Tober said:
So what are you suggesting? Who would decide where to lay the boundaries other then the people collectively themselves? How do people decide those boundaries other then listing to idea's and make up their mind? If not privy to all idea's, how to make a balanced judgement call? Yes the Nationalist Socialist Party in Germany came to power by popular vote. Why? Because the competition did not have the more convincing messages and messaging to solve the economic troubles of a demoralized Germany at the time. Nobody had a fortune teller at hand prior to those elections to know what it would end up as. In retrospect, who would have needed to decide that the Nazi party at the time should be expelled from the elections or not given space to campaign? Remove them from the people's choice with no crystal ball at hand? Yes, sometimes democratic processes can go very wrong. But it is the least flawed system with the hope of the best outcome. |
The answer might be counter intuitive, but the best way to protect democracy is really define boundaries for speech and vote. I'm not suggesting, those boundaries already exists for countries with some degree of advanced legislation
Some of those boundaries are often described in constitution. In a perfect democracy with free speech you could vote for states to separate themselves from the federal government, which could lead to a shit tons of issues
How to solve it? One of the ways is to put in an entrentchment clause (don't know if there is a direct English term for it, needed to google it in portuguese is clausula petrea) that as long the constitution stands the union is not dismemberable. It might not be criminal to propagate the idea your state/community could be free, but in practice you will need to first dissolve the constitution which on itself needs a huge part of the society agreeing and can be a headache for any politician to propose
We can do the same for rights we believe to be inalienable (like human rights), so include them in the list of free speech exclusion i.e. criminalize saying people needs to die or suffer because they were born with a different skin color
None of those things are so easy or decide in freestyle. So who decides where lands the limits you ask? It's ultimate ourselves who set boundaries, that's politics in practice. Hence, every democracy will have of course some degree of imperfection
You for once thinks it's okay to everyone say whatever they want
In other hand, I feel speech should be limited, because free speech is dangerous
We will vote, and ultimately politicians will choose based in the boundaries of the constitution and existing laws
