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Constitutions do not in themselves prevent governments from taking people away in the middle of the night for questioning. The US Constitution is, at most, one of the factors which has led the country to develop into a relatively free country.
Consider, for example, the 1936 Soviet Constitution, written during some of the worst years of Stalin's terror. The full text can be found here: http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.html . It contains such gems as:
CHAPTER X ARTICLE 124. In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the U.S.S.R. is separated from the state, and the school from the church. Freedom of religious worship and freedom of antireligious propaganda is recognized for all citizens.
CHAPTER X ARTICLE 128. The inviolability of the homes of citizens and privacy of correspondence are protected by law.
Nice words, but nothing more.
By contrast, the UK doesn't actually have a written constitution at all, and has evolved into another relatively free country.
Constitutions alone certainly don't protect from despotism if the citizens don't support its contents or the state is powerful enough and willing to ignore it. They are still an important foundation for any free country, I think. They serve as a declaration of intention of how the state is supposed to work and as a basic common ground on which all laws have to be measured.
No constitution is perfect and unfortunately their articles get bent by legislature time and time again because of ambiguisly written statements or simply out of ignorance/malice. Still, in a functional country most laws taking these kind of creative interpretations too far will get sacked sooner or later; either after a change of government or in a court of law.
For me a constitution is much more than just a piece of paper, it's the manifestation of a country's political culture. It doesn't even need to be written down; Rothbardian fantasy brought up the UK and while there's no constitution written down in a single document, the several bills and court decisions certainly provide a constitutional framework.
In regards to the United States it means that the Constitution itself does not prevent people from vanishing off the street but it's a manifestation of the will that this is not supposed to happen and of the general believe that man is born with certain inviolable rights.
That is also what seperates the USA from many, if not most, other countries, in my opinion. The USA are not perfect and neither is their constitution but so far far I haven't read a better one.
There have been changes for the worse in some aspects but I'm quite optimistic that it can and will improve again as long as there who share similiar values with their Founding Fathers.
The United States are still one of the freest countries in the world from my point of view; with only few others (like Switzerland) matching it in that regard.
I'm not an American with a constitution fetish by the way; I'm German. Germany is a very free country, too, certainly freer than many other countries but considerably less so than the USA. In my opinion this has much to do with different political cultures and different views on the relationship between individuals and the state. This also manifests itself in the constitution: The German constitution declares "human dignity" as sacrosanct. All other basic rights get acknowledged but not exactly in the form of "natural rights"; instead of protecting existing rights from all state intervention, the rights get merely granted by state. This means that those rights can also be revoked by the state again - albeit with high(ish) obstacles (someone had to "abuse" those rights by working against the so called "Freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung" or FDGO [roughly "Free and democratic constitutional order"]).
This also means the state can (and in most cases does) further limit those rights, resulting in a "Freedom of Speech" magnitudes weaker than in the US for example. Article 5.1 of our constitution states that there is free speech, article 5.2 states that this right can be limited by general laws... leading to a situation where it's allowed to say everything (as long as it's not A, or B, or C, or...).
In this country, it does. At least so far. With Obama and Holder in charge, there is no telling where it might go. But right now, as of this writing, people do not vanish in the middle of night never to be seen or heard from again. Even in matters of national security, US citizens caught here in the cannot be held incommunicado.
US citizens caught on a foreign battlefield fighting for the enemy do not have the same constitutional protections. Non citizens being dealt with overseas have no protections at all. This is especially true when dealing with those non-citizens on a battlefield. This is my guess as to where Drachill was going with his reference to the NDAA.
(Bold added)
Yes, absolutely. One of the problems with the US Constitution is its vagueness, which allows multiple interpretations. The Swiss Constitution, for example, is a much larger document, which is much more specific and therefore less open to different interpretations- the statement of general principles at the beginning of the Swiss Constitution is comparable to the entire US Constitution; it then goes on to describe mechanisms, rights and duties in much more detail. To my mind, this makes it a stronger defence against tyranny that its American equivalent.
I agree. Maybe constitutions are more symptoms of a country's political cultural than causes of such.
Hmm...Americans, and especially American politicians, often claim that their country is the freest in the world. This is part of the whole mythology of American exceptionalism- the US is the last great hope of mankind, the City on the Hill, and so on. As far as I'm concerned, this is nonsense.
There have been many different attempts to measure freedom (of different sorts), so that meaningful international comparisons can be made. The USA usually comes out upper-middling among advanced Western nations in these indices. For example:
Heritage Institute Economic Freedoms Index: USA 12th. See: http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Rankings: USA 21st. See: http://pages.eiu.com/rs/eiu2/images/Democracy-Index-2012.pdf
IHRRI Human Rights Index (measures civil liberties, but not democracy): USA 18th. See: http://www.ihrri.com/contry.php
Countries that come out above the USA in all 3 categories (economic, political and civil liberty) are Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland. The Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands do exceptionally well in civil rights and democracy, but not in economic freedom. Switzerland does well in democracy and economic freedom, but is lower than the US in civil rights.
Conclusion: Among the advanced Western Nations, the US is exceptional for its size and its power. It is also exceptional in that it is one of the first countries to be relatively free. But in 2014, there is absolutely nothing exceptional about American freedom.
As someone that has traveled around quite a bit, I disagree.
For now, this is the easiest country to start a business and make your fortune. It is also the best country to be a criminal defendant. No other nation goes so far out of its way to protect the criminals on trial here. (That's why we do not bring terrorists to your shores. Way to many legal hassles.)
While there may be nicer places to live, maybe some better to work in, possibly a few better to invest in, the United States is still the most consistent place that people from around the world are trying to get into.
Rothbardian Fantasy - there is nothing that Rothbard was wrong about that Kevin is right about. And there is much that Rothbard was correct about that Kevin Carson gets hopelessly wrong - for example money and banking (K.C. falls for the same low-or-no interest rates fallacies as late 19th century "anarchists" did - Rothbard understood that all lending should be from REAL SAVINGS at an interest rate agreed between borrowers and lenders) and land (again KC falls for the fallacies - this time of Ricardian socialists, people who took David Ricardo's writings on land and developed them in an anti land owner direction, these fallacies were refuted by the American economist Frank Fetter a century ago). As for Rothbard's errors (such as attributing American foreign policy to the interests of "Big Business" and-or "the rich") - K.C. makes all the same blunders (on American and international history) that the late Murray Rothbard made.
"Nothing exceptional about the United States" - how about the First Amendment and the Second Amendment? Even today (when they are attacked by the government) the First Amendment and the Second Amendment put the United States into a different league to other Western nations - such as Britain.
People such as Barack Obama and Mr Holder want to destroy what is exceptional about America - but they have not yet succeeded.
"Anarchists" who declare that such things as the United States Constitution (including the Bill of Rights) does not matter - are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
As I half expected, my comments on the (lack of) American exceptionalism were not well received by the American players.
I've travelled too, and come to different conclusions from you.
Yes, it's easier to start a business and make your fortune in the US than in (probably) any European country, although in Hong Kong and Australia it's at least as easy as in the US. But for the majority of people, making a fortune isn't a possibility anywhere- most people aren't potential world-beating entrepreneurs. What matters for most people is the possibility of bettering their life through hard work- i.e. social/ economic mobility. And here the USA is emphatically not a success story- the US has one of the lowest rates of social mobility in the Western world, along with the UK. If you're born poor in America, your chances of moving up the socio-economic ladder are considerably lower than say in Norway, Sweden or Canada.
To its credit, the US does provide excellent legal protection for defendants. On the other hand, the US has a very bad record with respect to state surveillance. See: https://www.privacyinternational.org/sites/privacyinternational.org/files/file-downloads/phrcomp_sort_0.pdf .
This underlines the point that I'm trying to make here- the US is better than other advanced countries in some respects, worse in others. Overall, it's a pretty good country to live in with respectable levels of political, civil and economic freedom. But it isn't exceptional- that's a myth
Lots of countries have constitutions with provisions similar to the US Bill of Rights. Nothing exceptional there.
From an outside perspective, Obama's efforts to undermine American freedom look very much like a continuation of the Bush Jr administration's policies.
I don't think that the US constitution doesn't matter. I do think that: a) it doesn't protect freedom any more than a lot of other constitutions and b) the importance of constitutions in general is over-estimated.
I'm not sure what "social mobility" means in that context. It almost sounds like you want the fry cook at McDonald's to be given a complimentary membership to the country club.
What is it you are getting at here?
Why do I care what some international privacy organization says? They have their own agenda to support. Our intelligence services have a far more important agenda to pursue. Frankly, most of these groups are just pawns and don't even know it.
Here is the bottom line. Privacy is a myth. That word does not appear in the anywhere in the US Constitution. This is one of those mythical "rights" some people make up because they simply feel it is right.
There are some things the government must get a warrant for. Most urgent national security issues are handled through a secure court open for business 24/7/365. (I hope the reasons for that secret court are not lost on you.) There some things that do not require a warrant at all. (International phones calls for one.)
Do we do it right all the time? No. Is there abuse of the system? Yes. Is the alternative better? Absolutely not. But not too worry, with the clown we have in the White House now, it is going to get a lot worse once we find out how badly he dropped the ball.
What freedoms did Bush undermine? I hear that a lot, but when it comes right down to it, no one can show me anything they are not free to do today that they were free to do on Sept. 10, 2001.
The Constitution is only as good as the people that are supposed to enforce it and those that live under it. The minute either or both start thinking they are above that document, the government is sliding down the slope.
Bush went out of his way to remain within the bounds of the Constitution. Even when it came to water boarding terrorists. Obama is trying to wipe his feet on that same document.
So yeah. We're in trouble right now.
Definition of Social Mobility courtesy of Google:
Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households, or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to others' social location within a given society.
It's important because social mobility is what allows people from poor backgrounds who work and study hard to succeed. A society with no social mobility is completely ossified- you're stuck in the socio-economic class that you're born into (the Indian caste system and the feudal system in Europe are examples of societies where social mobility is/was close to nil).
Compared to other advanced western countries, the US has low social mobility. When compared to more socially mobile nations, socio-economic status in America is more dependant on birth than on ability or effort. That isn't good, and it's far more important than the fact that a small number of people can become very wealthy.
Well...The right to privacy is recognized by (for example) the European Convention on Human Rights. If it's not recognized under the US Constitution, then that's a good example of the inadequacy of the constitution as a safeguard for liberty.
You have way too much faith in the honesty and good intentions of your 'security' services.
I'd say that the main freedom that Bush undermined was the one that you don't recognize- the right to privacy.
As for Obama- on reflection, you're right. He really has gone further than Bush ever contemplated. His record on civil rights is truly appalling; Bush was just very bad.
I really hope that America isn't in trouble. I may not be a constitution fetishist, but I do genuinely like the place.
There is absolutely nothing in this country preventing anyone from from moving up or down the social ladder here. It happens all the time.
If there is anything holding anyone back from moving up that ladder it is an unwillingness to put in what it takes to move up that ladder. There are other contributing factors as well such as welfare, unions, unwed mothers, drug and alcohol abuse, etc. But all of that comes down to personal responsibility. Bad life decisions, such giving up the responsibility for one's own income, tend to pin people right where they are.
That is on the people themselves, not the system. However in fairness, the US government enables "social lock" through programs like welfare that actually reward people for bad life decisions.
Perhaps the people taking the survey don't feel that enough people are getting up off their backsides to climb that social ladder. I notice they do not seem to complaining about the people descending that ladder.
This is not India and we do not have a caste system here. The phrase "social mobility" as defined and applied to the United States is just one more left wing myth right up there with "economic justice" and "wage equality."
Couple of things you got wrong here. First of all, this is not Europe. I love Europe and most of the people there. I have little or no use for the governments and left wing activists that dwell there. Frankly it is getting boring to listen to people on the other side of the Atlantic telling us that we are doing it wrong while their own institutions are crumbling under the weight of their ideas.
The closest thing to a right to privacy in the US Constitution is the Fourth Amendment. It reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, 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.
In reality, unless you are doing something like making phone calls to Iraq, Iran, Syria or other hot spots, the government is not watching. They simply do not have the time to pay attention to all of us. But even if they are watching, tell me what that prevents you from doing?
But most of the people screaming about this conveniently ignoring the next amendment. The Fifth Amendment reads:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Allow me to draw your attention to that part in bold. That is the basis for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It is also the basis of an old case dating back to the Cold War that allows the US to tap any phone call (other other communication) that crosses US borders without a warrant.
This is just common sense. If one blinds one's own intelligence services, very shortly after that there will be no nation left to protect.
As for the rest of the complaining about privacy, most of that information is already out there in the wild. Take cell phone call detail records fro instance. The cell phone companies sell that data to marketers like Pizza Hut. Why can't the government buy it too if it is for sale?
I am not sure what gave you that idea. What I said is the alternative is far worse.
The proof we are in trouble came when Obama was reelected in 2014. How much trouble and whether or not it is fatal are the only unknowns.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. claims to support the First Amendment, free speech and all that goes with it in his opinion piece running in the Huffington Post[1]. However that very opinion also contains the following words:
I do, however, believe that corporations which deliberately, purposefully, maliciously and systematically sponsor climate lies should be given the death penalty. This can be accomplished through an existing legal proceeding known as "charter revocation." State Attorneys General can invoke this remedy whenever corporations put their profit-making before the "public welfare."
I wonder where Comrade Kennedy got the idea that corporations have any duty to anyone aside from the law and their stockholders? This is the same kind of socialist/communist crap Obama, Peolsi and Reid are spewing.
There are actually two polls in this post. But we can only do one at a time. So for the moment we will focus on free speech. Should a corporate entity be able to share in the right to express and support their views in public?
Poll is up.
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[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/jailing-climate-deniers_b_5912596.html
From that well-known pedlar of left-wing myths, Milton Friedman:
A major problem in interpreting evidence on the distribution of income is the need to distinguish two basically different kinds of inequality; temporary, short-run differences in income, and differences in long-run income status. Consider two societies that have the same distribution of annual income. In one there is great mobility and change so that the position of particular families in the income hierarchy varies widely from year to year. In the other, there is great rigidity so that each family stays in the same position year after year. Clearly, in any meaningful sense, the second would be the more unequal society. The one kind of inequality is a sign of dynamic change, social mobility, equality of opportunity; the other, of a status society. The confusion of these two kinds of inequality is particularly important, precisely because competitive free-enterprise capitalism tends to substitute the one for the other. Non-capitalist societies tend to have wider inequality than capitalist, even as measured by annual income; in addition, inequality in them tends to be permanent, whereas capitalism undermines status and introduces social mobility. (Capitalism and Freedom chapter 10)
In actuality, pretty much everyone, on the right as well the left, agrees that social mobility is a good thing. There is also strong statistical evidence that there is more of it in much of Europe than in the US. An interesting article on the subject from The Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21571417-how-prevent-virtuous-meritocracy-entrenching-itself-top-repairing-rungs
And frankly, I'm getting bored with listening to Americans who think that everything about their country is superior, and that they have nothing to learn from anywhere else.
I guess I just don't share your trust in the intentions of governments (yours, mine...any government). I wouldn't claim to have any idea about who they are monitoring. It would be nice to believe that it was restricted to genuine terror suspects. Nice...but pretty unrealistic given the track record of governments and intelligence agencies.
I wasn't surprised by Obama winning in 2008. The party in office was always going to get the lion's share of the blame for the financial crisis- rightly or wrongly. I was really very surprised by Obama winning in 2012, given how much of a screw-up he'd turned out to be.
But the US is surely strong enough to survive bad presidents- you've had 'em before, after all. If anywhere in the world is a secure democracy, then it's America. And despite the best efforts of Obama & Co, the US is still pretty free and relatively solvent. I honestly can't believe that his administration could be fatal to the US.
Re the poll: I am not a supporter of corporate personhood. As far as I'm concerned, applying the idea of civil rights to corporations is a category error- only people have civil rights; corporations are not people (or indeed groups of people); therefore corporations do not have civil rights of any sort, including of course freedom of speech. I expect this will be a subject of heated discussion.
What I'd like to make clear at this juncture is that while I don't support civil rights for corporations, I don't support Robert Kennedy Jr's suggestion either. For while corporations are not people (and therefore don't have rights), corporate shareholders are very much people, and very definitely do have civil rights, among which is the right not have their property subject to arbitrary seizure. Kennedy is proposing to seize people's property on the most arbitrary, flimsy and altogether ridiculous grounds, and therefore is proposing to egregiously violate the civil rights of shareholders.
Destroying a corporation for having views is moronic, pretty much just burning the 1st amendment.
Beginning in the 1930s with Roosevelt's war on wealth (and by default, business) people have been trying to stop any input by business into the rule and law making process. Since that time we've seen stunning amounts of government overreaction in just about any field you can think of. As a result, we have children being cited for running lemonade stands, rules on trucking that are in conflict with one another and banking regulations that led to banks granting loans to less the qualified applicants lest they face investigations from multiple federal agencies for not doing their part.
Along with all the that, let us not forget that business (a/k/a corporations) are the people that create jobs, wealth and tax revenue. Without them we would have nothing but government jobs and no one paying the freight.
With business providing that vital life blood to our economy, All business, from sole proprietor one man shops to national corporations, not only deserve a say in the political arena, it is vital they have one.
The last couple of decades demonstrated that the US government will strangle business at every turn without it.
Rothbardian fantasy - you claim that "lots of countries" have such as the things as the First Amendment and Second Amendment is false.
These are important matters (freedom of speech, and the right to be armed - the defining feature of a free man in both Classical Civilisation, before the Roman Empire crushed it) and in the Germanic (and Nordic) Common Law tradition also.
In English Common Law the tradition of Chief Justice Sir Edward Cook and (a century later) Chief Justice Sir John Holt was crushed by the doctrine that Parliament can do anything it wants to (the doctrine of Blackstone and those who came after him) - but NOT in the United States.
Your statement that "lots of countries" have a First Amendment and a Second Amendment is false. Actually virtually none do - not if you look at the texts in detail. What they normally say is something like "freedom of speech - subject to law..." (i.e. not freedom of speech) or (like the Mexican Constitution) the right to keep and bear arms is utterly castrated (there - till one looks at the small print).
By the way I am NOT an American - I just dislike fundamental error, such as the claim that "lots of countries" have the First and Second Amendments (full freedom of speech and the right to keep and bear arms) AND your talk about the European Convention - for example the "right to privacy" (i.e. the right to censorship) and so on. Sir most British people want to get out of the European Convention on Human Rights (once separate to the European Union - but the E.U. has now declared the, once separate, European Convention one of its fundamental documents) and with good reason.
The European Convention (like the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights - written by Harold Laski, E.H. Carr and other totalitarians) does NOT protect the fundamental freedoms (no First Amendment in it - nor a Second Amendment), on the contrary it is a weapon for the P.C. elite to use AGAINST the ordinary people.
I am glad that is dealt with. It seems my Spider Sense (just call me Peter Parker - well his grandfather anyway) was not wrong about Rothhbardian Fantasy.
A corporation is no just a commercial company (not that there is anything wrong with commercial companies) - bodies corporate also include (and always have), clubs, societies, churches and so on. To say that "corporations" have no freedom of speech puts a person on the same side as those who wish to persecute Churches for daring to say no P.C. things.
Also the "I am against corporations doing...." is a con any way, as leftists are also against INDIVIDUALS spending their own money promoting their opinions (i.e. speaking against the near monopoly the left has in the media, especially the entertainment media). Those leftists who attack "the establishment" ARE THE ESTABLISHMENT - the control the schools, the universities, Hollywood, most of the news media (and on and on).
Also the hatred of "the rich" is very selective - Charles and David Koch? Boo-hiss. But all those billionaires who put money into (for example) the Tides Foundation, are fine.........
On commercial companies - "corporations".
American companies face some of the highest company taxation in the Western world, and American executives can be sent to prison for what would be considered clerical errors in most countries.
Remember that when the followers of the Red Flag (and the followers of the Black Flag) tell you that the United States of America is ruled by (or in the interests of) "capitalist big business".
Quoting Milton Friedman - and then drawing a conclusion that was the OPPPOSITE of what Milton Friedman means (the old Kevin Carson trick - with various free market thinkers). And then citing the Economist magazine (the sister publication of the Financial Times newspaper) - a magazine I detest (and with good reason). Yes me "spider sense" was correct - "always trust your gut" (especially when the your gut is as HUGE as mine......).
As for social mobility in the United States. Getting rid of "bog standard" government education would be a start - in (for example) Germany even government schools (especially in traditional places such as Bavaria) try and teach children useful information and skills, in the United States (which spends far MORE taxpayer money on schools) "self esteem" is key (one must not hurt the little darlings feelings by telling them they are ignorant s...... who need to knuckle down learn, or they will spend the rest of their lives saying "would you like fries with that Sir?".
If there has to be a government school system - it should concentrate on teaching the children things that will be useful to them in advancing their position in life (for the academically minded, academic stuff, but for others useful skills in metal shop and so on - so they can become skilled people, "with a trade" and their feet on the ladder of advancement within the company they work for, and there are too many marketing men and lawyers in the top ranks of companies and not enough engineers - due to all the government regulations companies have to face these days).
Presently too many government schools (at least in the United States) are P.C. playpens - wildly expensive P.C. playpens.
If parents had their own money to spend on education they would demand that the schools teach their children things that will be of use to them in their adult lives - but as it is, the parents have their money taxed away and it is handed over to "Progressive" leftists who dominate teacher training and so on.
Also America varies - massively.
State and local taxes (before one even looks at Federal ones) take more than 20% of the economy is a place like Bridgeport Conn, but less than 5% of the economy in a place like Cheyanne Wyoming.
It is not just taxes - culture and ethnic mix also varies wildly over the United States. Although Europe may now itself be experiencing the rather mixed blessings of demographic change. Still such is life - nothing lasts for ever, and one must look for the good (not just the bad) in social change.
My typing is falling apart - most likely the result of not sleeping for a couple of days.
The problems the United States now faces (the explosion in the size and scope of the Federal government - and its ordering about of both State and local governments, in such things as education, and ordinary people and enterprises) are due to the failure to enforce the Tenth Amendment.
The argument of the Progressive establishment is that because the Tenth Amendment does not include the word "specifically" it is legally meaningless. That strikes me as a breathtakingly dishonest "argument".
Reed Audio: Lots of countries do have an equivalent of the Bill of Rights (which is what I said). You're quite right when you say that these do not have anything corresponding to the Second Amendment. You obviously think that's important. I don't.
As it happens, I have no particular objection to corporations making political donations. The issues of corporate personhood and political donations are actually eminently separable. For example, one could argue as follows:
1. Corporations are a form of property.
2. People have the right to dispose of their property as they see fit, provided that they do not infringe on the rights of others in so doing.
3. Donating money to a political cause (a candidate, a party...whatever) does not infringe anyone else's rights. There are exceptions here, of course- contributing money to ISIL obviously does infringe on the rights of others.
4. Accordingly, shareholders have the right to use their property to fund political causes. There is no difference in principle between contributing via a company and simply writing a personal cheque.
I don't really see why you object to my quoting Friedman. I did so in order to
a) show that social mobility isn't a 'left-wing' concept.
and
b) show why it might be important (if nothing else, it's one indicator of societal health).
I actually agree with what Friedman says in the quoted passage- all other things being equal, you should see more social mobility in a market economy than in a command economy. The fact that Denmark has more social mobility than the US (which is obviously more free-market) indicates that all other things aren't equal, and factors other than economic structure must be involved. The Economist article is interesting because it tries to explain what the other factors might be.
You may well be right about the role of education in this. I agree completely about the importance of vocational education. Your description of education in the US is depressingly familiar; things in the UK are much the same.
I've just done a search on the Danish education system. Having skimmed some articles on the subject, I think I can safely say that their system is a lot better than the British one, or presumably the American one. For example: the whole system is free, the substantial private chunk of it being funded by a voucher system; 51% of secondary school students are in vocational education, 49% in the academic stream that prepares them for University; there is a large, free adult education sector. Their expenditure per student is roughly the same as the US.
Spider sense? Peter Parker? You need to go back on your medication.
Why don't you think the Second Amendment is as important as any of the other fundamental right?
Nonsense. He does his best writing when unmedicated and tingling.
I don't regard the 'right to bear arms' as a fundamental right. I see it more as a societal choice- the US has chosen to establish bearing arms as a 'right'; other countries haven't.
If Americans want to own lots of firearms, then that's fine with me- I don't have any problem with the Second Amendment. I do think that both sides in the American gun control debate have over-estimated the importance of the issue. For example:
- Guns don't make you free. Private gun ownership was extremely common in Saddam's Iraq; contrary to NRA propaganda, Hitler actually relaxed gun control after coming to power. In Jefferson's day, the state had access to the same weaponry as private citizens, plus some cumbersome artillery that was mainly useful in set piece battles. Back then, privately owned firearms really were a potential barrier to tyranny. Nowadays the state has tanks, attack helicopters, fuel-air bombs and so on- privately owned firearms are no more useful in resisting the modern state than swords were in the eighteenth century.
- Private gun ownership doesn't cause crime. Most gun crime in America involves illegal firearms; tightening up the laws would arguably benefit the criminal class by disarming their potential victims. A number of European states (Switzerland, Norway, Finland) have high levels of private gun ownership and low murder rates. When considering the causes of America's problems with crime, the whole gun control thing is frankly a red herring.
Rothbardian Fantasy - the discussion was about the First and Second Amendments, if you can produce "a lot countries" that have both of those (NOT places that seem to have them - but do not when one looks at the small print) then you have a point. But you can not - so you do not.
I remember reading the new (well few years old now) Swiss Constitution - Switzerland being the nation that (apart from the United States) is supposed to understand the old principles best (or perhaps "least worst" would be better). I was very let down indeed - from the first few words it was obvious that this Swiss Constitution was nothing like the United States Constitution orthe various State Constitutions (such as that of Texas). What should have been proof that the United States was NOT exceptional turned out to be proof that the United States was exceptional - in spite of the massive growth of government (the Welfare State) and all the other betrayals.
The United States is exceptional - even now (so live with it - or better help in the desperate effort to defend and restore the United States, something that is NOT the concern of Americans only but is the concern of all people who love freedom everywhere).
As for "get back on my medication"- I have many illnesses (so to which one do you refer?). None of problems is in fact mental - all physical.
Actually I did make an error in my comments - but you do not seem to have spotted it (although you have spotted my error and decided not to point it out - as a kind gesture). I mentioned that Cheyanne Wyoming had low taxes - thus implying that it was a small government place, but (of course) that leaves out the fact that the government of Wyoming is based there.
If one wants an example of somewhere in the United States that is (relatively) low government in both taxes and government spending, then Casper Wyoming (or Rapid City South Dakota) would be better.
Of course nowhere in the United States is truly low government any more - not in modern times.
Although even as late as 1950 (i.e. long after the New Deal) total government spending (Federal, State and local) was still only around 20% of the economy in the United States (in 1928 it has been about 10%). And, unlike most of Latin America, most of the United States did not (and still today does not) did not have unofficial taxes (where local police and officials demand extra money with the threat of violence - thus making most Latin American "government as a percentage of GDP" figures meaningless). Although modern America has its own corrupt practices - such as Asset Seizure "laws" which are in direct violation of the 4th Amendment (although the Supreme Court, in a terrible test case, declared it did not).
Even up to the start of the 1960s the United States was not a Welfare State - which made it exceptional in relation to all other large Western nations (including Denmark), but in the 1960s the United States was transformed (and the schemes created in the 1960s such as Food Stamps and Medicare have continued to grow - so that they are now huge) - so I AGREE with you that America is no longer exceptional in this respect.
I agree with you about American firearms being a red herring in relation to crime.
London (for example) had far LESS gun control than New York City before the First World War (and firearms were actually very common in London before the First World War) but its murder rate was vastly less.
However, even here (on the issue of firearms) you say some really weird things.
For example Mr Hitler certainly did not "relax" firearm regulations in relation to JEWS - which is the point that Stephen H. and others make in relation to the National Socialist regime (that it targeted Jews to be disarmed - and then, mostly, murdered).
As for your comment "I don't" in relation to regarding the Second Amendment (drawn from the old British Bill of Rights of course) as important. Was that a typo? I am a terrible typist - so I am in no position to gloat if it was a typing mistake (as I most likely make a thousand typing mistakes for every one you make).
You can not seriously think that the Second Amendment is NOT important, can you?
What about the First Amendment (freedom of speech - with no small print qualifications making it meaningless, as in European Constitutions) is that not important?
I was joking about Spider Sense - I am not really Spiderman (or the grandfather of Spiderman - actually the "real father of Spiderman" is a private joke when you look up the person who actually created the character, it was not Stan Lee, it was an American Objectivist S.D.). But perhaps I should not have been joking.
Someone who does not understand that the United States is special (exceptional) and that the survival of the West is bound up with the survival (indeed constitutional restoration) of the United States, has got a lot to learn. Although (of course) all of us have a lot to learn - I am sure there are vast areas of important knowledge of which I know nothing.
The United States is in political and cultural decline and has been for a long time.
If Britain vanished tomorrow it would be very sad (alas the world deprived of ME - how terrible, oh dear, how sad, never mind), but Western civilisation would survive. If the United States collapses the West will fall - fall into a new Dark Age or be overwhelmed by the forces of evil. The West may fall so much that it will be as if it never existed at all, the very principles themselves forgotten from the world.
That is why the United States (its survival and the struggle for its restoration - for the reversal of its decline) is exceptional - in the sense of being exceptionally important.
Ok. If you are cornered, either at home, at work, at school, at the mall, etc, by anyone threatening your property, safety or life, do you believe there is a fundamental right to defend yourself or those around you?
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