One of my favorite things about the internet: whatever the assertion, someone has already gone through the trouble of fact-checking it obsessively, then posted the results. Point in case, an interesting look at the much-discussed Universal Democracy Peace Formula (essentially, the claim that no two democratic countries have every waged war on each other). From the conclusion, by far the most interesting part:

“Although there is no undisputed case of two democracies at war, the evidence certainly casts doubt on the thesis. In fact, the thesis is not nearly as strong as the statement that no two countries with a MacDonald’s Restaurant have ever gone to war with one another, so why do you never hear distinguished international diplomats expound on the need to sell more beef patties in the world?

At first, this MacDonald’s factoid seems enormously trivial; however, when you stop and think about it, the MacDonald’s Peace Formula can be quite interesting. It seems to indicate that as countries are incorporated into the global economy by trans-national corporations, they stop waging war on one another (although it might be vice versa). Unfortunately, no one wants to go around saying that the best way to assure peace is to surrender your national economy to large heartless corporations. It makes a much better campaign slogan to say that democracy is the best path to peace. This is why we see so many people claiming that democracies never fight each other, and relatively few people outside of MacDonald’s Corporate Headquarters claiming the geopolitical virtues of burger bars. “

In other words: Want peace? Skip the protest and grab a Value Meal. Ah, the delicious, high-cholesterol irony.