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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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The question is complicated because one could argue that a liberal country, because of checks and balances, would not have made the Nazis' monumentally stupid mistake of entering a war against the UK and France (and they did enter it voluntarily, since on September 3, 1939 they were offered peace in exchange for withdrawing from Poland, and they turned down the offer) despite having no ability to knock the UK out of the war and knowing that the US would be fairly likely to help the UK.

Of course liberal countries also do very stupid geopolitical things sometimes. One could argue that the Iraq war was an example. But I can't think of any example of a liberal country making an existentially catastrophic mistake like Hitler's decision to fight the UK and France. Maybe Kerensky's decision to keep fighting in WW1 is an example? I feel like that is a special case though, since that liberal country was just a few months old.

Not that it wasn't coming eventually, but Germany also declared war on the US even though it was under no obligation to. And that is of course after adding the Soviet Union to the coalition.