Simple. The UK is not a pro democracy, pro human rights state.
It might be uncomfortable to admit this, but if your government is a police state that's pretty much mutually exclusive with being a pro human rights state.
It might be uncomfortable to admit this, but if your government is a police state that's pretty much mutually exclusive with being a pro human rights state.
A fundamental right that is being challenged every 6 month or so for the last 3 years with the push for Chat Control.
> In practice, it’s far costlier to push mass privacy infringements in Europe than in the U.S.
Absolutely false. With the way the EU commissions work, all you need is to buy or lobby your way in single one place and then you can push for any agenda that you want.
Also EU has a lot of rights on paper that don't exist in reality. Free speech? Come in my country, you can go to jail for speech, there are several ways, way too many. Rights to property? Good joke. What rights do we really have in EU? I don't know any.
While the EU certainly has its issues, its protection of democracy is still one of the best in the world. Democracy is something we need to keep working towards. There is not one simple set of rules that will keep it healthy, at least as far as recently history shows.
I personally don't like the Texas v Johnson decision. Burning flags is un-American and should be illegal. How is that dictatorial?
It's clearly dictatorial, you'll have to demonstrate why it's not an act of a single person dictating policy.
It's not all about getting your way... well maybe the better way to say it is that the left got their way, for sixty years. And some of those wins from that period for the left were built on shaky ground. There has to be give and take in any healthy political system.
And the left did not get their way for sixty years. The left is predominantly socialist, communist, anarchist. Democrats are not a leftist party. The left hasn't held many political positions in the US. But we on the left hate the democrats as much (or more) than folks on the right. We also tend to be broadly supportive of individual freedoms (most of my leftist colleagues are anti gun control, for instance.)
Or, using logical constructs - "A therefore B" is not made invalid by "C therefore B".
1. Degrees / magnitude. How many cases of dictatorial behavior were there with Obama vs Trump? Every president signs executive orders, but trump signs a lot more of them.
2. Defiance to checks in power. The current administration seems uniquely defiant of both the legislative and the judicial branches, both in rhetoric and act.
And now they are using a protected class loophole to keep doing it? After it was struck down by the Supreme Court?
No, but it's different when my opponent does it.
I certainly hope I've been clear that this isn't some D vs R conflict. Both parties are at fault, both parties own some blame, but the situation today is not ok. It was also not ok under Biden, Trump 1, or Obama. We should be looking at ways to get the working class to look past our differences and securing more of the pie for ourselves. We should be reducing the power of the executive, no matter who is sitting in the seat. We should be focusing on the wellbeing of all.
Stop making a team sport, or at least correctly identify that you have way more in common with me (a working class anarchist) than you do with the people in power.
Unless you are saying, "I have nothing in common with the narrow subset of leftists that are tankies" rather than implying I'm a tankie then, sure. I guess you could make that case.
that by itself doesn't mean much. More EOs and especially illegal ones produces more injunctions.
> No, but it's different when my opponent does it.
No it's not different but the amount that's done matters. I for one have no issues calling out overreach by "my" side as well (which is more than can be said about most MAGAs). But I'm also going to call it out when the "other" side is doing it as normal course of governing vs being the exception.
How many legislations has this administration proposed let alone passed? vs how many EOs signed just since Jan?
Using the IRS to target your political opponents should have been disqualifying. Running guns to the cartels should have been impeachable.
Trump is doing some fucked up shit, but he doesn't get to be able to do that without decades of groundwork from both sides of the aisle.
The youth desire a strong executive. They don't yet understand why it can be a bad thing, because they have little experience with people having power over them that aren't their parents or teachers.
The middle aged desire a strong legislative branch, the most fair branch of government. They have enough life experience to understand why. They are not quite old enough to be set in their ways just yet.
The elderly desire a strong judicial branch. Judges are almost always old, and biased towards the opinions of the elderly, left or right.
There is nothing wrong with a strong executive. It is just completely at odds with those who still control the vast majority of the money and power, and of course, mainstream media: the Boomers. JFK, Great Society, these are marked by a desire for a strong executive. Ironic, of course.
A strong executive can stop them, and the Boomers have never been told 'no' in their entire lives. Really truly, everybody was young in the 1960's. They warped society to their will, just like the people in every baby boom in history. You misinterpret their tantrum as something substantive.
I'm a syndicalist anarchist, who believes communities should be primarily bottoms up driven, democratic, and cooperative. I argue we don't need any of those branches to be strong.
Well, I disagree. What evidence do you have to demonstrate that a) this is true and b) it's so unassailable that one could not deny it?
Because it sure reads like, "I have a worldview. I will assert that it is true and talk down to anyone who does not accept my worldview as truth." It's a way to paint your discussion partner as an intellectual lesser, while adroitly dodging critique. You'll have to do better than just asserting something is true because you said so.
But here's something from today: "A lot of people are saying maybe we'd like a dictator." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koruWF1cfyc
This is just a small summary. Foreigners are not visiting the US, not because they don't want to or don't like the US, but because they are afraid of visiting a non-free country. It's not worth the risk of getting detained because you posted a negative comment online about a government official.
Don’t let defensiveness lead you to say nonsensical things. Nearly every single country in the EU has a worse-than-trumpian party waiting in the wings, or even in power, see Hungary. Ascribing some sort of special property to the EU, a region with absolutely terrible standards for personal liberty, because at the moment there is more respect for liberal democracy there than elsewhere.. well it’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
In contrast, my own country Canada is far more at risk of the rise of an authoritarian adjacent party. A party with majority control has too much power here, and lack of proportional representation also means that majority control can be achieved with less than 50% of the voting population supporting you.
This is why I say the EU has better protections. The existence of parties that want more authoritarian control shouldn't be a measure of the health of a democratic system. In fact, somehow forcing these parties out would be pretty against the principles of democracy and free speech.
I do suppose its worth asking the question of whether democracy should allow the voting down of democracy itself, but I don't think the EU is at risk of that as a whole, even if a few member states are.
This varies a lot by country. The French are still known for their protests, certainly not nearly as violent or disruptive in the modern day as their famous 18th-century revolution but very much quite impactful even so. And German trade unions use strikes very effectively to have a fair outcome in contract negotiations with employers.
Countries in the English-speaking world, certainly including the UK but also the US and Canada, seem a lot more deferential to elites in many ways than most of continental Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institu...
I mean, you tell someone 20 years ago that you have to use your real name on websites or provide a phone number and they would look at your like you're crazy. Now, we're demanding people upload real pictures of their real life ID to fuck around on the internet.