Comment by jameslk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jameslk | Hacker News Reader

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> I agree 100%. As an Asian American it is baffling how throughout years of propaganda, so many Americans firmly believe that personal freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with a competent and effective government that has all the tools and resources to do its job.

Propaganda? What?

> I think it comes from shallow interpretation of sayings such as "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I mean it's a catchy saying, but in reality it's just a result of terrible system engineering (in this case the government system) in many places.

I'm pretty sure it comes from the enlightenment era and especially the American Revolutionary War. American colonists were never been big fans of the powerful churches and monarchs of Europe they were trying to escape.

> If your big government devolves into individual dictatorship it just mean the single executive position likely had too much power to begin with.

Would you believe me if I told you this very thing was happening across the world in the 1930s and 1940s? And pretty close to home too? Maybe all it takes is enough people to forget history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_dictatorship

Yet American colonists hanged witches all the same, and slavery persisted for much longer than in European kingdoms those colonists had fled from.

Seems like the correct lesson to draw is that the size or power of government doesn't necessarily tell you how much systematic misery and injustice you will find there.

When did I say anything about the power of governments relative to misery/injustice? It seems you've picked a strawman to attack with little relation to what I said.

According to Matthew Arnold, the last hanging of witches in the United Kingdom occurred in 1716. As for slavery, it was a much smaller economic interest to the European colonies. Also, "much longer" is an exaggeration: twenty-seven years longer than the English colonies, seventeen than the French colonies count for only so much over a history that began 300-odd years before that.

I worry about responses like yours because they are based on an impressionistic and ultimately incorrect understanding of western history. This way of approaching our history is frequently used in what is effectively woke propaganda, as well as propaganda in support of Chinese authoritarian style government.

Regarding your claims specifically:

Americans did not hang witches "all the time". Prosecutions for sorcery and witchcraft occurred in the USA in the late 1600s, that's true -- but they all occurred all over Europe into the late 1600s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_England

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_Netherland... (ended trials exceptionally early)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Finland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Denmark

In England, the last person prosecuted for witchcraft (thankfully not executed) was Helen Duncan in 1944:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan

Most European kingdoms did not have slavery in Europe; it's in the colonies where all of them established slavery. The US was such a colony. It's perhaps unusual in being a place where slavery was abolished as a result of a war between the ruling inhabitants, as opposed to a slave revolt or something like that. The British followed a more orderly process, though, abolishing slavery in the colonies and then compensating the slave owners out of the treasury.

Slavery was abolished in the English colonies in 1833. That's 32 years before it's abolition in the United States. That might not be the "much longer" that you had in mind.

At the same time, Prescott Bush (HW's Dad) was alleged to be involved in a Fascist backed "Business Plot" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush#Business_Plot

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