By: Kirk

Kirk — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 19:58:02 +0000

Problem with this idea is that the Swiss are a really poor model for fixing things like the endemic ethnic issues you find surrounding most of Islam. Why? Because the Swiss are mostly sane, and are entirely willing to live and let live. You don’t have the Romansch-speaking Swiss looking over at the French-speaking cantons, and going “Oh, those miserable heretics… I cannot tolerate them, we must kill them all…”. The various Swiss ethnicities mostly get along and respect each other’s space. That’s the key thing–The people who make up the Swiss Federation.

You can’t take the “lessons” from Switzerland, and try to apply them to the Israeli-Palestinian situation, because at least one of the players there is homicidally insane, and the other is delusional to the extent that they think that peace is even possible. About all that would work, were you to really want to apply Switzerland’s “lessons” to the Middle East would be to exterminate or move the current lot of homicidal maniacs out, and then replace them with the Swiss ethnicities that are so peaceful and civilized in Switzerland.

I’d have to go digging through the history of Switzerland, again, but if I recall correctly, the Swiss mostly banded together in the face of outsider oppression, and the various ethnicities didn’t really have much to do with each other before they federated. Trying to use them as a model for how to fix the rest of the world is fraught with problems, mostly because the Swiss are quite sane, and you’d be trying to apply sane solutions to people who are fundamentally and unequivocally not sane…

By: Graham

Graham — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 15:01:26 +0000

There’s also that old chestnut beloved of so many that we could end war by just getting to know one another. Thus sidestepping the widely known human experience that, whether interpersonal or interethnic or international, the most frequent and vicious conflicts are among people who already know one another pretty well.

By: Wan Wei Lin

Wan Wei Lin — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 09:05:22 +0000

Diversity + Proximity = War

I wish I could remember who said that.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 15:00:58 +0000

I didn't realize that was Heartiste's coinage.

By: Bob Sykes

Bob Sykes — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 13:04:55 +0000