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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 3, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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@theory @Felagund

None of those examples really mean a lot. Slovakia and Czechia never really separated, they never instituted a hard border by which a citizen of one could not travel to or work in the other, and within just a few years of independence they both acceded to the EU and lost the most important points of sovereignty anyway. This is the Epcot Nationalism common in EU countries I've talked about before: once you take out the possibility of borders that prevent travel, the possibility of different regulatory regimes, the possibility of war, and smooth out most of the differences in values (ie both are subject to EU regulations and pressure on "Human Rights") well...what's the difference anyway other than linguistic choices in street signage?

The Baltic countries separated peacefully, perhaps, for now. Russia has repeatedly accused all the former USSR states of oppressing Russian speakers, which I'd qualify as state violence (being forced to abandon one's native language or accept second class status). And the story isn't written yet on the Baltics anyway: Ukraine and Georgia were countries that could be listed as separating peacefully, right up until they couldn't.

Norway and Sweden were never one country, they operated in a personal union as separate constitutional democracies with the same monarch.

The two states kept separate constitutions, laws, legislatures, administrations, state churches, armed forces, and currencies...

They were further apart than they will be as EU and NATO member states.

I'm not sure which examples we're talking about from the British Empire. India separated peacefully, but partition resulted in immense, tragic, and ongoing violence. Uganda and Rhodesia separated pretty peacefully, but would later engage in a great deal of violence against ethnic minorities perceived as colonizers, which would not have occurred without independence. I'd probably spot you Canada, New Zealand, Australia; but to a lesser extent they suffer from the EU problem: those countries remained in the Bretton Woods system and allied militarily with their former Colonial masters within the American alliance system. The process Moreover, those countries were never unitary parts of the British polity, they were colonies. They always had a separate legal existence as countries, who simply acknowledged the same monarch.

I continue to contend that separating states must result in violence. If not between the two states, then within the states against the people who don't "fit" the new border to forcibly alter or expel them. We should be seeking to achieve universal standards of human rights for minorities, not to properly sort them to avoid their existence as minorities.