Comment by geertj

>high-censorship, high-freedom societies like Germany

When the police storms your home (the wrong one at first, too) because you called a minister a dick on Twitter, that's not "high-freedom".

"High-freedom": https://www.yahoo.com/news/germany-offer-police-extra-search...

Germany isn’t “high-freedom”. Their people might be happy(though Germany seems to get more and more politically polarised every day), I wouldn’t know.

What's happiness got to do with it?

This is incorrect. Singapore is not a high censorship/low freedom society. You should visit countries before you trash them.

> The question that needs to be answer is how far democracy is willing to go outside of democratic bounds to preserve itself.

To answer this question you first have to define what democracy is.

A decent definition is probably something like, a system of government in which policy is decided by having a public debate in which anyone can participate and then, after everyone has had a chance to say their piece, policy is chosen through voting.

From this you immediately run into potential problems. For example, suppose the majority is quite fond of the current leadership and wants to put them in power forever and stop holding elections. Is that democratic? It's the policy people are voting for. And yet, it would be the end of democracy, so the answer has to be no.

From this we discern that in order to have a democracy, there have to be certain things the government is never allowed to do, even if they're what the majority wants. You can't cancel elections, censor the opposition, throw people in jail without due process, etc. These types of things are inherently undemocratic, regardless of what the majority wants, because if the government does them you no longer have a democracy.

It should go without saying that the government can never do these things to "save democracy" because they are the very things that destroy it.

You want a democratic government to have "undemocratic" guardrails, because otherwise you are ok with mob rule. Democracy without rules is pure and simple majority rule. You do not want this. Unless of course you are ok with slavery, going back hangings, etc. If that's the case, I rest my case.

You want democracy to be prevented from acting out on its passions by a balance of powers.

IN the brazil case, the state powers, and the brazilian voters are not preventing 1 judge from acting out his passion "to protect democracy". Ergo, this is the problem. The mob is granting him this power, when in fact it should be voters, via congress or even the office of the president which brings this loose cannon of a judge back within the powers given by the constitution of brazil.

In this case, brazil is behaving like a raw democracy. It is true majority rule. Laws apply as the majority sees fit.

Hope you don't end in the minority.

> The question that needs to be answer is how far democracy is willing to go outside of democratic bounds to preserve itself.

I would say it should not do that essentially ever? If so, what kinds of undemocractic behavior would be allowed and what isn't? You probably have a certain kind of behavior in mind that you want to allow when you pose this question. If so, why not legislate that behavior using the democratic process?

It seems to me that the argument that protecting democracy by undemocratic means is okay, is essentially the same argument that a benevolent dictator is superior to democracy. Both arguments give special power to a certain group or individual that others do not have, which can be used to go outside the system if things don't work out. First order this argument is plausible. But second order effects (there is no such thing as categorically benevolent, and characters change, especially when in power) will always ruin it.

Democracy is messy. And when the world changes, there are challenges that democracy has to overcome. We're in the middle of a few of those changes right now. But the mess in by design. I believe that if we give up on a very high democratic standard things will turn out for the worse. My one addition here would be that in my view democracy is necessary but not suffient to get to a prosperous society. It needs to go hand in hand with a common value system where there's fellowship between citizens and genuine respect for individual right and the law. If not, there's a risk that the majority will only cater to itself.

> It's not like we had a left leaning judge favouring a left leaning party

Why does this matter?

> The question that needs to be answer is how far democracy is willing to go outside of democratic bounds to preserve itself.

Democracy is not an being. When you act democratically, that's democracy. When you act undemocratically, that's against democracy. Acting democratically is when the justification for your rule comes from the desires of the people ruled. When you believe it's fine to silence (or officially harass, imprison or kill) people whose desires don't conform with yours, you are actively working against democracy.

The biggest scam of the centrist blob is convincing some (comfortable, middle-class) people that they're insiders who own democracy, so all of their anti-democratic behavior becomes democratic by definition.

I don’t know if a well-designed democratic government needs to act undemocratically ever.

For example, in the US, the Supreme Court is able to expand its powers, but it can always be overridden by the legislative branch by design. The executive branch doesn’t even have to follow the Supreme Court’s rulings. And the legislative and executive can be replaced by citizens.

By design, the US Constitution basically has an infinite loop of checks and balances - there is always another institution that can override one institution without breaking any rules.

That said, the buck does stop, but it stops at the people. The problem is that people do need to be well-informed and vigilant to for the this scheme to work out, but to be honest, that is not a problem specifically with democracy — it’s just a general societal problem.

There have been recent Supreme Court rulings that many would say are disagreeable, but we’re not doing anything about it because a lot of citizens either support it or just don’t care. But if citizens did, we could easily undo those decisions using the rules set out by the Constitution. So the problem really lies more with the people than the system.

Now I’m not familiar with the Brazilian political system — who checks the Supreme Court there? I just know the US Constitution had a LOT of people working on it and they covered a lot of bases.

If it's outside democratic bounds, what is being preserved is not a democracy anymore. Why preserve it then? So it serves autocrats better? "We must become fascists so other fascists don't take over" is not a very convincing principle.

It makes no sense to destroy democracy in the name of defending it. To accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same is doublethink, a symptom of political alienation. Beware that you might be the fascist. Given time Jesus will return our the Sun will die taking us along with it. Eventuality isn't an argument.

In this case it sounds like Moraes threatened to arrest Brazilian X employees if the company didn’t comply with its requests.

That is wildly outside democratic norms IMO. Not just the arrest of individual employers, but the threat of which coming directly from a sitting Supreme Court Justice.

I think the point when people start saying "you have to do the reverse of X to preserve X" is the right time for them to look in the mirror and check not wearing clown getup

> The question that needs to be answer is how far democracy is willing to go outside of democratic bounds to preserve itself.

Leaving aside all inaccuracies that are unavoidable in political situations: Philosophy spent quite some time thinking about this: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dirty-hands/

> It's not like we had a left leaning judge favouring a left leaning party, it's Moraes, a conservative technician fight an extreme right antidemocratic movement.

... Uhuh.

These are supreme court judges who openly and publicly showboat about being the ones personally responsible for defeating Bolsonaro. They literally said things like "mission given, mission accomplished" after the election was over. I saw news where one of them said he was proud to be partidarian. They've also said that Lula being elected was due to decisions of the supreme court.

And you would have us believe they did not favor Lula in any way whatsoever.

Investigating with the intent to suppress information you find objectionable is literally the definition of censorship. The reuters article makes it clear they intended to follow through legality be damned.

> Censoring isn't the same as investigating the use of bots and fake news to spread rumors and lies for polítics gain and literal profit.

I don't understand this post. Censoring is when a government official issues orders to publishers requiring them not so publish things. Whatever else you're talking about here you're simply using as a rationalization for censorship.

You have to know that you're being dishonest when the subject is a judge ordering publishers to unpublish and silence people, and you immediately equivocate between that and "investigating," then accuse "the right" of trying to confuse "their crimes" and "free speech." You're literally doing that right now. You are somehow explaining away literal and explicit censorship orders (that no one is claiming don't exist) as "investigation" of "their crimes."

This is why I like the United States. The first rule is freedom of speech. I hate Trump and I hate the right, I think Trump should be jailed for at least a decade for his attempts to destroy American democracy (fake elector scheme, inaction on Jan 6, pressuring of legislators during Jan 6), but I'd be out there protesting with everyone else if Trump could be jailed simply for spreading falsehoods in general.

I think freedom of speech is kind of a bullshit concept at a philosophical level - I've become very blackpilled in that department - but at a legalistic level it's beyond the pale to me that someone could be imprisoned just for words barring very special circumstances.

The government should not be throwing people in prison for allegedly "spreading lies for personal or political gain" unless it already clearly falls under an existing crime (like fraud - getting someone to give you money under explicit false pretenses) or tort (like defamation - knowingly telling damaging falsehoods about someone else to harm them). Incitement to likely, imminent lawless action is also already covered.

In the paradox of intolerance, Popper was writing about violence, not anti-establishment speech.

Known for his critical rationalism and vehement opposition to authoritarianism, Popper would probably be spinning in his grave if he knew that his essay is cited as a token every time someone is persecuted for posting the wrong kind of tweet.

It must be tricky since I don't think you understood Popper at all.

Popper was completely in favor of free speech, and a completely open society, with no censorship except in the cases of actual violence:

"he is known for his vigorous defence of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism that he believed made a flourishing open society possible" [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_popper#