David Frum: What If the Allies Had Lost World War One?

[Razgovory]

You can be born in France and live your entire life there and not have citizenship and thus wouldn't be able to vote, yet France is still a Democracy.

That seems rather complicated and does indicate you can be born in France and not be a citizen.

Even more complicated when moving goal posts. Five years of residence is not exactly to achieve when you're born and live in the same country till 18 years old of age.
In practice, most people born in France end up French, this accounts for the low percentage of foreign citizens when compared to similar other EU countries.

Wow, most people born in France end up French in practice.  Compare this to the US where all people born in the US are US citizens.

[Valmy]

Oh noooz Raz is going all Marty on France. Next he is going to ask when France can do things like civilized countries.

[Razgovory]

I don't think you can call yourself a democracy without women suffrage myself; that's roughly 50% of the population being denied participation in the political process. The whole point of a democracy is to allow subjects' participation in the entirety of the political process (no powers reserved for unelected officials), so a significant franchise is necessary.

So Democracy was invented by Finland in 1907 after all. We need to go back and retro-fit this definition onto all history.

Not what is being said at all - once could make the argument however that Finland in 1907 (if that is actually the first example of true women's suffrage) was the first time the ideal of democracy were realized in a practical extent such that the resulting nation could truly be called "democratic". That is not at all an unreasonable argument, and is in fact an argument that has been made many, many times - namely by thos wfighting for women's suffrage, for example.

The argument can be made now, since some people in the US don't have the right to vote in federal elections.  Children, felons, Puerto Ricans, Guamians etc.

[Berkut]

I don't think you can call yourself a democracy without women suffrage myself; that's roughly 50% of the population being denied participation in the political process. The whole point of a democracy is to allow subjects' participation in the entirety of the political process (no powers reserved for unelected officials), so a significant franchise is necessary.

So Democracy was invented by Finland in 1907 after all. We need to go back and retro-fit this definition onto all history.

Not what is being said at all - once could make the argument however that Finland in 1907 (if that is actually the first example of true women's suffrage) was the first time the ideal of democracy were realized in a practical extent such that the resulting nation could truly be called "democratic". That is not at all an unreasonable argument, and is in fact an argument that has been made many, many times - namely by thos wfighting for women's suffrage, for example.

The argument can be made now, since some people in the US don't have the right to vote in federal elections.  Children, felons, Puerto Ricans, Guamians etc.

It would not be a very persuasive argument though.

Nobody considers children or felons to be in the group of those who ought to be able to vote, or would argue that NOT allowing them to vote decreases the legitimacy of the democracy.

And while it is unfortunate that there are others who cannot vote (to a greater or lesser extent) it is difficult to argue that the impact of those groups is significant compared to the total - hard to imagine, for example, that any national election has ever been influenced by the fact that there is no need to cater to the desires of the voters in Guam.

If you could cough up an example of a group who ought to be allowed to vote and who are not such that fixing the problem would radically change the makeup of the set of voters, then that might be a better argument.

[Razgovory]

No, it would not.  But there was a time when voters did not think women or blacks should vote.  What seemed reasonable in 1840 may not seem reasonable today, and what's reasonable today may not be reasonable in the future, so "nobody considers children or felons to be in the group of those who ought to be able to vote" is not the most objective standard.

[Monoriu]

Somebody filed a suit and argued that prisoners should be allowed to vote in Hong Kong.  They won    So now the government needs to set up special booths inside the prisons for them to vote. 

[Duque de Bragança]

You can be born in France and live your entire life there and not have citizenship and thus wouldn't be able to vote, yet France is still a Democracy.

That seems rather complicated and does indicate you can be born in France and not be a citizen.

Even more complicated when moving goal posts. Five years of residence is not exactly to achieve when you're born and live in the same country till 18 years old of age.
In practice, most people born in France end up French, this accounts for the low percentage of foreign citizens when compared to similar other EU countries.

Wow, most people born in France end up French in practice.  Compare this to the US where all people born in the US are US citizens.

There's more freedom in this regard in France since people can choose not being French, default choice is being French for those born there, is that so hard to understand? It takes quite an effort to avoid French citizenship at 18, namely dealing with the French administration. Getting French citizenship at birth is also very easy.
More freedom in France in this regard. The law is meant to avoid birth tourism.
This explains the low percentage of foreigners reported as shown in this map. I found it even too low, with France a country with an history of immigration, with a lower percentage of foreign citizens than Spain, where immigration did not really exist till the '90s.



But yeah, Valmy summed it up nicely for Raz, so I won't bother anymore.

[Razgovory]

You guys get real defensive over your weird laws.  Incidentally the percentage of foreigners in the US is 7%, and if you are born here you automatically get citizenship the moment you fall out of your mother's womb not at 18.  Foreign born is like 13%.

[garbon]

I can hardly imagine that if I was engaging in birth tourism that I would want to pick a nation as welcoming as France.

[Duque de Bragança]

Not very welcoming for those who don't know what champagne is indeed.

[jimmy olsen]

I assume that a CP victory after 1917 can't happen if the US enters the war.  Without US entry, I suppose it could happen, but a peace in the West by mutual exhaustion could maybe be more likely.

That's an interesting question - what would have happened if the US didn't enter the war? I don't know if that would have much impact on the Austrians or the Turks, so Germany would likely still be shackled to a couple of corpses that would collapse eventually. On the other hand, it means that the Germans would not necessarily launch a major spring offensive (or at least not the offensive that was historically launched) in 1918, and, if it did, the British and the French must needs have had a more difficult time stopping the offensive and pushing the Germans back afterward.

The UK needed American loans, not for their own needs, but they were heavily subsidizing the French war economy at this point. If the Americans don't join, the Fed won't make the loans. The ability of the British to keep the French war economy going will collapse.

[dps]

I can hardly imagine that if I was engaging in birth tourism that I would want to pick a nation as welcoming as France.

Yeah, the chart DdB posted might show more the desirability of moving to a country than anything about its citizenship laws.  Switzerland, Ireland, and Luxembourg all have high percentages, and they're places that seem like they'd be good places to live, while Poland has a very low figure--and really, who want to move to Poland?  OTOH, that admittedly can't be the full story, 'cause I doubt that many people really want to move to Latvia or Estonia, either.

[Maladict]

Those are probably Russians.

As for Switzerland, I believe it is such a high number because it is very hard to get Swiss citizenship.

[LaCroix]

No, it would not.  But there was a time when voters did not think women or blacks should vote.  What seemed reasonable in 1840 may not seem reasonable today, and what's reasonable today may not be reasonable in the future, so "nobody considers children or felons to be in the group of those who ought to be able to vote" is not the most objective standard.

yeah, this is what i was thinking when i skimmed through the argument that not allowing women to vote back in the day meant the country wasn't a democracy. i'm under the impression that women were considered incapable of voting, and that's why the government kept them from voting. this is like the 16 year old voter argument rather than, say, denying women from voting merely because the government wanted to disenfranchise/silence strong women voters. some countries today allow sixteen year olds to vote, but those countries are probably not considered "truer" democracies than the countries that allow only eighteen and older to vote.

[garbon]

Not very welcoming for those who don't know what champagne is indeed.

Probably time to find a new anecdote but I'll note, Korbel () is marketed as champagne in the U.S.