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“You’ve got a mature liberal democracy that pursues and hunts down whistle-blowers and tries to kill the messenger.” Have we considered the possibility that th

“You’ve got a mature liberal democracy that pursues and hunts down whistle-blowers and tries to kill the messenger.” Have we considered the possibility that this is what a mature liberal democracy looks like? Peak democracy was WWII, we seem to have been sliding towards authoritarianism since then.

paulryanrogers 7y ago
Peak for whom? WASPs?
- vermilingua 7y ago
  For the liberal democracies of the time. I wasn’t there, so I can’t comment as to which specific demographic benefited the most from that.
- seszett 7y ago
  Maybe in the US, but most citizens of the other democracies at the time were neither anglo-saxon nor protestant. You might say that they were at their peak for the majority of their population maybe, but I think that's the normal, intended outcome of democracy.
macspoofing 7y ago
>Peak democracy was WWII uh... Do you mean the time just before WWII, when most European nations were either Fascist or Communist? Or do you mean the time just after WWII when all of Europe was destroyed?
- vermilingua 7y ago
  The latter. It was a resounding victory for democracy, and it flourished all over the world for decades. That being said, history is written by the victors.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    The decades after WWII were consumed by the Cold War, between two sets of victors, one of which was definitively not democratic. The other side had a tendency to prop up dictators as long as they opposed the Communists.
    - macspoofing 7y ago
      >The other side had a tendency to prop up dictators as long as they opposed the Communists. As opposed to the democratic governments the Soviet Union supported? Give me a break here. The Soviet Union pushed for disastrous political systems based on their own autocratic socialist model, and funded ideological guerrillas to destabilize the nation if it didn't wholly adopt their ideology. I cannot understand how people can look at history and be completely blind to the actions of Soviet Union.
      - asark 7y ago
        Why did you take the parent post as an example of anyone being completely blind to the actions of the Soviet Union? The points seems to be that treating the immediate Post-WWII era as some high point for democracy is... well, requiring further support than is immediately obvious, anyway, since there were two victorious sides, one of which wasn't democratic at all, and the other which supported autocracies all over the world, too. Pointing out that the spread of democracy post-WWII was mostly confined the defeated states in that conflict, and that neither victorious side did much to support democracy elsewhere and even the "free world" often did the opposite, isn't a defense of the Soviets.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        > The Soviet Union pushed for disastrous political systems based on their own autocratic socialist model, and funded ideological guerrillas to destabilize the nation if it didn't wholly adopt their ideology. That's the point, though. The USA did exactly the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair I am not blind to the bad actions of the USSR. I'm just also not blind to the bad ones of the USA and its allies during the same time period.
linuxftw 7y ago
People always demand unchecked democracy because they always believe they're interests align with the majority. Why should everyone get a say? Why should anyone get a say? I don't believe a legitimate democracy can have any power greater than the individual. To extrapolate, "The government may do x." If you replace 'government' with an individual, that is the guideline. For example 'Jose may tax your income.' Obviously, Jose may not do that.
Angostura 7y ago
Really sliding to authoritarianism since then? Until 1968, every new play in Britain required a licence from the Lord Chamberlain's Office before it could be publicly performed. There was no legislation attached to this, so the Lord Chamberlain could censor as he chose. Can you imagine introducing such a rule today? How about applying for a license before launching a website?
- Theodores 7y ago
  That law came in 1737 when there was a new theatre in town and satirists who dared to call the government silly things. It was the moral panic of the time. In 1959 we got the Obscene Publications Act and that got used quite a bit during the Thatcher years with a new moral panic - video nasties. Video nasties weren't just Chainsaw Massacre stuff they also had a thing to say about society. Police raided quaint little video shops and did their best to enforce the law, sometimes getting it wrong, well, often getting it wrong. This only encouraged the market in 'Video Nasties' so in 1984 they brought in a new law to get this moral panic under control. You could say that the law had been updated for the medium of the era - VHS cassettes - and that they could not be bothered with the stage any more. However, the stage is a public place, you have people congregate in an audience and they could be a dangerous rabble. In 2000 we got the Terrorism Act and that followed on from the Criminal Justice Act that had came along earlier in the 1990's to make it illegal for more than four people to get together to listen to 'repetitive beats'. There are plenty of laws regarding what you can and cannot say online and people have been prosecuted for saying not so nice things on Facebook. You might not have to apply for a licence to run a website but that is not so enforceable when you could put your website online in a country far, far away. Actual censorship has got a lot more refined over the decades. As has propaganda. A lot has gone on over the last twenty years of widescale internet usage, however it will be a while before we find out what this is.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  Aside from the absurdity of having a lord make any decisions, I think much of the population—maybe not a majority, but a significant part of the population—would be fine with that if presented as opposing or “preventing” terrorism (as if that’s even possible).
zzzcpan 7y ago
> Have we considered the possibility that this is what a mature liberal democracy looks like? It's not a mature liberal democracy, maybe it was one time. It's just that power always tries to acquire more power and obviously any not __perfectly__ designed political system will always end up authoritarian and undemocratic.
lordleft 7y ago
Plato explored this idea (that democracies are precursors to tyrannies - see Andrew Sullivan's article about this here: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html?gtm=top http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donal...
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  I think that’s a pretty natural progression. A well run dictatorship is probably superior to a democracy in the short term so it’s always tempting to give up freedom in exchange for efficiency. The question is how long the dictatorship can keep it up before going downhill.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    If you're allowed to take a form of government and say, "well-run," why not have a well-run democracy?
    - maxxxxx 7y ago
      It’s a little easier to set direction if you don’t have to ask everybody. There is a reason why successful companies are basically dictatorships .
      - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
        I consider myself to be strongly pro-democracy, but as a thought experiment look at TV shows like "X Factor" (or "American Idol" if you're in the US) to see the results of democracy in action. These shows should be producing the finest musicians the world has ever seen, right? After all, the masses know best.
        Veen 7y ago
        There are some who would argue that X Factor does, in fact, produce the best because best means nothing but most popular. Otherwise, you have to bring in subjective measures of taste which are open to being condemned as elitist. (Personally, I'm happy to be an elitist, provided it's an open elite that anyone can join)
gonzo41 7y ago
I'm going to hold myself back from writing a long post about Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp in Australia. Generally Australia is pretty free, even without explicit freedom of speech. The military is very competent and retrained in its actions, however in my life I've only seen an increase in nationalism related to the military. The right wing love to drape themselves in the flag and related militaria. I think the afghan war crimes by special forces should be of genuine public interest to Australians. And I think the application of Top Secret to government documents about these matters is the real problem. Its a problem for the public and democracy when you can use something like a Classification as way to cover up misdeeds. I feel sorry for the guy going down for the leaks.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  > I'm going to hold myself back from writing a long post about Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp in Australia A NewsCorp journalist was the first to be raided.
dillonmckay 7y ago
Compulsory voting?
- jakeogh 7y ago
  Outlawed silent protest, a base of any free society.
  - neumann 7y ago
    Not really. You can lodge an empty ballot paper.
    - jakeogh 7y ago
      Silent protest is not participating. Surreal that needs to even be said.
mikorym 7y ago
> sliding towards authoritarianism I think that we are at a time where there is more public input, whistle-blowing, outcry over corruption, democratic processes, and so forth than ever before in history. I daresay that we are also at an information age; a time in which we can identify authoritarianism, and argue and critise it from the comfort of our couches and for the larger part without fear of death. We should not confuse the matter: to think that the sum of our current challenges imply the lesser to be the sum of historic challenges.
germanlee 7y ago
How could peak democracy be ww2? The only significant democracy in ww2 was the US. British Empire, Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, China, etc were not democracies. There was the US and everyone else was a non-democratic empire or a colony of the empire.

paulryanrogers 7y ago

Peak for whom? WASPs?

vermilingua 7y ago
For the liberal democracies of the time. I wasn’t there, so I can’t comment as to which specific demographic benefited the most from that.
seszett 7y ago
Maybe in the US, but most citizens of the other democracies at the time were neither anglo-saxon nor protestant. You might say that they were at their peak for the majority of their population maybe, but I think that's the normal, intended outcome of democracy.

macspoofing 7y ago

>Peak democracy was WWII uh... Do you mean the time just before WWII, when most European nations were either Fascist or Communist? Or do you mean the time just after WWII when all of Europe was destroyed?

vermilingua 7y ago
The latter. It was a resounding victory for democracy, and it flourished all over the world for decades. That being said, history is written by the victors.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  The decades after WWII were consumed by the Cold War, between two sets of victors, one of which was definitively not democratic. The other side had a tendency to prop up dictators as long as they opposed the Communists.
  - macspoofing 7y ago
    >The other side had a tendency to prop up dictators as long as they opposed the Communists. As opposed to the democratic governments the Soviet Union supported? Give me a break here. The Soviet Union pushed for disastrous political systems based on their own autocratic socialist model, and funded ideological guerrillas to destabilize the nation if it didn't wholly adopt their ideology. I cannot understand how people can look at history and be completely blind to the actions of Soviet Union.
    - asark 7y ago
      Why did you take the parent post as an example of anyone being completely blind to the actions of the Soviet Union? The points seems to be that treating the immediate Post-WWII era as some high point for democracy is... well, requiring further support than is immediately obvious, anyway, since there were two victorious sides, one of which wasn't democratic at all, and the other which supported autocracies all over the world, too. Pointing out that the spread of democracy post-WWII was mostly confined the defeated states in that conflict, and that neither victorious side did much to support democracy elsewhere and even the "free world" often did the opposite, isn't a defense of the Soviets.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      > The Soviet Union pushed for disastrous political systems based on their own autocratic socialist model, and funded ideological guerrillas to destabilize the nation if it didn't wholly adopt their ideology. That's the point, though. The USA did exactly the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair I am not blind to the bad actions of the USSR. I'm just also not blind to the bad ones of the USA and its allies during the same time period.

linuxftw 7y ago

People always demand unchecked democracy because they always believe they're interests align with the majority. Why should everyone get a say? Why should anyone get a say? I don't believe a legitimate democracy can have any power greater than the individual. To extrapolate, "The government may do x." If you replace 'government' with an individual, that is the guideline. For example 'Jose may tax your income.' Obviously, Jose may not do that.

Angostura 7y ago

Really sliding to authoritarianism since then? Until 1968, every new play in Britain required a licence from the Lord Chamberlain's Office before it could be publicly performed. There was no legislation attached to this, so the Lord Chamberlain could censor as he chose. Can you imagine introducing such a rule today? How about applying for a license before launching a website?

Theodores 7y ago
That law came in 1737 when there was a new theatre in town and satirists who dared to call the government silly things. It was the moral panic of the time. In 1959 we got the Obscene Publications Act and that got used quite a bit during the Thatcher years with a new moral panic - video nasties. Video nasties weren't just Chainsaw Massacre stuff they also had a thing to say about society. Police raided quaint little video shops and did their best to enforce the law, sometimes getting it wrong, well, often getting it wrong. This only encouraged the market in 'Video Nasties' so in 1984 they brought in a new law to get this moral panic under control. You could say that the law had been updated for the medium of the era - VHS cassettes - and that they could not be bothered with the stage any more. However, the stage is a public place, you have people congregate in an audience and they could be a dangerous rabble. In 2000 we got the Terrorism Act and that followed on from the Criminal Justice Act that had came along earlier in the 1990's to make it illegal for more than four people to get together to listen to 'repetitive beats'. There are plenty of laws regarding what you can and cannot say online and people have been prosecuted for saying not so nice things on Facebook. You might not have to apply for a licence to run a website but that is not so enforceable when you could put your website online in a country far, far away. Actual censorship has got a lot more refined over the decades. As has propaganda. A lot has gone on over the last twenty years of widescale internet usage, however it will be a while before we find out what this is.
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
Aside from the absurdity of having a lord make any decisions, I think much of the population—maybe not a majority, but a significant part of the population—would be fine with that if presented as opposing or “preventing” terrorism (as if that’s even possible).

zzzcpan 7y ago

> Have we considered the possibility that this is what a mature liberal democracy looks like? It's not a mature liberal democracy, maybe it was one time. It's just that power always tries to acquire more power and obviously any not __perfectly__ designed political system will always end up authoritarian and undemocratic.

lordleft 7y ago

Plato explored this idea (that democracies are precursors to tyrannies - see Andrew Sullivan's article about this here: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html?gtm=top http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donal...

maxxxxx 7y ago
I think that’s a pretty natural progression. A well run dictatorship is probably superior to a democracy in the short term so it’s always tempting to give up freedom in exchange for efficiency. The question is how long the dictatorship can keep it up before going downhill.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  If you're allowed to take a form of government and say, "well-run," why not have a well-run democracy?
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    It’s a little easier to set direction if you don’t have to ask everybody. There is a reason why successful companies are basically dictatorships .
    - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
      I consider myself to be strongly pro-democracy, but as a thought experiment look at TV shows like "X Factor" (or "American Idol" if you're in the US) to see the results of democracy in action. These shows should be producing the finest musicians the world has ever seen, right? After all, the masses know best.
      - Veen 7y ago
        There are some who would argue that X Factor does, in fact, produce the best because best means nothing but most popular. Otherwise, you have to bring in subjective measures of taste which are open to being condemned as elitist. (Personally, I'm happy to be an elitist, provided it's an open elite that anyone can join)

gonzo41 7y ago

I'm going to hold myself back from writing a long post about Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp in Australia. Generally Australia is pretty free, even without explicit freedom of speech. The military is very competent and retrained in its actions, however in my life I've only seen an increase in nationalism related to the military. The right wing love to drape themselves in the flag and related militaria. I think the afghan war crimes by special forces should be of genuine public interest to Australians. And I think the application of Top Secret to government documents about these matters is the real problem. Its a problem for the public and democracy when you can use something like a Classification as way to cover up misdeeds. I feel sorry for the guy going down for the leaks.

jacques_chester 7y ago
> I'm going to hold myself back from writing a long post about Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp in Australia A NewsCorp journalist was the first to be raided.

dillonmckay 7y ago

Compulsory voting?

jakeogh 7y ago
Outlawed silent protest, a base of any free society.
- neumann 7y ago
  Not really. You can lodge an empty ballot paper.
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    Silent protest is not participating. Surreal that needs to even be said.

mikorym 7y ago

> sliding towards authoritarianism I think that we are at a time where there is more public input, whistle-blowing, outcry over corruption, democratic processes, and so forth than ever before in history. I daresay that we are also at an information age; a time in which we can identify authoritarianism, and argue and critise it from the comfort of our couches and for the larger part without fear of death. We should not confuse the matter: to think that the sum of our current challenges imply the lesser to be the sum of historic challenges.

germanlee 7y ago

How could peak democracy be ww2? The only significant democracy in ww2 was the US. British Empire, Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, China, etc were not democracies. There was the US and everyone else was a non-democratic empire or a colony of the empire.