Yet another damn terrorist attack

[Felch]

Slave holding was certainly terrible, but the tendency to ostracize people for absolutely no reason didn't help them out much. How different would history have been in Alcibiades had been able to lead the Sicilian campaign instead of fleeing trumped up charges of blasphemy? Or if Socrates hadn't been prosecuted for blasphemy?

Or (to somehow bring things back to the OP) if people in general weren't so keen on killing each other over bull**** like blasphemy?

[Bereta_Eder]

Being revolutionary here, by being consistent, I will return to the original post.
Apparantly Anonymous declared war on the jihadists

[C0ckney]

I don´t see how practising (consensual) BDSM would lower the democratic value of a society

As for true democracy:
Well, then maybe you could call switzerland a true democracy. For important things there are Referenda in which the whole of society (of a eligible age for voting) can cast their vote.
(One example of an important decision decided by Referendum was the dscision to ban all Truck-Transit from Switzerlands streets and enforce that these Trucks travel through switzerland via train)

there's always someone who has to lower the tone.

i think switzerland is far more democratic than most countries (iceland too stands out in this regard), but i see democracy as something broader than what one might call the political system. in most western countries people have certain political freedoms, but all the same have all kinds of things imposed on them, without their consent or even consultation, by the power relationships that exist in society. the most obvious is the workplace, where most people spend 1/4 of their lives being at someone's beck and call.

[Hauldren Collider]

There is a natural limit on speech where 'the speech' is made not for me to hear your ideas but for you to 'block' the speech of others. Basically, the intention of your speech is to make it so I can not hear others speech and not so that I can hear you.

In the US, for the rich (which includes more than just rich individuals), it is far past the point where the increases in 'speech' are made to drone out and block the speech of others rather than to inform/alert/express their own ideas.

Studies have shown that the money spent (at the high levels it is) doesn't serve to inform people, but the studies don't address why the money is still spent/etc. It is to make it so that that is all that is heard, rather than other's speech or even the audiences own mind.

JM

I'm not sure how you can buy the idea that buying ads on a tv station, paying for a book to be written, or making a movie is drowning out other speakers. In any case I'm going to go with what the ACLU has to say about campaign finance reform: that it's an unconstitutional encroachment on free speech. If you recall the Citizens United case, what was being infringed was the right of a group of people to make a movie critical of a politician during an election season. If that isn't infringing on free speech, what is?

[Hauldren Collider]

The Nazis substantially liberalized gun control (for everyone except Jews). And much of the Muslim world has about half a Kalashnikov per capita; it hasn't made them freer.

I never made the claim that the 2nd amendment made us freer. I was intending to illustrate the point that our constitution is designed to limit the government in ways that I suspect many Europeans would find surprising.

[Hauldren Collider]

I am curious as to why a parliament led country is not a democracy.

If the parliament isn't democratically elected, is it a democracy? I'm thinking of the house of lords here.

I'm not that well informed on British history so maybe Britain was a democracy in the late 1700s. But my impression was that the king was still the most powerful guy.

Anyway my point was that when TJ and friends were drawing up the bill of rights at the time, it wasn't unreasonable to fear that the military might try to commit a coup. How democratic Europe was at the time is a side issue.

[DinoDoc]

Have there been any thoughts on eliminating the so-called no-go areas in France?

[C0ckney]

Way too vague. But I'm gonna go with the easy one first: in your democracy, at what age are children no longer considered slaves?

meh. i think my answer was clear.

as for children, well i suppose the starting point would be to ask whether children are the property of their parents, or of society as a whole. i would argue that they are neither and that they only belong to themselves and their future, although of course parents and society at large have a big role to play in taking care of children and preparing them to become free members of society. as to what age children could start participating in running that society, there are many things to consider and such a decision is surely best left to the communities concerned to discuss and decide.

[C0ckney]

Slave holding was certainly terrible, but the tendency to ostracize people for absolutely no reason didn't help them out much. How different would history have been in Alcibiades had been able to lead the Sicilian campaign instead of fleeing trumped up charges of blasphemy? Or if Socrates hadn't been prosecuted for blasphemy?

Or (to somehow bring things back to the OP) if people in general weren't so keen on killing each other over bull**** like blasphemy?

that sounds like an excellent alternative history thread.

(which reminds me, i must get round to posting in elok's one)

[Bereta_Eder]

Have there been any thoughts on eliminating the so-called no-go areas in France?

I was in such an area once when I was a teenager. I wanted to go from a small village to paris and I had to go through it to take the train. So I took the bus from the village to that area where the train departed for paris.
When I got back from paris by this train, there were no buses running to take me to the village!!!
Why? Because apparently they threw rocks at them at night, so the buses simply didn't run.

Now, bare in mind it was dark. I walked (a bit scared I admit) to try and find a phone for my mom to come and pick me up.
Guys, out of the blue, started throwing beer bottles behind me and they shattered to the pavement with noise. Up untill now, I have no freaking idea why that happened. Eventually I found a phone and got picked up by my mom's friend car.
True story. And probably the scariest place I've ever been besides maybe Soho in england (when I was also young, although there nothing happened)

[Bereta_Eder]

it was just... hate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSRguUPC99A

[Lorizael]

as to what age children could start participating in running that society, there are many things to consider and such a decision is surely best left to the communities concerned to discuss and decide.

The correct answer is: such a decision is surely best left to the children themselves, because they count as humans, too. Sorry, you fail the "true democracy" test on the first question.

[C0ckney]

[Bereta_Eder]

On a more analytical note, those no go areas were built in the suburbs of big cities I think as solution, in order to both house and (maybe) keep apart from the big cities the low class which is made mostly of naturalized immigrants from the former colonies.
So they have the exploitation model kind of present on their mind, due their original's country history etc.
Most are muslims.
The messed up part of building artificial cities is just that. They are artificial they were not made in a natural progressive way and they were some shortsights. For example they are in the middle of nowhere with no "life" (clubs, shops etc).
So people just hang around there having nothing to do.
In large part they are not integrated in the financial life of france, so they kind of live in the outskirts of society. In far away, artificial, empty "cities".
If you want to see this from a "western" perspective, they are the poor, those that don't try and all that bull****.

From their perspective, the angry, unemployed, poor ones, of course they are pissed.
Some of them look for recognition, for being able to do something with their lives. But the system simply doesn't give them this right.
So, a few, who are crazy enough, attach themselves to the "muslim" ideology and become "heroes" in the milieu of radical islam by such acts.

I don't expect anything like that ever happening in Switzerland or elsewhere similar tbh.
Give young people a job, they might find a nice girlie (or whatever) let them make a living for themselves and things take care of themselves.
Keep them at the friges of society and things like that happen.


You know, in reply to "Je suis Charlie", in greek tv, they said there was a reply in french media and it was "Je suis Syria". Meaning the west doesn't do jack ass to solve the situation there, if possible. So there is a connecting tissue too with disephranchised muslim youths and open areas of war in the "muslim" world.
Put this all in the mix and... voila. Unfortunately.

[Bereta_Eder]

but hey of course it could be blasphemy