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I'm from Germany. I could tell you something about blindly following the "rule of law". If you throw morality out the window the law can become a very ugly inst

I'm from Germany. I could tell you something about blindly following the "rule of law". If you throw morality out the window the law can become a very ugly instrument.

suddenlybananas 2y ago
[dead]
- ty6853 2y ago
  I'd argue more have died from drug regulations than the Nazis, particularly when you factor in how DEA licensing and FDA approval corruption stifles access to medicine, and how prohibition fosters violence without meaningfully curbing harmful drug use.
  - suddenlybananas 2y ago
    Can you hear yourself? Are you really saying that "drug regulation" has caused more death than the tens of millions who died in ww2? Not to mention the millions and millions of people whose lives have been saved by drug regulation as they are not exposed to harmful drugs from charlatans.
    - gosub100 2y ago
      Slow burn vs all at once. Also helps if you include the casualties from the narco wars in mexico
  - kortilla 2y ago
    Yeah, I remember the silk web being exclusively for cancer treatments not yet approved by the FDA. /s
  - jaapz 2y ago
    39 million people died on the European theater of WW2 alone. Estimates of Jewish deaths during the holocaust range from 4.9 and 5.9 million people. Are you seriously suggesting drug ~regulation~ caused more deaths? Silk road was not primarily used for "unregulated medicine" but for recreational drugs, weapons and other quite unsavory illegal things.
    - ty6853 2y ago
      The bodies dead from the Holocaust are somewhat countable. The bodies dead because of worldwide drug wars, because it is insanely costly to sell new medicines, and because some poor African child could not get a medicine because a company spent 500 million to get it approved and needs to recoup their costs in the inflated US market is much harder to count. It's easier I guess to just frame the counterparty as downplaying the Holocaust. I am just not taking the death of the Jews seriously enough, perhaps I am some kind of racist or culturally insensitive person.
- kybernetyk 2y ago
  If you sell magic mushrooms and/or lsd then: yes. >who also completely violated the rule of law in any case Actually they didn't. Everything the Nazis did they had a law for. The mass murder was all lawful according to the 3rd Reich's laws.
  - suddenlybananas 2y ago
    That's not what rule of law is. Rule of law requires following the established constitutional order which the Nazis did not. A feudal king ruling on his whims has many laws, but there is not rule of law.
    - ty6853 2y ago
      The controlled substance act violated the constitution as it regulates even intrastate trade of drugs. It relies on the tyrannical Wickard V Filburn ruling which says intrastate commerce is actually interstate commerce. The charges against Ross relied on law that flagrantly transgress the 10th amendment of the US constitution as written and as enforced. This is why they needed an actual amendment to nationally ban, say, home made liquor.
      - suddenlybananas 2y ago
        I don't think that legal argument is accurate, but hey, I'm not a lawyer and neither are you.
        ty6853 2y ago
        It was 'accurate' until the 1930s when a certain lawyer with initials FDR found his programs unconstitutional, so he threatened to pack the Supreme Court until they were willing to shit can the 10th amendment.
    - kybernetyk 2y ago
      >The rule of law is a political and legal ideal that all people and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers, government officials, and judges. But the Nazis themselves were accountable to their own laws. It was a highly lawful state. Only the laws were pretty fucked because the society lacked any morality.
omnibrain 2y ago
No, "Rule of Law" means "Rechtsstaatlichkeit". What you mean is "It's law, so it's always right" i.e. "Rechtspositivismus".
- kybernetyk 2y ago
  Yes, Rechtsstaatlichkeit only means that the state and its organs have to follow the law themselves. It doesn't say anything about the moral quality of the laws. The Nazi state had to follow its own laws. They just had such laws that enabled the total lunacy that the 3rd Reich was. All I'm saying is: If you decouple laws from morality you get a really bad time.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    You are absolutely right saying that rule of law is not sufficient condition for the existence of modern society. It was a bit confusing still, because nobody claimed the opposite: the comment you replied to was saying rule of law is a necessity.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      It's not sufficient, but it's still necessary.
      - ivan_gammel 2y ago
        Exactly what I was saying.
        tpoacher 2y ago
        You may have been saying this but the parent comment that spurred the discussion was making the explicit assertion that "the rule of law is the only thing holding together [...] everyone's countries, and civilized society in general". Saying that law is 'the only thing' necessary for the existence of modern society effectively means it is also a sufficient condition. So yes, someone did claim the opposite.
GTP 2y ago
But now, let's get back to the case in point. Who threw morality out of the window, Ross Ulbricht or the state?
- LadyCailin 2y ago
  Both?
orwin 2y ago
I thought everybody knew the first thing the Nazis did was eroding the rule of law, with the help of Hans Frank, before even taking power. The fact that everybody is equal in front of justice and that justice should be independent, two of the basics tenet of the rule of law, were hated by the Nazis and called 'jewish law', and were targeted. Lawyers and judges were increasingly close to the Nazi party. The same crime by a party member didn't had the same consequence. I think the Nazis pamphlet said that 'roman law follow the materialistic world order, and should be replaced by German law'. Where materialistic was a dogwhistle for Marxism, and world order for Judaism. What did help Nazis was that older judges and lawyers were often aristocrats who didn't really love the republic, and new one were petty bourgeoisie where Nazism had a lot of supporters. They helped put a staunch conservative (who later joined the Nazis) at the head of the German supreme court before 1933. The man blocked socdems appointments, and changed how the German law was interpreted (basically pushing intent of the law vs letter of the law, where intent weirdly always aligned with Nazi ideology). Then, once they had power, the first thing they did after the conservative Hindenburg (may he be remembered as Hitler first collaborator) declared a 'state of emergency was to suspend judiciary oversight over arrest and imprisonment.
- Gravityloss 2y ago
  I learned so much from reading this, thank you. Is there more of this same style dense history writing somewhere? (Of course there are caveats and narratives etc., I hope people understand that...)
  - Dracophoenix 2y ago
    With respect to this particular topic, one may consider The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich by Ian Kershaw to be a worthwhile read.
    - foobarian 2y ago
      I found this short article also similarly illuminating: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-ger...
sillyfluke 2y ago
Certain discourse in other languages sometimes like to underline the difference between "rules" and "law" as in "we must aspire to be a state built on law, not a state built on rules." (not necessarily claiming English is such a language either)
ben_w 2y ago
Everything done without consideration is very quickly evil. Free tragedy of the commons with every free market; equivalents of Malthus for poverty wages and zero profit margins in the economy; Nash games where all parties want to defect and want the other not to; AI optimising for paperclips. Rule of law is a pillar, but not the only one — in an ideal case the laws themselves are bound by constitutional requirements, and the constitutional requirements are bound by democratic will, and the democratic will by freedom of speech, and the freedom of speech by a requirement for at least attempting to be honest.
vkou 2y ago
The Nazis did anything but blindly followed the rule of law. They did the opposite - they used law as a cudgel to beat their enemies with, while somehow magically, not being held responsible for any of their own violations of it. It's how they rose to power, and it's how they liquidated all of their internal opposition in the pre-war years. We are seeing this play out again. The brownshirts have all been pardoned (with a clear message to the ones who will be involved in the next act - that as long as they break the law in support of the regime, they'll get bailed out), while everyone else is getting in line to kowtow and kiss the ring - because if they don't, they might be targeted. It's actual insanity that people are looking at this and saying it is fine. Then again, the whole country has gone insane, it looks at a video of the richest main in the world giving a fascist salute, and insist that he's just giving a confused wave, or that it's the same thing as a still of some other person with an outstretched arm.
simonh 2y ago
Nobody here is advocating blindly following the rules. We can follow the rules with our eyes open, and while advocating for the rules being reformed. In this case the person throwing morality out of the window was Ulbricht.
immibis 2y ago
In Germany it is currently illegal to criticise Israel. You'll pardon me for being a bit skeptical about rule of law. Rule of good law is good, but rule of bad law is bad.
- sources_please 2y ago
  > In Germany it is currently illegal to criticise Israel. Got any sources for this claim? Like an actual law?
  - etc-hosts 2y ago
    one of the German states foundations is responsibility for the Holocaust, which led to the founding of the state of Israel. There are laws in Germany that make it a crime to condone a crime (forgive, overlook, allow, permit ) Some German courts have ruled that the slogan "between the river and the sea" is condoning the unlawful removal of Israelis or that the slogan is firmly attached to Terrorist Organization Hamas (therefore is by default a criminal statement ) Plenty of people have been fined for chanting the slogan at German protests against the current conduct of Israel in Gaza and West Bank. There isn't a German law that states "it is illegal to criticize Israel" but laws like the following have been used to punish people criticizing Israel, in Germany: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html Some German courts have thrown out some of these cases, they don't agree the Condone Crime laws can be applied to chanting 'between the river and the sea'
    - sources_please 2y ago
      Thanks for the explanation. I understand that you could face charges if you criticized a group of people and expressed something that can be interpreted as a call for their elimination. Pretending that those charges are for the criticism doesn't seem right, though.
andrepd 2y ago
Well you need to study history more x) If there's one thing Hitler did was precisely to ignore rule of law and rule by decree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Führerprinzip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Führerprinzip

I'm from Germany. I could tell you something about blindly following the "rule of law". If you throw morality out the window the law can become a very ugly instrument.

suddenlybananas 2y ago

[dead]

ty6853 2y ago
I'd argue more have died from drug regulations than the Nazis, particularly when you factor in how DEA licensing and FDA approval corruption stifles access to medicine, and how prohibition fosters violence without meaningfully curbing harmful drug use.
- suddenlybananas 2y ago
  Can you hear yourself? Are you really saying that "drug regulation" has caused more death than the tens of millions who died in ww2? Not to mention the millions and millions of people whose lives have been saved by drug regulation as they are not exposed to harmful drugs from charlatans.
  - gosub100 2y ago
    Slow burn vs all at once. Also helps if you include the casualties from the narco wars in mexico
- kortilla 2y ago
  Yeah, I remember the silk web being exclusively for cancer treatments not yet approved by the FDA. /s
- jaapz 2y ago
  39 million people died on the European theater of WW2 alone. Estimates of Jewish deaths during the holocaust range from 4.9 and 5.9 million people. Are you seriously suggesting drug ~regulation~ caused more deaths? Silk road was not primarily used for "unregulated medicine" but for recreational drugs, weapons and other quite unsavory illegal things.
  - ty6853 2y ago
    The bodies dead from the Holocaust are somewhat countable. The bodies dead because of worldwide drug wars, because it is insanely costly to sell new medicines, and because some poor African child could not get a medicine because a company spent 500 million to get it approved and needs to recoup their costs in the inflated US market is much harder to count. It's easier I guess to just frame the counterparty as downplaying the Holocaust. I am just not taking the death of the Jews seriously enough, perhaps I am some kind of racist or culturally insensitive person.
kybernetyk 2y ago
If you sell magic mushrooms and/or lsd then: yes. >who also completely violated the rule of law in any case Actually they didn't. Everything the Nazis did they had a law for. The mass murder was all lawful according to the 3rd Reich's laws.
- suddenlybananas 2y ago
  That's not what rule of law is. Rule of law requires following the established constitutional order which the Nazis did not. A feudal king ruling on his whims has many laws, but there is not rule of law.
  - ty6853 2y ago
    The controlled substance act violated the constitution as it regulates even intrastate trade of drugs. It relies on the tyrannical Wickard V Filburn ruling which says intrastate commerce is actually interstate commerce. The charges against Ross relied on law that flagrantly transgress the 10th amendment of the US constitution as written and as enforced. This is why they needed an actual amendment to nationally ban, say, home made liquor.
    - suddenlybananas 2y ago
      I don't think that legal argument is accurate, but hey, I'm not a lawyer and neither are you.
      - ty6853 2y ago
        It was 'accurate' until the 1930s when a certain lawyer with initials FDR found his programs unconstitutional, so he threatened to pack the Supreme Court until they were willing to shit can the 10th amendment.
  - kybernetyk 2y ago
    >The rule of law is a political and legal ideal that all people and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers, government officials, and judges. But the Nazis themselves were accountable to their own laws. It was a highly lawful state. Only the laws were pretty fucked because the society lacked any morality.

omnibrain 2y ago

No, "Rule of Law" means "Rechtsstaatlichkeit". What you mean is "It's law, so it's always right" i.e. "Rechtspositivismus".

kybernetyk 2y ago
Yes, Rechtsstaatlichkeit only means that the state and its organs have to follow the law themselves. It doesn't say anything about the moral quality of the laws. The Nazi state had to follow its own laws. They just had such laws that enabled the total lunacy that the 3rd Reich was. All I'm saying is: If you decouple laws from morality you get a really bad time.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  You are absolutely right saying that rule of law is not sufficient condition for the existence of modern society. It was a bit confusing still, because nobody claimed the opposite: the comment you replied to was saying rule of law is a necessity.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    It's not sufficient, but it's still necessary.
    - ivan_gammel 2y ago
      Exactly what I was saying.
      - tpoacher 2y ago
        You may have been saying this but the parent comment that spurred the discussion was making the explicit assertion that "the rule of law is the only thing holding together [...] everyone's countries, and civilized society in general". Saying that law is 'the only thing' necessary for the existence of modern society effectively means it is also a sufficient condition. So yes, someone did claim the opposite.

GTP 2y ago

But now, let's get back to the case in point. Who threw morality out of the window, Ross Ulbricht or the state?

LadyCailin 2y ago
Both?

orwin 2y ago

I thought everybody knew the first thing the Nazis did was eroding the rule of law, with the help of Hans Frank, before even taking power. The fact that everybody is equal in front of justice and that justice should be independent, two of the basics tenet of the rule of law, were hated by the Nazis and called 'jewish law', and were targeted. Lawyers and judges were increasingly close to the Nazi party. The same crime by a party member didn't had the same consequence. I think the Nazis pamphlet said that 'roman law follow the materialistic world order, and should be replaced by German law'. Where materialistic was a dogwhistle for Marxism, and world order for Judaism. What did help Nazis was that older judges and lawyers were often aristocrats who didn't really love the republic, and new one were petty bourgeoisie where Nazism had a lot of supporters. They helped put a staunch conservative (who later joined the Nazis) at the head of the German supreme court before 1933. The man blocked socdems appointments, and changed how the German law was interpreted (basically pushing intent of the law vs letter of the law, where intent weirdly always aligned with Nazi ideology). Then, once they had power, the first thing they did after the conservative Hindenburg (may he be remembered as Hitler first collaborator) declared a 'state of emergency was to suspend judiciary oversight over arrest and imprisonment.

Gravityloss 2y ago
I learned so much from reading this, thank you. Is there more of this same style dense history writing somewhere? (Of course there are caveats and narratives etc., I hope people understand that...)
- Dracophoenix 2y ago
  With respect to this particular topic, one may consider The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich by Ian Kershaw to be a worthwhile read.
  - foobarian 2y ago
    I found this short article also similarly illuminating: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-ger...

sillyfluke 2y ago

Certain discourse in other languages sometimes like to underline the difference between "rules" and "law" as in "we must aspire to be a state built on law, not a state built on rules." (not necessarily claiming English is such a language either)

ben_w 2y ago

Everything done without consideration is very quickly evil. Free tragedy of the commons with every free market; equivalents of Malthus for poverty wages and zero profit margins in the economy; Nash games where all parties want to defect and want the other not to; AI optimising for paperclips. Rule of law is a pillar, but not the only one — in an ideal case the laws themselves are bound by constitutional requirements, and the constitutional requirements are bound by democratic will, and the democratic will by freedom of speech, and the freedom of speech by a requirement for at least attempting to be honest.

vkou 2y ago

The Nazis did anything but blindly followed the rule of law. They did the opposite - they used law as a cudgel to beat their enemies with, while somehow magically, not being held responsible for any of their own violations of it. It's how they rose to power, and it's how they liquidated all of their internal opposition in the pre-war years. We are seeing this play out again. The brownshirts have all been pardoned (with a clear message to the ones who will be involved in the next act - that as long as they break the law in support of the regime, they'll get bailed out), while everyone else is getting in line to kowtow and kiss the ring - because if they don't, they might be targeted. It's actual insanity that people are looking at this and saying it is fine. Then again, the whole country has gone insane, it looks at a video of the richest main in the world giving a fascist salute, and insist that he's just giving a confused wave, or that it's the same thing as a still of some other person with an outstretched arm.

simonh 2y ago

Nobody here is advocating blindly following the rules. We can follow the rules with our eyes open, and while advocating for the rules being reformed. In this case the person throwing morality out of the window was Ulbricht.

immibis 2y ago

In Germany it is currently illegal to criticise Israel. You'll pardon me for being a bit skeptical about rule of law. Rule of good law is good, but rule of bad law is bad.

sources_please 2y ago
> In Germany it is currently illegal to criticise Israel. Got any sources for this claim? Like an actual law?
- etc-hosts 2y ago
  one of the German states foundations is responsibility for the Holocaust, which led to the founding of the state of Israel. There are laws in Germany that make it a crime to condone a crime (forgive, overlook, allow, permit ) Some German courts have ruled that the slogan "between the river and the sea" is condoning the unlawful removal of Israelis or that the slogan is firmly attached to Terrorist Organization Hamas (therefore is by default a criminal statement ) Plenty of people have been fined for chanting the slogan at German protests against the current conduct of Israel in Gaza and West Bank. There isn't a German law that states "it is illegal to criticize Israel" but laws like the following have been used to punish people criticizing Israel, in Germany: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html Some German courts have thrown out some of these cases, they don't agree the Condone Crime laws can be applied to chanting 'between the river and the sea'
  - sources_please 2y ago
    Thanks for the explanation. I understand that you could face charges if you criticized a group of people and expressed something that can be interpreted as a call for their elimination. Pretending that those charges are for the criticism doesn't seem right, though.

andrepd 2y ago

Well you need to study history more x) If there's one thing Hitler did was precisely to ignore rule of law and rule by decree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Führerprinzip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Führerprinzip