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> EU commission's retraction can be challenged in the courts if it's not allowed. Take it from a gay American dinosaur: you cannot trust the courts to do the r

> EU commission's retraction can be challenged in the courts if it's not allowed. Take it from a gay American dinosaur: you cannot trust the courts to do the right thing. The court system of any country is the system of last resort to dealing with issues after they have caused harm or suffering, and by design they’ve been overloaded with grievances to make it harder to stop any institutional harms. The right time to stop this sort of action is before it becomes law. Ideally, a society should be educated and inoculated against such harmful activity such that the mere mention of an idea of such a plan is enough to ruin one’s career, nevermind letting it make it to an actual proposal or committee. Stop putting faith in a court system operated by the same entities making the rules. You’re effectively waiting until the last possible moment to stop something after it’s done harm, which is highly irresponsible at the very least and does nothing to prevent harms from happening in the first place.

perihelions 1y ago
> "Ideally, a society should be educated and inoculated against such harmful activity such that the mere mention of an idea of such a plan is enough to ruin one’s career" Well said. It's a weak and stagnant variant of democracy, where people say (to paraphrase): it doesn't matter what the people think, or say, or believe; or how their elected representatives vote; because you can just count on the courts (or some other force external-to-democracy) to clean up and fix everything. That's not democracy. That's shirking the hard parts of civic participatory democracy—offloading the burden onto a small group of elites who aren't meant to be morally load-bearing. You've *failed* at liberal democracy if you've reached the point where your popularly-elected representatives are floating the suggestion of North Korean-style panopticons. (Or anything else as antithetical to core human rights). Liberal democracy, if it should exist, is a zeitgeist of strongly-held shared values—not (only) a set of legal technicalities codified in a document somewhere.
roenxi 1y ago
Yes and that even seems to be missing the key issue - if a system's legislative body is hostile to basic tenants of liberal democracy then expecting the courts to act as a protective buffer is at best a stalling tactic to delay the inevitable by a few years. It is almost pointless fighting once that sort of law gets in, the powers that be think mass spying is OK and are committed to finding a way. The courts can't protect people from that sort of pressure, the only way to resist is to have people in power who think mass spying is bad. The US failed that test and it looks like Europe will too - very distressing for the prospects of the liberal project.
hcfman 1y ago
The court system is zero integrity.

perihelions 1y ago

> "Ideally, a society should be educated and inoculated against such harmful activity such that the mere mention of an idea of such a plan is enough to ruin one’s career" Well said. It's a weak and stagnant variant of democracy, where people say (to paraphrase): it doesn't matter what the people think, or say, or believe; or how their elected representatives vote; because you can just count on the courts (or some other force external-to-democracy) to clean up and fix everything. That's not democracy. That's shirking the hard parts of civic participatory democracy—offloading the burden onto a small group of elites who aren't meant to be morally load-bearing. You've *failed* at liberal democracy if you've reached the point where your popularly-elected representatives are floating the suggestion of North Korean-style panopticons. (Or anything else as antithetical to core human rights). Liberal democracy, if it should exist, is a zeitgeist of strongly-held shared values—not (only) a set of legal technicalities codified in a document somewhere.

roenxi 1y ago

Yes and that even seems to be missing the key issue - if a system's legislative body is hostile to basic tenants of liberal democracy then expecting the courts to act as a protective buffer is at best a stalling tactic to delay the inevitable by a few years. It is almost pointless fighting once that sort of law gets in, the powers that be think mass spying is OK and are committed to finding a way. The courts can't protect people from that sort of pressure, the only way to resist is to have people in power who think mass spying is bad. The US failed that test and it looks like Europe will too - very distressing for the prospects of the liberal project.

hcfman 1y ago

The court system is zero integrity.