.  That's simply not true.  These are parties with broader ideologies and platforms, and these ideologies inform their politics regardless of which body they serve in, and thus they have meaningful contributions to make in the EU parliament even if the EU parliament doesn't have any say on their nationalist plank of their platform; the rest of their political ideology is still valid and useful.  -- Jayron 32 03:32, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * In Europe the regional parties tend to support the idea of a Europe of the Regions. That, and their general positions, often social democratic as Jayron says, gives them ample things to say. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:04, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed, the SNP occupy a distinct enough position in UK politics that I've heard people down in the South of England where I live wishing that they could vote for them - even when those people don't necessarily agree on Scottish independence itself. MChesterMC (talk) 08:43, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

May a monarchy be considered fully democratic?
In my opinion, no, because it implies that some people have more rights (i.e. the royal family and the nobility) than others. Besides no ordinary people can access to the more prestigious (even if often merely symbolic) position of the State.--Carnby (talk) 13:54, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Probably I made a mistake: I intended in classical political science studies.--Carnby (talk) 14:10, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Define "fully democratic". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:52, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Define "fully democratic". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:52, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Our article on Constitutional Monarchy should be the first address to check for information and links to the various implementations thereof. There are elected monarchs, e.g. Malaysia or the Holy Sea.  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 14:51, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * The head of state in elective monarchies is however elected among the aristocracy.--Carnby (talk) 16:49, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I will stick with it any day, in preference to a system which allows someone wealthy like Donald Trump to attempt to buy the presidency. Wymspen (talk) 15:29, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * If Trump wins the election (he hasn't managed to win them yet) in four or eight years' time it will be a normal citizen again. That's not the same with monarchies.--Carnby (talk) 16:49, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Holy Sea doesn't have any elected monarchs, though the Holy See could be said to have one. Matt Deres (talk) 16:05, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Oops :o) --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:03, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * The Democracy Index has many constitutional monarchies among the full democracies, including 4 of the top-5. If the monarch has no real political power then it's generally not considered a factor in evaluating democracy. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:19, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * OP, it's a question of perspective. You say the Royal Family has more rights than other people.  Well, they have no say about their status.  They are there because the law says they are there.  They have duties, and have no right to just ignore them.  Everybody else in the nation can choose their career; the RF cannot.  Oh, they can go off and become military officers, horse breeders, childrens' book authors or whatever, but those are essentially sideshows to the main events of their royal lives.  A UK monarch can't even abdicate without the approval of Parliament, and that requires the passage of a special law amending the laws of succession, as happened in case of Edward VIII.  Had the Parliament been bloody-minded had a different view about it, they could have just refused to pass the abdication bill, and Edward VIII would have continued to be le roi malgré lui.  The Parliament represents the will of the people, and if the Parliament does things the people don't like, they get the chance to change the makeup of the Parliament at the next General Election.  That's how parliamentary democracy works.  Anyone has the right to mount a campaign to abolish the monarchy, and if enough people got on the bandwagon, change would occur.  I don't see any evidence that that's imminent.  The people want it that way, or at the very least they are not unhappy enough about it to raise the energy to do something about it.  That's democracy.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:22, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm. It seems to me that "the royal family is granted special privileges by the State, for which there is little rational basis", and "the royal family is subjected to special disabilities by the State, for which there is little rational basis", are both arguments against the monarchy, taken by themselves.  Surely, if you combine them, they are still both arguments against.
 * Your point is well taken, of course, if it's an argument against holding the royals responsible for the situation. --Trovatore (talk) 01:39, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The OP seems to also be operating under some rather simplistic views of what democracy means as well; the concept of democracy is that it is a state whose decisions are made in accordance with the freely-arrived-at will of the governed. The existence or not of a monarch is entirely unrelated to whether or not a society can be said to be "democratic".  FWIW, attempts to quantify "democraticness" have been done.  The Democracy Index is one of them, under that metric the UK ranks at #16, or "full democracy".  Democracy Ranking is another, as of 2015 the UK was #12.  Freedom in the World, another, ranks the UK as "free" and gets the highest possible rankings on every metric.  -- Jayron 32 23:34, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * It's perhaps also worth noting that Norway comes out on top in both rankings of democracy. Nil Einne (talk) 15:43, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Hitler had a habit of shooting people that disagreed with him
I was just watching this video (at around 3:33) where the guy in it says that Hitler had a habit of shooting people that disagreed with him. Is this true? Did Hitler ever directly kill anyone in the first place (besides himself that is). ScienceApe (talk) 17:01, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Not according to our sources. See, for example, Military career of Adolf Hitler, Beer Hall Putsch and Night of the Long Knives.  Some sources implicate him in the suicide of Geli Raubal, but we don't cite them. Tevildo (talk) 19:18, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Those conspirators in the 20 July plot in 1944 who weren't shot out of hand were executed in a most barbaric way, apparently for Hitler's gratification. According to our Claus von Stauffenberg article, Stauffenberg's brother  Berthold "was one of eight conspirators executed by slow strangulation (reputedly with piano wire used as the garrote) in Plötzensee Prison, Berlin, later that day. Before he was killed, Berthold was strangled and then revived multiple times. The entire execution and multiple resuscitations were filmed for Hitler to view at his leisure." So it's difficult not to see Hitler's hand in the business, although of course, nothing was ever put down on paper. Alansplodge (talk) 22:30, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * But that's not what was asked. --69.159.9.187 (talk) 08:12, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
 * [Banned user's contribution deleted] Tevildo (talk) 19:48, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
 * on that last. Also, I think ScienceApe is interpreting the original source's statement a bit too literally. Hitler indisputably had hundreds, probably thousands of people shot on political grounds, not even counting victims of the Holocaust and enemy soldiers. Colloquially, I think we can assume a statement like that, while perhaps misleading if read literally, includes actions carried out by proxy. Evan (talk&#124;contribs) 14:35, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't remember any stories of Hitler personally pulling out a gun and shooting anyone like that, but Enver Hoxha supposedly did it at least once. 50.0.121.79 (talk) 05:08, 24 June 2016 (UTC)