RIP Jo Cox MP

An empire if a form of political organization in which the "metropolis" exercises control over diverse (heterogenous) actors through formal annexations and/or various forms of informal domination. That's the short definition from the International Encyclopedia of Political Science. As it goes on to mention, efforts to make it more specific or precise tends to come at the expense of consensus among political scientists :)

As for what it is in Johnsons's message that is "better communicated" you have failed to provide a contrast. Better than what? I laid out what merits their mention, they are the only other two "credible" attempts at unifying Europe in modern history. Further, the UK (or Britain, in the case of Napoleon) was the single major European power which successfully avoided integration in both throughout their attempts to unify the continent that is involved in the EU now. As I said, the only other candidate for comparison is the HRE and it's even crappier. You may want there to be no comparison whatsoever, for the EU to be treated as []sui generis[/i] in every particular but. . . that is AT LEAST as inaccurate as the comparison you dislike, particularly in the mentioned British context. Johnson didn't say a word about either Hitler's nor Napoleon's shenanigans, he referred to what both of them tried to build.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

Okay, before we go any further the illiterates among us would like to request a clarification of the relevant definition of the term "empire" (or at least a brief explanation of characteristics or criteria of an "empire") and pref. also a clarification of what exactly it is in Johnson's message that is better communicated through the comparison to Napoleon's and Hitler's shenanigans.

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Just wanted to point out that the nazi jibe didn't fall on deaf ears with the Brexiteers; tonight Cameron was told that he is a 21st century Neville Chamberlain. Hardly a coincidence I think.

I wonder if Cameron is on the traitors list already.

Where's the metropolis in the EU, Fuzzy? And are you really so gullible as to think Johnson was searching for the best analogy and not for a way to connect the EU to everyone's favorite bogeyman?

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Originally Posted by Loki

Where's the metropolis in the EU, Fuzzy? And are you really so gullible as to think Johnson was searching for the best analogy and not for a way to connect the EU to everyone's favorite bogeyman?

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The metropolis is the ministerial (and related semi-independent organs, like the ECB) technocracy. And unless the EU ends up settling into a permanent federal structure without further integration as it moves along its "ever-closer union" path (which I don't see happening and which I've seen Hazir mock those few times semi-concrete examples show up as opposed to an abstract concept. Technically confederal would also work but examples like Greece show the EU is already moving past that) then it is going to be an empire. And a federal structure won't necessarily preempt that either, no few poli-scientists consider the US an empire and with decent reason.

A few years ago, in one of Nessie's "mock the Republicans" threads, he and I talked about the probably inevitability of a not-terribly accountable technocracy replacing meaningful democracy as the source of governance in modern states, as the pressure for increasing centralization continues to grow from the pressures of constantly expanding human knowledge forcing greater degrees of specialization to become truly informed about various topics. He saw corporatism, I saw bureaucracy. It'll come to the same thing, eventually.

You're stretching the concept beyond all recognition. An empire requires a privileged center, and there is none. Anyone can become a eurocrat. Anyone can gain power within the EU structure, including those who want to destroy it. An empire requires central authority that can be used to establish and maintain control of the empire. The EU has no central authority. The EU has no means of enforcing compliance except that provided to it by the periphery. The EU is allowing something no empire ever would: it is allowing a large piece to splinter away without a fight, not even an economic fight. An empire seeks to subjugate nearby people, prospering at their expense. The EU does not subjugate people; they join (and leave) the EU of their own free will. The rich parts of the EU do not seek to centralize wealth; they willingly shift it to the periphery.

I object to those stretching the term empire to describe the US, and the case against that label is even easier for the EU. The EU is a confederation, in many ways similar to the American, Swiss, and German ones that came before. And like those confederations, it cannot survive in its current state. Confederations are inherently unstable. There's constant tension between those who want ever closer union and those who want to return power to the constituent political blocks. Eventually, one side will win. And will have either a European Federation or we'll have dozens of independent European states. The concept of empire is irrelevant to the European project, it does not explain it and offers no lessons for the present or the future. So why use the term except for its negative connotations? Why mention Hitler or Napoleon if not for their negative connotations? Furthermore, given how unique the EU is - whether the technocracy, the democracy of its members, the consensual way in which they joined, or a host of other factors - what use is there to making inappropriate analogies and using inaccurate language? If someone wants to attack the EU, they should do it on the basis of EU behavior, not by using the high school debate trick of saying X is part of Y and then attacking Y.

I was out all yesterday for Father's Day but looks like Fuzzy has covered this better than I could.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

So? He could have thrown in a line about at least this method isn't violent but it would be empty PC verbiage (and would be ignored in the soundbytes as such).

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He did. He was more comparing the EU to an attempt to rebuild the Roman Empire, or specifically "the golden age of peace and prosperity under the Romans" anyway. He said that "The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods".

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Originally Posted by Loki

You're stretching the concept beyond all recognition. An empire requires a privileged center, and there is none. Anyone can become a eurocrat. Anyone can gain power within the EU structure, including those who want to destroy it. An empire requires central authority that can be used to establish and maintain control of the empire. The EU has no central authority. The EU has no means of enforcing compliance except that provided to it by the periphery. The EU is allowing something no empire ever would: it is allowing a large piece to splinter away without a fight, not even an economic fight. An empire seeks to subjugate nearby people, prospering at their expense. The EU does not subjugate people; they join (and leave) the EU of their own free will. The rich parts of the EU do not seek to centralize wealth; they willingly shift it to the periphery.

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I said building and I meant building. I did not say it was there yet. But Johnson wasn't limiting himself to the immediate present either. As for allowing pieces to splinter away without a fight, well, that fight has been going on for years, decades, and I think we should wait and see what sort of economic reprisals might accompany actually leaving before saying it has no means of enforcing compliance.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

I was out all yesterday for Father's Day but looks like Fuzzy has covered this better than I could.
He did. He was more comparing the EU to an attempt to rebuild the Roman Empire, or specifically "the golden age of peace and prosperity under the Romans" anyway. He said that "The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods".

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He didn't compare it to the Romans, he compared it to Napoleon and Hitler's attempts. Which he did with a specific goal. And even if he did mean to compare it to the Roman empire. The Roman's didn't exactly build their empire with pictures of cute kittens, neither did they keep it together that way. Even if you weed out the obvious character murdering from the Twelve Ceasars, you still end up with a very grim dictatorship. It didn't get much better after the Julii became extinct either.

Unlike you I've read what he wrote. He compared it to the Romans "Golden age of peace and prosperity".

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Unlike you I've read what he wrote. He compared it to the Romans "Golden age of peace and prosperity".

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I thought we were talking about history but it seems I made a mistake not understanding we were talking about fiction. My bad.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Unlike you I've read what he wrote. He compared it to the Romans "Golden age of peace and prosperity".

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"Roman Empire" and "peace" together in one sentence are not really a good fit. You must have a very redacted overview of Roman history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...rs_and_battles

There may have been the odd decade where they had no war going on, granted.

The Pax Romana is regarded as such not because there was no conflict anywhere, but because there was not really any conflict in a very large heartland comprising almost all of the Mediterranean and most of Roman Europe.

Doesn't change the fact that it wasn't a very peaceful empire. You're cherry picking.

Or the fact that it was committing a new genocide every few decades. :noob:

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Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro

Doesn't change the fact that it wasn't a very peaceful empire. You're cherry picking.

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So conflicts on the periphery and in foreign territory count against something being peaceful? If that's the case, I don't think the EC has brought much peace over the last 70 years.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Or the fact that it was committing a new genocide every few decades. :noob:

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It always makes me smile if people use the term Pax Romana for a period during which the Romans mercilesly oppressed the nations they were ruling and they themselves were suffering under a military dictatorship. By comparisson the British Empire was a benevolent brotherhood.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

So conflicts on the periphery and in foreign territory count against something being peaceful? If that's the case, I don't think the EC has brought much peace over the last 70 years.

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If you equate full-scale wars and annexations of countries with "conflicts on the periphery" then you should take off those reality distortion goggles.

To keep with the military setting: You're fighting a rearguard action here. No shame in admitting that you got it wrong.

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Originally Posted by Hazir

It always makes me smile if people use the term Pax Romana for a period during which the Romans mercilesly oppressed the nations they were ruling and they themselves were suffering under a military dictatorship. By comparisson the British Empire was a benevolent brotherhood.

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Pax North Korea anyone?

By Fuzzy's logic a Porpoise and a Great White Shark amount to the same thing because they're roughly the same size and swim in water.

That's horrible. Sympathies for the British people. :(

Questions: Since the guy was mentally ill....how did he get ahold of a gun? And if he is associated with right-wing extremists (with ties to US White Nationalists) as reported....wasn't he/they on some terror watch list?

My impression is that it's really hard to get a gun in the UK, and that it's also a heavily policed and "monitored" place, especially when it comes to extremists and terrorism. Seeing that tensions are high for the upcoming Brexit vote, I also assumed security would be tight for PMs. :confused:

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Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro

If you equate full-scale wars and annexations of countries with "conflicts on the periphery" then you should take off those reality distortion goggles.

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I think those are less distorted than the idea that the Cold War between two powers (neither in the EC) competing for hegemony constituted a European-sourced peace.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

I think those are less distorted than the idea that the Cold War between two powers (neither in the EC) competing for hegemony constituted a European-sourced peace.

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This must be why EC/EU members have been at each other's throats since 1989.

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Originally Posted by Loki

This must be why EC/EU members have been at each other's throats since 1989.

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Because status-quos shift instantly? But we did see violence starting in Europe afterward, in the former Yugoslavia. And the states in the EU haven't shied away from participating in conflicts elsewhere in the aftermath. The US hasn't been at their throats either. We haven't seen the previous kind of conflict outside of the Middle East (and a different and more vicious style in Africa) for most of the world. Which has led various wags to suggest a Pax Americana.

You cannot simultaneously insist that things like the Pax Romana (or the Pax Americana) are a bunch of hooey while at the same time saying that interventions elsewhere in the world or violence on the periphery (like the Balkans) magically don't count when you're talking about Europe instead.

What does that have to do with intra-EU conflict? The argument is that the EU made violence unthinkable between its members. The Balkans are a strawman.

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Originally Posted by Loki

What does that have to do with intra-EU conflict? The argument is that the EU made violence unthinkable between its members. The Balkans are a strawman.

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No it's not. The argument is that the EU has made Europe sui generis, that it cannot be compared to anything in Europe's past because the EC's behavior and structure are completely at odds with prior attempts or partial unifications of Europe. Including having nothing of empire about them now or as a forseeable future.

And the EU has not made violence unthinkable anymore than Metternich's Balance of Power arrangement did. Another period of relative peace, lasting as long (or is it still a bit longer just now?) as the present one, but without the countervailing pressure of two superpowers competing for hegemony enforcing the inertia for the first 50 years. Any attempt to look at the creation and development of the EC and any peace associated with it that does not look first to the Cold War rivalry (and associated military and technological arms race) which spurred its development and continued deepening at least as much as WWII did is automatically invalid.

And who makes this argument? No one.

Yeah, you *and Minx, and others* did with your insistence that the EU was completely sui generis and no comparisons could allowably be made; on structural, mechanical, conceptual, or any other grounds. You make that argument when you insist on attacking from every possible angle, such that the EU cannot be an empire because it does not use violence, except when it does because that's not internal coercion, except when internal coercion happens because the coercion doesn't flow from X process, and X process doesn't count because. . . etc.

Are we reading the same arguments? The claim has always been that the EU ended the prospect of conflict between EU states. No one's dumb enough to claim that the EU, with its limited military might, can somehow create peace elsewhere.

And the argument was that the EU cannot be an empire because it doesn't use violence to subjugate people, which is to say against its own members.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

An empire if a form of political organization in which the "metropolis" exercises control over diverse (heterogenous) actors through formal annexations and/or various forms of informal domination. That's the short definition from the International Encyclopedia of Political Science. As it goes on to mention, efforts to make it more specific or precise tends to come at the expense of consensus among political scientists :)

As for what it is in Johnsons's message that is "better communicated" you have failed to provide a contrast. Better than what? I laid out what merits their mention, they are the only other two "credible" attempts at unifying Europe in modern history. Further, the UK (or Britain, in the case of Napoleon) was the single major European power which successfully avoided integration in both throughout their attempts to unify the continent that is involved in the EU now. As I said, the only other candidate for comparison is the HRE and it's even crappier. You may want there to be no comparison whatsoever, for the EU to be treated as sui generis in every particular but. . . that is AT LEAST as inaccurate as the comparison you dislike, particularly in the mentioned British context. Johnson didn't say a word about either Hitler's nor Napoleon's shenanigans, he referred to what both of them tried to build.

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I think you're putting words in my mouth here. I'm not opposed in principle to the notion of the EU being an empire. I'm just an interested layman but the most persuasive characterisation of the EU I've read in recent years is one that describes the EU's current state and recent behavior as being more consistent with a conception of the EU as some sort of nascent neo-medieval empire (Zielonka) rather than as a nation, or a federation or even a so-called "unidentified political object". I think such an analysis can be accurate and informative.

What lessons can we learn from the third reich or Napoleon's empire that are applicable to the EU and that can help us both explain its history up to this point as well as predict its ultimate fate and the path it will take to its inevitable doom or inform us about how we can change that path?

As for the Brits, they voluntarily joined the EU, they voluntarily gave up some of their sovereignty and even now about half of them apparently wish to remain under the horrible French-Nazi imperialist yoke.

A nice read

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Originally Posted by GGT

That's horrible. Sympathies for the British people. :(

Questions: Since the guy was mentally ill....how did he get ahold of a gun? And if he is associated with right-wing extremists (with ties to US White Nationalists) as reported....wasn't he/they on some terror watch list?

My impression is that it's really hard to get a gun in the UK, and that it's also a heavily policed and "monitored" place, especially when it comes to extremists and terrorism. Seeing that tensions are high for the upcoming Brexit vote, I also assumed security would be tight for PMs. :confused:

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You think criminals obey gun laws?

Most Islamic terrorists in the US aren't drug dealers. They're not in gangs. They're not street-savvy. Getting an illegal gun is harder than you think. The Colorado shooter had legal guns. As did the Orlando one.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Most Islamic terrorists in the US aren't drug dealers. They're not in gangs. They're not street-savvy. Getting an illegal gun is harder than you think. The Colorado shooter had legal guns. As did the Orlando one.

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Not a very testable hypothesis.

You have evidence that the Islamist terrorists here are parts of street gangs?

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I know of plenty that produce delusional thinking and weaken inhibitions.

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Originally Posted by BluntHorse

http://i.imgur.com/GpBlQel.jpg

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That's... kind of an irresponsible and also kinda dumb thing to say, esp. for someone who claims to have qualifications in the relevant fields. I'm not saying that there's no chance of the court finding that Mair was fully competent at the time of the murder and the fact that he went to the trouble of building a home-made gun using plans he had to order from abroad suggests some form of deliberation, but that tweet is just extremely unprofessional.

This is what happens when "scientists" decide that social justice should take precedence over science.

This is an example of social justice taking precedence over other social justice. There's, like, no actual science in the discussion. I honestly just can't get over how frustratingly bad that discussion is. This man is being sacrificed in the court of public opinion by people who're implicitly claiming the authority to be able to rule on his state of mind at the time of the killing without having any relevant knowledge whatsoever of that specific event that can help them make such an assessment. Others are rushing to her defense and gleefully mocked the lone critic who's called her out on this (admittedly not the best critic nor the best critique) but they're missing some important points.

At best they're using this man as a tool in service of a broader agenda. A narrative about pervasive bias against/hatred of progressive outspoken female politicians and Muslims, that serves to direct the violent tendencies of some people against those groups specifically. Bias in media and in public discourse wrt how perps of different backgrounds are portrayed. Sure. I can provisionally accept the claim that people more readily view a black or Muslim killer is a cold-blooded drug-dealing terrorist murderer while white killers may be more likely to be cast as lone-wolf types with mental health problems. I have no studies to base that impression on, but sure, I can accept it for the sake of argument. I can buy the idea that maybe societal attitudes can interact with a person's psychiatric problems in such a way as to lead to the killing of a left-ish female politician. I don't think I can draw many generalizations from this one case but sure, I can go along with it.

But that doesn't mean that it's justified to pre-emptively judge a person--who by all accounts seems to have had a long history of mental health problems--in order to make some sort of statement about media/public bias or in order to (as she claims) reduce the stigma associated with mental health problems. It makes a mockery of the law, it spits on forensic psychiatry, it jeopardizes the rights of that small portion of people with mental health issues who commit an act of violence as a result of their disability, it's unkind and it shows callousness and arrogance of a sort that I just don't want to see in a person who should be an advocate for science, professionalism and the decent treatment of messed up people. It makes me so livid I can't even properly articulate my thoughts on this :mad: :down:

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Originally Posted by Loki

You have evidence that the Islamist terrorists here are parts of street gangs?

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To clarify - that 'getting an illegal gun is harder than you think' is the part I'm addressing.

Nearly every time I hear about an alleged terror plot in NYC - where it's nearly impossible for civilians to get guns - it involves some kind of explosives. The Boston bombers used readily available explosives. A vast majority of the Islamist terrorists in the US who shot people had legal guns. When you combine that with their general ineptness (bright people in the West aren't the ones who are becoming terrorists; neither are the competent people, who could use that competence to establish successful careers), I think you're expecting far too much from them.

And let's not forget Breivik attempted to buy illegal guns but failed, and ended up with a legal gun. Unfortunately that still worked for him, but he was determined and planned ahead and still couldn't get an illegal gun.