On 12/19/2014 12:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 6:12 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/18/2014 2:05 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 9:07 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/17/2014 8:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 17 Dec 2014, at 13:03, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
Starting from the fact that The NHS was introduced by Bismark
in the
German Empire. for the same reasons that it is sustained today
by
"democracies": populism.
Since the introduction of NHS in England no new hospital was
constructed until recently.
Democracy, an element of the liberal state, lives on premises
that it
can not itself guarantee. (Bockenforde). It is based on the
idea that
people will not act or vote for their inmediate interests but
will
vote for anything that maintain the common good forever. That
is
absolutely false. The only thing that maintain democracy is not
democracy, but the morality of the people. That morality is
contunuously underminded by democracy itself by means of the
logic of
populism and the formation of majorities that produce false and
impossible and incompatible political promises for different
groups of
people. That divides and confront ones with others.
It is based on the idea that a million idiot votes within an urn
produces wise decissions. On the idea that consensus produce
truth.
Democracy is destined to be hyaked by false democrats that do
not
believe in democracy but want to abuse it from inside . They
are the
worst antidemocrats. And the responsibles of that hyaking are
te dumb
people that believe acritically in democracy.
I disagree. Democracy is based on the fact that people will vote
for their
immediate interest, and that it will be implemented reasonably well
by
opportunist politicians, and if they don't succeed people will stop
voting
against them. (so it is not just vote, but a promise that you can
vote
again if dissatisfied).
Democracy is not perfect, and indeed it can regress easily to
tyranny. Like
a living being can die, or a cell become cancerous, democracy can
easily be
perverted and misused by bandits or ideologues. There is nothing we
can do
about that, except investing in means (like education, logic,
reasoning,
...) helping people to not fall in the trap of the demagogs.
It is not the system which makes bad people. It is bad people which
makes
the system bad.
How americans have ever accepted prohibition remains a bit of a
mystery to
me. In this context, I am not so much for legalization of drugs
than for
penalization of prohibitionists, and education explaining how
prohibition
illustrates well a technic to kill democracy and its most important
key
features like the separation and independence of the different
powers,
including the press.
They accepted it out of Puritan theology: that this life is just a test
and
indulgence in any pleasure is suspect and possibly a sin. It's the same
strain
of thought that wants to ban any recreational drugs, pornography,
prostitution,
homosexuality,...
But the institutionalization of religion, especially when the state
and the
religion are not well separated is a deeper cause of the problem for
democracies. It is that mentality which has made possible
prohibition: the
very idea that other people can decide for you between the good and
the wrong.
But people who live in a community do need to decide on some rules of
behavior
in order to live without conflict. The important thing is distinguish
between
a sphere of personal morals and a sphere of public ethics. This is the
thing
missing in Islam (and was missing in the West before the
Enlightenment). The
great advancement of the U.S. was not democracy, the Greeks and
Scandanavians
had invented democracy long before; it was the invention of
constitutionally
limited government and inalienable human rights.
I agree. I am a great admirer of the american constitution. Sadly, I think
it
eventually failed.
In my view the flaw is that the constitution still requires interpretation.
If it
could be written in some formal mathematical language, then it could be
directly
implemented by every citizen, policeman, judge, soldier, etc.
That's a pure fantasy. The Constitution was written if fairly plain
language,
Doesn't matter. The problem is that natural language is just not unambiguous. This is a
well known problem with legal systems, and the reason why it is accepted to have judges
and law professors interpret laws. One example amongst many possible: the constitution
protects freedom of speech, but what is "speech" exactly? Are computer games speech?
but it could not (and should not) have foreseen every technological advance.
Of course.
Then it depends on weather you believe if rational ethics is possible or not. I believe
it is, and when a rigorous ethical principal is derived, technological progress does not
change it.
It said little about privacy, only prohibiting "unreasonable search" because
surveillance was impractical in 1780.
"and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation,
and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized."
The mention of "warrants" strongly implies a right to privacy. Otherwise, what are the
warrants meant to protect?
It was meant to prevent seizure of material evidence. It was court interpretation that
extended it to spoken communication (as in wiretaps) but not to photo surveillance in
public places. Video surveillance of public places, for example, is not prohibited.
Courts have held that evidence inside a home that is visible from the street is
admissible, but not if it is "seen" by means of infra-red. So do you still think
technology is irrelevant?
If you read the text of the fourth amendment, there should be little doubt in your mind
of what the founding fathers would think of the activities of the NSA.
If, as they claim, they were only keeping records of who talked to who? The founding
fathers would probably object to the feds doing it - but they might have been OK with the
states doing it.
More of a problem in my mind is the fact that courts don't really question requests for
warrants. They tend to just rubber stamp them so long as the cops put in the right words.
There's a recent case in which an upstanding citizen was shot dead by a no-knock SWAT raid
on his house. When he heard people breaking in he grabbed his shotgun, so of course the
cops shot him - and besides he was black. They had a warrant, but it was from a jailhouse
informant who said he knew of a drug deal in that house five years earlier. Of course the
request for a warrant failed to mention it was based on five year old data and the cops
didn't bother to even research whether the house had changed hands. The judge didn't ask
any of the right questions either.
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
