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> Authoritarian governments don't give their subjects a good civic education This seems to have been untrue in the USSR, and it seems currently untrue in China

> Authoritarian governments don't give their subjects a good civic education This seems to have been untrue in the USSR, and it seems currently untrue in China, the first two big authoritarian governments that came to my mind. Also "because" is doing the heavy lifting in your sentence, I do wonder how you arrived at that causality.

Kinrany 3y ago
The civic education in USSR was clearly not good if you look at the current state of Russia.
StanislavPetrov 3y ago
The term "civic education" means different things to different people. In North Korea everyone is blanketed with "civic education" on a daily basis, but it isn't the sort of civics that leads to democracy.
antifa 3y ago
In those two counties, sometimes the term "authoritarian" just means the rich aren't free to endlessly exploit the poor. In US politics, property rights are far more important than human rights, so while it might still be accurate to call all three countries authoritarian, the rhetoric just gets confusing/ambiguous and is mostly just propaganda anyways. We love overstating how much democracy we have and understating how much democracy our competitors have.
- safety1st 3y ago
  The governments of the two authoritarian countries under discussion were responsible for two of the largest mass murders in history. Your apologies for some of the greatest criminals in history not withstanding, my original comment referred to the concept of a good civic education. There was some debate in the responses about what that constitutes. I think it includes a comparative analysis of various systems of government and how people under those systems fare. What we can say about the systems in the USSR and China is that as a matter of undisputed fact, people living under those systems are poorer and more likely to be subject to arbitrary detention or execution than the typical citizens of the world's democratic countries. A good civic education will teach that because it is a fact. A bad civic education will use propaganda to conceal facts like those.
  - antifa 3y ago
    This reply is a perfect example of the "overstate/understate" propoganda in action. Really? The United States didn't commit mass murder? Read a history book. Can you imagine school children in China, one of them asks in a political science class "What's wrong with US democracy?" and nobody can give them an answer without first mentioning the genocide of native americans, the mass graves in latin american, the contras, Iraq.
    - safety1st 3y ago
      There really is no comparison unless your goal is to make China look good by distorting the facts. The highest estimate I've seen for deaths on the Trail of Tears is 15K. Iraq was perhaps 100K-200K. The Chinese killed some 75,000,000 people (mostly their own) in the 20th century. Plus, why did you make this about the US? Have you forgotten that other democracies exist? I was talking about the human rights track records of democracies in general versus authoritarian governments in general. Democracies consistently have better records. You're the one who decided to cherry pick one of the worse democracies (and still failed to demonstrate that it is as bad as one of the worst authoritarian states).
      - antifa 3y ago
        > why did you make this about We were talking about democracy and citizen's education regarding how their own country's political systems. You're the one who is so obsessed and foaming at the mouth with any chance to bash China/USSR, you couldn't hesitate to derail a non-ideological conversation into boring ideological drivel.

Kinrany 3y ago

The civic education in USSR was clearly not good if you look at the current state of Russia.

StanislavPetrov 3y ago

The term "civic education" means different things to different people. In North Korea everyone is blanketed with "civic education" on a daily basis, but it isn't the sort of civics that leads to democracy.

antifa 3y ago

In those two counties, sometimes the term "authoritarian" just means the rich aren't free to endlessly exploit the poor. In US politics, property rights are far more important than human rights, so while it might still be accurate to call all three countries authoritarian, the rhetoric just gets confusing/ambiguous and is mostly just propaganda anyways. We love overstating how much democracy we have and understating how much democracy our competitors have.

safety1st 3y ago
The governments of the two authoritarian countries under discussion were responsible for two of the largest mass murders in history. Your apologies for some of the greatest criminals in history not withstanding, my original comment referred to the concept of a good civic education. There was some debate in the responses about what that constitutes. I think it includes a comparative analysis of various systems of government and how people under those systems fare. What we can say about the systems in the USSR and China is that as a matter of undisputed fact, people living under those systems are poorer and more likely to be subject to arbitrary detention or execution than the typical citizens of the world's democratic countries. A good civic education will teach that because it is a fact. A bad civic education will use propaganda to conceal facts like those.
- antifa 3y ago
  This reply is a perfect example of the "overstate/understate" propoganda in action. Really? The United States didn't commit mass murder? Read a history book. Can you imagine school children in China, one of them asks in a political science class "What's wrong with US democracy?" and nobody can give them an answer without first mentioning the genocide of native americans, the mass graves in latin american, the contras, Iraq.
  - safety1st 3y ago
    There really is no comparison unless your goal is to make China look good by distorting the facts. The highest estimate I've seen for deaths on the Trail of Tears is 15K. Iraq was perhaps 100K-200K. The Chinese killed some 75,000,000 people (mostly their own) in the 20th century. Plus, why did you make this about the US? Have you forgotten that other democracies exist? I was talking about the human rights track records of democracies in general versus authoritarian governments in general. Democracies consistently have better records. You're the one who decided to cherry pick one of the worse democracies (and still failed to demonstrate that it is as bad as one of the worst authoritarian states).
    - antifa 3y ago
      > why did you make this about We were talking about democracy and citizen's education regarding how their own country's political systems. You're the one who is so obsessed and foaming at the mouth with any chance to bash China/USSR, you couldn't hesitate to derail a non-ideological conversation into boring ideological drivel.