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Comment by happymellon | Hacker News Reader

> To be fairly honest, the rule of law in most European countries has been greatly eroded over the past two years. Mostly with support from the people themselves, I might add.

Do you have any examples of how the "rule of law" has been eroded in Europe with a positive public reaction? I can't think of any times where the people have cheered that the law was being wilfully broken. It was the final straw for kicking the last UK PM out.

I might agree that governments care less about their public appearance due to many factors, but it doesn't seem to ever come with public goodwill.

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For that, you can look at France for example:

Some times ago, there use to be constant demonstrations against the government in Paris. The police governor of the region requested police to do a lot of harmful and possibly unlawful actions and tactics. Resulting in a lot of casualties (broken eyes, concussions, ...) And more trouble as the strategies were forcing people in more aggressive and violent positions that they would have been.

All of these methods were previously forbidden especially because it was known to be harmful and against civil rights.

Still they continued without conséquence as they said that "they are the police, they can decide what is the understanding of the law".

Same things for the police using "drones" to monitor civilian without authorization. But still, no consequence...

It's my understanding that what's happening in society is a reflection of what's happening in A majority of individuals. As individuals that have not worked out their karma form into groups, those group dynamics create the very conditions we find ourselves in. So until there's a significant change in The majority of individuals there won't be a significant change in society.

Specific to the Netherlands, there was a scandal where the government was discriminating against minorities with regards to child benefits - unlawfully demanding the return of benefits and putting thousands in debt as a result. The government resigned - only to be re-voted in with the coalition being comprised of the exact same parties as before.

>The government resigned - only to be re-voted in with the coalition being comprised of the exact same parties as before.

Sorry, but if the majority of people decided to democratically elect the same people in charge, who's at fault here?

If political misbehavior is not punished though votes, then what's left?

Maybe the people should learn to vote better.

They were using that as an example of somewhere where there has been a positive public reaction to breaking the law.

Seems like a trick question to me, the founders of the republic and everyone who didn't push for legal consequences (such as permanent ineligibility for civil service) for major civil infractions is at fault.

A pure democracy is garbage because it never protects a minority from the greed of the majority. No amount of education can stop populists if the education is covering the fact that your framework technically legalizes unethical behavior.

The majority of citizens in any system are going to have frustrations from some of the many trade offs made to keep a system and would rather not have the total of that frustration hit a topic where they are in the minority.

This is why a well educated wealthy person and a racist populist are often the same person, if you come from wealth then better a race argument than a class argument causing a violation of civil rights whenever the republic wrongly gives ground to the democracy.

Rule of law and breaking the law are two very different things.

As for examples, look at the Dutch childcare benefits scandal. That alone should tell you enough about why GP claims the rule of law not only being eroded, but also why the majority is doing this to itself. It was a massive scandal with huge consequences for many victims. Yet, many individuals still haven't been fully compensated, the news has largely stopped reporting it, the majority has stopped caring, and the authorities in question have barely changed their modus operandi.

The people even immediately re-voted right back in the same government after it was forced to resign.

Freedom of assembly and movement, for one. My country had seventy days of armed soldiers out to enforce a lockdown. That was done by completely violating the constitution and the rule of law. It was done with an administrative act, bypassing all checks and balances.

Afterwards, a year later unvaccinated people were denied access to public transport and even work (note that a mandate would've been lawful instead, just not the vaccine pass scheme implemented).

All of this with an overwhelmingly high support for these measures. It was a de facto tiranny of the majority.

Oh and even afterwards protests were forbidden for a while to "avoid hurting the economic recovery". Again, most were favorable.

> It was a de facto tiranny of the majority.

Isnt that democracy anyway?

So is lynching. Democracy means zilch when people do not have inalienable rights not to be fucked with and those rights are enforced.

Such rights mean nothing when people lose their respect for them. Democracies work when a sufficiently vast majority of those within them belive that the systems are fundamentally good.

Lynching represent a public belief that whatever systems are in place are insufficient to bring justice. They happen regardless of what rights are declared in some legal text or whatever. The solution to building a better democracy always returns to building better, more trusted institutions, and building thr peoples trust that they are fair, and inalienable rights are just another such institution.

>"...and those rights are enforced"

You missed this part. When protection of one's rights is enforced it does not matter if particular group, even the majority looses a respect.

What country did this happen?

Italy, 2020 and 2021.

I'm wondering if you recognize the distinction between public support and public reaction?

In my view those are two very different things.

People support tyranny by supporting policies that feed on the perception of public fears.

Reactions are just reactions and my judgment don't really hold as much value as making personal changes and being an example to the world.

It was public support. Polls, as unreliable as they were, showed that the vast majority of the people asked were in favor. Aside that we had people calling the police on "offenders", DDR style, and at the very least showering them with insults.

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