Can anyone explain why so many of the smaller dots end up forming into distinct lines toward the right side of this chart?
Guess you can populate names of those using the data
http://www.cgeh.nl/data#conflict
Tim_N
6055
No, but my guess is that there are a bunch of conflicts where precise numbers are impossible so they estimate 50,000 or something like it for each of them, which then becomes slightly less per 100,000 people each year because of population growth.
That’s why you get lines that are flatter earlier on and then slope downward closer to the present, because population growth exploded. Again, just a guess.
Seeing it like that, it’s terrifying how awful humanity is.
Steven Pinker, makes a very convincing case that humans are becoming far LESS violent now than any time in human history. His book Better Angels of our Nature, a Bill Gates recommendation, is filled with charts like this one. What Pinker did is look at more data sets, and found that a lot of the small conflict Tribe on Tribe was being overlooked at which makes ancient times look a lot worse.
In the case of gun violence it is worth noting that murder rates in western towns in the late 19th century were roughly 10x a place like Chicago today. Plenty of gun violence,but also knifing, hanging, and tar and feathering.
Pre-gun cultures could be quite violent, too. Per capita homicide rates in 14th century England were about ten times what they are in England today (at the least, the number that’s possible to reconstruct is an underestimate.)
Of course, that per-capita medieval rate is equal to about the rate in Miami today, but the US is exceptionally violent compared to England.
Matt_W
6059
Wut? Incompetence and lies leading to thousands of American deaths, a weakened standing among nations, a failed state giving rise to one of our current greatest security threats, massive incursions on civil liberties, erosion of political norms, and trillions of dollars of wasted money doesn’t really matter because…NATO intervened in Kosovo? By that logic, anything Trump does is wholly excusable because corruption has been a feature of political systems since time immemorial.
antlers
6060
And if that chart were to include the 14th century, it would need to have a giant bump to account for Timur and the Mongols, who slaughtered a greater percentage of the human species than anyone since.
Alstein
6062
She’s getting primaried out so she has to go all in.
If you think something has changed, then point to it. Again, I’m not arguing that there are no conservatives who have left the Republican Party; I’m just saying it remains a conservative party.
Sure, and I agree with the quote. Nevertheless, the Republican Party is and has been a conservative party, by any reasonable definition.
I think at least some of the questions get at the basics of conservative thought quite clearly, e.g. the questions on government, on regulation, on social programs and the poor, on private enterprise, on the military. The question on race may not be entirely fair — conservatism doesn’t usually openly espouse racism these days, so posing a question which treats views on race as an indicator of conservatism might be seen as a controversial approach — but the fact that views on race so closely align with the other conservative views, in my mind, reveals that racism is in fact still a substantial component of the views of many (not all!) conservatives.
In any event, we ought to be able to agree that this is at least evidence that people with conservative views (not all of them!) tend to gravitate to the Republican Party. It’s a conservative party.
Timex
6064
Gabbard is trying to get a job on Fox.
There are so many things wrong with this — from Pete — that it’s hard to know where to begin:
Now, what I’m proposing that we do in terms of reform is to stop the descent of the Supreme Court into becoming yet another political body. This is not about making sure that it agrees with me on everything. My appointments will definitely be people who share my values. But when I’m talking about the structure of the Supreme Court, I’m talking about something deeper. I’m talking about depoliticizing the Supreme Court. Because right now, every time there’s a vacancy, there’s this apocalyptic ideological battle and it hurts the court and it hurts the country.
So I’ve floated several ideas and deliberately kept some level of open-mindedness about which ones are going to work best. One of them would be to have 15 members, but 5 of them can only be seated if the other 10 unanimously agree. The idea here is you get more justices who think for themselves. Justices like Justice Kennedy or Justice Souter, and there are many legal scholars who think this could be done without a constitutional amendment under current law.
Just off the top of my head:
- SCOTUS has always been a political body. Saying you’ll make it non-political is saying you’ll make it a unicorn.
- Saying I have views you should vote for, but if I win I will appoint justices to the Court whether they share those views or not is not a recipe for getting my vote.
- Of course both sides make Court vacancies hard!
- Kennedy is Pete’s idea of an ideal Justice.
- Predicating appointments on unanimous agreement of the sitting Justices seems certain to be abused to partisan purpose. Now it won’t be Mitch preventing Dem Presidents from appointing Justices, it will be the Court itself.
Except he’s explicitly not saying that. He’s saying he will appoint people who share his views, but that we should reform the Court to be less ideological. The goal should be to have the ideological viewpoints cancel each other out rather than having distinct voting blocks.
I think the goal is reasonable - sitting justices have more incentive to seat other justices who will be respected and not too far from center. I think allowing one justice to hold up the appointments is a bad idea, though - all it takes is one political operative on the court and those five other seats effectively stop existing. Seven of the other 10 justices would be better, but really why not hold that standard for all of them? 15 person court, require consent of 67% of the other justices to approve new ones.
Still I think it’s too hard to create a system of life appointments that can’t be exploited. Better would be something like add 3 justices to the court, have them elected to 8 year terms, with 3 justices up for election every 2 years (so there are 4 “classes” like the senate classes), and require all decisions to get 8 votes or be sent back with no recommendation.
Then he’s just talking in contradictions. An appointee who shares his views will be an appointee who shares his ideology. And how will he balance the ideological tilt of the court, cancelling it out, other than by appointing someone with a different ideology?
I don’t know that it is, but never mind if the goal is reasonable. The method can’t achieve the goal.
magnet
6068
This means that US Circuit Court decisions will likely become the controlling precedent in controversial issues, which means they will become the focus for politicization.
His idea is to open up 6 more spots on the court. The only change in process would be for slots 11-15, which would require the other 10 sitting members of the court to give unanimous approval. Ostensibly, conservatives wouldn’t approve liberal firebrands and liberals wouldn’t approve conservative nutjobs.
This would swing the ideological balance as follows:
Currently there are 9 members, and only 4 would be considered liberal. His proposal adds a 10th which instantly grants the next President (him) the ability to pick someone with only Senate approval (current process). Despite the various levels of grumpiness about him being a moderate Dem, he’s a liberal when applied to the country as a whole and therefore we’d wind up with a liberal pick. The next 5 would then likely all be moderates.
In the future, the importance of a single seat on the court would also be slightly watered down; instead of any one judge being 11.1% of the final say in the law, they’re only 6.7%.
When was the last time that the Democrats ran an old person and won the general election?
Then Justice McConnell — or his spiritual equivalent — digs in his heels and simply refuses to approve any nominated person who doesn’t share his ideology, and one sitting Justice effectively controls all the nominations to the Court. Giving any sitting Justice a veto on all appointments is a spectacularly bad idea. Giving any single person anywhere that veto is a spectacularly bad idea.
