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Yes. Not every form of democracy is a liberal democracy. In a liberal democracy, some entity such as the judicial system is supposed to prevent the rest of gove
by charlesism 8y ago
Yes. Not every form of democracy is a liberal democracy. In a liberal democracy, some entity such as the judicial system is supposed to prevent the rest of government from tyrannizing minorities.
Democracy protects the majority from a minority (ie: nobility). Liberalism protects minorities (eg: people an with unpopular philosophy, religious view, ethnicity, language) from the majority.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y agoThis again depends on a definition of "liberalism" accepted by all, but I find the term "illiberal" or "non-liberal democracy" (i.e. the opposite of a liberal democracy) to be very difficult to interpret. Is it a democracy in which people have the right to vote, but their liberties are not protected by the law? But- the right to vote is a liberty. And then again, how come people voted to have their liberties not protected by law? What are they, idiots? In any case, I can't really recall any state etc that has gone down in history as being an "illiberal democracy"!
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- repolfx 8y agoDon't try and parse the term literally, the term is a contradiction - there's no such thing as an "illiberal democracy" for the reasons you specify. People who use that word simply mean "democracies where my personal views on things like immigration don't win". The term illiberal democracy is an especially empty one because more or less any decision can be phrased in terms of positive liberties - e.g. "restrictions on immigration preserve the liberty of voters to enjoy and propagate their own culture".
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- repolfx 8y agoNo, you're still playing with words to suit your own politics. It's this kind of empty pseudo-intellectualism that gives liberalism a bad name. The role of the judicial system is to resolve disputes, either between citizens or between the government and the citizens. It is not intended to "prevent the rest of the government from tyrannizing minorities", indeed that would be a logical impossibility because in a healthy society criminals like rapists and murderers are an extreme minority yet it is the role of government to tyrannize them by tossing them in jail and obviously the judicial system is a big part of that. There is no mechanism in any form of democratic government that can protect minorities against the will of the majority. Either the will of the majority is imposed on the minority (democracy) or the will of the minority is imposed on the majority (dictatorship). In a democracy the only way to preserve the rights of a minority is to convince the rest of the population that those rights should be preserved. This is why people who promote so-called "liberalism" so often seem to support illiberal policies like censorship.
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- charlesism 8y agoWikipedia: "Liberal democracy is a liberal political ideology and a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of classical liberalism. Also called western democracy, it is characterised by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people." I promise you, I'm not in league with Wikipedia editors to make this stuff up. It is literally textbook.
- dang 8y agoWould you please stop using HN for ideological battle? Accounts aren't allowed to use this site primarily for that, and this looks like exactly what yours has been doing. Also, your first paragraph breaks the site guidelines pretty blatantly in other ways. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended from now on, we'd appreciate it.