This week has really been a struggle for me. Not just in class but trying to figure out what to blog about. I have, however, found this second reading to be fascinating. Who would have thought that there were so many ways to interpret this stuff!? (yes im a little biased...) It is extremely interesting the different directions that historians have gone on. I am curios to see how much political affinity, nationality and time affect what these people say. Of course people writing while the country was divided would have a much different opinion that those who wrote right after the fall. What about internal or external pressures? What if work wouldn't get published unless it presented facts in a certain way? What about governmental or social pressure? If people disagreed with what he said they wouldn't purchase his book or perhaps react even more strongly. How much of what these people write is what they truly believe?
To go off on a little different direction (and I may be incorrect in this, so don’t attack. Remember I don’t do the whole politics thing well. This is my uneducated opinion)…
Is anyone else extraordinarily irked with the social democrats? I mean they get enough support to create a political party, which splits. well alright, but they spend THIRTY YEARS trying to decided what ideology to believe, how to influence the government, what kind of government they wanted, "who they were" etc... and what did they accomplish? NOTHING. well ok they were able to disagree to every bit of legislation that came to the Riechstag there for a little while, until Bismark (thank goodness) kicked them out. Not that I only disagree with their ideals, but my gracious. What a waste of space! Get voters in there who will actually vote on the issues. Voting against stuff to “prove a point” and be antagonistic is a useless exercise. Yeah, whatever I am sure that you have some nice plans and pretty ideas but not doing anything is not going to implement them. At some point you have to be realistic. Its like the girlfriend who gets mad at her boyfriend because, I don’t know, say he fell asleep and forgot to call her. Rather than say, “Hey baby it really hurt that you didn’t find me important enough to talk to…”, she is furious, rants to her closest girlfriends, gets a manicure, goes shopping and ignores him for a week. I mean he might get the hint (smart boy). But to get any sort of real change you have to confront the underlying issue head on. Giving the cold shoulder or pretending to not be angry is NOT going to solve anything. At all. Grow a pair and tackle the issues at stake. Don’t waste thirty years of my time.
To be honest I hadn’t really had any feelings towards the social democrats other than a passive observance until I read your blog. You make a good point. If there is going to be a group that wants to function in the world of politics then they need to know what goals that want to achieve. Say you want to enter politics, but you don’t know why. You just really want to be in the room and determine what you believe. That does somewhat seem like that is what they were trying to do. I don’t like the idea of politicians that don’t know what they believe in until they hear something they don’t like. That isn’t what gets things done. They should have been in there with all of their ideas and beliefs ready to be pulled from a holster to fight policies with which they disagreed. I’m not saying I would fight for one side or the other during that time, I just think that the only way that things get done is to have two opinions that disagree and find a way to compromise in the best interest of the people. I think that in our country if either the democrats or the republicans had complete power we would go swirling down the drain. It’s that we have people who know what they want to do and have to work together to get things done, not a group of politicos that stand together to possibly form an opinion.
ReplyDeleteTo play the devil's advocate, I think that is was probably difficult to exercise any sort of (oppositional) political agency with someone like Bismarck in power. He seemed to have a good grip on his foreign policy, which probably put a lot of otherwise cynical Germans at ease, since France (right next door) hated them and Austria, who had just been kicked out of the club, could make new alliances with Germany's enemies. It would have been really hard to garner support for a radical political party from a population that for the most part seemed pretty into Bismarck's plans for Germany. I say good for them for setting up their own program, however futile! Voting only gives you so much political power - why should one have two choose between a handful of options provided by a government that they don't even support?
ReplyDeletei feel like you do have to choose, even if you dont like your options. yes both options may be wrong and yes you should be able to overthrow the bad options. but in the meantime you have to live with at least one of those two choices. wouldnt you rather it be the lesser of the two evils? even if there is little chance your choice might come through, wouldnt you feel better knowing that you did everything you could to make a difference? is that not the right thing to do? otherwise the idea of democracy has a very serious flaw
ReplyDeleteAlright, nice blog. I have an idea of what you believe in and yes you did mention some of the things you wrote above, to me personally. Here is the deal, the Social Democrats had some really interesting ideas that were actually practical. They urged universal mass suffrage not just for all men (which was popular at that time) but more importantly for women as well. I believe that the Social Democrats also took a middle of the road type path when it came to defining what their ideology was. The Social Democrats definately believed in complete socialism but they were the first ones to promote their idea by participating in the government than in the streets. That is significant since during the nineteenth century, everybody was shit scared of Marx and anything socialist or communist meant a "French style Revolution". I definately agree that for thirty years they could not get their ideas implemented. But eventually after World War II, the SPD becomes a major political force in Germany. Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Gerard Schroder served as Chancellors of Germany in recent times. Ok, I agree that the SPD was ineffective for a long time but their ideas survived and they were implemented. Today, SPD and the CDU/CSU are the major political parties in Germany that have governed the nation alternatively since the end of World War II. Marilin think of SPD like the Democratic Party and the CDU (Christian Democratic Union)/ CSU (Christian Social Union) as equivalent to the Republican Party.
ReplyDeleteThe SPD occupied an interesting position in German politics. It adopted an oppositional stance while the party was banned but then gradually became more willing (from the 1890s on) to participate in governments. However, because of its revolutionary rhetoric, the party was always a pariah party. No other party really wanted to cooperate with the SPD because the stated goal of the SPD was to overthrow the existing system. Even when it was willing to perhaps be a force for positive change, its outsiders status made it difficult.
ReplyDelete