{"id":6460,"date":"2016-11-08T20:53:20","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T02:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=6460"},"modified":"2016-11-08T20:53:20","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T02:53:20","slug":"obscure-european-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/11\/08\/obscure-european-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Obscure European Countries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ian Reifowitz on The Daily Kos <\/b><\/i>gives a short but fascinating history lesson <\/a>of a republic I’d never heard:<\/span><\/p>\n

I teach history. My graduate training included in-depth study of a country once called the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania. I\u2019ll venture few of you knew a country by that name existed, and fewer know much about its history. In fact, it was once the largest country in Europe by territory, and in the 18th\u00a0century had a voting franchise that was roughly as democratic as Britain\u2014i.e., one of the most democratic in the West at that time. Yet it got literally carved up by its neighbors. Why? Because its government ceased to function.<\/p>\n

The government of Poland-Lithuania ceased to function because it had a fundamental flaw in the way its legislature operated. The system could only work if its elected officials operated in good faith. When the Commonwealth\u2019s parliament gathered to debate legislation, any individual deputy could block a proposed law. This right<\/a> was called the \u2018liberum veto\u2019 or free veto. A deputy could simply rise and declare: \u201cI do not allow!\u201d Not only would the individual law under discussion be vetoed, but the entire parliamentary session would immediately end, and all legislation already passed would be declared null and void.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ian Reifowitz on The Daily Kos gives a short but fascinating history lesson of a republic I’d never heard: I teach history. My graduate training included in-depth study of a country once called the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania. I\u2019ll venture few of you knew a country by that name existed, and \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6461,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6460\/revisions\/6461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}