Re:Catalan referendum: 'Hundreds injured' in Catalan clashes
by lifeisstillgood on Sunday October 01, 2017 @10:27AM
(#15377985)
>>> Legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed, and nothing else.
Fan-bloody-tastic
Woah now, that's an absolutely insane statement you just made. Actually, it's two absolutely insane statements.
There is nothing that says you have to have one particular set of rights before it counts as "democracy". The EU goes nowhere near as far as the US on some "liberal freedoms" (try supporting the Nazi Party in Germany and see where it gets you - being the most obvious example). They go much farther than the US does on some other ones. Which one of us is not a democracy in this situation?
Also, there's nothing that says a territory must necessarily be indivisible. Scotland independence, Puerto Rico independence (or statehood), and Catalan independence are all perennial issues. Hell, we literally just had the whole Brexit vote a year ago. There is no reason that any particular unit of government has a self-evident right to exist. They exist to serve their people! And in fact it would probably be better if we rearranged them more often - the US states are very unbalanced in many respects and it might be better if we rearranged them into equal populations and geographies that made a little more sense (this will never happen of course).
Legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed, and nothing else. If it doesn't work, there should absolutely be a right to dissolve it and reform another government. Or in other words: "when in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..."