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Comment by Propelloni | Hacker News Reader

They missed that liberty and freedom is not a god-given right, but hard-earned privilege. They missed that liberty is not a personal property but a shared practice of pluralism. They missed that liberty is not absolute, but requires compromise and limitations so that we all can be free.

To be fair, those are not things that are taught in school. If they come up at all it is in some historical context, a battle someone else fought--and won. There is no mention that maintaining a liberal democracy requires effort and vigilance. Modern, ie. post-WW2, "fighting democracies" have built-in safeguards to oppose internal enemies of democracy, but if they are effective remains to be seen. The USA mostly does not even have such mechanisms and it shows.

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>Modern, ie. post-WW2, "fighting democracies" have built-in safeguards to oppose internal enemies of democracy, but if they are effective remains to be seen.

Eh, "internal enemies of democracy" is way too vague. E.g. Trump supporters claim that "unelected bureaucrats" in the "deep state" are enemies of democracy. Anyone can call anyone an "enemy of democracy".

Those fighting democracies are very specific about what is and what is not irreconcilable. For example, in Germany you can murder the president--that's just homicide--but you cannot abolish the protection of minorities. That's a violation of the constitution. Germany's far-right party Alternative für Deutschland has been under suspicion of violating a few of those provisions for quite some time now.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (aka. Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) completed a report a few weeks ago but is required by law to withhold it from the public due to due process. Of course it leaked, you can read the report here [1] (it's in German, obviously).

Now there is a discussion ongoing, if the Alternative für Deutschland has to been dissolved. That's a fighting democracy at work, following the rule of law.

[1] https://assets.cicero.de/2025-05/Geheimgutachten_Teil%20A.pd...

I'm not sure Germany's approach is a good one, based on the historical record:

https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/wo...

Me neither, but as the discussers point out, the Weimar Republic totally failed to apply serious consquences, e.g. Hitler's very short arrest after the Munich coup. Besides, the safeguards include more than limiting free speech.

Of course, those safeguards were designed in the late 1940s, so it's interesting, to say the least, how they cope with modern demagoguery. In any case it is worth a try.

Tangentially, that's a great site! I hadn't heard of FIRE before, but I'm glad they exist. I hope they don't get suborned by one side or the other.

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