31–40 of 200 posts
I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.
If you support unrestricted speech, then you support legalisation of lies, fraud, vilification, threats, child abuse pornography, yelling "Fire!" in crowded theatres, abandonment of copyright, spreading of state secrets, insider trading, you name it. It's not surprising that few dare to advocate it.
"Legalization of lies". They are legal by any legal code in existence. Nothing to support here. Criminalizing lies implies totalitarianism, it's as simple as that - because either enforcement is selective, leading to its usage to suppress dissent, or it's total, implying total surveillance and massive police state.
"Fraud" - fraud is not a free speech issue because it's a form of failure to adhere to contract: when I form a contract with somebody I expect honest description of what I get in exchange for fulfilling of my contractual obligations.
"Vilification" - it's legal. Just turn on TV and watch news for five minutes.
"Threats" - ditto. In US it's called "diplomacy". In private life _credible_ threat is considered a pre-cursor of violent action, to which pre-emptive defensive response is considered appropriate.
"Child abuse pornography" - again, the issue here is not images but the violence against children which was inherent in production of child porn. The current state of the art in generating photo-realistic imagery has decoupled viewing of such images from the actual harm to the children.
"Yelling "Fire!" in crowded theatres" - here is confusion is between speech and action. Yelling "fire" in a theater has a predictable and immediate consequence of having people to panic, and is a deliberate action. Yelling "fire!" on a movie set when playing a role isn't - it will not trigger panic as everyone on the set understands that it's a part of the play. Yelling "fire" on the same set when not playing a role is the same as in a theater. The difference is intent and immediate causation of harm to others.
"abandonment of copyright" - it is de-facto abandoned by millions of people and mega-corps like Google. In fact, the very existence of Silicon Valley media and search tech depends on willful violation of copyright law AS WRITTEN. In any case, copyright is a very bad idea to start with and amounts to little more than socializing exclusion costs while collecting private gains in the content creation line of business.
"spreading of state secrets" - like complicity in mass murder of innocent people? This is one very slippery rationale for suppressing right to free speech.
"insider trading" - ditto. The crime of insider trading is basically the crime of having better information sources than others. If legal, insider trading will change trading behavior to compensate - i.e. people will be looking at what insiders are doing. As they should, but naive "investors" rely instead on the illusion of government protection.
"you name it" - you named it, and none of that holds water on closer examination.
"It's not surprising that few dare to advocate it" - yeah, because people get mobbed immediately by the fascist gang pretending to be progressive just because they express their views.
Fact is that democracy is constantly under attack say voter suppression etc.
The question should be about what can be done in practice to make democracy work better, not whether it "is" a perfect system or not.
Democracy can be made to work better if people get informed, there are proposals like "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy" and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting which should be discussed more in the media.
And how about making the election day a national holiday?
I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.
I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.
Another fun way to put this and make the point perhaps a bit provocatively is to say there are no wrong outcomes from a [free and fair] election - even if your choice didn't win.
I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.
I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.
I think Karl Popper ("The Open Society and its Enemies") puts it best: a democracy is not defined by how the governed elect our leaders, but how they get rid of them. Popper came to this idea when looking at Hitler's Germany. Hitler came to power through elections and then used the existing laws to become absolute dictator. But clearly his government was not a Democracy, so clearly the fact that elections had been he…
The author, Walter Lippmann, was a close advisor to Wilson and had been an intelligence officer in France. I wonder if he was aware of the President’s condition?
I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.
That reminds me of a truism I heard about protesting: The purpose of protesting is to demonstrate the need for violence to the fence-sitters. If protesting results in change non-violently, so much the better. But the purpose is to demonstrate that violence is absolutely necessary.
Seems like they often exist to expose systemic violence that is underappreciated, undocumented, forgotten, etc. That is, show what the violent are really willing to do to get them to alienate themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Karl Popper ("The Open Society and its Enemies") puts it best: a democracy is not defined by how the governed elect our leaders, but how they get rid of them. Popper came to this idea when looking at Hitler's Germany. Hitler came to power through elections and then used the existing laws to become absolute dictator. But clearly his government was not a Democracy, so clearly the fact that elections had been he…
I note in this context that threatening to lock up either Hillary or Trump are not helpful. Say that in 2020, Trump loses the election, and feels that if he leaves office, his political enemies will find a way to imprison him. He therefore has very strong incentive to find a way to stay in power. That really might not be what you want...
Jailing Trump would be counterproductive. Taking such an extreme step would be destabilizing and make it more difficult to bury the whole affair of the Trump presidency. Would you really want a slow drip of Wikileaks about how compromised a US President was going public?
If I were a victorious president-elect, I would offer to pardon him with the condition that he STFU, and appoint a special counsel to investigate his crooked family if he failed to remain silent, or some kid decided to run for Congress.
With that kind of figure, it’s better to have him sell out and take away the mystique than to get a conviction and make him a martyr. The more you directly persecute him, the longer you’ll have people wearing Trump hats, etc.