Transcript

A threads post saying “There has never been another nation ever that has existed much beyond 250 years. Not a single one. America’s 250th year is 2025. The next 4 years are gonna be pretty interesting considering everything that’s already been said.” It has a reply saying “My local pub is older than your country”.

  • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Dumb people hear something, misunderstand it, and repeat an incorrect version with authority and without any critical thinking. I’m sure this person heard that the US is the oldest existing democracy. The next oldest, depending on the criteria you use, is probably Switzerland at 175+ years. But does this person really think that the US has existed longer than, say, the ancient Egyptians, the Ottomans, the Byzantines, etc.?

    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      12 days ago

      The oldest existing democracy is Iceland depending on how you define democracy. But that was around 930 ad and had free men participating in making laws

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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        12 days ago

        depending on how you define democracy.

        This part of your comment seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting.

        According to the ancient manuscript Landnámabók, the settlement of Iceland began in 874 AD, when the Norwegian chieftain Ingólfr Arnarson became the island’s first permanent settler.[15] In the following centuries, Norwegians, and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians, immigrated to Iceland, bringing with them thralls (i.e., slaves or serfs) of Gaelic origin. The island was governed as an independent commonwealth under the native parliament, the Althing, one of the world’s oldest functioning legislative assemblies. After a period of civil strife, Iceland acceded to Norwegian rule in the 13th century. In 1397, Iceland followed Norway’s integration into the Kalmar Union along with the kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden, coming under de facto Danish rule upon its dissolution in 1523. The Danish kingdom introduced Lutheranism by force in 1550,[16] and the Treaty of Kiel formally ceded Iceland to Denmark in 1814.

        Influenced by ideals of nationalism after the French Revolution, Iceland’s struggle for independence took form and culminated in the Danish–Icelandic Act of Union in 1918, with the establishment of the Kingdom of Iceland, sharing through a personal union the incumbent monarch of Denmark. During the occupation of Denmark in World War II, Iceland voted overwhelmingly to become a republic in 1944, ending the remaining formal ties to Denmark. Although the Althing was suspended from 1799 to 1845, Iceland nevertheless has a claim to sustaining one of the world’s longest-running parliaments. Until the 20th century, Iceland relied largely on subsistence fishing and agriculture. Industrialization of the fisheries and Marshall Plan aid after World War II brought prosperity, and Iceland became one of the world’s wealthiest and most developed nations. In 1950, Iceland joined the Council of Europe.[17] In 1994 it became a part of the European Economic Area, further diversifying its economy into sectors such as finance, biotechnology, and manufacturing.

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

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          12 days ago

          It does a lot of heavy lifting when defining the US to be a democracy too.

          You’d have to be a white supremacist to think the US was a democracy when slavery existed. Sure some people may have been voting, but there were Lords in a lot of places in Europe voting on stuff for a very long time.

          We may as well say the Holy Roman Empire was a democracy because people voted for who would be Emperor. Sure the peasants didn’t get to vote, but it doesn’t matter if not every one gets to vote? Or does it?

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Those are not nations in the modern sense. Modern Turkey and Egypt have only been around since after WWI. Byzantium hasn’t been a nation since they were conquered by the Ottomans.

    • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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      12 days ago

      If a country has ethnic/lingual, racial, gender/sexual, or wealth requirements is it really a democracy?

      I’m not convinced that the USA was a democracy prior to 1964.

      • JoshCodes@programming.dev
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        12 days ago

        When Greeks invented the term they stipulated only free men were able to vote. So depending on how you want to look at it, any country that allows free men to vote is a democracy. We’ve (modern people) just updated the terms of service to suit our current version of morality. We might decide our thinking outdated and misguided in the next 250 years and change things again. Hell we might even give trans people, women and people of colour equal rights to white men, you know, like legal protections and such. We might not try to suppress their votes… idk has anything actually changed since 1964 or did Americans just visit the moon?

        • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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          12 days ago

          Yeah words are a cultural construct, we’re speaking modern English so I don’t really care a ton about the word choices of philosophers 2500 years ago speaking a different language.

          We should definitely make sure that our society provides rights for all, and work towards a truly representative democracy.

          I think things have definitely changed since 1964.

          • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
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            11 days ago

            When do you draw the line then? If 2500 and 250 years ago is too far back for theory and philosophy to apply, when does it?

            • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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              11 days ago

              I’m not saying their philosophy/theory doesn’t apply, I’m just saying that what the word “democracy” meant to them is pretty irrelevant in a modern context. I wouldn’t call apartheid South Africa a democracy, would you?

      • huppakee@lemm.ee
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        12 days ago

        In that case there wasn’t any democracy up until maybe 100 years ago (no clue what country first ticked all the boxes, or when)

    • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      US is the oldest existing democracy

      It is not. Not a democracy, at least in its modern sense.

      • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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        12 days ago

        It wasn’t one back then either. Women and black people weren’t allowed to vote from the start.