| MrWayne said: 1) No I didn't prove your point. My point and why I brought this example up in the first place: "it is a principle of democracy that results can be overturned by follow-up elections...Merkle overturned the decision to pull out of nuklear-elekticity when she came to power" It's just a fact that she did that. she didn't reverse her decision because it was undemocratic but because nuclear power was and is not well received in german public and she didn't want to lose votes in the next election. It proves my point, politicians overthrow decision made by other politicians all the time and sometimes even their own. What did you say in your last coment: "Angela Merkel did NOT repeal Gerhard Schroeder's call for decommissioning nuclear power and in fact speed it up!" She did repeal Schöder's bill, yeah she changed her mind later but that doesn't mean her first decision didn't happen. Merkels plan to decommission nuclear power is not faster, it's a hole year slower than the previous and on top of that her flip-flopping on the matter will cost the german state millions because the electric companies sued the state for the extra time Merkle promised. 2) What is your point? Why is it important that he isn't elected directly, our chancellor is also not directly elected. The Swiss model is good, the UK model is the perfect negative example for direct democracy. 3) I would bet if tomorrow would be a second referendum with the options "no deal" or "stay in the EU", that the majority would vote for the EU. a) politicians who will vote for no deal or let the no deal scenario happen aren't decent. b) "clear results" this must be a joke, if the result of "leaving the European Union" was so clear, why is there such a chaos right now? |
1) Merkel herself and her party overturning a bill from a previous chancellor along with his opposition party is not in any way 'democratic'. Germany is first a 'republic' before a 'democracy' ...
2) It is VERY IMPORTANT that your president and chancellor are not directly elected. This means that a higher power exists outside of a democracy such as the republic or monarchy ...
3) You can't be truly certain of that ...
a) Then I assume that the majority of the MPs aren't so 'decent' then. The ERG are uncompromising Brexit MPs who will not vote for any deal and the DUP will not agree to anything with a backstop. Having a customs union as the default for a withdrawal agreement was defeated too last summer and there were a bunch of no shows as well during the vote so I assume that the majority of MPs are content with letting no deal happen ...
b) It really isn't. 'Leave' meant exactly as what it did and it was having no EU membership and if that's going to cause chaos then so be it ...
| Bofferbrauer2 said: 2) The difference between a Swiss referendum and the Brexit vote is that the population first gets fully informed on all the pro and cons and in a neutral manner, something that didn't happen in the UK. At. All. 3) I wouldn't be so sure about that, I'm fairly certain if there would be a second referendum (which most probably won't happen) Remain would win by a good margin - especially since quite a few find a no-deal Brexit even worse while one could still leave the EU orderly at a later date if the UK would remain now. b) The problem here is that it's too black-or-white, it lacks both nuance and exact definition. We got the perfect example at school as to why this is very important: First we got a text about Euthanasia (which was a big question in Luxembourg at the time), and got if we would allow to use euthanasia like in the text "on people who according to medical consensus are terminally ill with no hope on improvement". Most of the class said yes at the time, then the teacher dropped the atomic bombshell: The text in question was actually the Euthanasia Law of Nazi Germany, and due to lack of nuance and definition they did use it to kill millions for reasons like, Alzheimer, Tourette syndrome, or simply missing a limb, and explained that technically at the time everybody who had to wear glasses would be eligible (nowadays there's surgery that can heal that) under that law. This is why laws are normally several pages long texts, as they have to be defined exactly and include enough nuances to both future-proof a law and for avoiding things falling under being it by circumnavigate the issue. And this is the reason why in Switzerland everybody gets all the information with all the pros and cons mailed to them to make sure they choose really what they want without outside influence overshadowing everything. |
2) With all due respect "pros and cons" are totally arbitrary depending on the individuals interpreting them so there is no such thing as being 'neutral' when it comes to voting ...
3) If you're basing it off by polling then their still within margin of error ...
b) Both options were absolutely crystal clear in what would happen. Either Britain keeps EU membership (Remain) or it doesn't (Leave) and in fact the electoral commission were testing the question for 12 weeks ...
As for your example, it isn't all that comparable to Brexit. Brexit is both simplistic and well defined so anything that's NOT EU membership is fine for the British people ...
