The Fate of VM was: Baby MVS 4418

I've heard the hypothesis before that democracies don't start wars. I don't believe it. Counterexamples: The U.S. Civil War, the Irish troubles, the U.S. in Vietnam, the French in Algeria. The people are just as capable of antisocial acts as dictators are.

Most governments are dictatorships of various sorts. Statistically you'd expect most wars to be started by them.

The causes of WW I are pretty diffuse. Arms race, systems of opposed alliances, secret treaties, the belief on all sides that the conflict would be over in weeks or months. There's no one person or country who's responsible.

It is, but it's a world of nation-states, and we're not the father of them all. Helping as many individuals as possible to escape and giving them asylum might be a better approach. However, note that unlike Hitler, Saddam was not trying to exterminate all his minorities but rather keep them suppressed.

That seemed to be the main reason for voting for it. Less than a third of the "yes" votes changing to "no" would have defeated it.

I think the Islamic extremists are already going to repeat 9-11, if they can. It doesnt' matter whether we try leaving Islamic countries to placate them, or continue to occupy Iraq to show our resolve, they're already doing everything they can.

What we need to do is go after al-Qaeda, you know, the ones who actually perpetrated 9-11. We could also be doing a lot more to increase airplane and port security.

We should also be concerned that we seem to be no closer to being able to leave Iraq than we were two years ago. Indeed, progress may be negative. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

No... First, the people don't vote directly, but through representatives. Second, there's supermajorities required to amend the consbreastution as well as ratification by 3-4 of the states. Third, there's the supermajority required to end a filibuster in the senate. Fourth, there's the decisions of what bills get acted on in each committee and which are sidetracked by lack of time. Fifth there's the possibility of amending them to do something completely different at each step through committees to the floor. All these are deliberate checks on the majority's rule.

-- Patrick