Comments on: UPDATED: Amy Chua’s Serbian Slant

By: Bob Roddis

Bob Roddis — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 23:32:31 +0000

“Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability” by Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle caused me to give up on my fashionable democratic socialist beliefs this month in 1973. I was reading Rothbard concurrently and became a libertarian. The theory of the book is that democratic socialism produces almost instantaneously ethnic voting blocs. Since the government owns everything, the largest ethnic group win the entire prize. Ethnic conflict invariably ensues.

The entire book can be downloaded here (12mb):

http://www.stanford.edu/~rabushka/politics%20in%20plural%20societies.pdf

Or purchased here:

http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Plural-Societies-Democratic-Instability/dp/0205617611

By: Aeoli Pera

Aeoli Pera — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:55:34 +0000

Here's a permalink to Malic's entry defining and illustrating Chetnixploitation, the propaganda films whose purpose is to demonize Serbs.

By: Nick

Nick — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:50:22 +0000

Being born and raised in the Balkans, I can vouch for what Nebojsa Malic says here. There were ostensibly no ‘bad guys’ in the Balkan wars. They were merely the logical outcome of fusing 7 peoples into a single nation against their will. The same thing is being tried in Europe again, only this time they’re calling it the European Union and they’re fusing 27 nations into a single state against their will.

By: Robert Glisson

Robert Glisson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:54:38 +0000

Myron: You keep looking for ‘sense’ in a world that hasn’t any. Ron Paul stated that we should follow the ‘Golden Rule’ in dealing with Iran, he was booed by the ‘Christian Right’ Nothing fits. I get constant emails about how bad the Obamacare program is, or how badly we lost the Fourth Amendment and immigration, etc. Other Amendments as well and that we are going to loss all of our freedoms because of our present president. When I remind the senders that the present Republican runners approve of all those things and only Ron Paul will fight to overturn Obamacare etc, it’s “Oh we can’t have that wacko and his foreign policy in office. They would rather destroy a country that wants to make nuclear medicine and kill who knows how many people than clean up their own house. Nope as Derbyshire said “We are doomed”

By: My RON-PAUL i

My RON-PAUL i — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:38:05 +0000

Austria tried a power play in 1908 in Bosnia. Russia may have enouraged Serbian military intelligence to plan the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. After that, every idiot go into the act with the biggest hypocrite, Woodrow Wilson, encouraging the “allies” not to settle for a cease fire in 1916-1917, promoting “peace without victory”, and then pushing Europe into more bloodlust alias World War 2.

If “non-interventionism”, the philosophy of people such as Ron Paul,
had been dominant in Europe instead of lethal doses of Imperial Empire Glory and Ethnic Self-Determination, we could have been spared a century of mass murder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria

Obviously, one can go another 500 years “settling scores” but I would prefer to head towards non-interventionism. Ironically, Ron Paul called for trade with Cuba and those who call him “isolationist” denounced any attempt to live in peace with a pipsqueak diectorship that is no threat.

By: George Pal

George Pal — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:58:30 +0000

I recall Rebecca West’s observation about Westerners with no dog in the fight seemingly driven to make devils or pets of the participants in other people’s wars, as in the Balkans recently. It is never enough that there should be legitimate gripes and centuries long animosities exacerbated by competing nations, ideologies and geopolitical forces – there must always be saints and devils; and the West has it Serbia’s turn to play the devil. It would not surprise me if, left all to themselves, the Croats and Serbs, could get along famously together, arguing over nothing more than which produced the better poets, intellectuals and silivovica (plum brandy).