#liberal democracy

[mapsontheweb]

The global state of liberal democracy in 2022 where each country's size is distorted relative to its value of liberal democracy.

by researchremora

#maps #researchremora #twsourced #liberal democracy #2022

[tomorrowusa]

« In 1999, exactly a quarter of a century ago, Poland was invited to join NATO and the transatlantic family.

Twenty-five years later, not least because of the security guarantees that NATO provided us, we have become the fifth largest economy of the European Union, and the main buyer of US military equipment as I’ve already mentioned.

Victorious Ukraine may follow a similar path.

[ … ]

Ladies and gentlemen, whether we want it or not, Putin’s decision to start the biggest war in Europe since the defeat of Nazi Germany has already changed the course of history. It is up to us to decide if we want to shape that course ourselves, or let it be shaped by others—in Moscow, Tehran, or Beijing.

Helping Ukraine by defeating Putin is the right thing to do in the broadest sense of the word.

It is morally sound, strategically wise, militarily justified, and economically beneficial.

It outweighs politics. It transcends partisanship.

Now is the moment to act. Let’s get this done. »

— Foreign Minister Radosław "Radek" Sikorski of Poland speaking Monday at the Atlantic Council.

You can see his address and the following discussion in this vid.

In response to a question from the audience, Pan Sikorski gave this insight on Putin's thinking regarding the war:

[T]he trouble is that Putin doesn’t have an incentive to make peace. He’s already indicted at the Hague for stealing Ukrainian children. And he probably thinks that he—that it’s better for him to have a bad war than an unsatisfactory peace.

The only way to end the war is to make it way bad for Putin to continue it.

Putin is counting on the notoriously short American attention span while manipulating US politics through his vassal Donald Trump. We need to understand that wars don't go away just because Americans get bored with them.

A defeat in Ukraine for ethno-nationalist Putin and his mafia fascist régime is a victory for international liberal democracy.

#invasion of ukraine #the atlantic council #radosław sikorski #poland #polska #liberal democracy #nato #UkraineAidNow #russia's war of aggression #russian imperialism #vladimir putin #ethno-nationalism #НАТО #русский империализм #агрессивная война россии #владимир путин #путин хуйло #добей путина #союз постсоветских клептократических ватников #руки прочь от украины! #геть з україни #польща #радослав сікорський #вторгнення оркостану в україну #деокупація #слава україні! #героям слава!

[jollyrebelwinner]

#bread and circuses #rome #football #soccer #liberal democracy #capitalist oligarchy #government #politics #sport #entertainment

[uboat53]

I had a discussion with a friend of mine in the (US) military recently and it reminded me that most people in the US and, in fact, in the world, are almost entirely unaware that there is a new Cold War taking shape. I think more people should be aware of it, knowledge is power after all, and knowing about something gives you the opportunity to help shape it, particularly if you're a citizen of a country where your voice has an impact in government. I hope this LONG RANT (TM) helps someone better understand.

INTRODUCTION

As I said, there's a new Cold War beginning, and, like the previous Cold War, there's a strong component of ideology to it. Specifically, the world is beginning to fracture between liberal democracy and autocracy.

What makes this conflict particularly complex is that we're at the early stages. When thinking about the Cold War, capitalism vs communism, it wasn't until the 1950s, 1960s, or even the 1970s in some cases that it was really clear which side most consequential nations would end up on. It was pretty obvious that the Soviet Union and the United States would be the major communist and capitalist powers, respectively, but the status of many other nations didn't become clear until long internal political debates and outside interventions had a chance to play out.

So, without further ado, let's get into it.

WHY IS THERE A CONFLICT AT ALL?

This is one of the key questions and, honestly, it all comes down to the interconnectedness of the modern world. You see, modern autocracies that don't rely on the divine right of kings to justify their rule generally justify it by results. In order to make sure the results come out correctly, they control the information available to their people to ensure that their people are told that the autocratic rulers are giving them the best results, whether that's in terms of economics, culture, religion, or whatever else they want to focus on.

As my old boss used to tell me a decade and a half ago, "North Korea can't afford to allow YouTube to get to the average person even if the average person just watches stupid videos because it's going to become really obvious that, yes, this person is an idiot, but that idiot has a fridge, a TV, a car, and has obviously never missed a meal in their life; they can't possibly be poorer than us."

In the olden days that would be fairly easy. Radio signals only travel so far, so as long as you control the TV and radio stations and limit the ability of printed media to spread too widely, you could completely control what information your population receives.

Nowadays, however? Well, that's very different. The internet allows people from all over the world to talk to each other in an instant and it can even go a long way to easing language barriers. The advent of satellite internet means that even efforts to control internet traffic such as the so-called "Great Firewall of China" will be increasingly limited in their effectiveness.

Today, in order for an autocracy to control the information their people receive, they not only have to control the information environment in their own country, they have to control the information available in other countries as well. That's the reason you're seeing things like the Saudi Arabia's murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi, Russia's poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei and Yulia Skripal, a Chinese attempt to kidnap dissidents in the US, India's alleged killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, and it's attempt to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

All of these were killings or other physical violence that took place in liberal democratic countries (except for Khashoggi who, though American, was lured to the Saudi embassy in Turkey where was killed) where what the individuals were doing was perfectly legal. This is the driver of conflict today, authoritarian nations attempting to maintain their monopoly on the information their citizens receive in a global information environment.

THE EARLY DAYS

We're currently in the early days of this autocracy vs liberal democracy competition and there are numerous nations currently in conflict over which side they're going to be on including, unfortunately, our own. In order to explain that, I need to get a bit technical over the difference between "democracy" and "liberal democracy".

Democracy, basically, can describe any situation where leaders are elected by some kind of popular vote. If you look closely at that for a second, you'll realize that it's such a broad category that even the autocratic Soviet Union technically qualified. Obviously, a category broad enough to include actual autocracies isn't really in opposition to them.

Liberal Democracy, on the other hand, is a Democracy, but with a whole bunch of other things as well. In general, a Liberal Democracy will feature multiple distinct candidates and/or parties in their elections, some sort of separation of powers between branches of government, the rule of law (law that applies equally to all), an open society (one in which individuals make choices rather than being controlled by tribes or other type of collectivism), a market economy with private property, universal suffrage, and the protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and political freedoms for all people.

(That definition borrowed almost entirely from the Wikipedia article on Liberal Democracy, check it out if you're interested.)

In other words, Liberal Democracy is more than just "do people vote for leaders?", but encompasses just about everything we'd associate with individual rights and liberties and the structure of institutions to ensure them. People in an Illiberal Democracy may technically vote for their leaders but, without all of these other rights and protections, they can hardly be said to have truly chosen them. And, when you define it clearly, you can see that there's a bit of a disagreement about that in American politics right now.

The Republican Party, and particularly its MAGA wing, is increasingly of the mind that not everyone's vote is legitimate and has been putting in place barriers to voting that disproportionately affect disfavored groups. In addition, they're pushing to end much of the separation of powers, putting more unchecked power in the hands of the president at the expense of checks, balances, and sometimes guarantees of individual liberty. Democracy would continue, but Liberal Democracy would end.

To be clear, this isn't just an American problem, but one that is faced by nearly every Liberal Democracy today. As part of autocrat's efforts to control information outside of their own borders, they've been attempting to influence politics within Liberal Democracies and promote internal autocratic movements; usually right-wing nationalists. From the Republican Party's MAGA wing to France's National Front to Germany's Alternativ Fur Deutschland, just about every Liberal Democracy in the world now has a fundamentally autocratic right-wing party that is doing much better than it did just ten or twenty years ago and, if you scratch the surface, you will find support for them, both financial and otherwise, from autocrats around the world.

Of course, it's not just the far-right either, autocrats have been promoting the far-left in Liberal Democratic countries as well. While the far-right has had much more electoral success and is much more politically organized in the west and, thus, has received more attention, we can't ignore the fact that autocracy is largely neutral on the political scale and operates anywhere that conspiratorial thinking can take hold and distract people from the removal of their freedoms or even convince them that those freedoms hold no value in the first place.

WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

Well, that's the trillion dollar question, isn't it?

Conflict will likely continue between autocratic and liberal democratic states, but the complexities are growing. Much like communism vs capitalism, autocracy vs liberal democracy is more of a spectrum than a hard binary and many states are actively sloshing around along that spectrum.

There's also the uncertainty of how different countries react to incidents like the ones we're seeing. Technically, killing a person on the soil of another country is an act of war, but not many people in the modern world are willing to go to war for the killing of one person. Most likely what we'll see is a gradual hardening of blocs as liberal democracies react to provocations by slowly pulling back from cooperation and connection with autocratic nations.

We're also likely to see countries switch sides. Unlike the rapid shift in allegiances that we saw during the Cold War, however, these are likely to be more gradual shifts like what we've seen in Hungary and Turkey where individual rights are stripped away gradually and a governing autocrat is slowly ensconced in power rather than a hard and fast coup. We could, of course, see countries go the other way as well, as in the case of Ukraine which has slowly strengthened individual rights and overthrown its autocrats.

All of this, the solidification of blocs and the shifting of countries within this spectrum, is going to create the opening situations for this particular conflict. Whether it becomes a conflict of more rigidly defined blocs or even sparks proxy wars remains to be seen.

CONCLUSION (TL;DR)

The days of a fairly open world, both in physical travel, the movement of goods, and in communication, is starting to come to an end as that openness begins to threaten the hold of autocrats on power. Those autocrats are attempting to keep both the openness and power by working to control the information available in countries that practice Liberal Democracy and generally guarantee individual liberties.

Over the next several decades, it is likely that we will see increasing separation between a bloc of autocratic nations and a bloc of liberal democracies, much as the Cold War saw separation between pro-capitalist and pro-communist countries. Some of that separation will likely not go smoothly and we will likely see at least some military tension and possibly even armed conflict as leaders react to changes or even try to distract from them with military force.

Just as importantly, we are likely to see tension within countries all over the world as autocratic political parties attempt to take control of liberal democracies and pro-democracy movements attempt to overthrow autocrats.

I'll admit this isn't the most hopeful vision of the future that we'd like to see, but I think it's fairly realistic given the current realities we see. I hope that this gives you some insight into what's going on and allows you to plan accordingly.

As always, let me know if you think I missed something or got something wrong, I'm always up for adjusting my thoughts, and I hope you enjoyed the read.

#politics #international politics #liberal democracy #democracy #individual rights #autocracy #cold war #new cold war #long rant (tm)

[travistr7]

#politics #liberal democracy #youtube

[pumpacti0n]

#fascism #friendly fascism #oligarchy #capitalism #voting #democracy #liberal democracy #bertram gross #noam chomsky #uploads #youtube #john dewey #politics #david hume #philosophy #walter benjamin #sisyphus 55 #project 2025 #authoritarianism #viktor frankl

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Helen Pluckrose

Published: Apr 30, 2023

In Western societies, nobody seems to think conservatism is the belief that society is already conservative or that Marxism is the belief that one lives in a Marxist state. Certainly nobody mistakes the movement that presumptuously calls itself ‘Social Justice” for holding the belief that we live in a just society. In these cases, it is easily understood that conservatives are people who stand for conservative values while Marxists are those who seek the implementation of Marxism. Meanwhile the “Social Justice” movement (or “wokeism”) is defined by its belief that society is highly unjust and desire to remedy this in certain very specific ways. In all of these cases, these positions are understood to represent goals in a society which its proponents believe to fall short of them.

Liberalism, on the other hand, is very often understood (by non-liberals) as a belief in liberalism, not as a goal but as a social reality - a goal achieved. This understanding of liberalism is often expressed differently by those on the left and those on the right but still expressed.

When this misconception is expressed by non-liberals on the left, it often takes the form of an accusation that liberals want to maintain the “status quo.” This clearly implies a belief that the status quo is liberal and, further, that liberals know it and are invested in keeping it that way. This generally stems from a feeling that left-liberalism is not radical enough. When it comes from the Marxist left, it might look like this:

When it comes from the identity-based Critical Social Justice left, it looks more like this,

When the right claim that liberals believe society to already be satisfactorily liberal, this is more often expressed by the right-winger telling anybody arguing for a liberal society either that we don’t have one or that liberalism isn’t working. This clearly implies a belief that the speaker believes we do have one and that it is working. These exchanges might look more like this:

It is from people on the right I have been hearing a lot recently, and specifically with the claim that liberalism has failed because authoritarian Critical Social Justice still exists. They usually go on to argue that we need to try some form of social conservatism. I have always found this quite bewildering because, at the same time as I, and other liberals, have been arguing against authoritarian CSJ and for liberalism, social conservatives have been arguing against it and for social conservatism and they have not succeeded either.

In what sense, then, is it reasonable to argue that liberalism has failed and social conservatism is needed when social conservatism (and all other critics of CSJ) have failed too? It is not as though social conservatives said “Go on, liberals. You have a go first and if that’s no good, we’ll give it a try.” They have been trying at the same time to persuade more people to their way of thinking.

There are social conservatives who would be quite happy in a properly liberal society where they get to believe, speak and live according to their own values, and have no wish to impose them on anyone else. For them, it may well seem that the ‘live and let live’ ethos of a liberal society is a reasonable Plan A, but if that does not work, then they would be justified in pushing for a socially conservative moral code. This would make sense, but asking liberals to support it does not. We don’t want, in a UK context, for people to be cancelled for insulting the monarch any more than we do for misgendering a trans person.

When people single out liberalism as the ethical framework that has failed, they seem to be indicating that they think liberalism was the one that had the power to succeed. That is, that they think we live in a society run on liberal principles. Yet, very often, when describing what has failed to me, they indicate the same highly illiberal things that I have been addressing as a liberal for many years. I think some of this comes from the fact that we call the kind of society we live in a ‘liberal democracy,’ which does seem to suggest that it is governed on the principles of liberalism, To some extent, this is true, in that a liberal democracy is defined as “a democratic system of government in which individual rights and freedoms are officially recognised and protected, and the exercise of political power is limited by the rule of law.” There’s a lot of wriggle room there, though. Which rights and freedoms do people have? Which people? And what limitations on political power are in place?

This definition certainly does not indicate that a society is really what could reasonably be considered liberal. Countries defined as liberal democracies have had institutional slavery and colonialism, denied women the vote and criminalised homosexuality among other very clearly illiberal things. If ever a country were fully liberal, it would likely not have liberals in it as we’d then be conservatives trying to conserve the liberal society. (This is a little facetious, but it is true that if people in a country are having to argue for liberal principles like freedom of speech and belief or the equal treatment under the law, then it is lacking in its liberalism).

This is a good distinction between liberal democracies and liberalism.

Liberal democracies are countries in which citizens have the right to actively participate in political processes, such as voting and expressing their opinions through speech and peaceful protest. These countries typically also grant a wide range of civil liberties, such as freedom of religion, speech, and press. However, in practice some countries may be more liberal than others – for example, those with a strong constitutional protection of individual rights may afford their citizens a higher degree of liberty than those without. Additionally, depending on the country’s culture or demographics, certain liberties may be more widely accepted than others. In general, liberal democracies share commonalities when it comes to protecting civil rights and liberties but can vary greatly in terms of how liberal they actually allow their citizens to be.

Liberalism is an ideology which promotes individual freedom, civil rights, and the importance of the rule of law. It emphasizes the protection of individual liberty through government guarantees of civil rights, freedoms, and responsibilities in societies. It also stresses that governments should limit its intervention in economic activities except for enforcing contracts, property rights and other market regulations that promote competition. Liberalism also stands for equal rights for individuals regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation; it supports the idea of personal responsibility and encourages a merit-based society where individuals can rise up based on hard work. The core values in Liberalism include respect for human dignity and individual autonomy, the free exchange of ideas and goods, equality under the law, justice tempered by mercy and compassion, social inclusion, environmental stewardship, international cooperation and a strong commitment to democracy.

Individual liberals will then vary on the weighting of these principles according to their politics and personal ethics. I, for example, as a liberal leftie, am more concerned with freedom of belief and speech than freedom of markets and, while I do support a meritocracy on principle, also think we cannot have one unless the equal rights for individuals regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation and class includes thorough attention to ensuring access to opportunities. A right-voting libertarian might well be most concerned with the freedom of markets and minimisation of state control while also supporting equal rights under the law.

It seems clear to me that some who say that liberalism has failed really mean that society has failed to be liberal. This is not wordplay. It is the difference between antibiotics failing to work and an individual failing to take their antibiotics; a diet not working and an individual not sticking to their diet. If you are someone who would like to live in a genuinely liberal society but recognise that you are not, I urge you not to give up on liberalism, but help the push to create that society.

Other people, of course, genuinely do not want to live in a liberal society. Even if it fulfilled all its promises perfectly, they would not. Marxists do not. Social Justice activists do not. Social conservatives often do not. Postliberals do not. It is postliberals whom I have been reading most lately (and becoming very depressed by). They would be likely to reject the key tenets of liberalism with some variation of this:

Individual rights and freedoms.

We are suffering from an excess of individualism and freedom at the cost of meaningful connections. We should think less of individual fulfilment, rights and freedoms and more of family, community, responsibilities and commitment.

Pluralism - a positive view of having many different kinds of people, customs, cultures and ideas. Celebration of difference. Robust, reasoned debate.

Cultural integrity is being lost. We should encourage cohesion and shared values, traditions and customs.

Universalism - Being united in our common humanity, experiences and goals.

We should focus more on our own communities, families, nation.

Progress - We should keep seeking to advance our scientific knowledge and improve our society.

The relentless pursuit of progress is destabilising & alienating. In human rights it pushes humans away from their natural inclinations and relationships and, in science, is potentially dangerous, particularly in the realms of technology.

The freedom of markets, enterprise and innovation. (Liberals vary on the extent of regulation needed, if any)

There is too much focus on free markets and innovation. This leads to a shallow and artificial consumer culture, the commodification of people and the disruption of families.

If you think this way, you are clearly not a liberal, although you are not necessarily illiberal either. (I am not Ibram X. Kendi about liberalism). The growth of postliberalism, particularly in the UK, is gaining significant momentum as an attitude if not as a movement. Although proponents of it are usually very aware of what liberalism is (which makes a refreshing change from many of its critics), I think they too misattribute too many of society’s ills to it, often seem to conflate individuality with narcissism and freedom with irresponsibility, are too narrow in their outlook and can be unwarrantedly alarmist about technology. I intend to address these issues in forthcoming essays.

#Helen Pluckrose #liberalism #liberal ethics #liberal society #classic liberalism #liberal democracy #illiberalism #anti liberalism #religion is a mental illness

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Scott Stantis, Chicago Tribune

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 1, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

Although no one has seen the charges, MAGA Republican lawmakers reacted to the decision of a grand jury of ordinary citizens to charge a former president by preemptively accusing Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg of abusing the power of the government against MAGA Republicans.

“[C]orrupt Socialist District Attorney Alvin Bragg [and] the radical Far Left” (New York representative Elise Stefanik) “irreparably damaged our country” (House speaker Kevin McCarthy) “for pure political gain” (Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin). It is “a direct assault on the tens of millions of Americans who support [Trump]” (Ohio senator J. D. Vance), and “[the House Republicans] will hold Alvin Bragg accountable” (Stefanik, again).

The lawmakers have reached their position after extensive coordination with Trump, with whom Stefanik, Jordan, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speak regularly to keep him abreast of what they know about investigations and to plan policy. As Stephen Collinson pointed out on CNN, they are taking to a new level what they have been doing since Trump took office: weaponizing the government to put Trump back into power.

As the Manhattan grand jury’s investigation got close to a decision, McCarthy backed an investigation of the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Promptly, committee chairs Jim Jordan (R-OH, Judiciary), James Comer (R-KY, Oversight and Accountability), and Bryan Steil (R-WI, House Administration) demanded that Bragg turn over all documents and testimony related to the investigation and appear before them to answer questions. As the counsel for the district attorney’s office, Leslie B. Dubeck, pointed out in response, these demands are “an unprecedented and illegitimate incursion on New York’s sovereign interests” and amount to  “unlawful political interference.”

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, told Washington Post reporter Greg Sargent: “This is an extreme move to use the resources of Congress to interfere with a criminal investigation at the state and local level and block an indictment.” It is, he said, “the kind of political culture you find in authoritarian dictatorships.”

At Axios today, Sophia Cai and Juliegrace Brufke ran the numbers of Trump backers in Congress. Thirty-seven Republicans have already endorsed him, and in the House, McCarthy has put them into key positions. Trump supporters make up more than a third of the Republicans members on the Committee on the Judiciary, which oversees the legal system, and the Committee on Oversight, which oversees government accountability. Nine of the 25 Republicans on the Judiciary Committee support him; 11 of the 26 Republicans on House Oversight do, too.

What is actually in the indictment remains unknown, but the language Republicans are using to attack it reveals that what it says doesn’t particularly matter. Their claim that “the Left” is “weaponizing government” against the right echoes “post-liberal” ideology. This worldview explains why the right wing continues to lose ground in society despite Republican victories at the polls. The problem is not that right-wing positions are unpopular, post-liberal thinkers insist, it’s that the “left” has captured the nation’s institutions.

They argue that the ideas that underpin democracy—equality before the law, separation of church and state, academic freedom, a market-driven economy, free speech—have undermined virtue. These values are “liberal” values because they are based on the idea of the importance of individual freedom from an oppressive government, and they are at the heart of American democracy.

But post-liberal thinkers say that liberalism’s defense of individual rights has destroyed the family, communities, and even the fundamental differences between men and women, throwing society into chaos. They propose to restore the values of traditional Christianity, which would, they believe, restore traditional family structures and supportive communities, and promote the virtue of self-sacrifice as people give up their individualism for their children (their worldview utterly rejects abortion).

The position of those embracing a post-liberal order is a far cry from the Reagan Republicans’ claim to want small government and free markets. The new ideologues want a strong government to enforce their religious values on American society, and they reject those of both parties who support democratic norms—for it is those very norms they see as destructive. They urge their leaders to “dare to rule.”

Those who call for a new post-liberal order want to “reconquer public institutions all over the United States,” as Christopher Rufo put it after Florida governor Ron DeSantis appointed him to the board of New College as part of a mission to turn the progressive school into a right-wing bastion. “If we can take this high-risk, high-reward gambit and turn it into a victory,” Rufo told Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times, “we’re going to see conservative state legislators starting to reconquer public institutions all over the United States.”

To spur that process, Republicans have turned to so-called culture wars, but as David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo notes, issues are becoming heated not in some vague way, but because Republicans are deliberately making normal processes partisan to destroy consensus about them. So, for example, Rufo pushed the idea that the legal framework “critical race theory” was being pushed in public agencies and public schools in order, he told Benjamin Wallace-Wells of the New Yorker, “to politicize the bureaucracy.” He hoped to “take some of these essentially corrupted state agencies and then contest them, and then create rival power centers within them.”

The Republican attacks on Bragg reflect this process. They are quite deliberately destroying public faith in the justice system, declaring Trump’s looming indictment a political attack even before we know what’s in it, and attributing the indictment to a single man—a Black man— rather than to a jury of ordinary citizens. That attack, as Raskin pointed out, is their own attempt to politicize the Department of Justice and then take it over.  

It is important to understand the pattern behind these attacks on American institutions. They are not piecemeal; they are a larger attack on democracy itself.

Republicans are wrong, not only in their attacks on Bragg, but also in their premise that liberal democracy is immoral. It has not destroyed families or communities, or ended self-sacrifice: just the opposite.

The principles of liberal democracy made nineteenth-century writer Harriet Beecher Stowe turn her grief for her dead eighteen-month-old son into the best-selling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which showed why no mother’s child should be sold away from her. It made Rose Herera sue her former enslaver for custody of her own children after the Civil War. It made Julia Ward Howe demand the right to vote so her abusive husband could not control her life any longer.

It made Black mathematician and naturalist Benjamin Banneker call out Thomas Jefferson for praising liberty while denying it to Black Americans; Sitting Bull defend the right of the Lakota to practice their own new religion, even though he did not believe in it; Saum Song Bo tell The New York Sun he was insulted by their request for money to build a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty when, three years before, the country had excluded people like him; Dr. Héctor García realize that Mexican Americans needed to be able to vote in order to protect themselves; Edward Roberts claim the right to get an education despite his physical paralysis; drag king Stormé DeLarverie throw the first punch at the Stonewall riot that jump-started the gay rights movement.

And self-sacrifice? Americans trying to push the United States to live up to its principles have  always put themselves on the line for freedom rather than permitting democracy to fall to white supremacists or theocrats. As James Meredith recalled of his long struggle to desegregate the University of Mississippi in the 1960s: “My entire crusade at Ole Miss, you see, was a love story. It is a story about my love for America….”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#reptile mind #political cartoon #incitement to violence #Scott Stantis #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #American Values #Vast Right Wing Conspiracy #liberal democracy #Liberty and Justice For All #attacks on American Institutions

[terraplusultra]

"El Fin de la Historia" de Francis Fukuyama

¿Tú qué opinas? ¿Los conflictos étnicos y económicos son escenciales de las democracias liberales?

Fukuyama sugiere que con el colapso del comunismo y la Guerra Fría, la humanidad habría alcanzado el fin de su evolución ideológica. La democracia liberal representaría el sistema político final y ya no habrían desarrollos significativos más allá de este punto en términos de estructuras políticas. “El Fin de la Historia” de Francis Fukuyama, fue publicado en 1989. Los Argumentos…

View On WordPress

#1989 #analisis #análise #análisis #argument #argumenta #argumento #arguments #brief #End of History #Fim da história #Fukuyama&039;s #lectura #liberal democracy #neoliberalismo #reading #report #reporte #resumen #summary #text #texto

[indizombie]

We've reached finally at the position of an unamended constitution which is actually amended in practise. Liberal democratic character of the Constitution has not been altered by amendments but, minorities are lynched, journalists are prosecuted or worse, killed. Lawyers are attacked for doing their professional duties, activists from civil society are thrown behind bars and the ED is unleashed against all. Then there is targeted prosecution for some and impunity for others. Abuse of criminal law has been raised to the level of a policy. You do not need a gun to be a terrorist. You can be thrown into jail for the thoughts in your mind. You, as a lawyer can argue a case in court and be thrown in jail...The legal profession is in danger. We all know what happened in the Delhi riots, Elgar Parishad and Bhima Koregaon cases; these cases represent the transformation of the victim into an accused in a Court of law by the use of UAPA.

Indira Jaising, senior advocate

#Indira Jaising #India #BJP #Indian Constitution #Liberal democracy #amendments #lynching #minorities #murder #journalists #arbitrary arrest #civil society activists #abuse of criminal law #legal profession #2020 Delhi Pogrom #Elgar Parishad #2018 Bhima Koregaon violence #UAPA

[achilleanfemme]

SCOTUS v. Democracy

Capitalism and democracy are fundamentally opposed to one another. This is a tenant of socialist politics that I learned early on in my political development on the Marxist left in 2017. A social-political-economic system that supports claims to capitalist, minority control of private property over majoritarian, democratic claims to control of wealth and resources cannot support genuine popular, democratic sovereignty. The interests of the vast swaths of the world’s ordinary peoples who are workers, peasants, small farmers, small business owners, enslaved and incarcerated people are completely at odds with the rule of a small, owning-class elite. This has always been the core flaw of liberal democracy.

Liberalism, while a vast school of political thought, most typically seeks to balance private property rights with social, economic, and civil rights. Liberals support capitalism to some degree but also support democracy to some degree. The contradiction here has played out bloodily over-and-over across history. Large capitalists and their conservative and far-right allies will always support private property rights over democracy in times of crises. Ordinary people will nearly always support democracy over private property rights in a crisis (race, gender, religion, sexuality, caste, national origin, colonial status, and disability status are complicating factors here for sure). In our time of profound social, political, economic, and ecological crisis it is no wonder that the wheels are falling off liberal democratic institutions all over the world, as forces, especially those from the far-right, seek to permanently enshrine minority, capitalist rule to protect private property at the expense of the continued existence of humanity. 

In the United States of America, there is no shortage of examples of liberal and social democratic institutions collapsing under the weight of decades long rightwing rule and neoliberalism. The Supreme Court and the judiciary have played an outsized role in this forced democratic decay. One case before SCOTUS, Moore v. Harper, demonstrates just how far the MAGA right in the USA is willing to go to undermine democracy in the name of racial capitalist and hetero-patriarchal rule.

The Harper case, which is set to be argued before the High Court on December 7, revolves around a North Carolina Republican gerrymandered electoral map that was struck down by the state’s supreme court. The plaintiffs in the case, the conservatives, who support the gerrymandered map, are arguing in favor of a fringe, far-right legal theory known as the independent state legislature theory (ISLT). ISLT supporters argue that the US Constitution only allows state legislatures and federal courts to regulate elections in the USA (meaning not state or federal executive branches, state ballot measures, and federal legislatures). State legislatures and federal courts are notably two of the political institutions that are most captured by far-right forces in the USA. A recent New York Times piece notes, if ISLT is implemented by the Court, this would threaten state and municipal laws around ranked-choice voting, rights to a secret ballot, regulation of maintenance of voter rolls, and more. It would effectively mean the end of free-and-fair elections in states dominated by the Republican Party.

So, what is to be done? I have long argued that it has historically been the role of the Left to support liberal democracy in times of fascist insurgence. The liberal center has demonstrated throughout history an inability to stop and reverse slides towards far-right authoritarian capitalist rule. A further move away from any semblance of democracy in the USA would mean that leftwing movements would have to move completely underground. Many comrades would be disappeared, imprisoned, exiled, or killed and our movements would have to resort to guerilla style tactics to protect vulnerable communities that are already under assault under our current governmental regime. This would undoubtedly result in much more suffering and loss of life than if we are able to continue organizing for social and economic justice under our current liberal democratic arrangement. On a personal note, I rather like not dying in a White Power uprising.

Socialist and progressive support for liberal democracy does not mean support for the status quo. I believe massive social, economic, and democratic reforms are necessary to hold on to the US’s liberal democracy. Abolition of the Supreme Court (or at least ending of judicial review), abolition of the Senate, creating multi-member congressional districts using Ranked-Choice Voting to allow for a multi-party democracy, and the dramatic limiting of Presidential powers are just a few of the democratic reforms needed. Moreover, mass expansion of labor organizing rights and voting rights, a new Equal Rights Amendment that would enshrine the right to an abortion and non-discrimination protections for all historically oppressed communities into the Constitution, and the adoption of something along the lines of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights are needed. We know that none of these things will come to fruition without a militant, well-organized Left in the USA that is fighting for them because they challenge the power of the ruling racial capitalist order. Without these things, I fear that I soon will not even be able to publish pieces like the one you are reading now. The stakes are high, the challenges are immense, but the rewards for our action could be great.

#scotus #anti fascist #liberal democracy #democracy #elections #midterms #socialism #democratic socialism #leftist #marxist #progressive politics #progressive #bernie #DSA

[tomorrowusa]

« Wygrała Polska, wygrała demokracja. » (Poland won, democracy won.)

— Donald Tusk, former prime minister and currently leader of the democratic opposition in Poland, on the apparent victory of opposition forces in Sunday's election in Poland. From Polska Agencja Prasowa.

Today is a great day for democracy. The MAGA-ish Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – known by the unfortunate acronym PiS) has been booted out of power after eight miserable years.

Donald Tusk, a good Donald, is the leader of Koalicja Obywatelska (KO) which is the largest of the three pro-democracy groupings who together are projected to win enough votes in the Sejm (the lower house of parliament).

Turnout for this election was about 73%.

This victory by PO and its likely coalition partners Trzecia Droga and Lewnica carries significance similar to Joe Biden's victory in 2020.

Projections made by a reliable exit poll give the pro-democracy parties a total of 248 seats in the Sejm. 231 are needed for a majority. Final results are likely to differ slightly from these numbers.

Oh yeah, there's an extreme rightwing party called Konfederacja which is led by an idiot named Janusz Korwin-Mikke who is a misogynist with pro-Putin tendencies. Konfederacja, in American terms, is somewhat like the House Freedom Caucus – but led by the My Pillow guy or Rudy Giuliani. Fortunately Konfederacja won just an estimated 12 seats.

I'll write about this more tomorrow. But it's not just a victory for democracy but also one for NATO, the European Union, and (probably) Ukraine. Putin can't be very happy about liberal democracy being strengthened next door to him. It halts a trend towards the right in Europe.

#poland #polska #donald tusk #election #wybory do sejmu #prawo i sprawiedliwość #pis #koalicja obywatelska #trzecia droga #lewnica #konfederacja #liberal democracy #nato #european union #chwała polsce

[agentfascinateur]

This is the first genocide that the liberal democracies of the West have endorsed and supported.

- Richard Falk, a Professor emeritus of International Law at Princeton University

#dystopia #ww3 #palestine #palestinians #gaza #genocide #childrens holocaust #mass murder #biden administration #israeli apartheid #israeli occupation #idf terrorists #iof terrorism #war crimes #free palestine #free gaza #justice #icc #icj #humanitarian crisis #ethnic cleansing #is weapons #us complicity #uk complicity #eu complicity #right wing extremism #netanyahu the madman #joe biden #liberal democracy #racism

[uboat53]

Well, after years of outright lies, half-truths, and omissions out of the Russian government, here is a statement that, as far as I can tell, is entirely true (SHORT RANT (TM) ahead):

"[W]e are at war not so much with Ukraine and the Ukrainian army as with the collective West. At this point we are really at war with the collective West, with NATO." -- Sergei Shoigu, Russian Minister of Defense

This statement is worth analyzing because I believe it is entirely true. Understanding what he means will mean a greater understanding of what the next several decades, perhaps even the next half-century, will look like.

So yeah, Russia's attack on Ukraine, not just the most recent one but all of their bellicose actions back to and even before their 2014 invasion of Crimea and the Donbass, is actually an attack on NATO, the west, and the very concept of western values such as individual liberty and liberal democratic governance.

These values threaten authoritarian and autocratic governments like Vladimir Putin's Russia and Xi Xinping's China among others. Putin's moves against Ukraine have all been motivated by a desire to suppress the rising embrace of western governance and values by the people and government of that country.

Ukraine is particularly important to Russia in this regard because of the close connections, linguistically, culturally, historically, and personally, between people in Ukraine and people in Russia. This closeness means that ideas that spread in Ukraine are also likely to spread to Russia, this is the reason that Putin has acted aggressively in ways that the leaders of other authoritarian countries have not.

But that doesn't mean that this will continue to be an isolated event. The fact that other authoritarian countries are not currently threatened by cultural ties to populations that are beginning to embrace these kinds of western ideals does not mean that they won't be in the future. In fact, we already see China building up its military capacity for a likely assault on the island of Taiwan.

This is similar to the conflict that we faced in the Cold War, though even more drawn on ideological lines. The conflict in the Cold War was largely defined along the lines of economic systems; communism and capitalism; the state control of industry vs the free market. The conflict now seems to be different, a conflict of systems of governance. Autocratic governance pitted against, not democracy, but liberal democracy, democratic governance but with strong protections for individual rights.

And that last is important. An autocratic or authoritarian government can exist in a democracy. What western values truly mean in this context is a respect for individual liberties, the right of individuals to protest and even oppose the government short of violence if they wish. It is a society in which the government itself cannot use its powers over society to privilege the views of those in power or punish the views of those who oppose them.

Those who have been listening to the rhetoric of authoritarian leaders such as Xi Xinping, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, or even the leaders of more open countries such as Jair Bolsonaro or Donald Trump will have noticed that they have increasingly crossed the line in terms of using the power of their governments to promote their own views and suppress those that oppose them over the past decade.

In my view, this will likely be the defining conflict of the next several decades. When the Cold War ended, liberal democracy, free market economics, and the countries that practiced and promoted them were ascendant, that is no longer the case. The rise of China in particular has shifted the balance of global ideology and created a powerful actor devoted to autocracy. It may be that it is possible to avoid further direct conflict between the major powers involved in this conflict, but I do not believe that this conflict of interests will be settled amicably anytime in the next several years.

The conflict in Ukraine, then, is genuinely as the Russian Minister of Defense says it is; a conflict between autocracy and liberal democracy. It is important, then, that those of us in the west who believe in the values of individual rights and liberties as well as representative government commit to supporting Ukraine. The conflict is likely to be long and grinding and there will be a good deal of suffering and bloodshed before it is finished, but if we do not then autocratic nations will be encouraged to attack their neighbors and suppress individual rights and liberties anywhere in the world in order to preserve their own autocracies at home.

That's not a world I want to live in, I hope I'm not alone in that regard.

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/time-come-top-putin-official-201022301.html

#short rant (tm) #politics #us politics #international politics #liberal democracy #autocracy #autocrats #russia ukraine putin #russia #russia ukraine war #putin ukraine #vladimir putin #xi xinping #china #united states of america #united states #nato

[usauthoritarianism]

#USA #us ball #USABALL #meme #countryballs #memes #country #corruption #the west #the state #liberal democracy #neoliberalism #working class #inequality #politics #capitalism #lobbying #gerrymandering #government #federal government #hehehe serious #why #imperialism #us imperialism #military industrial complex #aipac #lobbyists #government corruption #climate justice #fossil fuels

[pumpacti0n]

leadership ≠ liberation

collective autonomy makes any notion of hierarchical leadership unnecessary. when people are able to self-direct, they won't need middlepersons or orgs acting as daddies and mommies constantly undermining their desires and pathologizing them. leaders are incapable of serving everyone equally

so "we need new leaders!" is fundamentally untrue. every leader can be corrupted, or simply ineffectual. that quality is within the nature of leadership itself, not the result of an individual's flaws. it is simply the inherent risk of being led and following in the first place: being misled.

a solution to this is encouraging & directly supporting people's efforts to think and act on their own, guiding them in the process of figuring out what they need and want the most. when people can lead themselves, they can take full responsibility for the direction they go in. when they're (mis)led, it's leaders who will share blame.

often leaders will have an incentive to blame their failures on other shit. its not necessarily always out of malice, but they don't ever seem to question the merits of needing a leader in the first gotdamn place. they just take their position for granted as a necessary good.

this is what people like us mean when we say that "power corrupts", it's not just a buzzworthy catchphrase, its an analysis of how power tends to work when it is consolidated and hoarded to establish hierarchies.

its only a surprise if you aren't very critical of power and leadership, and think authoritarianism works or is necessary for independent and collective liberation, when in reality it works as a counter-force, regulating and micromanaging endlessly, inevitably trying to control the thoughts and habits the population it claims to represent the best interests of

enough of this "leadership" shit. it works to neutralize self-empowerment. instead, we could organize around common interests and goals, consensus, solidarity models that don't rely on one or a handful of would-be experts, politicians, clerics and managers preventing us from being free. leadership/representation and democracy are incompatible.

revolutionary leadership is an oxymoron.

#leadership #democracy #social democracy #individualism #autonomy #bodily autonomy #liberation #unions #workers rights #human rights #revolution #voting #liberal democracy #liberalism #socialism #communism #anarchism #marxism leninism #marxism leninism maoism #mass line #cpusa #psl #leftism #anticapitalism #marxism