Sure, it hurts when when people of a liberal bias gets called for being part of the problem (you can tell they use phrases like "For anyone who has grown past kindergarten" to inflate their elitist egos). But isn't that the purpose of your article - to point your finger at your perceived issues with the US that could cause a collapse? Maybe you don't see it every night on the news up their in utopia, my original comment is valid (sorry you disagree and it hurt your sensabilities), plenty of US citizen hate their own country without outside help. So if your statement above isn't the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is. When you get Canada sorted out, by all means come fix the US. I would'nt dream of laying out a laundry list of their issues, as I would consider that rude and improper, especially with it being so terribly awful here in the US.

A collapse occurs because the system cannot adapt to a new situation. This new situation can occur from outside pressure or from inside pressure.

The US is too big to collapse because of pressure from the outside, much like for instance the EU.

And as for pressures from the inside, if there is one system capable of adapting to this, it is a democracy. As far as I'm concerned it is what makes it superior to any other type of government, the ability to get rid of any truly incompetent leadership.

So, although anything is possible, the likelyhood of an US collapse within our lifetime is neglectible. Its power will probably slide over time (and some will argue it is already sliding), but a collapse? Not in the foreseeable future.

But the electorate voted for those MPs.

The pietistic Obama shall head off the Judgment Day and lead us children and Wall Street out of the wilderness--with the help of the resurrection of the New Deal.

It is a little overextended on the global stage, but yeah, I'd agree it's not going to collapse for a while. The liberal/conservative divide you have going isn't geographically based, so although the intensity of hatred displayed on JU may be widespread, without a geographical split between the two sides it's not going to threaten the union.

It's certainly not going to collapse for economic reasons. Regime change is too easily facilitated through the electoral process. When a president or congress is dumb enough to postpone elections, then nastiness might happen, but I don't think that's likely, nor that it would result in a widescale collapse rather than just a tweak of the country's chiefs.

You're an intelligent man, surely you don't fall for the guff that people elect MPs because they represent every viewpoint a voter possesses. Usually it's just a couple of issues that decide an election; presumably the overthrow of government by Hitler was not a big part of the campaign trail for those who did win big at the polls (correct me if I'm wrong).

Well, I asn't alive then, obviously, but I do know that the social democrats and communists were the only ones who campaigned positively against Hitler.

If the Germans had made Hitler an issue and had wanted to avoid him they could have voted for the social democrats.

They presumably thought that other issues were more important. Either way, it's not fair to say that only one third of Germans supported Hitler given that another third or so didn't care enough to oppose him.

Maybe, but maybe not. There's a strong case to suggest far right-wing candidate Pauline Hanson wouldn't have been so popular in Australia if every other political party hadn't turned on her and made her a martyr candidate. it's possible the strategists in the big parties simply underestimated what Hitler was capable of achieving with a little indifference.

Totally. Problem is, we'll never really know - propaganda was really effective those days, especially considering the inconsistent education and focus on rote (and therefore indoctrinated) learning. It makes it impossible to apply any of our modern assumptions to the situation (and yes, I realise that conveniently disqualifies my previous comparison, but let's just ignore that).

It would be fascinating to read some translations of internal party documents regarding the Nazis if they still exist. I have a feeling they don't though.

Anyway, I think we can safely assume that after people started disappearing nation-wide any German who wanted to know, knew. That's where the 'you can blame the German people safely' line comes in for me.

Yea, and we still make those mistakes today.

If we are talking about the early 30s, education would still have been Weimar Republic and German Empire. I don't think anybody can justly claim that German education under those two systems was inconsistent. It was probably better than in most western countries.

I'll see what I can find.

Are you kidding? It's a lot worse than that.

In the town in the northwest of Germany where my parents live they recently build monument to remind people of the events of a month before the end of the war. I have pictures, will upload them later today.

Basically what happened was that one of the last trains transporting Jews to death camps was derailed near the town by British bombs and 95 or so people escaped.

They were hunted down and murdered by the people of the town, NOT just soldiers or Nazis, but the normal people who had every reason just to sit out events and let the soldiers and SS do their jobs (the soldiers and SS had the decency to shoot the refugees, the townsfolk just beat them to death).

That was one month before the end of the war in the region. The Nazis had already lost control. But the people murdered the Jews anyway. They COULD have sat at home and do nothing, but they decided to be proactive and kill. I don't even think the Nazis would have (or could have) punished them for doing nothing at that point.

The memorial is made of stones from the main Holocaust memorial in Berlin and was build after much arguing in the town council. Originally the text on the sign wouldn't even have mentioned the fact that the people of the town actively participated in the murders, but most of the population thought that the planned text was too harsh and had a historian look into it. The resulting text was thus worse (but honest). The monument is made of two big stones symbolising the "gateway to freedom" and several small stones symbolising the refugees who nearly made it standing in front of it. A tree was planted for the few people of the town who tried to help, the very few.

I don't usually cry but when I stood in front he of the memorial (I walked up to it wearing a kippa), and said the Hebrew words (I promise I will never forget...), I cried. This was worse even than the Holocaust I learned about at school.

That's where the 'you can blame the German people safely' line comes in for me.

(And now the "edit" button has vanished again. I really don't understand the JoeUser user interface!)

Edit: This post has an "edit" button.