Comment by blindriver
15 days ago
The US is the only country with codified freedoms from the government. Every other country has rights given by the government to their citizens.
The US may suck every now and then, but the US constitution is one of the best things in human history. It protects us from governments like the UK that don't think they have any limits to control their citizens.
> The US is the only country with codified freedoms from the government.
This is not true, both because it’s not the only one[1], and because the constitution hasn’t prevented state censorship in the US[2-4].
> It protects us from governments like the UK that don't think they have any limits to control their citizens.
How would it do that? The US constitution has no power over the UK.
[1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
[2]: https://journals.ala.org/index.php/jifp/article/view/7208/10...
[3]: https://historycollection.com/10-situations-in-history-when-...
[4]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Sta...
> and because the constitution hasn’t prevented state censorship in the US[2-4]
That the constitution hasn't been upheld to a perfect standard all the time doesn't mean it doesn't codify freedoms. Also, precisely what the standard is isn't universally agreed upon and changes over time.
GP tried to argue that, by virtue of the First Amendment & co, US citizens are more protected against right violations than any other country, including those that merely “give” the rights to their citizens.
Freedom being “codified” doesn’t mean much when it’s trivial to violate it both directly and indirectly.
> What the standard is isn’t universally agreed upon.
The First Amendment is very explicit about what the standard is: “[…] or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The government has many tools to violate precisely those rights, and both sides of the political spectrum have exercised them.
The society and political environment that created the Constitution are far in the past, and we should stop pretending that modern US shares its spirit. Instead, we should look around to learn from the success of other countries.
The constitution is merely a few pages of paper produced by the founding fathers together with many more pages of paper produced by the Supreme Court.
Without men and women willing to stand by it and defend it, it is useless. And what we are seeing is that there are increasing number of people who have taken an oath to defend the constitution but have chosen not to do so.
History is full of cases where a well written constitution is ignored by the ruling government.
> The US is the only country with codified freedoms from the government.
No, its not. Plenty of other countries have written constitutions with codified rights against the government. Many of them are more explicit about how the conflict between explicit grants of power to the government and explicit rights of the people balance in conflict, which may make them seem superficially less strong; OTOH, the fact that the US Constitution has both unqualified grants of power and unqualified enumerated rights has led to that conflict being resolved by the courts, by...qualifying the rights based in large part on the grants of power.
> Every other country has rights given by the government to their citizens.
That's no more true of “every other country” than it is of the US. The Constitution itself is a deal negotiated between representatives of and ratified by state governments, so all of the rights it protects are, ipso facto, granted by government.
Indeed. It’s somewhat funny (and sad) how the average educated person simply denies this or says it doesn’t matter.
For example, in the Dutch constitution, freedom of speech, religion, privacy et cetera are all qualified “except as restricted by law.” [0] That is to say: if the government passes a law restricting your speech, religion or privacy, that will typically be Constitutionally acceptable. Meanwhile, in the US, the Constitution is absolute, to rather extreme ends. The Dutch constitution is of course rather obvious in its weaknesses, but there are other signs for other countries aside from the text itself. One good method is to take a look at the mechanisms of enforcement of the Constitution and measures of Constitutionality. For a good laugh: https://www.advocatie.nl/nieuws/rechter-mag-wetten-langs-de-...
[0] https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001840/2023-02-22 For example: “Ieder heeft, behoudens bij of krachtens de wet te stellen beperkingen, recht op onaantastbaarheid van zijn lichaam.” or “Everyone has, subject to restrictions under the law, the right to inviolability of his body.” Most other rights include such a provision.
How do you mean? Who upholds those codified freedoms? Many democratic countries have similar fundamental laws that are explicitly hard to change or bypass. In the end though all rules are either enforced by some authority or they are mere suggestions. The USA doesn’t seem like a special case to me?
> Many democratic countries have similar fundamental laws that are explicitly hard to change or bypass.
What exactly constitutes "hard to change"? In many countries, fundamental freedoms are regular legislation which can be overturned in the usual manner. Even a threshold of 2/3 or 3/4 to change is much easier to overcome than the federated constitutional amendment process in the US.
There are also countries that have a constitution that cannot be overturned like a regular legislation. It's not like the US is the only place that has it that way.
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> Even a threshold of 2/3 or 3/4 to change is much easier to overcome than the federated constitutional amendment process in the US.
This can go either way. If you can agree 3/4 of state legislatures to agree on an amendment, you can successfully ratify it (via convention if needed if Congress isn't amenable). But 3/4 of state legislatures can represent small states - so much so that it's possible to amend the US Constitution though legislatures that are nominally representing less than 25% of the country (and in practice even less than that when you consider the effects of FPTP).
Did the US constitution protect you from NSA conducting mass surveillance on all US citizens like the Snowden files showed?
Constitution, yes - but following it, not so much. I would really like the Federal government to improve in that regard.
While the US does have a written Constitution that explicitly limits government power (notably in the Bill of Rights), many other countries also have codified documents or legal frameworks that protect citizens from government overreach.
For example, Germany's Basic Law (Grundgesetz) was created after World War II to ensure the protection of human rights, including freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, among others. In Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is part of the Constitution Act of 1982 and guarantees a range of civil liberties. India's Constitution, too, contains an extensive list of fundamental rights that are designed to restrict arbitrary government action, such as the rights to equality, freedom of expression, and personal liberty. South Africa's Constitution is also highly regarded for its strong emphasis on human rights protections.
Even in the United Kingdom, where there is no single written constitution in the US sense, many rights are protected by statutes (such as the Human Rights Act 1998) and established common law principles that limit government power.
Many democracies enshrine rights in law, reflecting the widely accepted idea that such rights are inherent and must be protected against undue governmental interference, rather than merely being granted as privileges.
> In Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is part of the Constitution Act of 1982 and guarantees a range of civil liberties.
I would like to point out Section 1 of the Charter:
> 1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
There is a ton of complexity to determining whether or not Charter violations by the government will actually have any kind of consequential remedy for those whose rights have been violated. None of the rights or freedoms in it are strictly absolute and there's legislation that infringes on many of them with those infringements held as "reasonable" by the courts.
Hello ChatGPT
Well didn’t Snowden reveal that is a bit of a stretch in what actually happens? Don’t the 5 eyes just just look over each other citizens and report to each other? The constitution only protects up until a national security threat and then ignored is it not? Still I think the US is an amazing country with some of the strongest protections from the government. I just don’t think it is as rock hard as you believe.
You are missing the most important part: a culture in which these kinds od overreach are not tolerated. For sure resistance has waned over time, but it is still strong. The constitution is merely a piece of paper if people are not willing to defend their rights.
>the US constitution is one of the best things in human history. It protects us from governments like the UK that don't think they have any limits to control their citizens.
The next 4 years will certainly prove or disprove this statement!
The US Constitution also guarantees birthright citizenship, but that doesn't mean the government will actually respect that right. The US Constitution only holds as long as people are willing to defend it.
That amendment has never been tested in the grounds that the Trump administration is.
It certainly wasn’t intended for the currently used purpose and will very much come down to “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which anyone short of the best legal scholars in our country aren’t qualified to speak to.
The text of the amendment is as clear as day: anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen, with only a few, well defined exceptions (children of foreign diplomats).
The Supreme Court already ruled on the meaning of the amendment in 1898, so there's no possible ambiguity left.
Trump's executive order is just blatantly illegal.
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Erm, a nationwide injunction was already made against that part of the executive order by a federal judge. You're the second person today I've seen try to imply that we're in a dictatorship because of that executive order. Whoever is spreading that misinformation should be fact-checked!
The president has ordered the bureaucracy to ignore the 14th Amendment. You may be blasé about that, and even consider pointing that out to be "misinformation," but I'm not. It's a sign that Constitutional rule in the US is in serious danger.
I'm not even going to get into all the other unconstitutional actions Trump has taken, such as appointing Elon Musk to lead the most powerful agency in the federal government without Senate advice and consent.
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Please read Articles 1 to 19 of the German Constitution.
It's a worthwhile read for anyone.