Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 January 18

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January 18

Australian article about democracy w/r/t death penalty

I'm trying to track down an article or opinion piece I read years ago by an Australian journo which opened with an anecdote about them interviewing an Australian politician - I think the anecdote itself was from the 80s or 90s, and I thought the politician was Paul Keating but including his name is not helping with google - and arguing with the politician, who claims that democracy or majority rule is not always the best on every issue. The politician supports this claim by saying that a huge majority of Australians support capital punishment (both politician and journo are left-wing), which the journo refuses to believe, only be told to look it up, which he later does and is surprised to find the politician is correct. (This is not true now but I'm sure it was 30 years ago.) That's the jumping off point for a longer article about whether majority belief in the unwashed masses is always "good" or whether a more "elite" administration is wiser on some issues. Anyway I doubt anyone will have better luck tracking that down, but you never know... Dr-ziego (talk) 08:13, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

How do you know it's "not true now"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:41, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Why are you asking the OP that question, when it doesn't help in answering his request? Mind your own business. --Viennese Waltz 14:53, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

It would have been quicker for Baseball Bugs to make a Google search than to type out his counter-question; he would easily have found Public Opinion: Australians Oppose Capital Punishment. Alansplodge (talk) 15:26, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The OP made an unsubstantiated editorial comment. If someone doesn't like that line of discussion, the OP shouldn't have brought it up and others here should mind their own business. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:09, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

If the OP had not inserted that parenthetical remark, some smarty pants would have googled "australians capital punishment" and written that it is not true that a huge majority of Australians support capital punishment. The statement was not an "editorial comment" but a statement of fact, just like stating that Bob Hawke is no longer the prime minister.  --Lambiam 21:32, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Opinion polls are unimpeachable. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:26, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

This paradox is addressed in detail in Robert Dahl's famous book, A Preface to Democratic Theory: i.e. democracy lets people make decisions (in theory), but often the electorate is prejudiced and uninformed, so how do you ensure this does not lead to abuses? It was a widely discussed matter in political science in the second half of the 20th Century (I have no idea if this debate is still current). Xuxl (talk) 15:01, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

To be fair as well, it's been a matter that has been discussed for centuries before the twentieth century by political theorists, maybe since time immemorial. For example, it forms a major part of the political theory expounded by the writers of the The Federalist Papers in the late 18th century. Federalist No. 10 in particular deals with this exact paradox and how a well-designed government is to deal with such a paradox. Leviathan by Hobbes, written in the mid 17th century, also deals with the notion that granting "the people" too much power results in their own demise. The Republic by Plato also grapples with the matter, and now we're talking another several millennia back. --Jayron32 15:34, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Often the elected people are prejudiced, uninformed and incompetent, supporting other interests than those of the people whose votes they courted. Often the people in power work hard to keep the voters uninformed by telling half-truths or even outright lies while keeping information that is relevant for proper decision making inaccessible. Or they are populists and knowingly stoke prejudice with dishonest arguments to gain more power. It is by no means clear that truly letting the people make the decisions is any worse than the prevailing situation.  --Lambiam 21:46, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The underlying assumptions evident here include this: there is a better answer to some issues than the one that the largest number of people (or the majority, your choice) prefer. If this is to be taken at face value – and there is no reason it should be – then the best possible system would be an absolute dictatorship under an absolutely benevolent and wise ruler. Since there is almost certainly no such person, the next best would be a group of people with all those benevolent characteristics deciding things. That leads to the question o how large the group should be, which leads back to the most simple answer: democracy. And, if you don't like the death penalty but the majority do, perhaps you're not really a democratic person. DOR (HK) (talk) 17:17, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Votes do not a democracy make; it's important to note that most political theorists define democracy by the average person's access to power and information; in general the more say they have in the outcome of their own lives AND the more information they have about what the decision making process is like, the more democratic a society they live in. Lots of non-democratic countries vote on things, but if the people are not able to have the necessary access to information to allow them to vote intelligently, if they lack access to run as candidates themselves, etc; that's not very democratic. Lack of a government authority is also not very democratic. Anarchic societies are not particularly democratic as the average person is under threat from the people with the most guns, and not particularly able to be safe from those people. The Democracy Index is one way that democratic societies are quantified around the world, and their methodology is instructive here. They list 5 traits of a functioning democratic society: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, political culture; only the first of those is about access to voting. --Jayron32 18:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

• The first name I thought of was Barry Jones, a very high-profile campaigner against capital punishment ever since 1967, when Ronald Ryan became the last person to be executed in Australia. Jones was also a minister in Paul Keating's government. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:48, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Rommel

Can you find if he had known of his friend Rudolf Schmundt's injuried and death before his suicide two weeks later? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.207.217.34 (talk) 18:41, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

It seems improbable that he wouldn't, despite the relatively short interval of only two weeks between the two events. I do not know which first hand accounts exist besides that given by Ms Rommel to Charles F.Marshall, who wrote about it later. One recent biography of Rommel is implicitly asserting that, in October, Rommel knew that Schmundt was dead. Problem is that the same argument supported by the implicit assertion would also work if Schmundt had remained only incapacited. Review of this work by R. G. Reuth in the popular science de:Bild der Wissenschaft journal for example notes it as of easy reading and not intended to a public of specialists (Warum also nun ein weiteres Buch über Erwin Rommel?), which could possibly mean that extrapolations are tolerable. However, a lot is known about Rommel, for example from his letters to his wife. Furthermore it is well known that during his crucial final weeks he was still under medical surveillance and particularly his physician held an authoritative stance about him not traveling. According to accounts from such provenance, or otherwise, from friends, Rommel would have been informed about the fate of von Klüge as well as of Speidel for example (https://thejns.org/focus/view/journals/neurosurg-focus/41/1/article-pE8.xml). --Askedonty (talk) 23:26, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Size of True Spain

Spain is the 51st or 52nd largest country in the world depending on how Morocco's size is defined. But what if the country had only included "True Spain", which means Spain apart from Catalonia?? What countries would it end up smaller than?? (How many is what I want; the specific countries can be found using the Largest countries list.) Georgia guy (talk) 19:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I did the math but didn't need to. The area of Catalonia is ~12.4ksqm. Spain has a 11ksqm margin over the next country in the list. So at most, losing Catalonia would push Spain down at most two spots in the list. --Golbez (talk) 19:39, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Every single part of Spain has a separatist movement, albeit in varying degrees of strength. --Soman (talk) 22:06, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

ok? --Golbez (talk) 22:17, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Since when is Catalonia not part of Spain? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

It used not to be, and a sizeable majority of its current population would like it not to be again. Perhaps you could look this up in some sort of online encyclopaedia, if such a thing existed. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.194.245.235 (talk) 08:57, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Actually, it's been part of Spain since Spain has existed as a state. Whether one considers the union of crowns (in the case of the Catholic Monarchs) to be the founding of the country of Spain, when they joined the Crown of Castile or the Crown of Aragon into a single monarchy during the late 15th century, or whether it was the Spanish Constitution of 1812 which finally ended the separate Cortes of the constituent kingdoms of the Spanish Monarchy and established the single parliament for the whole nation, at no time was Catalonia its own state. Many centuries before "Spain" was a thing, there were several semi-autonomous feudal states, such as the nominally Frankish County of Barcelona, which was perhaps functionally independent, but that was several centuries before "Spain" meant anything at all. Which is not to say that there is not a position that Catalonia deserves to be an independent country, or that the Catalonian people are not a distinct and separate ethnic/national group than the Spanish people are, I take no position on that, but historically, Catalonia was always part of Spain as long as Spain has been Spain. "True Spain" is not a thing; Spain has always been a multiethnic and multilingual state (similar to Belgium and Switzerland and the UK for example). If one is going to "break out" the Catalonian people, there's no reason not to also break out the Galicians, Basque, Valencians, etc. "True Spain" without the Catalonians is no more meaningful than "True Switzerland" without the French Swiss, or "True Belgium" without the Flemish.--Jayron32 13:07, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I always wonder, before 1469 was the name Spain in use (as Germany was before there was a coherent strictly German state) and did it include Portugal? —Tamfang (talk) 01:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

The earliest citation in the OED is from circa 1275. DuncanHill (talk) 02:12, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Spain as a name for a patch of dirt is distinct from Spain as a political entity, it should be noted. Italy was called Italy (or cognates thereof) for millennia before there was an actual political state called "Italy". Same here. Spain prior to there being an actual country called Spain was basically calque or cognate of Hispania, a term that existed since Roman times, to be fair. If we understand Spain in 1275 to mean what the Romans meant Hispania to mean; then it maybe also meant what became Portugal? Hispania referred to the entire Iberian peninsula, and in Roman times there was no particular distinction between Portugal and Spain, except in a very loose sense as the province of Lusitania, which didn't really have anything to do with Portugal except that part of Lusitania overlaps with part of what became Portugal. Hispania was still used for the whole Peninsula at the time; other provinces in Hispania included Tarraconensis and Baetica. Of course, by 1275, there was a Portugal, the Kingdom of Portugal having existed for a time by then, but it was not particularly distinct from the other Iberian kingdoms of that time period; which is to say that Portugal would have been considered one of the Reconquista-era petty kingdoms of Iberia, alongside places like the Kingdom of Leon and the Kingdom of Castile and the Kingdom of Galicia and the Kingdom of Aragon and so on. While the others would coalesce into Spain and (for the most part) lose their distinct cultural identities, at that time, there were a number of Ibero-Romance languages spoken on the peninsula, each likely centered on one of those kingdoms, and the kingdoms that "became" Spain later did not necessarily have more in common with each other than each had with Portugal. Which is all a long way of saying that I suspect (but cannot prove, alas) that when someone in the 13th century said "Spain" (or whatever the particular cognate of it was) it likely included the lands of Portugal as well at the time. --Jayron32 17:16, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

And of course, lest I forget, Spain did also (sort of) include Portugal for the period between 1580-1640. While modern historiography treats this as a "Spain + Portugal = the Iberian Union" sort of math, where Spain and Portugal retained their separate political identities within the Union, that belies the fact that the constituent parts of what we now call Spain also at that time retained their own separate political identities; at that time there was also a Cortes of Castile and a Cortes of Aragon alongside the Portuguese Cortes. Portugal was basically a co-equal part of said union alongside Castile and Aragon, it's just that only Portugal re-asserted its independence later, Castile and Aragon remained a union of crowns long enough to coalesce into a single state over time. --Jayron32 17:26, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Also also, to correct myself from earlier, I stated a wrong date for the end of the independent constituent parts of Spain (Castile and Aragon) as being in 1812; it was actually the Nueva Planta decrees which functionally did so; abolishing all functions of the Aragonese state and subsuming them within the Castilian state. I was just wrong on that; misremembered the time frame. --Jayron32 17:31, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

(ec) What makes you ask this irrelevant question?  --Lambiam 08:57, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

• Out of curiosity… is the term “True Spain” something the OP made up for this question… or is it used by sources? Blueboar (talk) 13:38, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

  True Spain turns up basically bupkis in a Google Search. Even if one were to call it [Spain proper, THAT seems to always refer to European Spain or Iberian Spain, which is to say not including the overseas colonies in Asia, Africa, or the Americas, nor does it include any of Spain's non-Iberian lands (so not the Spanish Netherlands or Spanish-controlled Italy) but does seem to include Spain's closely associated islands (like the Balearic Islands). Under no definitions do I find any meaning of "true Spain" or "Spain Proper" or any similar phrase that refers to Spain without some subset of what is usually considered modern Spain. There are real separatist movements, but all of these involve lands and people that have been part of Spain from the foundation of the Spanish state (i.e. at least further back than the 15th century). --Jayron32 14:58, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

  Nitpicking:

  Olivenza is part of Spain since 1801, Ceuta since 1581 or 1640, depending what you consider Spain.

  They have "unionist" movements, rather than separatist, though.

  -- Error (talk) 02:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

  Error is correct, I stand corrected. --Soman (talk) 15:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Material assets

Please note I'm not asking for any legal advice nor am I requesting predictions. But now since Todd and Julie Chrisley started their prison sentences, what is going to happen to their material assets?2603:7000:8100:F444:2DB0:C9B4:5732:B036 (talk) 22:45, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Unless some new informaton has emerged, the answer would be the same as the last time you asked it: We don't know. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:53, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The Chrisleys settled the tax evasion case with the Georgia Department of Revenue for $150,000, a pittance, so there is no specific reason to assume the (Federal) imprisonment sentence will have a significant impact on their assets.  --Lambiam 09:16, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

They stole tons of money to fund their lavish lifestyle. That includes their mansions, luxury cars, a boat, Rolex watches, designer clothes, etc.2603:7000:8100:F444:7444:B867:9392:A9CC (talk) 13:11, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

• See here for the full story so far. There are separate trials for different matters. The trial that concluded was a criminal trial which was for fraud and tax evasion, which included a penalty for violating a law; this included a fine and a prison sentence. The matter of what to do with the assets is a matter for a civil trial, which has not occurred yet. In general, this would require the aggrieved parties (the people from whom they stole) to file a civil suit against them. --Jayron32 14:21, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

To tell you the truth, the Chrisleys stole from banks.2603:7000:8100:F444:2DB0:C9B4:5732:B036 (talk) 19:39, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Then it would be up to the banks to file a civil suit to recover the lost money. --Jayron32 17:00, 20 January 2023 (UTC)