Unfortunately the only answer that I know of is eternal vigilance, which is the price of liberty.
I decided to look up who that saying is attributed to, and apparently it's John Philpot Curran, not Thomas Jefferson. But I like Orwell's saying better, because it shows why all of you are just as ineffectual at steering government policy as I am:
https://www.socratic-method.com/quote-meanings-and-interpret...
After a quick search - and ignoring Google's helpful clanker who tries to point you to the _wrong_ Orwell text - it's not hard to find a clean source:
https://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/RoadToW...
If your Member of European Parliament supports chat control stop voting for their parties and politically support their opposition
The key point to make is that once you're spying on your own people, you've created the single weakest point of entry for your geopolitical opponents spying on you and manipulating the population as well. It's such a dumb political move, it seems like it could only come from extreme fear, greed, or manipulation. Switch it around and make them afraid of the alternative.
Also very weird how whenever "liberals/centrists" are in power the (ultra) right gain lots of momentum. Must be the weather
Almost forgot: we're also in our third year of recession and the only investments are made in the military industry to prep for starting the next world war
>I don't want to get too political
Do you practice self censorship like the German media?
This whole thread is about EU politics.
> Greens are even further right than cdu/csu who have the same policies in 99% of cases as libs
Trying to paint the greens as further right than CDU/CSU is just plain wrong by any measure. The greens are a green/social liberal party while the CDU/CSU are conservative center-right party. None of their politicians would ever argue that they are more left than the greens which is pretty obvious when looking at a quote from Friedrich Merz (German chancellor and party leader of the CDU/CSU) where he quite literally says that the greens are more left. [1]
[1] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/merz-gruene-10... English: "In the coming weeks and months, we will once again significantly intensify the debate with the Greens and, above all, counter the impression that we are always looking to the left and saying that we absolutely must form a coalition with them at some point."
You trust what the parties are saying rather than what they're actually doing? Is this a joke? The biggest warmongering party the greens are supposed to be left? This is tagesschau levels of propaganda.
You are talking about greens, the party that wants to deport everyone who criticizes Israel, sues everyone who insults them, and they literally warned against a "linksruck".
And you're really not sure this is less draconian than nazis?
The vast majority of these deportations are just shuffling people around the EU in what seems like a game of hot potato over who is supposed to be responsible for a given migrant. Deportations that actually get people out of the EU seem to be extremely rare afaict.
Anyway, let's assume germany deported 0 people. It's telling that you're focusing in typical liberal manner on a single issue and disregarding everything else (war, genocide, recession, submission to usa as a vassal state etc.)
Not quite a fan of deportations, but I'd rather risk people going back on their word than the alternative here.
I wholeheartedly refuse to vote for anyone who publicly supports this. It is integral to democracy itself. If my only alternative is "The party of kicking kittens and opposing chatcontrol" I will 100% support them.
For better or for worse the EU itself is about as much of a democracy as some of the European empires were back in the in early 1900s with their sham parliaments which had very little real power.
Maybe it is a result of sending the biggest idiots off to the EU when they failed in national politics, but the problem remains.
Like when the Irish electorate rejected the Lisbon Treaty, and then was then harangued into accepting a reheated version. Opponents of the treaty reasonably asked if it could be best-of-three.
After receiving concessions.
The real problem was that the referendum commission (the state body in charge of informing the public on these matters) was deemed “too neutral” and was forever after hobbled and since then we have had to vote in a veritable information vacuum.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Dutch_European_Constituti...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut...
That sounds exactly like you'd expect it to work, and yet people seem outraged by it.
Why?
They circumvent the accountability of nation states, it is a development catastrophe since people cannot have a reasonable influence on policies anymore.
The bad thing about the EU is that it opens up views like yours, trying to absolve your own nation of any culpability, when that is just not true.
If you don't like the direction of the EU, vote in a government and MEPs who will steer it in a different direction. If enough people do this, then the EU changes, as happens in every democracy.
What you're seeing is simply democracy in action. You think these things are going against the majority, but the reality is, the majority of citizens are ok for this to happen at the nation state level, and by extension at the EU level.
Stop blaming the EU. It is lazy and makes the problem worse. Look closer to home.
So in this case it is the fault of the EU as well because its structures allow this to happen.
I prefer battling one national government instead of 27.
The EU certainly isn't democracy in action, on the contrary it is highly technocratic. Without the promised proficiency though.
You're blaming the EU for something that is the fault of our populations, voting in governments who increasingly push these agendas. You're not helping anything by doing that.
There are no real polls. Any positive poll asks about protecting kids in a populist way or it is framed as something combatting big tech, which is just as dishonest.
But the real numbers will be in if people don't submit any photos or IDs for some flimsy age verification.
Be that as it may, there are also constitutional protection against surveillance, regardless of popular support, which I argue doesn't exist.
Where do you draw the line/how do you strike balance? And I'm curious if you have an idea of an alternative for the regular coordination efforts that would be needed for the national/sub national governments in the absence of something like the EU.
Your argument doesn't make sense, you cannot just use abstraction to justify building new layers of governance.
I could give you an arbitrary line and say a common language would be the point. It is sensible as well because nobody in the Netherlands knows any politician from Spain and vice versa. On a national level this is not as pronounced.
I don't need coordination efforts about scanning encrypted messages if that is your question.
Your use of this then would translate to the governments wanting to read all the mail to constantly stay informed would be the bad guys where the other actors only have to get lucky once by having a mission complete would be the good guys?
Cops vs robbers? Christians vs lions in Rome?
Or, we're merely fish in a barrel and trying to convince ourselves we have any control over whether we get shot?