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Is there a public conversation in European countries about the value of liberty? I don't mean arguments about how liberty can lead to more economic prosperity,

Is there a public conversation in European countries about the value of liberty? I don't mean arguments about how liberty can lead to more economic prosperity, I mean how liberty is valuable on its own terms. Without this value, the state can continue to erect legislation in the name of "safety", or any other perceived inequity in society, until you can no longer move. How perverse that English law used to be a bastion of civil liberty protections. Here's a great scene from A Man For All Seasons that shows what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBiLT3LASk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBiLT3LASk

Stevvo 1y ago
In the EU we have different liberties to the US. That doesn't necessarily make Europeans less free. For example, wlthe EU has free movement of goods, capital, services, and people across borders. None of which are present in the USA. Does that make Americans less free than Europeans? Some would argue so, but I don't see it. The UK however, maybe. Brexit was a real dumb idea.
- CalRobert 1y ago
  Huh? The US has all of that. You can move freely between states.
  - Stevvo 1y ago
    Internal movement doesn't count. Only a real hell-hole like North Korea will prevent you moving around in your own country.
    - CalRobert 1y ago
      The EU and US are roughly equivalent in size. I’m not sure it’s fair to say that doesn’t count. It’s (nominally) a union of states after all
      - theptip 1y ago
        There is far more cultural diversity between the EU countries than states in the US - it’s not close.
        CalRobert 1y ago
        Agreed, but in terms of moving around a similar land mass, an even bigger economy, integrated currency, etc the comparison seems reasonable. If anything the US has more freedom in that sense, at least on paper. I don’t need to register with the gemeente when I move interstate. (Though I’d likely need a new drivers licence) Also, for better or for worse it helps that almost everyone speaks English everywhere.
    - lowkey_ 1y ago
      The US economy is about 1.5 times larger than the entire EU. The US is over 2 times larger by land. Population is about a quarter smaller. Still, Massachusetts has more people than Denmark, New York has the same as Romania, California has more people than Poland. Our original founding documents cite "these united states", interestingly and very tellingly "these", not "the." States are their own entities, and you'd find many to have very different cultures and laws — probably the same level of variance you'd find in the EU.
      - FredPret 1y ago
        I agree with your points. It's ridiculous to suggest Americans don't have freedom of movement. The US economy is actually roughly double that of the EU. But European countries are much more different from one another than the States are. I think it's actually quite a challenge to doing business there - growing into another country means you have to appeal to a very different culture, deal with different laws, speak a different language. The US states have their differences but there's a reason they're part of the same nation.
- PKop 1y ago
  > free movement of goods, capital, services, and people across borders What in the world are you talking about? The US has all of this internally. If on the one narrow point you want to claim that EU has open-borders to the rest of the world, no you don't and that's not something that's good to have anyways. Both US and European citizens are fighting their own governments to decrease immigration as polling shows large opposition to current immigration levels for many years now. A big part of the crackdown on speech in the UK is to restrict criticism of immigration policy.
  - Karawebnetwork 1y ago
    EU is not a single country. Most if not all countries allows free travel between their own regions, provinces or states. A better example would be Americans being able to travel freely to USMCA countries.
  - atmosx 1y ago
    The European Union has, in practice, lacked genuine free movement of people across internal borders for some time (I went through complete and very aggressive border control entering France via airplane three years ago). Schengen arrangements have been curtailed in Germany[^1]. Part of the challenge is that Europeans appear out of touch with rapidly changing realities (I say this as a European). Additionally, some argue that the European Parliament is operating under an unofficial coup[^2]. The rearmament initiative is particularly concerning. Over the past three years, communities in Italy, Spain, Greece, and Germany have been devastated by flooding, wildfires, etc. Rather than prioritizing investment in resilient infrastructure, leaders are channeling resources into rearmament to confront Russia and China (or so they say - since they are acting as clowns anyway no one really pays attention). My concern is that these weapons may ultimately be used by Europeans against one another; It happened twice already. [^1]: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/temporary-border-controls-to-remain-until-eu-finds-solution-to-migration-german-chancellor/3631643 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/temporary-border-controls-to... [^2]: https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-europe-commission-brussels-power/ https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-europe-...
    - 1y ago
tiahura 1y ago
The law has always distinguished between public and private. These vans are in public places.
mattmanser 1y ago
Depends what you mean by liberty. If you mean the sort of American Libertarianism that's popular in tech circles, then no. That's never really been a thing in Europe. If you mean liberty as in Human Rights, it waxes and wanes. Broadly speaking in the EU in the 90s/00s human rights were improved and expanded. The European human rights courts were strengthened, more laws passed aimed at opposing discrimination. And the Human rights act in the UK was codified into law in 1998, for example. The pendulum is presently swinging the other way, mainly due to a populist revolt against mass migration to Europe. It also doesn't help that mass surveillance has become so cheap and an easy way for politicians to be 'tough on crime'. Plus American tech treats privacy as a revenue model rather than a right, and that bleeds into policy expectations via lobbying.
- troad 1y ago
  This is almost entirely backwards. European liberalism is the wellspring of American liberalism, but Europe has - for obvious, historical reasons - much better organised reactionary elites. The equilibrium between the European publics and elites does indeed wax and wane. In the 1990s a whole bunch of elite shibboleths were encoded into supranational law (so that no elected government is able to repeal them) as incredibly vaguely defined "human rights", which in turn have given rise to a vast bureaucratic apparatus to administer them (often staffed by the children of elite families). This apparatus is used as a cudgel to chip away at basic liberties - abstract, ill-defined communitarian rights (eg "safety") are used to sweep aside actual, tangible individual rights (eg speech, privacy). (As an aside, the Soviet Union did effectively the same thing with their emphasis on "social rights" - such as those in the ICESCR - as opposed to "bourgeois" individual rights - such as those in the ICCPR. Didn't work out great for Soviet citizens.) Since the 1990s, as a result of misgovernance by its chronically incompetent elites, Europe has been in decline by almost every metric. In the past ten years or so, the European publics have been in increasingly open revolt about this. A bunch of populist opportunists have seized on this revolt to offer various alleged alternatives, but been unable to deliver any sort of tangible change. (There is no reason to believe any change will come from this group, since they are basically just the second-rate members of the existing elite who have bet on populism as their ticket to the top.) Europe tells itself stories about being a "human rights superpower" as an adaptive mechanism for its clear decline in prosperity, freedom, and relevance. IMHO, Europeans deserve much better than this sad, managed decline. But given the deep structural barriers to protect the elites and prevent change, I just cannot see how this gets better. Will the last European please turn out the lights?

Stevvo 1y ago

In the EU we have different liberties to the US. That doesn't necessarily make Europeans less free. For example, wlthe EU has free movement of goods, capital, services, and people across borders. None of which are present in the USA. Does that make Americans less free than Europeans? Some would argue so, but I don't see it. The UK however, maybe. Brexit was a real dumb idea.

CalRobert 1y ago
Huh? The US has all of that. You can move freely between states.
- Stevvo 1y ago
  Internal movement doesn't count. Only a real hell-hole like North Korea will prevent you moving around in your own country.
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    The EU and US are roughly equivalent in size. I’m not sure it’s fair to say that doesn’t count. It’s (nominally) a union of states after all
    - theptip 1y ago
      There is far more cultural diversity between the EU countries than states in the US - it’s not close.
      - CalRobert 1y ago
        Agreed, but in terms of moving around a similar land mass, an even bigger economy, integrated currency, etc the comparison seems reasonable. If anything the US has more freedom in that sense, at least on paper. I don’t need to register with the gemeente when I move interstate. (Though I’d likely need a new drivers licence) Also, for better or for worse it helps that almost everyone speaks English everywhere.
  - lowkey_ 1y ago
    The US economy is about 1.5 times larger than the entire EU. The US is over 2 times larger by land. Population is about a quarter smaller. Still, Massachusetts has more people than Denmark, New York has the same as Romania, California has more people than Poland. Our original founding documents cite "these united states", interestingly and very tellingly "these", not "the." States are their own entities, and you'd find many to have very different cultures and laws — probably the same level of variance you'd find in the EU.
    - FredPret 1y ago
      I agree with your points. It's ridiculous to suggest Americans don't have freedom of movement. The US economy is actually roughly double that of the EU. But European countries are much more different from one another than the States are. I think it's actually quite a challenge to doing business there - growing into another country means you have to appeal to a very different culture, deal with different laws, speak a different language. The US states have their differences but there's a reason they're part of the same nation.
PKop 1y ago
> free movement of goods, capital, services, and people across borders What in the world are you talking about? The US has all of this internally. If on the one narrow point you want to claim that EU has open-borders to the rest of the world, no you don't and that's not something that's good to have anyways. Both US and European citizens are fighting their own governments to decrease immigration as polling shows large opposition to current immigration levels for many years now. A big part of the crackdown on speech in the UK is to restrict criticism of immigration policy.
- Karawebnetwork 1y ago
  EU is not a single country. Most if not all countries allows free travel between their own regions, provinces or states. A better example would be Americans being able to travel freely to USMCA countries.
- atmosx 1y ago
  The European Union has, in practice, lacked genuine free movement of people across internal borders for some time (I went through complete and very aggressive border control entering France via airplane three years ago). Schengen arrangements have been curtailed in Germany[^1]. Part of the challenge is that Europeans appear out of touch with rapidly changing realities (I say this as a European). Additionally, some argue that the European Parliament is operating under an unofficial coup[^2]. The rearmament initiative is particularly concerning. Over the past three years, communities in Italy, Spain, Greece, and Germany have been devastated by flooding, wildfires, etc. Rather than prioritizing investment in resilient infrastructure, leaders are channeling resources into rearmament to confront Russia and China (or so they say - since they are acting as clowns anyway no one really pays attention). My concern is that these weapons may ultimately be used by Europeans against one another; It happened twice already. [^1]: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/temporary-border-controls-to-remain-until-eu-finds-solution-to-migration-german-chancellor/3631643 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/temporary-border-controls-to... [^2]: https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-europe-commission-brussels-power/ https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-europe-...
  - 1y ago

tiahura 1y ago

The law has always distinguished between public and private. These vans are in public places.

mattmanser 1y ago

Depends what you mean by liberty. If you mean the sort of American Libertarianism that's popular in tech circles, then no. That's never really been a thing in Europe. If you mean liberty as in Human Rights, it waxes and wanes. Broadly speaking in the EU in the 90s/00s human rights were improved and expanded. The European human rights courts were strengthened, more laws passed aimed at opposing discrimination. And the Human rights act in the UK was codified into law in 1998, for example. The pendulum is presently swinging the other way, mainly due to a populist revolt against mass migration to Europe. It also doesn't help that mass surveillance has become so cheap and an easy way for politicians to be 'tough on crime'. Plus American tech treats privacy as a revenue model rather than a right, and that bleeds into policy expectations via lobbying.

troad 1y ago
This is almost entirely backwards. European liberalism is the wellspring of American liberalism, but Europe has - for obvious, historical reasons - much better organised reactionary elites. The equilibrium between the European publics and elites does indeed wax and wane. In the 1990s a whole bunch of elite shibboleths were encoded into supranational law (so that no elected government is able to repeal them) as incredibly vaguely defined "human rights", which in turn have given rise to a vast bureaucratic apparatus to administer them (often staffed by the children of elite families). This apparatus is used as a cudgel to chip away at basic liberties - abstract, ill-defined communitarian rights (eg "safety") are used to sweep aside actual, tangible individual rights (eg speech, privacy). (As an aside, the Soviet Union did effectively the same thing with their emphasis on "social rights" - such as those in the ICESCR - as opposed to "bourgeois" individual rights - such as those in the ICCPR. Didn't work out great for Soviet citizens.) Since the 1990s, as a result of misgovernance by its chronically incompetent elites, Europe has been in decline by almost every metric. In the past ten years or so, the European publics have been in increasingly open revolt about this. A bunch of populist opportunists have seized on this revolt to offer various alleged alternatives, but been unable to deliver any sort of tangible change. (There is no reason to believe any change will come from this group, since they are basically just the second-rate members of the existing elite who have bet on populism as their ticket to the top.) Europe tells itself stories about being a "human rights superpower" as an adaptive mechanism for its clear decline in prosperity, freedom, and relevance. IMHO, Europeans deserve much better than this sad, managed decline. But given the deep structural barriers to protect the elites and prevent change, I just cannot see how this gets better. Will the last European please turn out the lights?