Democracy is rather more clearly a means to an end, one of those ends being government by consent.
Democracy is government by consent. They’re not two different things.
The type of democracy for which you are advocating is majority rule. This is traditionally OK for the majority, but there is a long track-record of it not being so good for minorities, as has already been referred to. It appears you consider discrimination against minorities to be an acceptable price to pay.
And yet isn’t it strange that the only societies where discrimination against minorities has been legislated against are democracies. It may not have a 100% record, but it’s a damn sight better than any other way of doing things.
One thing that isn't clear in your idealised world is what you do about turkeys voting for Christmas. The only way to stop a majority of people voting for an end to democratic majority rule is to establish a non-democratic rule forbidding it. For their own good.
The thing that isn’t clear in your idealised world is how the turkeys are supposed to vote against Christmas. Or are you just assuming that all the unimpeachable leaders who make the rules will be benevolent?
I can go through a very long list of how Trump has imposed a cancel culture on agencies and programs he considers too woke.
For instance, many American public colleges had been practicing a policy of diversity, equality and inclusion in both their hiring practices and in student body admissions. Not any more, Trforced many of the colleges to stand down with DEI by withholding federal funds. Very illegal, but Congress let it go, and the courts cannot act without a complaint.
Climate change is also a dirty word with the Trump administration. They are canceling many programs that study this.
The fact that 6 million were murdered seems to matter less than the belief in a mythical sense of democracy.
If democracy had been maintained in 30s Germany the the Nazis would probably have been voted back out again and all those murders (not to mention WW2) wouldn’t have happened.
The Nazis literally destroyed German democracy in the 1930s.
We have to look at how the Nazis destroyed democracy. My view is that they did so by a) discrediting the Weimar constitution and Parliament and b) demonising “out” groups, such as Jews, other non-Aryans, homosexuals and many kinds of disabled people (eugenics was popular in Europe at the time).
If you can do something like that, democracy is in danger. Just like now.
…Liberal democracy is destroyed by fascism. It just is.
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
It looks like you want to preserve liberal democracy, but you also want to preserve all the mechanisms which have been used to undermine and destroy liberal democracy. Are you just hoping that no-one else uses them this way? As the Standford entry on freedom of speech puts it:
The Nazi propagandist Goebbels is said to have remarked:
This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.
But it is not clear why this is necessarily so. Why should we insist on a conception of democracy that contains a self-destruct mechanism? Merely stipulating that democracy requires this is not enough.
I think the people abusing liberal democracy for their own ends are rather counting on that. Maybe it's possible to keep adding checks and balances, or hoping that governments willing to uphold its spirit will come back into favour, but there are no guarantees.
I remember my political science prof saying the pendulum swings both ways. It will go from hard right to hard left almost in the blink of an eye.
…
The USA will have another liberal government. How long it will last is another question.
How many illiberal governments do you think it will it take before people are willing to let go of the idea?
It might not be mythical, but it does rely on the majority of people behaving a certain way and playing by the rules (following a set of norms). Once the proportion of people deciding that they'll play by a more self-serving set of rules reaches a certain level, liberal democracy starts to become untenable.
Why is liberal democracy such an article of faith?
Once a violent authoritarian regime has been ushered in by weak democracy, how then is it going to be removed democratically? When rights are removed by a minority of the Far-Right who have broken the checks and balances that limit power, what mechanism is there to reinstate them?
When the Far-Right have been able to remove liberal rights, how is anyone imagining a situation will occur where they come back? Nobody is ever going to get to a situation where an authoritarian government suddenly decides that pluralism would be a good idea.
Where it has happened, it has been by popular uprising and revolution, not by the failed tools of liberal democracy.
In an ideal world, Marvin would be right. And I'm not really seeing any proper response to his arguments.
The basic problem with free speech absolutism is that it assumes that everyone is effectively exposed, directly or indirectly, to all the important arguments and counterarguments on any point. In the world as is, the people who control media outlets control the arguments that reach those who use those outlets, and people with resources can dominate public space with arguments favouring their point of view. An abstract public space is free of friction, and the world is not.
What one does about that is another matter. Banning the public expression of ideas that cause harm seems to me another thing that only works on abstract public spaces.
[<snip>
Even in the left wing articles I posted, a closer reading will show authoritarianism is not just restricted to the right but across the board. Even the UK is in the process of autocratisation according to the V dem report, which is considered quite left wing.
I have read through the article now, I can’t find where it says that the UK is in the process of auto authorisation. Please can you have a quotation or cite a page number in the report. Thank you.
Democracy is rather more clearly a means to an end, one of those ends being government by consent.
Democracy is government by consent. They’re not two different things.
I'm not sure everyone would agree. Some democratic systems are rather more consensual than others. And many forms of democracy do not place consent very high on their list of priorities.
Democracy is government by the people. Consent is voluntary agreement to the desires or proposals of another. Can a democratic system in which a party gains power with a third of the votes cast (representing about 20% of the electorate) really said to be government by consent?
All democratic governments today allow decisions to be made even over the dissent of a minority of voters which, in some theorists' view, calls into question whether said governments can rightfully claim, in all circumstances, to act with the consent of the governed.
Let alone allowing decisions to be made over the dissent of a *majority* of voters.
The type of democracy for which you are advocating is majority rule. This is traditionally OK for the majority, but there is a long track-record of it not being so good for minorities, as has already been referred to. It appears you consider discrimination against minorities to be an acceptable price to pay.
And yet isn’t it strange that the only societies where discrimination against minorities has been legislated against are democracies.
A number of one-party states have introduced anti-discrimination legislation, including China, Cuba, Eritrea, Laos and Vietnam. (North Korea hasn't, and neither has South Korea, intriguingly.)
One thing that isn't clear in your idealised world is what you do about turkeys voting for Christmas. The only way to stop a majority of people voting for an end to democratic majority rule is to establish a non-democratic rule forbidding it. For their own good.
The thing that isn’t clear in your idealised world is how the turkeys are supposed to vote against Christmas. Or are you just assuming that all the unimpeachable leaders who make the rules will be benevolent?
I think you might have fallen off the edge of the metaphor, which is about people acting *against* their self-interest.
But I think it illustrates how consent is imperfectly served by democratic majority rule and plebiscites. How many turkeys need to be persuaded to vote for Christmas before the votes of those that don't consent to it become irrelevant?
…Liberal democracy is destroyed by fascism. It just is.
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
It looks like you want to preserve liberal democracy, but you also want to preserve all the mechanisms which have been used to undermine and destroy liberal democracy. Are you just hoping that no-one else uses them this way?
I would hope that the rest of government, the police, the civil service, the armed forces and the population as a whole would step in to ensure that, come the next election, it is held fairly and freely and the result is honoured.
I think the people abusing liberal democracy for their own ends are rather counting on that. Maybe it's possible to keep adding checks and balances, or hoping that governments willing to uphold its spirit will come back into favour, but there are no guarantees.
No, there aren’t. But where are the guarantees in any other system?
Abandoning democracy is like using the Ring of Power. You might do it for the very best of intentions, to defend your people from the Dark Lord, but the temptation to use more and more of the power you have seized to reshape the world according to your desires and compel people to share your beliefs will always be too much, and all you will end up doing is creating another Dark Lord to take his place. The truly wise know that that isn’t an option, and that not doing it, even if it means risking defeat, is nevertheless the only way to truly win freedom.
As I have said before, democracy, at least in the USA and the U.K., is no longer rule by the people for the people. Economic interests, in the form of corporate interests, the stock markets and their offshoots have called the shots for the last 45 years.
Once a violent authoritarian regime has been ushered in by weak democracy, how then is it going to be removed democratically? When rights are removed by a minority of the Far-Right who have broken the checks and balances that limit power, what mechanism is there to reinstate them?
When the Far-Right have been able to remove liberal rights, how is anyone imagining a situation will occur where they come back? Nobody is ever going to get to a situation where an authoritarian government suddenly decides that pluralism would be a good idea.
Where it has happened, it has been by popular uprising and revolution, not by the failed tools of liberal democracy.
How do those liberal rights come back if someone not from the Far Right removes them?
For that matter, what happens when the progressive authoritarians who have seized power in order to stop the Far Right inevitably become violent themselves? Are concentration camps more palatable if this time they’re full of people from the other side of the Epiphanic debate (having been sent there because removing them from society is all part of serving the Common Good, of course)? Will we eventually end up needing a Final Solution to the problem of bigots and racists?
I’m hyperbolising, of course, but the point is that dictatorship is bad regardless of where on the right-left axis it sits. Once you start believing that keeping the country where you think it should be on that axis is more important than letting the population as a whole decide via free and fair elections, you’ve taken the first step down a very dark road.
In an ideal world, Marvin would be right. And I'm not really seeing any proper response to his arguments.
Thank you.
The basic problem with free speech absolutism is that it assumes that everyone is effectively exposed, directly or indirectly, to all the important arguments and counterarguments on any point. In the world as is, the people who control media outlets control the arguments that reach those who use those outlets, and people with resources can dominate public space with arguments favouring their point of view. An abstract public space is free of friction, and the world is not.
What one does about that is another matter. Banning the public expression of ideas that cause harm seems to me another thing that only works on abstract public spaces.
The solution IMO is to encourage a true plurality of media outlets covering all views. The good news is, there’s very little preventing us from working towards that starting right now.
This is like free market economists assu:ing people are rational actors in possessions of perfect information at all times - then wondering why the real world doesn’t act like their models.
In an ideal world, Marvin would be right. And I'm not really seeing any proper response to his arguments.
Thank you.
The basic problem with free speech absolutism is that it assumes that everyone is effectively exposed, directly or indirectly, to all the important arguments and counterarguments on any point. In the world as is, the people who control media outlets control the arguments that reach those who use those outlets, and people with resources can dominate public space with arguments favouring their point of view. An abstract public space is free of friction, and the world is not.
What one does about that is another matter. Banning the public expression of ideas that cause harm seems to me another thing that only works on abstract public spaces.
The solution IMO is to encourage a true plurality of media outlets covering all views. The good news is, there’s very little preventing us from working towards that starting right now.
Apart from every single interest served by a concentrated media, as I said, your views completely ignore issues of concentrations of power.
Money. Overwhelming quantities of money in the hands of individuals who love throwing it around and seeing who and what they can fuck up or convince others to fuck up. That's what is driving ultimate terminal enshittification of all things
Money. Overwhelming quantities of money in the hands of individuals who love throwing it around and seeing who and what they can fuck up or convince others to fuck up. That's what is driving ultimate terminal enshittification of all things
Is that the money in the hands of the media moguls or the Shitty Traders? Or both? Or is it impossible to put a cigarette paper between them?
Once a violent authoritarian regime has been ushered in by weak democracy, how then is it going to be removed democratically? When rights are removed by a minority of the Far-Right who have broken the checks and balances that limit power, what mechanism is there to reinstate them?
When the Far-Right have been able to remove liberal rights, how is anyone imagining a situation will occur where they come back? Nobody is ever going to get to a situation where an authoritarian government suddenly decides that pluralism would be a good idea.
Where it has happened, it has been by popular uprising and revolution, not by the failed tools of liberal democracy.
How do those liberal rights come back if someone not from the Far Right removes them?
For that matter, what happens when the progressive authoritarians who have seized power in order to stop the Far Right inevitably become violent themselves? Are concentration camps more palatable if this time they’re full of people from the other side of the Epiphanic debate (having been sent there because removing them from society is all part of serving the Common Good, of course)? Will we eventually end up needing a Final Solution to the problem of bigots and racists?
I’m hyperbolising, of course, but the point is that dictatorship is bad regardless of where on the right-left axis it sits. Once you start believing that keeping the country where you think it should be on that axis is more important than letting the population as a whole decide via free and fair elections, you’ve taken the first step down a very dark road.
What does any of this mean? Which "progressive authoritarians"?
What does any of this mean? Which "progressive authoritarians"?
I expect Marvin means the Communist Party of Great Britain or the Worker’s Revolutionary Party (the Stalinists or the Trots). We could include George Galloway’s Respect Party.
In an ideal world, Marvin would be right. And I'm not really seeing any proper response to his arguments.
Thank you.
The basic problem with free speech absolutism is that it assumes that everyone is effectively exposed, directly or indirectly, to all the important arguments and counterarguments on any point. In the world as is, the people who control media outlets control the arguments that reach those who use those outlets, and people with resources can dominate public space with arguments favouring their point of view. An abstract public space is free of friction, and the world is not.
What one does about that is another matter. Banning the public expression of ideas that cause harm seems to me another thing that only works on abstract public spaces.
The solution IMO is to encourage a true plurality of media outlets covering all views. The good news is, there’s very little preventing us from working towards that starting right now.
Apart from every single interest served by a concentrated media, as I said, your views completely ignore issues of concentrations of power.
What exactly is preventing you, or a group of you, from starting your own newspaper or TV station or podcast or social media platform and using it to promote your own views?
Sure, they’ll use their own platforms to argue against you. They’ll try to discredit you. They may even try to buy you out (though they can’t force you to sell). But they can’t actually stop you.
What does any of this mean? Which "progressive authoritarians"?
I expect Marvin means the Communist Party of Great Britain or the Worker’s Revolutionary Party (the Stalinists or the Trots). We could include George Galloway’s Respect Party.
Galloway's moved on, hasn't he? Workers Party of Britain or some such, if memory serves. Like Farage (or Kilroy), no electoral vehicle can contain his ego for long.
Democracy is government by the people. Consent is voluntary agreement to the desires or proposals of another. Can a democratic system in which a party gains power with a third of the votes cast (representing about 20% of the electorate) really said to be government by consent?
Consent in this context means that the voters recognise the resulting government as the legitimate result of legitimate procedures. It doesn't mean agreeing with what the government is doing; merely that the government is entitled to do it.
<snip>
What exactly is preventing you, or a group of you, from starting your own newspaper or TV station or podcast or social media platform and using it to promote your own views?
Sure, they’ll use their own platforms to argue against you. They’ll try to discredit you. They may even try to buy you out (though they can’t force you to sell). But they can’t actually stop you.
Put simply, the immense amount of money and, to a lesser extent, time and energy involved means that it is beyond the reach of an average person who has to work to earn a living.
Once a violent authoritarian regime has been ushered in by weak democracy, how then is it going to be removed democratically? When rights are removed by a minority of the Far-Right who have broken the checks and balances that limit power, what mechanism is there to reinstate them?
When the Far-Right have been able to remove liberal rights, how is anyone imagining a situation will occur where they come back? Nobody is ever going to get to a situation where an authoritarian government suddenly decides that pluralism would be a good idea.
Where it has happened, it has been by popular uprising and revolution, not by the failed tools of liberal democracy.
How do those liberal rights come back if someone not from the Far Right removes them?
For that matter, what happens when the progressive authoritarians who have seized power in order to stop the Far Right inevitably become violent themselves? Are concentration camps more palatable if this time they’re full of people from the other side of the Epiphanic debate (having been sent there because removing them from society is all part of serving the Common Good, of course)? Will we eventually end up needing a Final Solution to the problem of bigots and racists?
I’m hyperbolising, of course, but the point is that dictatorship is bad regardless of where on the right-left axis it sits. Once you start believing that keeping the country where you think it should be on that axis is more important than letting the population as a whole decide via free and fair elections, you’ve taken the first step down a very dark road.
What does any of this mean? Which "progressive authoritarians"?
The ones on this thread who are saying that we shouldn’t have free and fair elections because the stupid proles might vote for the wrong people.
Because once you’ve convinced yourself that it’s right and proper to restrict their freedom for their own good in that way, then it’s only a little step - such a little step - to restrict it in other ways. For their own good, of course. It’s not their fault they’re too stupid to know what their own good actually is, after all. It’s an act of kindness, not letting them choose when they’re too stupid to choose properly. And there are so many actions and activities and opinions that are detrimental to the Common Good, and if it’s ok to ban one or two of them then of course it’s ok to ban a couple more as well. Thats fine. They’ve still got freedom, but now it’s the freedom to do what’s Right. And of course, those disruptive elements who still want to do things that any intelligent person would know are bad for them have to be stopped, for their own good, and of course prevented from trying to influence any of the other stupid people to do the same…
Once a violent authoritarian regime has been ushered in by weak democracy, how then is it going to be removed democratically? When rights are removed by a minority of the Far-Right who have broken the checks and balances that limit power, what mechanism is there to reinstate them?
When the Far-Right have been able to remove liberal rights, how is anyone imagining a situation will occur where they come back? Nobody is ever going to get to a situation where an authoritarian government suddenly decides that pluralism would be a good idea.
Where it has happened, it has been by popular uprising and revolution, not by the failed tools of liberal democracy.
How do those liberal rights come back if someone not from the Far Right removes them?
For that matter, what happens when the progressive authoritarians who have seized power in order to stop the Far Right inevitably become violent themselves? Are concentration camps more palatable if this time they’re full of people from the other side of the Epiphanic debate (having been sent there because removing them from society is all part of serving the Common Good, of course)? Will we eventually end up needing a Final Solution to the problem of bigots and racists?
I’m hyperbolising, of course, but the point is that dictatorship is bad regardless of where on the right-left axis it sits. Once you start believing that keeping the country where you think it should be on that axis is more important than letting the population as a whole decide via free and fair elections, you’ve taken the first step down a very dark road.
What does any of this mean? Which "progressive authoritarians"?
The ones on this thread who are saying that we shouldn’t have free and fair elections because the stupid proles might vote for the wrong people.
This is a ridiculous strawman. The question is how you ensure elections are free and fair. It's far from clear that allowing the wealthy to amplify their voice many times over to push their agenda is either of those things.
What one does about that is another matter. Banning the public expression of ideas that cause harm seems to me another thing that only works on abstract public spaces.
The solution IMO is to encourage a true plurality of media outlets covering all views. The good news is, there’s very little preventing us from working towards that starting right now.
As BroJames says, there may be very little stopping us, but most of us don't have the time or the money or neither. I think most news outlets large enough that other news outlets pay attention to them are running at a loss.
In an ideal world, Marvin would be right. And I'm not really seeing any proper response to his arguments.
Thank you.
The basic problem with free speech absolutism is that it assumes that everyone is effectively exposed, directly or indirectly, to all the important arguments and counterarguments on any point. In the world as is, the people who control media outlets control the arguments that reach those who use those outlets, and people with resources can dominate public space with arguments favouring their point of view. An abstract public space is free of friction, and the world is not.
What one does about that is another matter. Banning the public expression of ideas that cause harm seems to me another thing that only works on abstract public spaces.
The solution IMO is to encourage a true plurality of media outlets covering all views. The good news is, there’s very little preventing us from working towards that starting right now.
Apart from every single interest served by a concentrated media, as I said, your views completely ignore issues of concentrations of power.
What exactly is preventing you, or a group of you, from starting your own newspaper or TV station or podcast or social media platform and using it to promote your own views?
Sure, they’ll use their own platforms to argue against you. They’ll try to discredit you. They may even try to buy you out (though they can’t force you to sell). But they can’t actually stop you.
This is true in a very narrow sense; even ignoring the massive gap in reach and resources, they can take over any platforms you are on, they can do various things to the companies that host you all the way up to completely locking them out of the banking system. These are all things that have actually happened.
You appear to have taken Dafyd's post, ignored the part about 'in the ideal world' and continued to argue with all the confidence of someone who isn't a historically discriminated against minority.
What one does about that is another matter. Banning the public expression of ideas that cause harm seems to me another thing that only works on abstract public spaces.
The solution IMO is to encourage a true plurality of media outlets covering all views. The good news is, there’s very little preventing us from working towards that starting right now.
As BroJames says, there may be very little stopping us, but most of us don't have the time or the money or neither. I think most news outlets large enough that other news outlets pay attention to them are running at a loss.
I believe if you tot up the Sun's total losses over recent years you get to about £500M:
<snip>
What exactly is preventing you, or a group of you, from starting your own newspaper or TV station or podcast or social media platform and using it to promote your own views?
Sure, they’ll use their own platforms to argue against you. They’ll try to discredit you. They may even try to buy you out (though they can’t force you to sell). But they can’t actually stop you.
Put simply, the immense amount of money and, to a lesser extent, time and energy involved means that it is beyond the reach of an average person who has to work to earn a living.
We’ve managed it before. Democracy didn’t come down off a cloud. Trade Unions didn’t create themselves. LGBT+ folk weren’t granted the freedom to be themselves by a fairy with a magic wand. All those things happened because normal, ordinary people decided they were what they wanted, and persuaded enough other normal, ordinary people to support them that eventually they happened.
Nobody ever said it was easy to defeat the Dark Lord without becoming a Dark Lord yourself. But it’s the only way to end up with a society that doesn’t have a Dark Lord at all.
The question is how you ensure elections are free and fair.
No. The question is what you think “free and fair” actually means. Does it mean everyone - everyone - is able to advocate for their preferred type of government, or does it not?
The question is how you ensure elections are free and fair.
No. The question is what you think “free and fair” actually means. Does it mean everyone - everyone - is able to advocate for their preferred type of government, or does it not?
Everything else is just noise.
Given the massive resources available to very few, the chances of genuinely free and fair elections is low and slipping away as we speak.
The question is how you ensure elections are free and fair.
No. The question is what you think “free and fair” actually means. Does it mean everyone - everyone - is able to advocate for their preferred type of government, or does it not?
Everything else is just noise.
Except that you're advocating an impossible standard. There is no situation ever where *everyone* is so able. The question of how you get closest to it. By keeping Nazi views, and excess money, out of it you enable a whole lot of people to advocate on a closer to equal footing who would otherwise be drowned out or scared into staying quiet. You seem to think letting billionaires and Nazis run riot is closer. Which is basically "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Except that you're advocating an impossible standard. There is no situation ever where *everyone* is so able. The question of how you get closest to it. By keeping Nazi views, and excess money, out of it you enable a whole lot of people to advocate on a closer to equal footing who would otherwise be drowned out or scared into staying quiet. You seem to think letting billionaires and Nazis run riot is closer. Which is basically "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Careful. You said “views” there. If you’re going to say certain views need to be banned so that everyone can be free then you’re excluding the people who hold those views from your definition of “everyone”. And then you’re no better than anyone else who thinks certain people aren’t part of “everyone”.
And as for the law’s majestic equality, yes that’s exactly what it says. Because if something is illegal then it’s illegal for everyone, and if something is legal then it’s legal for everyone. You can’t have one law for some people and a different law for others, because that’s neither fairness nor equality nor freedom. And that’s the case regardless of which people happen to be on the shitty end of it.
Except that you're advocating an impossible standard. There is no situation ever where *everyone* is so able. The question of how you get closest to it. By keeping Nazi views, and excess money, out of it you enable a whole lot of people to advocate on a closer to equal footing who would otherwise be drowned out or scared into staying quiet. You seem to think letting billionaires and Nazis run riot is closer. Which is basically "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Careful. You said “views” there. If you’re going to say certain views need to be banned so that everyone can be free then you’re excluding the people who hold those views from your definition of “everyone”. And then you’re no better than anyone else who thinks certain people aren’t part of “everyone”.
And as for the law’s majestic equality, yes that’s exactly what it says. Because if something is illegal then it’s illegal for everyone, and if something is legal then it’s legal for everyone. You can’t have one law for some people and a different law for others, because that’s neither fairness nor equality nor freedom. And that’s the case regardless of which people happen to be on the shitty end of it.
You can have a law that restricts violent speech. This is going in circles, you seem to think laws are good when they are developed in liberal democracies but that laws are bad when they restrict violent speech. So which is it?
Frankly, I would rather live in a place where Nazis were not able to terrorise communities than your ideal state.
Except that you're advocating an impossible standard. There is no situation ever where *everyone* is so able. The question of how you get closest to it. By keeping Nazi views, and excess money, out of it you enable a whole lot of people to advocate on a closer to equal footing who would otherwise be drowned out or scared into staying quiet. You seem to think letting billionaires and Nazis run riot is closer. Which is basically "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Careful. You said “views” there. If you’re going to say certain views need to be banned so that everyone can be free then you’re excluding the people who hold those views from your definition of “everyone”. And then you’re no better than anyone else who thinks certain people aren’t part of “everyone”.
And as for the law’s majestic equality, yes that’s exactly what it says. Because if something is illegal then it’s illegal for everyone, and if something is legal then it’s legal for everyone. You can’t have one law for some people and a different law for others, because that’s neither fairness nor equality nor freedom. And that’s the case regardless of which people happen to be on the shitty end of it.
Ok, so the law can say that no-one is allowed to advocate for laws sending Jews to gas chambers, right? Same law for everyone.
Except that you're advocating an impossible standard. There is no situation ever where *everyone* is so able. The question of how you get closest to it. By keeping Nazi views, and excess money, out of it you enable a whole lot of people to advocate on a closer to equal footing who would otherwise be drowned out or scared into staying quiet. You seem to think letting billionaires and Nazis run riot is closer. Which is basically "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Careful. You said “views” there. If you’re going to say certain views need to be banned so that everyone can be free then you’re excluding the people who hold those views from your definition of “everyone”. And then you’re no better than anyone else who thinks certain people aren’t part of “everyone”.
And as for the law’s majestic equality, yes that’s exactly what it says. Because if something is illegal then it’s illegal for everyone, and if something is legal then it’s legal for everyone. You can’t have one law for some people and a different law for others, because that’s neither fairness nor equality nor freedom. And that’s the case regardless of which people happen to be on the shitty end of it.
You can have a law that restricts violent speech. This is going in circles, you seem to think laws are good when they are developed in liberal democracies but that laws are bad when they restrict violent speech. So which is it?
But also that if liberal democracies decide to restrict rights to an entire class of people that would be good/fine.
So in this schema views have rights, but people don't.
Views are abstract, whereas people, speech and actions are real and I consider that these should be constrained because they can do harm. That’s my sole concern. It needs some excellent legal drafting to wise judges to ensure the outcomes are just.
I've just read through this thread which may have been a poor choice on a Friday afternoon. I'm concluding that human nature is such that we make evil come of anything. If we put in restrictions, even with the best of motives and to protect others, people may corrupt them to their own ends and power may corrupt us. If we don't put in restrictions, the mass instincts of the mob, or the instinct to accumulate money and power, may take over and run riot. I conclude that the only thing that keeps us from disaster is that change generally has to be slow - the Overton window (societal consensus on what's acceptable) shifts slowly. Given enough time to see the effects of a harmful shift, the better angels of our nature may well triumph.
I appear to have reached a Christian conclusion. May God have mercy on us.
Except that you're advocating an impossible standard. There is no situation ever where *everyone* is so able. The question of how you get closest to it. By keeping Nazi views, and excess money, out of it you enable a whole lot of people to advocate on a closer to equal footing who would otherwise be drowned out or scared into staying quiet. You seem to think letting billionaires and Nazis run riot is closer. Which is basically "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Careful. You said “views” there. If you’re going to say certain views need to be banned so that everyone can be free then you’re excluding the people who hold those views from your definition of “everyone”. And then you’re no better than anyone else who thinks certain people aren’t part of “everyone”.
And as for the law’s majestic equality, yes that’s exactly what it says. Because if something is illegal then it’s illegal for everyone, and if something is legal then it’s legal for everyone. You can’t have one law for some people and a different law for others, because that’s neither fairness nor equality nor freedom. And that’s the case regardless of which people happen to be on the shitty end of it.
Ok, so the law can say that no-one is allowed to advocate for laws sending Jews to gas chambers, right? Same law for everyone.
I’d prefer a law that said nobody can send anyone to the gas chambers.
But let me be absolutely clear on this. I don’t think anyone should be prevented from advocating for any law they think is right. Not even the ones I really disagree with. If someone wants to start a Party that says there should be an annual Purge (as in the movies, sorry I can’t do links on my phone), I don’t think they should be banned from doing so. I earnestly hope they lose, of course, but I don’t think they should be banned.
Frankly, I would rather live in a place where Nazis were not able to terrorise communities than your ideal state.
Do you think Nazis are the only people who would terrorise communities if given the power to do so? Because I don’t. I think anyone would terrorise the community if they were given the power to do so without any democratic checks. Including myself. I don’t trust anyone to have that kind of power. That’s why I’m so dedicated to democracy.
In an ideal world, Marvin would be right. And I'm not really seeing any proper response to his arguments.
The basic problem with free speech absolutism is that it assumes that everyone is effectively exposed, directly or indirectly, to all the important arguments and counterarguments on any point.
I think you've hit the nail on the head re what I think a proper response is. Sure, in a perfect world he'd be right. But this isn't the garden of Eden and not everyone has the ability to realize which news media outlets are literally lying (ex: Fox news as entertainment so they can openly lie a la the 2020 law suit.) So we end up with people tricked and misinformed if we allow everyone to argue as they like. As it is, we must defend democracy by making sure voters can actually understand the issues. If I can stand up and advocate for [Epiphanies issue] by making false statements, I'm a dangerous person to give platform, even if I believe what I'm saying. And I can think of examples of that re tons of Epiphanies issues. For a safer example, does anyone remember the guy who shot up a pizza parlor because he thought there was a child prostitution ring there?
The right to advocate for your own persecution might be sacrosanct. The right to argue for other people's persecution can't be.
Especially in a consumerist world, where there seems to be an assumption that "they" are making sure that no policies which reach the public realm will be harmful. They wouldn't be allowed to do it if it was a bad idea, would they?
The right to advocate for your own persecution might be sacrosanct. The right to argue for other people's persecution can't be.
Especially in a consumerist world, where there seems to be an assumption that "they" are making sure that no policies which reach the public realm will be harmful. They wouldn't be allowed to do it if it was a bad idea, would they?
and by persecution, I mean direct, personal persecution. not "they won't let me say that all gays should be stoned. I'm being persecuted" No you aren't. You want to persecute other people. You are being prevented from arguing for the persecution of others. Now fuck off and learn what a human being is, and gain the first clue how to be one. Or just fuck off.
Views are abstract, whereas people, speech and actions are real and I consider that these should be constrained because they can do harm. That’s my sole concern. It needs some excellent legal drafting to wise judges to ensure the outcomes are just.
Define “harm”.
Is it purely physical? Individual? Collective? Mental? Societal? Spiritual?
And for some of those, who gets to decide exactly what’s good and what’s harmful?
And who gets to decide which definition is correct, if not society as a whole via free and fair elections?
I mean, to take an example that plenty of others have already raised on this thread, the Nazis thought Jews were harmful to society. I don’t agree with them, but they did.
Are there any grounds that don’t boil down to personal preference by which you can assert that your definition of harm is Right and theirs is Wrong?
Frankly, I would rather live in a place where Nazis were not able to terrorise communities than your ideal state.
Do you think Nazis are the only people who would terrorise communities if given the power to do so? Because I don’t. I think anyone would terrorise the community if they were given the power to do so without any democratic checks. Including myself. I don’t trust anyone to have that kind of power. That’s why I’m so dedicated to democracy.
People who want to terrorise people are not equal and opposite to people who want to extend liberty. That's just a lie.
and by persecution, I mean direct, personal persecution. not "they won't let me say that all gays should be stoned. I'm being persecuted" No you aren't. You want to persecute other people. You are being prevented from arguing for the persecution of others.
Ok, so you don’t think banning people from expressing views you consider to be harmful (as you define it) is persecution.
What about people who think that the views you hold are harmful (as they define it)? Should they be able to ban you from expressing your views?
What’s the difference? Please answer in terms that don’t boil down to “I’m right and they’re wrong”.
Frankly, I would rather live in a place where Nazis were not able to terrorise communities than your ideal state.
Do you think Nazis are the only people who would terrorise communities if given the power to do so? Because I don’t. I think anyone would terrorise the community if they were given the power to do so without any democratic checks. Including myself. I don’t trust anyone to have that kind of power. That’s why I’m so dedicated to democracy.
People who want to terrorise people are not equal and opposite to people who want to extend liberty. That's just a lie.
Define “liberty”. Is it something everyone should have, or just something everyone who agrees with you should have?
Comments
Democracy is government by consent. They’re not two different things.
And yet isn’t it strange that the only societies where discrimination against minorities has been legislated against are democracies. It may not have a 100% record, but it’s a damn sight better than any other way of doing things.
The thing that isn’t clear in your idealised world is how the turkeys are supposed to vote against Christmas. Or are you just assuming that all the unimpeachable leaders who make the rules will be benevolent?
For instance, many American public colleges had been practicing a policy of diversity, equality and inclusion in both their hiring practices and in student body admissions. Not any more, Trforced many of the colleges to stand down with DEI by withholding federal funds. Very illegal, but Congress let it go, and the courts cannot act without a complaint.
Climate change is also a dirty word with the Trump administration. They are canceling many programs that study this.
LIke I said, the list is long.
If you can do something like that, democracy is in danger. Just like now.
I think the people abusing liberal democracy for their own ends are rather counting on that. Maybe it's possible to keep adding checks and balances, or hoping that governments willing to uphold its spirit will come back into favour, but there are no guarantees.
How many illiberal governments do you think it will it take before people are willing to let go of the idea?
It might not be mythical, but it does rely on the majority of people behaving a certain way and playing by the rules (following a set of norms). Once the proportion of people deciding that they'll play by a more self-serving set of rules reaches a certain level, liberal democracy starts to become untenable.
Why is liberal democracy such an article of faith?
So what do you have in mind as an alternative?
When the Far-Right have been able to remove liberal rights, how is anyone imagining a situation will occur where they come back? Nobody is ever going to get to a situation where an authoritarian government suddenly decides that pluralism would be a good idea.
Where it has happened, it has been by popular uprising and revolution, not by the failed tools of liberal democracy.
The basic problem with free speech absolutism is that it assumes that everyone is effectively exposed, directly or indirectly, to all the important arguments and counterarguments on any point. In the world as is, the people who control media outlets control the arguments that reach those who use those outlets, and people with resources can dominate public space with arguments favouring their point of view. An abstract public space is free of friction, and the world is not.
What one does about that is another matter. Banning the public expression of ideas that cause harm seems to me another thing that only works on abstract public spaces.
I have read through the article now, I can’t find where it says that the UK is in the process of auto authorisation. Please can you have a quotation or cite a page number in the report. Thank you.
Democracy is government by the people. Consent is voluntary agreement to the desires or proposals of another. Can a democratic system in which a party gains power with a third of the votes cast (representing about 20% of the electorate) really said to be government by consent?
As wikipedia notes:
All democratic governments today allow decisions to be made even over the dissent of a minority of voters which, in some theorists' view, calls into question whether said governments can rightfully claim, in all circumstances, to act with the consent of the governed.
Let alone allowing decisions to be made over the dissent of a *majority* of voters.A number of one-party states have introduced anti-discrimination legislation, including China, Cuba, Eritrea, Laos and Vietnam. (North Korea hasn't, and neither has South Korea, intriguingly.)
I think you might have fallen off the edge of the metaphor, which is about people acting *against* their self-interest.
But I think it illustrates how consent is imperfectly served by democratic majority rule and plebiscites. How many turkeys need to be persuaded to vote for Christmas before the votes of those that don't consent to it become irrelevant?
I would hope that the rest of government, the police, the civil service, the armed forces and the population as a whole would step in to ensure that, come the next election, it is held fairly and freely and the result is honoured.
No, there aren’t. But where are the guarantees in any other system?
Abandoning democracy is like using the Ring of Power. You might do it for the very best of intentions, to defend your people from the Dark Lord, but the temptation to use more and more of the power you have seized to reshape the world according to your desires and compel people to share your beliefs will always be too much, and all you will end up doing is creating another Dark Lord to take his place. The truly wise know that that isn’t an option, and that not doing it, even if it means risking defeat, is nevertheless the only way to truly win freedom.
How do those liberal rights come back if someone not from the Far Right removes them?
For that matter, what happens when the progressive authoritarians who have seized power in order to stop the Far Right inevitably become violent themselves? Are concentration camps more palatable if this time they’re full of people from the other side of the Epiphanic debate (having been sent there because removing them from society is all part of serving the Common Good, of course)? Will we eventually end up needing a Final Solution to the problem of bigots and racists?
I’m hyperbolising, of course, but the point is that dictatorship is bad regardless of where on the right-left axis it sits. Once you start believing that keeping the country where you think it should be on that axis is more important than letting the population as a whole decide via free and fair elections, you’ve taken the first step down a very dark road.
Thank you.
The solution IMO is to encourage a true plurality of media outlets covering all views. The good news is, there’s very little preventing us from working towards that starting right now.
Apart from every single interest served by a concentrated media, as I said, your views completely ignore issues of concentrations of power.
Is that the money in the hands of the media moguls or the Shitty Traders? Or both? Or is it impossible to put a cigarette paper between them?
What does any of this mean? Which "progressive authoritarians"?
I expect Marvin means the Communist Party of Great Britain or the Worker’s Revolutionary Party (the Stalinists or the Trots). We could include George Galloway’s Respect Party.
What exactly is preventing you, or a group of you, from starting your own newspaper or TV station or podcast or social media platform and using it to promote your own views?
Sure, they’ll use their own platforms to argue against you. They’ll try to discredit you. They may even try to buy you out (though they can’t force you to sell). But they can’t actually stop you.
Galloway's moved on, hasn't he? Workers Party of Britain or some such, if memory serves. Like Farage (or Kilroy), no electoral vehicle can contain his ego for long.
The ones on this thread who are saying that we shouldn’t have free and fair elections because the stupid proles might vote for the wrong people.
Because once you’ve convinced yourself that it’s right and proper to restrict their freedom for their own good in that way, then it’s only a little step - such a little step - to restrict it in other ways. For their own good, of course. It’s not their fault they’re too stupid to know what their own good actually is, after all. It’s an act of kindness, not letting them choose when they’re too stupid to choose properly. And there are so many actions and activities and opinions that are detrimental to the Common Good, and if it’s ok to ban one or two of them then of course it’s ok to ban a couple more as well. Thats fine. They’ve still got freedom, but now it’s the freedom to do what’s Right. And of course, those disruptive elements who still want to do things that any intelligent person would know are bad for them have to be stopped, for their own good, and of course prevented from trying to influence any of the other stupid people to do the same…
This is a ridiculous strawman. The question is how you ensure elections are free and fair. It's far from clear that allowing the wealthy to amplify their voice many times over to push their agenda is either of those things.
This is true in a very narrow sense; even ignoring the massive gap in reach and resources, they can take over any platforms you are on, they can do various things to the companies that host you all the way up to completely locking them out of the banking system. These are all things that have actually happened.
You appear to have taken Dafyd's post, ignored the part about 'in the ideal world' and continued to argue with all the confidence of someone who isn't a historically discriminated against minority.
I believe if you tot up the Sun's total losses over recent years you get to about £500M:
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media_business/platform-algorithm-changes-hit-revenue-losses-at-the-sun/
GBNews comes in at £131M:
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media_business/gb-news-losses-2025/
We’ve managed it before. Democracy didn’t come down off a cloud. Trade Unions didn’t create themselves. LGBT+ folk weren’t granted the freedom to be themselves by a fairy with a magic wand. All those things happened because normal, ordinary people decided they were what they wanted, and persuaded enough other normal, ordinary people to support them that eventually they happened.
Nobody ever said it was easy to defeat the Dark Lord without becoming a Dark Lord yourself. But it’s the only way to end up with a society that doesn’t have a Dark Lord at all.
No. The question is what you think “free and fair” actually means. Does it mean everyone - everyone - is able to advocate for their preferred type of government, or does it not?
Everything else is just noise.
Given the massive resources available to very few, the chances of genuinely free and fair elections is low and slipping away as we speak.
Except that you're advocating an impossible standard. There is no situation ever where *everyone* is so able. The question of how you get closest to it. By keeping Nazi views, and excess money, out of it you enable a whole lot of people to advocate on a closer to equal footing who would otherwise be drowned out or scared into staying quiet. You seem to think letting billionaires and Nazis run riot is closer. Which is basically "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Careful. You said “views” there. If you’re going to say certain views need to be banned so that everyone can be free then you’re excluding the people who hold those views from your definition of “everyone”. And then you’re no better than anyone else who thinks certain people aren’t part of “everyone”.
And as for the law’s majestic equality, yes that’s exactly what it says. Because if something is illegal then it’s illegal for everyone, and if something is legal then it’s legal for everyone. You can’t have one law for some people and a different law for others, because that’s neither fairness nor equality nor freedom. And that’s the case regardless of which people happen to be on the shitty end of it.
You can have a law that restricts violent speech. This is going in circles, you seem to think laws are good when they are developed in liberal democracies but that laws are bad when they restrict violent speech. So which is it?
Frankly, I would rather live in a place where Nazis were not able to terrorise communities than your ideal state.
Free speech is not an absolute. It just isn't.
Ok, so the law can say that no-one is allowed to advocate for laws sending Jews to gas chambers, right? Same law for everyone.
But also that if liberal democracies decide to restrict rights to an entire class of people that would be good/fine.
So in this schema views have rights, but people don't.
I appear to have reached a Christian conclusion. May God have mercy on us.
I’d prefer a law that said nobody can send anyone to the gas chambers.
But let me be absolutely clear on this. I don’t think anyone should be prevented from advocating for any law they think is right. Not even the ones I really disagree with. If someone wants to start a Party that says there should be an annual Purge (as in the movies, sorry I can’t do links on my phone), I don’t think they should be banned from doing so. I earnestly hope they lose, of course, but I don’t think they should be banned.
Do you think Nazis are the only people who would terrorise communities if given the power to do so? Because I don’t. I think anyone would terrorise the community if they were given the power to do so without any democratic checks. Including myself. I don’t trust anyone to have that kind of power. That’s why I’m so dedicated to democracy.
Especially in a consumerist world, where there seems to be an assumption that "they" are making sure that no policies which reach the public realm will be harmful. They wouldn't be allowed to do it if it was a bad idea, would they?
and by persecution, I mean direct, personal persecution. not "they won't let me say that all gays should be stoned. I'm being persecuted" No you aren't. You want to persecute other people. You are being prevented from arguing for the persecution of others. Now fuck off and learn what a human being is, and gain the first clue how to be one. Or just fuck off.
Define “harm”.
Is it purely physical? Individual? Collective? Mental? Societal? Spiritual?
And for some of those, who gets to decide exactly what’s good and what’s harmful?
And who gets to decide which definition is correct, if not society as a whole via free and fair elections?
I mean, to take an example that plenty of others have already raised on this thread, the Nazis thought Jews were harmful to society. I don’t agree with them, but they did.
Are there any grounds that don’t boil down to personal preference by which you can assert that your definition of harm is Right and theirs is Wrong?
People who want to terrorise people are not equal and opposite to people who want to extend liberty. That's just a lie.
Ok, so you don’t think banning people from expressing views you consider to be harmful (as you define it) is persecution.
What about people who think that the views you hold are harmful (as they define it)? Should they be able to ban you from expressing your views?
What’s the difference? Please answer in terms that don’t boil down to “I’m right and they’re wrong”.
Define “liberty”. Is it something everyone should have, or just something everyone who agrees with you should have?
Of course you can have values and promote them. Go nuts. I just don’t think you should be able to prevent anyone else from doing the same thing.