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Failure Mechanisms in Democratic Regimes – An Army's Role
86 tkgally 47 5/25/2025, 12:30:04 AM angrystaffofficer.com ↗
I think the author, like many today who try to disparage democracy, gets too caught up in the founders as scripture and old word usages.
The modern usage of democracy is at least a century old, per the article itself - hardly the 'present moment'.
Democracy is superior not because some founders wrote some scripture, but because of its moral and rational foundation, that all are created equal, all have universal, inalienable rights that include liberty, and thus nobody else has the right to tell them what to do without their consent. Thus only the people can legitimize a government, and governments exist to protect the people's rights.
And yes, oppression of the minority is a danger, but the solution isn't to have some self-selected people take power from the democracy and call themselves a 'republic' (and what stops those people from oppression, corruption, etc. Why would they be superior?). The solution is human rights, as implemented in the Bill of Rights. The majority can't violate the rights of the minority.
One of the coolest tidbits of Slovenian history is that in the early 800’s AD we had a kingdom where the coronation involved peasants giving the crown to their king and the king promising to do good by them. It was still hereditary and all that, but rather than power coming from God it came from people.
We lost that sometime in the late 900’s when the future king, now German, said “I don’t understand this peasant language, what are you talking about?” and decided to just keep ruling anyway. By then this coronation was but a quaint tradition from one corner of a larger kingdom. Sad.
It took until 1991 before we were independent again.
That is to say: it doesn’t matter that people legitimize the government if they won’t unlegitimize it back when necessary.
edit: I got the years wrong, the tradition lived longer than the 900’s but as part of larger foreign (Frankish, then Holy Roman) kingdoms.
How can it be both hereditary and given by the people? Could they have choosen to give it to someone else? Did they ever? Because if not, then that is just set decoration.
These are medieval times. Just that power wasn’t granted/legitimized from god was a huge innovation for the times.
Here’s the ritual, from Wikipedia:
> The peasant, sitting on the Stone, was representing the people during the ceremony and he had to ask in Slovene: "Who is he, that comes forward?" Those sitting around him would reply: "He is the prince of the land".
> "Is he an upright judge seeking the well-being of the country; is he freeborn and deserving? Is he a foster and defender of the Christian faith?" the representative of the people had to ask them. "He is and he will be", they would reply.
> "By what right can he displace me from this my seat?" he had to ask them and they would reply: "He will pay you sixty denarii and he will give you your home free and without tribute".
> The peasant then had to give the duke a gentle blow on the cheek (un petit soufflet), after which the duke was allowed to draw his sword, mount the Stone and turn full circle, so as to face ritually in all directions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince%27s_Stone#Democratic_pr...
But I mean it’s not like the other kings/rulers in Europe actually got their power from God. That’s just a story we tell. Coronations are about pomp and tradition, power comes from having a local monopoly on violence.
The majority can’t violate the rights of the minority as long as some enlightened people are empowered to enforce the Bill of Rights.
That is a really great formulation of the imago dei, image of God, doctrine.
> and thus nobody else has the right to tell them what to do without their consent.
And this is a generalisation of a principle that is downstream of the English yeomanry, of freeborn men who can kill a knight.
To see an Anglo proclaiming the universal destiny of all humanity to follow the Anglo culture is just such a stirring thing.
“You have seen, in the lands where you worked and fought and where many of your comrades died, what happens when the people of a nation lose interest in their government. You have seen what happens when they follow false leaders. You have seen what happens when a nation accepts hate and intolerance.
We are all determined that what happened in Europe and in Asia must not happen to our country…If you see intolerance and hate, speak out against them. Make your individual voices heard, not for selfish things, but for honor and decency among men, for the rights of all people.”
"An earlier version of this article was submitted to the U.S. Army War College’s War Room blog back in the fall of 2024.... The piece was accepted and scheduled for publication in February. I found out on February 25, 2025 that USAWC had changed their mind and decided not to publish the piece, after having to pull another previously-published piece 'due to sensitivities' of 'unnamed critics that wield the power'."
The fact it was accepted and they then said we are censoring it the speech due to the government.
In non-democratic systems, people are assumed to be not having the expertise needed to choose the ruler. In a democracy with a large number of political parties, people's vote will be highly fragmented, leaving the decision to coalition politics, making the people's vote meaningless.
Also, the assumption that crowd is right about what policies should a government have, is also questionable. 100 monkeys, or the leader elected by them, can't make a better decision than a single subject matter expert.
Since non-democratic systems give far more power and duration to their leaders, a good leader in these systems provide a superior rule than a good leader in a democratic system, while bad leaders in non-democratic systems is worse than bad leader in democratic system. Over a long-term of multiple generations, both even out.
I do bot think in Germany there are large numbers of parties. Still this seems to aplly very much.
The broad failure of human rights enforcement required for these events absolutely could not have happened over the objections of all, or even most, on the military side. Tacit and widespread approval of Washington's agenda on 'terrorism' was, at the very least, a precondition.
Taking this in context of his broader point: I can see why it would be comforting to believe institutional norms tend to be stronger than petty politics, but if that's the case he wants to make, I'm not convinced. To me, the preponderance of evidence, and the typical patterns that occur when a military attempts to circumvent democratic processes to 'safeguard rule of law', would indicate that military norms around human rights tend to break down, in fact, much quicker than the norms of democratic civil procedure. I also have no good reason to believe the US military is exceptionally ahead of the curve in this regard.
Could there be a situation where military intervention prevents a democratic state from deteriorating further? Theoretically. Are military leaders, generally, excellent judges of when such intervention would be in the public interest? Most of the history of military coups seems to indicate 'no.'
Leadership normalises moral expectations. If those are perverse, the entire machinery of government will be perverse. Including the military.
Occasionally you get dissidents like Smedley Butler who call out moral shortcomings. But generally those kinds of ruminations are above the Pentagon's pay grade. The Bush admin painted military action and torture as legitimate responses to real external threats, and that's the narrative the footsoldiers bought into.
So it's very unlikely the military in the US will ever directly challenge the elected civilian leadership. There may be thoughts and even discussions, but direct action would split the military down the middle - even after today's West Point fiasco.
Before nation states, the world wasn't as divided geographically into nations. It got to be that way through violent conflict.
Empires like Austria-Hungary, Russia or the Ottoman Empire were multicultural. Places like Poland, Czechoslovakia had communities of Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Jews, Hungarians, Roma. "German" ethnicity was spread out all over europe... and all the way to Kazakstan. The whole world was like this.
We "sorted" mostly through conflict... in the latter examples of transition to National democracies, or non-democratic nation states.
Ireland was partitioned along religious lines, in 1921. The world wars moved borders and people until strong majorities were created. When the Ottoman empire divided, Greeks and Turks kicked eachother out. When India gained independence Muslims and Hindus kicked eachother out.
Yugoslavia divided violently at a later date... as soon as totalitarianism ended. Cyprus divided in in 1974. Iraq divided internally into ethnic regions and neighbourhood after Sadaam. Syria is currently shedding its ethnic diversity. Conflicts in Sudan and Yemen are civil wars between different religions.
Democratic nation states with familiar features like left-right politics and a widely respected constitutional order... those generally appear post "sorting." The Military is always involved here.
We have some good ideas about defending an order. This text makes more sense in that context. Defending a democratic order. It doesn't tell us much about generating such an order. I think that a stronger narrative understanding of this history would serve an officer well. Allows a distinction between a defensive and offensive mission.
My understanding is that partition was driven by the British, starting with the 1905 partition of Bengal and ultimately leading to the greater partition of (formerly) British India.
Had it not been for the British obsession with drawing lines on map both India and the middle east would be very different today with (possibly) considerably less inter ethnic group strife.
https://youtu.be/4VMLTmksq3Y?si=G6rhRG21hnh-yaaW
The British absolutely had a role. One theory is the West needed a pliable state on India's west to guard the Arabian Sea from the Russians. A lot of Hindu politicians of the era were socialists. Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, was a Fabian Socialist. What if India allied with Russia? Pakistan soon became a CENTO treaty member.
The thousand year Hindu-Muslim rivalry is the main driver, however. During the 16-18th centuries, European expeditions started hitting Indian shores, initially nibbling around the edges, and Muslim power on the subcontinent was comprehensively demolished by the Maratha Empire. The British drove out other European claimants and managed to wrest control over the subcontinent piece-by-piece.
Muslim elites did not mind ruling over majority-Hindu provinces for centuries. But loss of power and membership of a numerical minority creates insecurities and the idea of a separate Muslim nation started post 1857.
People can quibble about the origin of the idea and who is to blame. But no one can deny the fact that repeated massive riots between these communities (which are separate communities/religions, not ethnicities) in the decades leading to the partition signaled the inevitable.
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If morality is the letter of the law, that law can be changed by an unjust majority. If the majority of Americans think it is OK to put dog collars on prisoners in Abu Ghraib, who are you to deny them that?
What else do we have to base our morals off of, religion?
The American founding fathers understood the “rights” that constrain democracy to originate from God (“they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights”). That’s an internally consistent world view: divine or natural law can constrain man-made law.
If the people don’t recognize a shared higher law, then there is nothing higher—nothing more legitimate—than democratic law. If the people decide it’s okay to put dog collars on prisoners in Abu Ghraib, what legitimate authority can say they’re wrong? Some Harvard professors of moral philosophy?
1: This is complicated on the Ottawa Treaty, where the US and a few other countries have held out- though at least under most administration's the US considers itself bound by Ottawa everywhere except on the Korean peninsula.
2: The USSR did not sign the Geneva Convention of 1929 (they wanted POW's to be explicitly allowed to form political organizations- e.g. Soviets, and to not be allowed to discriminate against POW's, while Article IX of the Convention mandated that POW's be racially segregated "as far as possible") and so the Nazi's technically did not break the convention in their horrible mistreatment of Soviet POW's that led to millions of deaths.
International law certainly doesn't represent a higher moral standard for the US. When it was set up the USSR and the British Empire both had vetos on what could be international law - it is hard to claim they had any higher moral opinion to add on how countries should treat each other.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...
Seems like the current international order is if the US thinks you are violating international law they will kick the shit out of you, but if the US is violating international law they will also kick the shit out of you.
That still doesn’t answer the question of what US generals do when given an order which violates international law.
Who says, 'everyone should determine for themselves what is right'? Maybe I think it's right to shoot you for stepping on my lawn, or looking me in the eye for too long.
Heck, much of the Bill of Rights is instructions on things the representatives of the people are disallowed from doing.
It is called “amending the Constitution”.
The SCOTUS strikes down unconstitutional laws and is appointed to interpret constitutionality, by the Constitution that was ratified by the American People.
But the American People are the ones who originally ratified the version of that thing that annoys you so much and the American People were the very people who said that’s what SCOTUS needs to look like. (There is a dead giveaway in the first three words! Damn!)
Maybe we can just call in RuPaul to redesign their robes or something. Queer Eye For the Judge Guys. That could do the trick.
If the American People decide that we need laws that conflict with the Constitution, or that we need to abolish/reform the Supreme Court, then we simply ratify Amendments to do what the American People need done. Easy peasy, bro!
By the way, the term of art for what you’re doing, of defining democracy I like as real democracy and democracy I don’t like as not democracy is to call democracy I like “liberal democracy”.
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As with anything involving Israel/Palestine, the article takes an extremely simplistic view of the conflict between Hamas and Fatah. Anyone who followed the events in 2006/2007 after the election knows that both parties were equally to blame.
Hamas had good reason to believe Fatah was planning a violent takeover, and there were assassination attempts on Hamas's leader, widely believed to be by Fatah members. At the same time, Hamas committed their own crimes against Fatah.
There isn't a clean "They instigated, and we responded" event here by either side. They had been in conflict since prior to the election.
(Somewhat unrelated, but supporters of Hamas do correctly point out that "playing nice" hasn't worked out well for the Palestinians in the West Bank).
I pretty much stopped reading the article after this statement. It stinks strongly of "I have a thesis and let me bend reality to convince you of it".
This is not an attempt at a broader commentary on anything else about this conflict, but the sociological and psychological explanations that only ever get deployed one direction do in fact run both ways.
One interesting note about the Hamas example is that it was the last election for the same reason a lot of countries have a last election: a powerful foreign imperialist nation intervened. In this case, Israel intervened directly to prop up Hamas in order to ensure Palestine destabilizion and prevent the election of a more leftist government. This was achieved through assassinations by the IDF of Palestinian politicians as well as directly funding Hamas.
Here is Benjamin Netanyahu quoted directly (https://m.maariv.co.il/journalists/opinions/Article-1008080), translated from Hebrew:
> Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas ... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.
Netanyahu's associate and a high ranking IDF member said: (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-11/ty-article/.p...)
> Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.
To broaden the scope back to beyond just Israel and Palestine and focus more on globally the destabilization of democratic governments through the efforts of imperialist nations, perhaps the army's role may also include efforts against said imperialist nations or their local allies and representatives.
In the USA I wonder if that means there'll be USA military units operating against what are functionally proxy arms of the PRC "turncoat" (but in their minds supporting democracy) units of the USA military. Living in Taiwan I can't fathom ever finding myself on the same side as the PRC on anything... Unless the nightmare situation of a full American slide into hyper imperialist fascism happens and there's basically only a couple superpowers on Earth capable of resisting them. Their jokes about invading Greenland and Canada are really sounding less like jokes every day...
It's true that Netanyahu likely wanted to divide and conquer so benefited somewhat from having the Hamas in Gaza and the Fatah/PA in the West Bank but really the alternative to Hamas in Gaza were other armed factions or chaos, it wasn't like the PA was going to retake it if Netanyahu prevented funds from getting into Gaza. There was also a lot of international pressure to allow those funds in to "rebuild" Gaza. So that story has a lot more nuance to it. So yes, the Israeli right benefited from the lack of a unified Palestinian government but that was not the sole reason why Israel did [not] try to forcibly remove Hamas and tighten the transfer of funds and aid to Gaza.
Also worth noting that all this calculus was after the Hamas took control that was a result of Israel's leaving. Sharon did not intend for this to happen, his intention was to try and prove that Israel can end the conflict by unilaterally withdrawing.
The main reason why there wasn't another election was because the PA didn't want to have one because it would have lost to Hamas.
It is a new take to me that the party not in power was able to prevent elections happening because they were not popular enough.
What argument are you making?
What do you think the social contract is?
E.g: I am interested if you believe that the government derives its power from the consent of the governed?
Social contract per se is a construct of liberalism.
Divine right, not a notion ever endorsed by the Catholic Church, was certainly one embraced by Protestant rulers as it legitimated kings who now claimed both temporal and spiritual authority [0].
Which is to say, I don't think we have any need for fictions, and not fictions like these.
[0] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02137c.htm
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