Almost every politician wants more power over citizens. That is why a binding popular referendum is necessary in cases like these. Congrats to the Swiss people, I am a little bit jealous.
It's has all the modern postulates of liberty & governance that most countries are striving for without the "scam orchestration"
The University of Lucerne ran a study and came to the conclusion that there are around 20-30 women in all of Switzerland who wear a niqap or a burqa.
I would take the view that banning the form of your religious buildings (and implicitly, to your comment, being hostile to Muslims who in your response you seem to equate with a culture that destroys the possibility of liberty) seems more of a betrayal of the principle of liberty and freedom for all than allowing different people to pray and associate as they wish, providing they follow basic tenants of human law (not harming people etc).
Going back to GP's point, the deeper issue is that people thought this was worth writing in the constitution. Other countries apply such laws in different ways, so I don't think the Swiss direct democracy is to blame here.
A simple Google search shows that the referendum passed with 57% of the voters support, so that leaves us with a 43% who thinks it's a bad idea for one reason or another. Since around 5% of Switzerland is muslim, one could argue building minarets is not such a scandalous idea for Swiss voters.
OP seems to be suggesting that people should "do as the romans do", and I said while I agree with the general idea, his suggestion doesn't fit the case in hand.
In this case half of romans are verifiably not bothered [1] by the act of building minarets, then this simple act doesn't signal that people "go there without a degree of humility and willingness to adapt", in his words.
Or you could turn it around and say, if (having ability to) building minarets was such an unacceptable expectation to a point of painting one as a colonist, it wouldn't gather the support it gathered from the local community in the first place.
[1] to the extent of participating in a political process to explicitly disagree with the ban.
I've been seriously considering leaving the USA permanently because I'm having a difficult time reconciling my morals and ideals with the taxes I pay. Ballots and debates aren't enough. I'd rather vote with my taxes and my feet, and start helping a county I believe in.
(I'm not Norwegian btw.)
It also make any change, for the good or the bad, very very slow, which can be frustrating at times. So if stability is not high up on your list of life’s values it might not be the best place to be.
Do you admire denying women the vote until the end of the 20th century?
I agree there should be safeguards against a rogue or even non-rogue person modifying these records to hurt someone.
> having a central ID for each citizen at birth, and then a way to prove that you match that ID
This seems a trivial and no-brainer and yet you will be surprised how many Americans will be simply denied this sort of service after birth. Racist law makers would put severe restrictions on people they dont like. If they don't get this ID soon after birth they don't get anything. They will be illegals in their own country.
Entire song and dance around illegal immigration, e-verify and all that crap was needless if there was no concept of SSN.
The whole "centralized ID means your government will oppress minorities" narrative seems like a mostly american concept.
I imagine part of it is due with the US's particularly bad history with minorities, and part of it is a general defiance against any kind of centralization that also seems kind of unique to american culture.
Speaking as someone living in a country (France) that has had centralized ID for decades, it feels really weird to see people describing what a dystopian future American would become if it did that thing we do right now.
(and yes, ID card checks are used as an excuse for racial profiling; and the lack of an ID card is used to track down undocumented immigrants, and that's bad; but it's a symptom of other problems, and it's nowhere as bad as "centralized = black people are denied access to social services")
Authoritarian countries have combined a cashless society with 24/7 surveillance of all kinds to create a black mirror style social credit system.
None of this would be possible without first having a form of centralized identity. This will likely be coming soon to a democracy near you due to the level of state control it invites. Someone needs to get working on an ad blocker we can use in real life. I suspect it will be built around aluminum foil.
But for things where requiring an ID is already accepted (banking, etc) or inherently necessary (interacting with the government, like filing taxes), a robust, digital ID system would be much better than a paper-based system vulnerable to fraud and human error.
True. It is an American experience.
Different admins have harassed different Americans at different points in time. Jews, Blacks, Chinese, Indians (India) and so on. Donald Trump showed us just how much evil US admin can get on matters of paperwork. Since he could not legally stop legal immigrants from working, he changed rules and created such a long backlog that it takes now 24 months to renew some work permits which use to take 15 days 4 years ago. Immigrants were deeply hurt. He also adopted several tactics which can be called "voter suppression". He used ridiculous logic such as "extreme vetting" to deny visa approvals for 4 year old children of an already approved immigrant.
Trump admin harassed a lot of Hispanics born in border towns of USA, refusing to use their birth certificates as evidence of citizenship.
>it feels really weird to see people describing what a dystopian future American would become if it did that thing we do right now.
USA is much much larger and far diverse than France. It also does not have the groups who hate each other as Americans have. I highly doubt if there are any French politicians who bear certain hatred for specific groups.
I am not at all denying that centralized IDs are bad for everyone, but for Americans it is going to be pretty bad.
But few years ago this was definitely a problem and especially in border towns of Texas and Arizona.
But not just about brith certificates. You can look at legal immigrants. A lot of them are forced out of job because USCIS is taking their own sweet time of 24 months to approve their work permits. This means these legal immigrants have to quit their jobs, they can't drive as their driving license is expired and so on.
This is sheer caprice enabled by a hostile administration.
I am not against Americans having tighter immigration. Pass whatever tough laws you want and enforce them to hearts content. But when you have an admin that can be hostile to specific groups you have to be really suspicious of all government powers.
It would if the federal government was shrunk back to what it was designed to be in the first place and states where given actual governing power.