Countries That Should not be Countries? page 6

that’s not the same. the veterans association is not the government, and a charge is not a conspiracy.

furthermore, bad countries should change, not stop being a country. it’s not feasible to force all nations that do bad stuff to stop being a country. Russia does some bad stuff sometimes, but i wouldn’t suggest not letting it be a country is gonna solve anything.

the Vatican however, has very little claim to a right of being a nation. probably less than a few micronations. Freetown Christiania would come to mind.

for one thing, the Vatican has 0 endemic population. no births, no children, not even any women.

you’re still not reading the article, i see. It’s government directed. Read the damn article before coming back on this.

The Vatican has been around longer than the Netherlands has. I don’t see why they have little right to be a country, but your country (you know, the virulently islamophobic anti-immigration nation) should be one.

I’d like a source for the population angle.

Just on the islamophobic angle, if geert wilders was canadian, he’d be in jail. Now, you might think that’s an injustice of liberty or whatever, but conversely, WE don’t lock guys up for pointing out canadian skeletons in the closet.

yes he would be in jail. in almost any country he would be. but please, we are far from “virulently islamophobic anti-immigration”. we just have strong beliefs in the freedom of speach. we invented it, we grew upon it.

Geert Wilders gets a lot more votes than i and many people here are comfortable with, but it’s still less than 20% of the votes. now compare that with the US, where the Republicans get over 50% of the votes quite often, and they really are a lot worse. if you were trying to attack us…

now as for the article. thanks for forcing me to read the whole thing looking for content you insist is in it. i don’t know if you base that on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poncke_Princen, who was banned from the Netherlands on the grounds of desertion. apparently we never really knew how to handle the situation. but this is really a quite small thing, relatively. i mean if you have to dig back for THAT…

or maybe you mean how we aren’t taught much about that part of history? well, while i would certainly agree that our accounts of history we learn in school is highly skewed and i think i have expressed my vehement objection to our education system including for that reason on various occasion, i’m not so sure this is quite equivalent to allowing the continuation of the rape of blind children by turning a blind eye and protectorism. it’s also perhaps not directly the government that determines the curriculum.

and about the Vatican, i shouldn’t need to provide a source for something that is common knowledge.

The Vatican has been around for at least half a millennium. It’s a state in its own right. If the pope were not his own sovereign, he would be manipulated by whoever was, and then we get massive corruption much worse than has already happened. And absolving the Vatican as a country would do nothing to get rid of the religious institution planted there. No altar boys would be “unmolested”, and future molestation would still happen, Vatican government or non-Vatican government. When a region becomes part of another country, it’s not like that region completely gives up its own identity and becomes a clone of the controlling group. If that were true, all Spaniards would be Castillian and all Dutchmen would be Spanish, and by extension also Castillian.

then how come there isn’t much worse corruption in Protestant churches? from what i know, it’s predominantly the Vatican that gets its hands that dirty.

and that it’s been around for a few centuries isn’t a great argument for its right to be a state. while having no endemic population, and out of its 550 citizens only a handful actually lives there along with some 200 non-citizens should give it less validity as a state than many micronations.

and its not like the way it became a “country” speaks in favor of it.

then how come there isn’t much worse corruption in Protestant churches?

Obviously you haven’t talked to a small town American Baptist preacher.

Atlantis.