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A comment on George Soros: Facebook and Google are a menace to society. Parent comment

Re:George Soros: Facebook and Google are a menace to society by d1zzy on Friday January 26, 2018 @01:16PM (#16241490)
Democracy without a Bill of Rights is simply dictatorship of the majority. That's why modern democracies have a Constitution and a justice system that is independent of the election system. You are technically right that if someone from outside tries to influence the result of some election that would be meddling with the democratic process but at the same time if that democratic process is considering getting the majority to vote against human rights of certain ethnic groups I don't think it deserves much defense to begin with.

In other words, democracy is a tool, not an end in itself.

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Re:George Soros: Facebook and Google are a menace to society by ABCLAW on Friday January 26, 2018 @04:04PM (#16242888)
>You are technically right that if someone from outside tries to influence the result of some election that would be meddling with the democratic process

No, he isn't. If someone from the outside is influencing the system to preserve key characteristics it has, they aren't subverting the process.

No one thinks foreign election observers sent to oversee contested elections are the heralds of the end of democracy; quite the opposite.

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Re:George Soros: Facebook and Google are a menace to society by dragonwriter on Friday January 26, 2018 @04:07PM (#16242906)
Election observers are specifically tasked with not influencing the result in a preferred direction; though the accusations that they are influencers is often made to deligitimize them and cause them to be seen as anti-democratic.

So the example is, depending on how you look at it, either irrelevant or diametrically opposed to the point you offer it to support.

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Re:George Soros: Facebook and Google are a menace to society by ABCLAW on Friday January 26, 2018 @04:38PM (#16243104)
Observing certainly influences the election if the non-observed state of the election would involve voter intimidation, ballot box stuffing, or any other corrupt practice.

Hence we can distinguish between interventions aimed at subverting the democratic process and interventions based upon reinforcing them.

Whether or not Soros' interventions are enabling democracy or subverting them is a separate debate. My statement is just to show that the premise that 'any' interference is anti-democratic is demonstrably false.

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