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It's interesting to observe the different failure modes of western nations in the last decade. Democracy is undermined by populism, parliamentary systems are un

It's interesting to observe the different failure modes of western nations in the last decade. Democracy is undermined by populism, parliamentary systems are unstable with regards to civil rights, the Fourth Estate of media is completely compromised by local corruption, massive conglomerates, rich activists, and weird tribal mobs that flit from panic to panic, all of them degrading anything and everything in pursuit of wealth or political advantage. Nothing is sacred or revered, to the extent that religion is being replaced by diy mysticism, ideology, politics, or Great Causes, be it climate or BLM or MAGA. In my mind, the solution is cultural. We need shared values and deep understanding of the principles that govern our countries. We need good faith debate and review of outdated laws, revision or excision of bad ideas - racial language, weird moral errata, and finally a sufficiently detailed and rigorous regulation of novel technology that older concepts fail to account for. Social media, adtech, and search engines aren't common carriers, but legislation shouldn't try to shoehorn regulation of platforms and communities into pre-internet legal paradigms. It's way past time for regulation and legislation of digital liberties. The 2nd amendment in the US didn't account for nuclear weapons. The war on drugs and the current global legal system around drugs didn't account for human nature and civil liberty. Section 230 and phone companies and cable TV aren't concepts that map properly to the modern internet, and we'll probably see radical changes at an increasing rate. Nailing down basic things like digital privacy rights, penalizing surveillance, rewarding innovation and fixing patents and copyright are crucial, but apparently it doesn't test well, so nobody is fundraising for that platform. Canada is not bad, but things can break down rapidly. Trudeau will fail on the side of authoritarian control, so any actual damage resulting from that should be fodder for debate on refining the system and protection from abuse. And if no damage is done, recognizing and reinforcing the fail-safe structures in government is probably necessary.

pasabagi 5y ago
> We need shared values and deep understanding of the principles that govern our countries. This is the mainstream prescription since there has been bellyaching about the woes of the age (i.e. forever, or provably, since the invention of writing). One idea that I think is more interesting is Machievelli's - he pointed out that the Roman state was at its most dynamic and powerful when it was locked in permanent internal contradiction: between the landless and landed. One can easily carry the analogy along. The 60's, in its time, was seen as a moment of social disintegration and civilizational collapse. In retrospect however, we can see that an america that had not had the 60's would be a scary, oppressive place, a perpetual 1955 of the human soul.
- verisimi 5y ago
  Honestly, 1955 seems like a distant dream....
  - kixiQu 5y ago
    Or, to others, a nightmare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    So long as you're a white, protestant, male adult with no significant or visible disabilities.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Every time someone says anything good about any year prior to 1980 or so someone shoots back with this low effort quip. I think it's obvious that anyone praising the 1950s in 2022 can be assumed to be saying "like that but for everybody" unless there is a specific reason to think they want to exclude certain groups.
      - pasabagi 5y ago
        I don't understand your comment. The whole reason why most nightmarish historical moments are considered nightmarish is because they give certain groups drastically elevated rights, and others none. Talking about an apartheid society without talking about privilege is nonsensical.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        >The whole reason why most nightmarish historical moments are considered nightmarish is because they give certain groups drastically elevated rights, and others none. Talking about an apartheid society without talking about privilege is nonsensical. The 1950s were not nightmarish for anybody actually living in them. Racial minorities, though still mistreated, were mistreated a heck of a lot less than in decades prior and had much more economic opportunity though they were starting from lower on the ladder on average than white people. That economic opportunity is what everyone wants back. The fact that you can consider the 1950s in the US a "nightmarish historical moment" is nonsensical, to put it very, very charitably.
lupire 5y ago
You are saying that politics would be easier if everyone shared your values. OK. Whose calues should we pick? How to decide? What do we do with people who disagree?
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  I don't care what your values are, just that we should find some sort of common ground if we want to maintain and improve the country, or world, we find ourselves sharing. The principles don't have to be mine, and they don't need to be political, even. It's even possible with something silly... "America has the best fucking apples on the planet, and we're goddamn proud of that. Everything we strive and suffer for is for the best goddamn apple pie in human history, and if you wanna take that, you can pry it from our cold dead hands. " Right now, we're socially fractured in every way possible to fracture under the threshold of combat, and even that is failing in some places. We better figure out what it means to be American before there's no point to it, or before it fails so badly that continuing as an American means fatally corrupting any principles or ideals we claim to hold. There are ideas for seasteads and crypto-nations that I find compelling, but I'm not a utopian. I think the Constitution is something admirable and the ideals are structurally important for any notion of liberty going forward in history. I hope that America finds its way back to some sort of cohesion but I don't see any paths toward anything resembling unity.
zdragnar 5y ago
> The 2nd amendment in the US didn't account for nuclear weapons What a wild straw man argument. On the one hand, I generally agree with you. On the other hand, I am fairly confident I wouldn't trust anyone to decide for me what limits there are on "revision or excision of bad ideas". So much of what you argue for relies on trust- trust that we are all working towards a common goal, primarily. However, there really doesn't seem to be a clear path forward when both sides assume the other side is arguing in bad faith.
- wmidwestranger 5y ago
  Somehow everyone making those arguments is also happy to overlook the reality of operating such weapons in any purposeful way. I'm not aware of any military that deploys a precision marksman without a spotter. That makes a precision rifle a two-soldier job. .50 caliber machine gun? two, maybe three boots? Squads will have members with DMRs or LMGs but they aren't suitable for the same task -- they just extend the capabilities of the squad. Extend that to thinks like fighter jets, nukes, comms, etc. etc. and the actual threat of any of those is drastically reduced outside the crazy people do crazy things category of events, and even then, you're going to need a big group of crazy people. The replacement and actual threat already exists and was popularized in the Middle East in the 70s and arrived here in the 90s but it isn't sensational but I'm not confident I wouldn't end up on yet-another-watch-list by saying it explicitly. So, yay, freedom.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
> Canada is not bad, but things can break down rapidly. Trudeau will fail on the side of authoritarian control, That feels accurate. The next question then becomes, how will that play and/or be exploited in the USA, it's neighbor. Let's, for a moment, presume there are entities within the USA that would welcome the opportunity. Now back to Canada...how much outside (i.e., USA based) influence is being exerted on the situation in Canada to tilt things towards the authoritarian? This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's a simple extrapolation of history. Let's not be naive.
- noduerme 5y ago
  If anything, it seems like the trucking protest was a case of American dollars and influence trying to tilt Canada towards right-wing populism. Granted, that appears to have been a grassroots fundraising campaign and not American government policy or CIA black budget money (as underwrote, e.g. the failed anti-Chavez and anti-Maduro coups Venezuela). The banking measures look like a ham-fisted, authoritarian attempt to squelch that. I think this feels "new" to Americans because it's on our border, and because Canada looks more like the US and is assumed to be more stable and less prone to authoritarian emergency measures than e.g. Venezuela or Argentina. But similarly extreme and extra-judicial banking controls have been implemented by other governments in the hemisphere when authoritarian left-wing parties in power feel threatened by right-wing populist movements they believe are at least partly sponsored by America.
  - blaser-waffle 5y ago
    > If anything, it seems like the trucking protest was a case of American dollars and influence trying to tilt Canada towards right-wing populism Why? Canada already has a strong conservative movement, and NAFTA makes it damn easy for US-based companies to do as they please. This reeks of the same forces that got Trump elected. Which would be a mix of billionaires, Russian money, and anyone who has an axe to grind against Canada, e.g. China (for the Huawei, et al, conflicts).
    - familymart 5y ago
tomp 5y ago
xdennis 5y ago
> Democracy is undermined by populism Populism is democracy. That's what anti-populists hate about it: the idea that a simple majority can get its way.
- joelbondurant1 5y ago
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I disagree. Populism is too general a term, but to the extent they exist in the US they are decidedly opposed to democracy.
  - blaser-waffle 5y ago
    What's that HL Mencken quote? Something to the effect of "Democracy is the idea that the common man knows what he wants, and deserves to get it, good and hard." If a group of people, in a free and fair election, decide to elect in radical, repressive Islamists, is that not democracy functioning as intended?
    - jquery 5y ago
      That democracy was dead before it started. A democracy cannot survive without broad agreement in the value of the individual. That is a failure mode of democracy that can be brought about via poor civics education. This is why universal public education is so critical to a functioning democracy.
- dmcgee 5y ago
  > Populism is democracy. Wrong. A democracy, at least a functioning and legitimate one, is not judged by enacting the will of the majority, but by protecting the rights of the minority.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    A constitutional democracy protects its minorities. A pure democracy doesn't, but we haven't had one of those for well over 2000 years.
fredgrott 5y ago
It did not have to account for weapons that do not met the definition of common arms. Same misconception about what armed and regulated militia is. Its' Federal commanded state national guard units not individuals.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Regulated is probably the most misunderstood term there. It did not mean the same as it does today.
- dontcare007 5y ago
  It's a preparatory phrase, and does not limit the rights to an organization. Remember, the 1st 10 Amendments were just meant to reiterate inherent rights in the individual, and ensure that they were not encroached upon by a tyrannical government.

pasabagi 5y ago

> We need shared values and deep understanding of the principles that govern our countries. This is the mainstream prescription since there has been bellyaching about the woes of the age (i.e. forever, or provably, since the invention of writing). One idea that I think is more interesting is Machievelli's - he pointed out that the Roman state was at its most dynamic and powerful when it was locked in permanent internal contradiction: between the landless and landed. One can easily carry the analogy along. The 60's, in its time, was seen as a moment of social disintegration and civilizational collapse. In retrospect however, we can see that an america that had not had the 60's would be a scary, oppressive place, a perpetual 1955 of the human soul.

verisimi 5y ago
Honestly, 1955 seems like a distant dream....
- kixiQu 5y ago
  Or, to others, a nightmare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  So long as you're a white, protestant, male adult with no significant or visible disabilities.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Every time someone says anything good about any year prior to 1980 or so someone shoots back with this low effort quip. I think it's obvious that anyone praising the 1950s in 2022 can be assumed to be saying "like that but for everybody" unless there is a specific reason to think they want to exclude certain groups.
    - pasabagi 5y ago
      I don't understand your comment. The whole reason why most nightmarish historical moments are considered nightmarish is because they give certain groups drastically elevated rights, and others none. Talking about an apartheid society without talking about privilege is nonsensical.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        >The whole reason why most nightmarish historical moments are considered nightmarish is because they give certain groups drastically elevated rights, and others none. Talking about an apartheid society without talking about privilege is nonsensical. The 1950s were not nightmarish for anybody actually living in them. Racial minorities, though still mistreated, were mistreated a heck of a lot less than in decades prior and had much more economic opportunity though they were starting from lower on the ladder on average than white people. That economic opportunity is what everyone wants back. The fact that you can consider the 1950s in the US a "nightmarish historical moment" is nonsensical, to put it very, very charitably.

lupire 5y ago

You are saying that politics would be easier if everyone shared your values. OK. Whose calues should we pick? How to decide? What do we do with people who disagree?

robbedpeter 5y ago
I don't care what your values are, just that we should find some sort of common ground if we want to maintain and improve the country, or world, we find ourselves sharing. The principles don't have to be mine, and they don't need to be political, even. It's even possible with something silly... "America has the best fucking apples on the planet, and we're goddamn proud of that. Everything we strive and suffer for is for the best goddamn apple pie in human history, and if you wanna take that, you can pry it from our cold dead hands. " Right now, we're socially fractured in every way possible to fracture under the threshold of combat, and even that is failing in some places. We better figure out what it means to be American before there's no point to it, or before it fails so badly that continuing as an American means fatally corrupting any principles or ideals we claim to hold. There are ideas for seasteads and crypto-nations that I find compelling, but I'm not a utopian. I think the Constitution is something admirable and the ideals are structurally important for any notion of liberty going forward in history. I hope that America finds its way back to some sort of cohesion but I don't see any paths toward anything resembling unity.

zdragnar 5y ago

> The 2nd amendment in the US didn't account for nuclear weapons What a wild straw man argument. On the one hand, I generally agree with you. On the other hand, I am fairly confident I wouldn't trust anyone to decide for me what limits there are on "revision or excision of bad ideas". So much of what you argue for relies on trust- trust that we are all working towards a common goal, primarily. However, there really doesn't seem to be a clear path forward when both sides assume the other side is arguing in bad faith.

wmidwestranger 5y ago
Somehow everyone making those arguments is also happy to overlook the reality of operating such weapons in any purposeful way. I'm not aware of any military that deploys a precision marksman without a spotter. That makes a precision rifle a two-soldier job. .50 caliber machine gun? two, maybe three boots? Squads will have members with DMRs or LMGs but they aren't suitable for the same task -- they just extend the capabilities of the squad. Extend that to thinks like fighter jets, nukes, comms, etc. etc. and the actual threat of any of those is drastically reduced outside the crazy people do crazy things category of events, and even then, you're going to need a big group of crazy people. The replacement and actual threat already exists and was popularized in the Middle East in the 70s and arrived here in the 90s but it isn't sensational but I'm not confident I wouldn't end up on yet-another-watch-list by saying it explicitly. So, yay, freedom.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

> Canada is not bad, but things can break down rapidly. Trudeau will fail on the side of authoritarian control, That feels accurate. The next question then becomes, how will that play and/or be exploited in the USA, it's neighbor. Let's, for a moment, presume there are entities within the USA that would welcome the opportunity. Now back to Canada...how much outside (i.e., USA based) influence is being exerted on the situation in Canada to tilt things towards the authoritarian? This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's a simple extrapolation of history. Let's not be naive.

noduerme 5y ago
If anything, it seems like the trucking protest was a case of American dollars and influence trying to tilt Canada towards right-wing populism. Granted, that appears to have been a grassroots fundraising campaign and not American government policy or CIA black budget money (as underwrote, e.g. the failed anti-Chavez and anti-Maduro coups Venezuela). The banking measures look like a ham-fisted, authoritarian attempt to squelch that. I think this feels "new" to Americans because it's on our border, and because Canada looks more like the US and is assumed to be more stable and less prone to authoritarian emergency measures than e.g. Venezuela or Argentina. But similarly extreme and extra-judicial banking controls have been implemented by other governments in the hemisphere when authoritarian left-wing parties in power feel threatened by right-wing populist movements they believe are at least partly sponsored by America.
- blaser-waffle 5y ago
  > If anything, it seems like the trucking protest was a case of American dollars and influence trying to tilt Canada towards right-wing populism Why? Canada already has a strong conservative movement, and NAFTA makes it damn easy for US-based companies to do as they please. This reeks of the same forces that got Trump elected. Which would be a mix of billionaires, Russian money, and anyone who has an axe to grind against Canada, e.g. China (for the Huawei, et al, conflicts).
  - familymart 5y ago

tomp 5y ago

xdennis 5y ago

> Democracy is undermined by populism Populism is democracy. That's what anti-populists hate about it: the idea that a simple majority can get its way.

joelbondurant1 5y ago
rootusrootus 5y ago
I disagree. Populism is too general a term, but to the extent they exist in the US they are decidedly opposed to democracy.
- blaser-waffle 5y ago
  What's that HL Mencken quote? Something to the effect of "Democracy is the idea that the common man knows what he wants, and deserves to get it, good and hard." If a group of people, in a free and fair election, decide to elect in radical, repressive Islamists, is that not democracy functioning as intended?
  - jquery 5y ago
    That democracy was dead before it started. A democracy cannot survive without broad agreement in the value of the individual. That is a failure mode of democracy that can be brought about via poor civics education. This is why universal public education is so critical to a functioning democracy.
dmcgee 5y ago
> Populism is democracy. Wrong. A democracy, at least a functioning and legitimate one, is not judged by enacting the will of the majority, but by protecting the rights of the minority.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  A constitutional democracy protects its minorities. A pure democracy doesn't, but we haven't had one of those for well over 2000 years.

fredgrott 5y ago

It did not have to account for weapons that do not met the definition of common arms. Same misconception about what armed and regulated militia is. Its' Federal commanded state national guard units not individuals.

rootusrootus 5y ago
Regulated is probably the most misunderstood term there. It did not mean the same as it does today.
dontcare007 5y ago
It's a preparatory phrase, and does not limit the rights to an organization. Remember, the 1st 10 Amendments were just meant to reiterate inherent rights in the individual, and ensure that they were not encroached upon by a tyrannical government.