| >Are you saying plenty of people don't consider it to be settled now? Clearly some people don't, or the modern slave trade would not exist. Never mind that the US depending on your point of view continues to have slavery in the form of prison labor. And then we can get into what I personally consider hyperbolic descriptions of wage "slavery" that others I'm sure do not consider it so hyperbolic. > Mind you European borders today are not "debated" that way, and we consider that a win. Up until very very recently I suspect quite a few Irish and British nationals would have disagreed very strongly on that front. Even today I imagine there are some that don't consider it settled. 1998-1999 brought us the war in Kosovo. Famously there are still protests surrounding Basque independence in Spain, and similarly in 2017 there was the Catalan declaration of independence. Heck a good portion of the readers on this site are probably older than the current unified borders of Germany (34 years). I would also remind you that the Ukraine is a European country whose borders and independence are actively and violently up for debate currently. And none of that counts any of the various European colonies that were divested (in sometimes quite violent ways) in the last century, regardless of the border stability of the home country. >I mean, that is precisely why US domestic debate is increasingly breaking down and violent. Not because it's not free enough but because it's too free. Because there's no ethical or rational ground underpinning it. And I see it as almost the exact opposite. I see the breakdown as an increasing unwillingness to ascribe any ethical or rational ground to the opposing side. I think it's compounded by an unwillingness to debate the starting axioms before trying to debate the higher level topics as well, but conveniently if you just assume your opponents have no "ethical or rational ground underpinning" their debate, you also don't have to bother with debating those baseline axioms. |
There's no "debate" about the legal borders of Ukraine, or its status as an independent country. There's a war going on of course and an endless stream of propaganda, mostly from one side. But it's not like there's anything resembling a disputed border, or any other unsolved historical issue that's driving the conflict.
BTW it's not "the Ukraine", but "Ukraine" simply (and yes the distinction matters).