I´m in Britain, wat do?

[loftar]

l2quote, nub.

As for the HRE I still believe that any strife does weaken ones willingness to work together.

As I said, I'm sure there's a balance to be struck. It's not like I'm saying "the moar war, the better". And I'm sure that argument carries some truth, but that doesn't mean that it's the only or ultimate truth. Balance and moderation, &c&c.

I forget the battle but it was The Coalition vs Napoleon and their greater numbers failed because they lacked the proper cooperation and organization.

In this greater context, I would like to point out that the Napoleonic wars are one particular example, and that the Empire had already survived for almost a thousand years through a diversity of adversities.

Furthermore when the ottomans attacked weren't they stopped so successfully that they never made it to Vienna? ¦]

They got through various non-Imperial lands to Vienna, where they were immediately stopped, indeed. Your point? ¦]

As for the united states, our current government while technically remaining a republic made up of politically independent states has been perverted to the extreme that it is no longer the Republic the founders envisaged. The states are completely economically dependent on the federal government and states power is an absolute joke. You should come over here and see for yourself. You also misinterpret our constitution. One example, While the president may ask for a declaration of war it is Congress that must approve it, and Congress is theoretically beholden to the states.

I am, of course, very well aware of all these things. I'm not sure what made you think otherwise.

So your claim that Declaration of War is a federal power is questionable to say the least.

I never said it is a federal power (though it is; your arguments are invalid, but that's uninteresting). I only said that the declaration of independence states the power of levy war as a power rightly belonging to independent states.

Afraid not. [blah blah]

The Kaiser's political situation at the beginning of the Great War was immensely complex, and my point was just that you can't use him as some kind of prime example of a nobleman triggering war. As one of many examples of a presentation of the opposite position, you can check this out. And keep in mind that I'm not upholding that as some kind of absolute truth, but rather as a way of exemplifying the complexity of the matter.

Whilst England and a few others are advanced in this regard it is not wholly representative of the whole of Europe or the whole of European history.

Of course not. That's why I said "the specifically British doctrine". It was just one little window into the greater matter. :)

Example, Louis XIV.

I know le Roi-Soleil is popularly used as an example of a despot, but I doubt this is true. French constitutional history is a matter that I'm having trouble finding good information on, but what I have found thus far leads me to doubt that any French kind had such absolute power as has been said since the revolution (and I would not be the least surprised if this is just a Jacobin smearing of the King). I guess I just need to learn French.

A parliament seemed to work out well.

For England, perhaps. I think that is, however, "not wholly representative of the whole of Europe". ^^

Isn't using Sweden as an example cheating? ¦]

Is it? :) It has been easier for me to study, for obvious reasons.

Do regale me with the history of the united states!

The history of the United States seems to have little relevance to any discussion of traditional societies or the Holy Roman Empire specifically. :)

Personally I refer to prospecting how these more archaic forms of government would deal with modern corruption.

By not having instituted it in the first place? :) That question seems to me to be like asking how a horse would deal with a breakdown of its piston rings. :)

As a final note, it seems this discussion is branching off into a tad too many irrelevant subjects. :P

[Lord_of_War]

I implied the Kaiser was a weak king, not a warmonger.

The Swedish and U.S thing are connected. Its a touche of saying that I don't know much Swedish history and presumably you don't know too much american.

I do believe the Hungarians were allies of the HRE at the time. In any case the Siege of Vienna was an avoidable failure.

A thousand years in different forms. Hardly surviving 1000 years in a noticeable way. In name only.

And do learn french, Its a rather nice language, or at least I think so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDTzRGax2No

PS Is the 'G' for gangster?

[loftar]

I implied the Kaiser was a weak king, not a warmonger.

Sure, that may well be argued, not least seeing as how liberal democracy already seems to have had Europe in its grasp by that time. It's a pity. QQ

Saying that he "ignited the powder keg" is a strange way of implying that, though. But I digress. :)

The Swedish and U.S thing are connected. Its a touche of saying that I don't know much Swedish history and presumably you don't know too much american.

I think it's probably fair to say that I'm in a better position to know American history than you are to know Swedish history, since I'm part of the American empire rather than the other way around. ¦] As such, I don't mind using American history for examples; I just don't see that it has very many historical precepts applicable to this discussion. :)

A thousand years in different forms. Hardly surviving 1000 years in a noticeable way. In name only.

Of course. Something doesn't remain for a thousand years in unchanging form. :)

I would find it hard to argue that it wasn't both quite decentralized and fraught with internal war during those 1000 years, however, if that's relevant to the point you're trying to make.

PS Is the 'G' for gangster?

No, it is of course a Masonic reference, this game being set in America. Don't you know your own country's state religion? ¦]

[Lord_of_War]

Yes, guns, god and jesus. Lets see that american history sometime. irc? Also why does everyone insist America is an Empire? I've thoroughly refuted it before.

[The_Witch_King]

For sure. I would argue this happened along with the fall of Christianity rather than with the rise of it, however.

We would be able to both be correct in that regards. While upholding its old ways I only see a problem that assisted the destruction thereof the Empire: Making Christianity the state religion. It was heavily put down at points but was better fit when it was not a center for politics. The limited time it was accepted, before being required, and considered equal among other religions in the eyes of the Republic, is when I say it avoided conflict.

Now we live in an melinia where people believe they must conserve it as the moral and philosophical foundation of Western civilization. Which is a pity.

[The_Witch_King]

You mean Catholicism?

I mean all forms of Christianity. Catholics came with the state organization. Catholics were not the only ones at the time

[Trenial]

Loftar, I believe you presented a solid case after much reading. It seems to me the jest of the matter lies here:

Lord believes that he isn't in the New Order of the World, but that it is something being worked on at this moment, a future event as it seems to be the most common taught idea, perhaps even intentionally.

Whereas, and I feel again, after much reading, you and I are of this mind :

The New Order will rise from the Ashes of the Old.

This is a New Order of the World, and we sirs, are living in it already. Time to wake up and smell the roses. Its not coming, its already here, to stay. It arrived generations ago in a powder keg. It was primed, and when it went off, the heads of Kings and Queens rolled. Entire nations were carved out in extremely short time spans. Embroiled in ideas such as Liberalism, Nationalism, Patriotic Ideals, Socialism, Republicanism, the destruction of rights to property, inheritance, family, traditions and customs, and the over all sacredness of these various things. Revolution, revolution, revolution, revolution.

I will conclude with a bit of Philosophy, as I was reading I could not help but feel a bit of it present in the talks. I quote the Philosopher Ravi Zacharias at length:

“Gods, too, Decompose”
“God is dead,” declares Nietzsche’s madman in his oft-quoted passage from The Gay Science. Though not the first to make the declaration, Nietzsche’s philosophical candor and desperate rhetoric unquestionably attribute to its familiarity. In graphic brushstrokes, the parable describes a crime scene:

“The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Whither is God,’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I! All of us are his murderers…Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?…Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’”(1)

Nietzsche’s atheism, unlike recent atheistic mantras, was more than rhetoric and angry words. He recognized that the death of God, even if only the death of an idol, introduced a significant crisis. He understood the critical role of the Christian story to the very underpinnings of European philosophy, history, and culture, and so understood that God’s death meant that a total—and painful—transformation of reality must occur. If God has died, if God is dead in the sense that God is no longer of use to us, then ours is a world in peril, he reasoned, for everything must change. Our typical means of thought and life no longer make sense; the very structures for evaluating everything have become unhinged. For Nietzsche, a world that considers itself free from God is a world that must suffer the disruptive effects of that iconoclasm.

Herein, I believe Nietzsche’s atheistic tale tells a story beneficial no matter the creed or conviction of those who hear it: Gods, too, decompose. Within Nietzsche’s bold atheism is the intellectual integrity that refused to make it sound easy to live with a dead God—a conclusion the self-deemed new atheists are determined to undermine. Moreover, his dogged exposure of idolatrous conceptions of God wherever they exist and honest articulation of the crises that comes in the crashing of such idols is universal in its bearing. Whether atheist or theist, Muslim or Christian, the death of the God we thought we knew is disruptive, excruciating, tragic—and quite often, as Nietzsche attests, necessary.

Yet for Nietzsche and the new atheists, the shattering of religious imagery and concepts is simply deconstruction for the sake of deconstruction. Their iconoclasm ultimately seeks to reveal towers of belief as houses of cards best left in piles at our feet. On the contrary, for the theist iconoclasm remains the breaking of false and idolatrous conceptions of God, humanity, and the cosmos. But added to this is the exposing of counterfeit motivations for faith, when fear or self-interest lead a person deeper into religion as opposed to love or truth, or when the source of all knowledge becomes something finite rather than the eternal God. While this destruction certainly remains the painful event Nietzsche foretold, God’s death turns out to be one more sign of God’s presence. As C.S. Lewis observed through his own pain at the death of the God he knew:

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence? The incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are ‘offended’ by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not.”(2)

For Lewis, it was the death of his wife that brought about the decomposition of his God. For others, it is the prevalence of suffering or the haunt of God’s silence that begets the troubling sense that our God is dying. At some profound level, the Christian story takes us to God’s death as well, perhaps for some in more ways than one. Like the Incarnation, the crucifixion leaves most of our ideas in ruins at the foot of the cross. The journey to death and Golgotha is an offensive journey to take with God. But blessed are those who take it. Blessed are those in pain over the death of their Gods. Blessed are those who mourn at the tombs and take in the sorrow of the crime scenes. For theirs is somehow the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom somehow able to hold Golgotha, a kingdom able to hold death itself."

I too mourn in the ashes of the Old Order I read about.

[Icon]

Denver airport is proof of that. Ever see that creepy ****? Not what I want to stare at for 2 hours on a layover

[Lord_of_War]

Denver airport is proof of that. Ever see that creepy ****? Not what I want to stare at for 2 hours on a layover

I know right.

[Icon]

For anyone not in the know, http://thechive.com/2012/03/08/something-is-rotten-in-the-denver-airport-25-photos/ pay close attention to the bottom of the stone in pic 5, paid for by the new world airport commission.