Tell them you're going to have their messages scanned on behalf of the government and nobody wants it. Tell them you're going to introduce measures for online safety and to crack down on child abuse, and everybody wants it.

Unless you're pre-informed on the issues, whoever presents it to you can just pick the side that gets you to the answer they want.

This summarizes a good 75% of modern political discourse.

Otherwise, you'll have lemmings. Where people with a bit of propaganda will drive everyone else off the cliff.

There's a reason this quote gets echoed so frequently. Picking special electors to drive the government in a more informed manner is a dangerous path which includes a lot of danger around how to pick those electors.

It might be nice if there was a way to fairly filter out the politically illiterate but then again even the best system is likely just going to result in systemic discrimination against the disenfranchised class... and I think it's pretty damn likely that the filter would be quickly manipulated to shape the voting block in some partisan direction beyond just political literacy.

You can combine it with ID checks and/or proof of residency.

All of which are minor, but easily doable and universally accessible. You don't need a test, just a little bit of effort to remember to bring your wallet and travel 10-30 minutes.

Somewhat - these things take money. State IDs aren't free and neither are proofs of residency. ID laws are discriminatory against the poor which is likely somewhat aligned with political illiteracy but through a correlation in our current system.

A national voting day coupled with advanced voting would probably help our vote equality quite a bit and having the actual voting day be a holiday would likely discourage folks who'd rather spend a day at the beach.

To get public services in the U.S. you need to have an ID, i.e. food stamps. It's a talking point that is not a real problem. Identifiers of who you are, are a requirement for free and fair elections. Otherwise, everyone just cheats and there is no democracy.

Further, everyone can get an ID, it costs $5-$10 in most states and most states will waive fees if you cannot afford it. Finally, if people can't get to a voting booth during a pre-designated, national holiday, then they don't care enough to vote. Even the homeless could make it happen, if they wanted to.

> A national voting day coupled with advanced voting would probably help our vote equality quite a bit and having the actual voting day be a holiday would likely discourage folks who'd rather spend a day at the beach.

The whole point of my statement was to present the argument (without judgement), the goal is to create a less equal and more discouraged voting system, bias towards those who actually care / follow politics. We want to limit it to the politically literate.

You'll get people with a lot of time on their hands for sure, that's about the only thing one can say with certainty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=GRocvuyAMeI

If you're a Yes Minister fan, it's a must see IMO.

You don't need to be "pre-informed".

You just need to be skeptical. Some knowledge of history is a good start.

- put forward sound arguments why a specific viewpoint or presented fact could be wrong

- reserve judgement altogether

Expressing a contrary opinion is not in the skeptic's playbook, because it would be self-defeating: they would be making the same categorical error as they're arguing against.

Actually today you don't use cracking down on child abuse as a reason, you use the danger of the far-right. All the leading left-wing publications, New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, CNN, Vox have been running articles about how dangerous encrypted chat apps are:

> Why right-wing extremists’ favorite new platform is so dangerous. Telegram’s lax content moderation and encrypted chats make it a convenient tool for extremists.

https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-socia...

> In collaboration with anti-fascist research group the White Rose Society, the Guardian has tracked McLean’s activity through the rabbit warren of largely unregulated Telegram groups and found that he describes a vastly different version of his intentions.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where...

> Far-right groups move online conversations from social media to chat apps — and out of view of law enforcement

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-war...

> White supremacists openly organize racist violence on Telegram, report finds

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-t...

> Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot? Telegram and Signal, the encrypted services that keep conversations confidential, are increasingly popular. Our tech columnists discuss whether this could get ugly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/t...

> A report this week found that the messaging app had emerged as a central hub for several conspiracy movements espousing antisemitic tropes and memes, including QAnon, as well as others on the extreme right promoting violence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-...

While one can technically argue that the EU Commission has constituency, it's worth noting that it's a few layers of abstraction away: Commissioners are typically people with industry background who are nominated by the "EU Council". The EU Council is in turn made up of state leaders. (The "EU Parliament" is a separate body that is actually elected by voters).

Lobbyists also have much more direct access to commissioners than any constituents ever would.

For some context, Thierry Breton is the current EU Commissioner for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Defence Industry and Space, Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. His background is running France Télécom & acquiring Xerox IT outsourcing. (He's also the former French Minister of Finance, but ministries are not elected positions in France).

My former manager worked at Thompson during Breton's presence there, let's say he was unsurprised when he learned about the suicide waves at France Telecom.

I don't know much about corruption, but he is the prime example of what i would consider corruption in France.

In practice the head of the Commission has a veto. In the treaties this veto power doesn't exist, but Juncker admitted he regularly vetoed appointees and it's unlikely vDL gave up that power.

So that leads to the question of how the head of the Commission is picked. Again, by treaty it's up to the Council to decide. How do they do that? Nobody knows. They walk into a room and have a secret meeting, at the end they jointly announce the decision. Is there a vote? Does everyone even get to express their view? Do countries make threats to get their way? How are the candidates selected? What did the different country leaders think? Do their statements in private even match their statements in public (sometimes not, it seems). The process is entirely opaque.

After that was done, just to make the comparisons with North Korea super-duper obvious, they gave the European Parliament a "vote" on who should be Commission head. The voting slip had a single option on it - vDL. MEPs could either vote for her, or not vote at all.

For some maybe yes.

But in many cases they don't understand technology, they often end up with very incomplete and wrong partial understandings by extrapolating from things they do understand, but which do also have very different dynamics.

Also while they often insist on their broken understanding they are not stupid and do realize that there is a lot they don't understand. That frightens them.

Then there are real problems around child abuse/porn in the internet. But they are hard to solve without doing much more damage in other ways. But because they don't understand the dynamics of the internet they don't realize that. Like in the world they understad requiring a thing which allows people to publish things to (skimingly) check the things published isn't hard or a problem (as it's something like a printed book or newspaper, few publisher, many consumer). But if you try to apply this to modern internet platforms it all falls apart. But they don't see it for them e.g. a dating app is nothing more then a fancy "locking for people" section in a small regional newspaper or something like that.

So in my opinion it's less because of power hunger then more because of arrogance and incompetence.

And without question there are exceptions.

Terrorism, human trafficking, 'high treason' (i.e. nuclear secrets, spying).

Those are very real things and I think it would be relatively easy to convince the population that some degree of oversight is necessary. Because there's legitimacy.

I fully support the idea, nominally, except that I don't trust the bureaucracy at all, and so I'm pretty much against it, other than in careful situations with a ton of oversight. To the point where I think a national committee ought to validate every single surveillance request, not even a local judge.

And FYI the issues is far more nuanced - it's going to be politicized to narrow the range of acceptable behaviour and thought, as various groups try to designate 'the others views' as 'hate speech' etc..

We've always had high common standards of morality, but there were always many escapes - nobody cares what 'the guy said at the beer hall / pub'. It was just some boozing up. It 'didn't count' so to speak. Now we record everything everywhere and context is lost.

Which wouldn’t make it mass-surveillance.

The problem is when the government enforces an infrastructure of mass-surveillance where information about everybody, in their homes, outside, their communication, and so on, is being collected. Regular people like you and I will have zero ability to vet how this information is used. We can’t let the government have this much power over us. The best way to prevent this mass-surveillance is by not allowing this data to be collected in the first place.

Selective surveillance is something different. It’s not logistically possible for your government to selectively surveil everyone the same way they do with the mass-surveillance infrastructures that are being deployed. This logistical limitation is a feature, not a bug.

For example - I think in the US, Verizon etc. has to keep a history of 'call records' - so that, in the event of some issues, that information can be acquired. I don't know how much oversight goes into that later part, but ideally, it would be a lot.

Even in that case, there is kind of a 'record' or 'background tracking' related to what would otherwise be 'very legit' situation.

Same for search, tweets, DMs etc. etc..

I'm fine with it as long as there is 'really good oversight' ... which I don't trust any of our governments to do. Not the EU/UK/US/Canada etc..

The answer is always the same: 'it depends' , 'it's nuanced', and always requires 'high degree of competence', 'transcend politicization', 'transcend descent into bureaucracy' and 'unforeseen situations' esp. 'data leaks', 'weird constitutional rulings' and 'weird populist political situations'. Etc..

Just look at the history of any mass surveillance state to see how that works out in practice. The East German STASI is a relevant example, and there are others one could think of as well. Recommended watching: "The Lives of Others".

Like the US did with Airbus in the echelon scandal even before the pervasive surveillance that came in after 9/11. Just saying this is not a remote "worst case" scenario but a real-world one.

Yes.

The EU is becoming a totalitarian regional government of elites.

Originally it wasn't even supposed to have a military presence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_forces_of_the_European...

It was supposed to prevent the need of passports. https://www.covidpasscertificate.com/europe-digital-green-pa...

All the good things are going out the door and all the bad things are walking on in.

It’s trolling at worst and nerd sniping at best. The author of this comment knows this full well. His comment history is full of this kind of “drop bomb” and run crap.

“covid passports” being required is not exactly the fault of the EU, if anything it’s because of the freedoms the EU still has. Anti-covid rhetoric needs to die, anti-EU bad faith propaganda needs to die.

This is a legitimate constitutional crisis, not a time to try to pile on with nonsense.

Hello. I usually keep responding to people. I'm not from the EU, so if you disagree with me I'll respond. It's not unlikely I'm wrong.

I am a crazy anti-government guy though, so you've got me there.

I'll start by saying that the EU does have issues, I can talk fairly about what the EU even is first, why it evolved and then talk about those issues as fairly as I can.

FD: I am pro-EU but it's not like I can't understand that people can have exactly the same information as me and disagree, the EU is trade-offs and I'm personally in favour of those trade-offs; I can understand why some people would not.

----

The EU, at its core started off, as everyone mentions repeatedly: as an economic union; the purpose of which was to make the idea of war in Europe unpalatable.

This core fact is why when people complain about "jobs moving to x,y,z EU country where the labour is cheaper" they're right, but that was the purpose of the economic union from the beginning and not the EU; since that's the point of the EEC (the pre-cursor to what became the EU).

Over time it became apparent (during the cold war, specifically) that Europe is directly in the crossfire of two super powers, and each of us alone is not capable of fending off either of them, either economically (since the power imbalance in economics means Russia, the US or even China can basically dictate terms to us) or in terms of defence (a scrambled response will be slow and ineffective).

Thus: the EU was formed, to try to compete at the same level as the Soviet Union and USA. (and, recently, China is a super power).

The way the EU functions is actually the most democratic system that exists in Europe itself; no government is more transparent, more directly elected or more advanced with regards to how it decides who gets seats. This is probably contestable on some level, maybe there's some more balanced democracy that I'm not aware of, but as a Swedish/British citizen: the EU parliament is far more representative of votes than the UK parliament or Swedish Riksdag (though the Swedish one comes a lot closer).

Every time someone complains about the EU they're doing so from either a place of ignorance ("the EU mandates bananas cant be too bendy!"[0]) or a place of understanding of inefficiency (France being unwilling to release the EU parliament from being moved between cities half of the year[1]; or the growing right wing totalitarian regime in Poland and Hungary[2]).

When you conflate ignorant topics with important topics it muddies the water; it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation about reform.

Why would we need reform instead of abolishing the institution though?

Because the EU countries are actually under serious threat from Russia, the USA and China (as mentioned). While it might not be obvious to those living in the EU; the same way the presence of a military or police is sort of invisible and people act "reasonably" most of the time; you might wonder if you even need the police or the military.

I might sound like I'm fear mongering, but I'm not, it's just the reality of trading and defending as a bloc; the same is true at nearly any scale. For example in Sweden it's common for an entire apartment building to negotiate for internet, and the rates that they get are significantly cheaper than if they had negotiated alone. Apes together strong.

The downside of that negotiation is: everyone must be aligned on the decision being made, and you lose the individual freedom to choose a provider. But the result is a better experience for everyone. Most of the time you elect representatives, in Sweden this is a board in a housing community, and they act on behalf of the interests of the bloc.

Crucially, this is what the EU is doing; and what you said about COVID passports is one of those things that's there because the EU does not impose itself on member states, the EU is very hands off on many areas.

There's a few projects or initiatives which go through the (directly) elected parliament, but they often must get unanimous consent of all member states, not just "Germany throwing its weight around" as is commonly suggested, that's not really possible with the way the EU is structured, the EU is structured in a way that it's easy for most member states to stop the EU from doing something; and really difficult to make something new happen.

This is why certain problems are occurring: the French holding on to the EU parliament for 6 months of the year, the French can simply say "no" to proposals to stop that inefficiency from existing and the EU can't really do anything about it.

The same is true for any potential sanctions against Poland and Hungary suppressing freedom of the press. Obviously the potentially sanctioned country can't vote on if it gets sanctions, but if Hungary say "no" to sanctions against Poland, there's nothing the EU can do.

The EU is optimised for ensuring basically nobody is doing anything against their will, except in rare cases where everyone but 1 member state agrees; but historically there have been "opt-outs" to many things. The UK being in the country in the EU has the most asterisks of every country combined in any treaty usually.

[0]: Overly disfigured bananas are supposed to bear a classification, they're not banned: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/en/news-and-pre...

[1]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/18/why-does-parli...

[2]: https://cepa.org/what-can-we-do-about-poland-and-hungary/

Particularly the following statement.

> The EU is optimised for ensuring basically nobody is doing anything against their will

To me, just because representatives from member states vote for something, it doesn't mean that individuals aren't being made to do something against their will.

Democracy itself always gives rights to the majority against the will of the minority. On top of that their are many issues with representative democracy to begin with including media manipulation and corruption.

As a defensive mechanism against other blocs I see your point, and its a catch 22. Governments are generally the cause of major wars. So, it feels counterintuitive to band together as another larger government with centralized control.

I wish that people would never rationalize "following orders." If that alone went away, then governments would become impotent.

I'll try to do some more research regarding my original post and get back to here again. These are just some of my initial thoughts. At this point, nobody else is watching this comment thread, so it's really just a discussion between you and I. No need to prove anything, so I'll try to be correct, researched, take my time.

Good chatting, and I'll follow up again in another day or so.

Cheers!

> Democracy itself always gives rights to the majority against the will of the minority.

this is true and it has a name I believe; the "Tyranny of the Majority", I think.

> The tyranny of the majority (or tyranny of the masses) is an inherent weakness to majority rule in which the majority of an electorate pursues exclusively its own objectives at the expense of those of the minority factions.

Unfortunately, as you mentioned, being _more democratic_ ultimately lends itself to being this way.

However one neat trick the EU has (and I promise I'm not trying to spin this as pro-EU, as it's only in one place): is that the direct votes are split proportionally. This means that lesser represented groups get a voice in the EU parliament.

For the UK with their "First past the post" system, and winner take all government; where a party like UKIP can get 12.6% of all votes and win 0 representation in parliament.... well, lets say it's a stark contrast. explained very nicely; here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9rGX91rq5I

The EU voting system (the way in which we elect MEPs to parliament) is detailed in this video by the BBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CU3F3ToIIg ; as you'll see it's much more representative.

I know of other videos that speak pragmatically about the EU, its problems and if it's worth it (though with a slight pro-EU stance): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4Uu5eyN6VU

I also found this video that asks the question if the EU is democratic, which I think makes good points and you can draw different conclusions from it: https://youtu.be/XxutY7ss1v4

I like this explanation of what the EU even is, since you mentioned you might not be informed I think it's beneficial and very impartial (and pre-brexit): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg

That's pretty cool. There are a lot of voting systems that make a ton more sense than first past the post.

One of my favorites on the topic is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

CGP Grey's video uses animals and whatnot. It's cute, but then he talks about alternatives and it's clear anything would be better than first past the post.

In the US, this is one of many reasons why I'm cynical about the federal government. Everyone knows our voting system is useless--none more than the politicians in the system. But, once they're in the system, they're taking advantage of it and never bother with voting system reforms.

I also still mostly disagree with governments in general. A group of people shouldn't be allowed the rights a single person doesn't have. No matter the system, there are people in it that never agreed to be a part of it. That said, from a pragmatic standpoint it doesn't really matter. As you've mentioned, it's dog-eat-dog out there.

I've been fairly busy these past few days, but I'll make it a point to watch the videos you've linked today (not to exceed 1hr of viewing--I haven't checked the length, lol).

> All the good things

when you wrote your comment? Those that

> are going out the door

?

Maybe my criticism was grave regarding the post, but still though I'd be grateful if you give what you coined positive more insight.

My view (although very limited and I'm here to expand it) is that every time a larger governmental body takes some power with some promise of prosperity, it's nice for a short while, but governments only grow till they crash.

Much of the promise of the EU (again a feeling that I'm researching so I can back up or disprove) is being lost to the trend of governments that grow until they no longer represent their people and then fall.

It is a valid approach to naively ask for the obvious repercussions even if it isn't done honestly.

> Originally it wasn't even supposed to have a military presence.

Because each country has its own military presence and they all already cooperate anyway together in the NATO so they already had a connected military presence as part of NATO. The reason they consider making that plan explicit is due to a massive lost of trust in the US and realization that the US will put its interest before their interest. If you look at politics in the US in recent years a very sane thing to do.

EDIT: I mixed up passport and official ID below, still not needing a passport (or more precise being able to use your ID as passport) was more a beneficial side effect then a core goal.

> It was supposed to prevent the need of passports.

No definitely not. All or at least many of the EU countries have relatively strict requirements for citizens owing a passport. Strict as in _it being legal required for all adults_. You always had been required to carry a passport when traveling in the EU you just practically could (and still can) travel a lot without showing it. Having a passport is the norm in the EU, you won't get more or less anything done without. For EU citicens it can be quite hard to understand why "requiring a passport" (e.g. for votes) is a problem in the US, as it isn't in general in the EU.

> totalitarian regional government of elites

No, it's a mess without question. But it's very far away from being totalitarian. Or at least most member states are. There are a few problematic exceptions.

Sure. And that's reasonable. The US will do that.

I just think it goes against the original promises, and national sovereignty is being widdled away by larger governing bodies like the EU.

> But it's very far away from being totalitarian.

Okay, the legislation being suggested to monitor communications isn't totalitarian?

There are regulations on toasters!

Problematic, Misguided, and can be abused by totalitarian regimes. Oh and also likely in conflict with EU law, Human Rights and some member constitution.

Which are very good reasons to prevent it.

But it's not necessary totalitarian by itself.

Yes and no. A passport is a specific means of a legal identity document, and specifically a passport is not mandatory: you can also use a European Identity Card [1]. This serves as legal identification anywhere in the EU, but not outside. And inside your home country, a driver's license also suffices as legal identity document (for certain uses: in NL, you can use it to identify yourself to the police or when collecting packages at the post office, but you can't use it to open a new back account).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identity_cards_in_the...

It is about the doing already, and less about what can be even done afterwards.

"Becoming"? That's how it was designed. Well, not "totalitarian", exactly; it was designed to make sure that the member governments stayed tightly in charge. The EU Commission is composed of government appointees from the member governments, and is the most powerful EU institution. EU commissioners don't go rogue (not against the wishes of their own government; but they are infinitely corrupt).

The ability to almost arbitrarily spy on people especially in a politicized environment is 'powerful'.

It's the 'most powerful thing'.

There are innumerable ways for a program like this to go wayward.

There are a few legit reasons for such things but 'proper oversight' is hard.

Pretty much. While no one supports it, few people see it as something that directly affects them so they don't fight it.

I'd guess the much older folks that don't use any of these means of communication wouldn't be strongly opposed and will probably be voting for some social benefit carrot program that is included as part of the package.

That said I have no data on this whatsoever and am just speculating.

Try looking past IT-affine circles, there the mindset of "nothing to hide, my info is not worth anything anyway" is shockingly prevalent. Particularly once the virtue signaling starts along the lines of "People who oppose this, support organized crime, terrorism and child abuse!", once these topics are brought up pretty much everybody has to fall in line, or risk being accused being one of those nasties.

There is also a substantial part of the Zoomer generation that openly, and loudly, demand censorship, to hide those opinions online that don't fit their Overton window. Thanks to a decade of propaganda about disinformation by "social bots", relying on technology that ain't even a thing yet. People literally demanding to be protected from views that make them uncomfortable.

And it's apparently not censorship because private corporations do it, the same corporations that dominate the majority of the online discourse these days. But who cares about details like that, when it's about protecting "democracy, freedom and the children"?

So from their perspective, it's easy to see it as the natural progression where things should head even more.

[0] https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...

"Risk"?! If in your environment that is part of survival, I encourage to reconsider the value of survival.

Edit: interesting that this post, disparaging social conformity that would bow to the demands of what is low, was soon hit by a sniper - such silence is consistent with what a side disagreeing on such principle could look like.

In the past some stuff like this has either gotten through of been attempted, and its usually in some trade deal with the US. So apparently the US really wants this all over the world.

Complex or difficult to comply with regulations are a regressive tax on businesses, impacting smaller or new businesses far more than large ones. The cost of compliance drops with scale.

(And still PSD2 has given private entities accesses to dashboards of financial details of individuals - some of us have not yet understood in which terms.)

Moreover, there is a matter of legal boundaries for each involved agent, and also a matter of a will for those legal boundaries to be actually enforced (as opposed to being expressed as an appeasing veneer).

In general a large portion of the electorate doesn’t actually care or can be swayed using the flimsiest of arguments.

What elected officials? They are appointed.

Its been a technocracy from the start and they are open about this.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/7/how-are-the-com...

However, they don't write the proposal (i least i don't think so), they just review the proposal and help with the parts that would be striked down by EU court. Doesn't always work btw). I think that this have to come from either a citizen petition, a quarter of the nations, ECB or the parliament itself.

Can't get your dystopian policy through at home? Delegate it to Brussels, then publicly claim that 'it can't be helped, it's an EU directive', washing your hands in innocence.

I do understand why the British decided to leave. It was a crazy idea, it's incredibly damaging to their economy, but subjectively, I can understand them.

I also knew it would cause pain; the last people I wanted at the wheel during Brexit was Boris Johnson and the Tories. But I voted Brexit anyway, because I figured that it would be a very long time before we'd be allowed a referendum on EU membership again.

I consider myself European, and I welcomed the UK joining the EU back then. But over the years, I've seen new entrants promptly ignoring the financial rules, the division-of-powers rules, and a bunch of other rules, and not get kicked out, or even sanctioned. I don't want to be in a union of governments with authoritarian racists.

So you're saying you voted for Brexit because the EU didn't have enough power to punish member states? Do you think that these new entrants were the only ones breaking the rules with no consequences?[0]

> I don't want to be in a union of governments with authoritarian racists.

Leaving the EU doesn't help make Hungary (for example) become any less authoritarian or racist, and it certainly hasn't made Boris Johnson and the Tories any less authoritarian or racist, so you're still in such a union.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/04/uk-has-b...

Of course not. Rules get broken all the time. But as the years went by, I came to realise that the EU didn't embody the principles it claimed to stand for (and of which I approved).

> Leaving the EU doesn't help make Hungary (for example) become any less authoritarian

Moderating the atavistic instincts of other countries isn't a good reason for being in a political union.

> Boris Johnson and the Tories

I have half a chance of voting them out. It's not possible to vote Hungary and Poland off the EU Commission.

The fact is, we're out; I voted to leave; I'm not regretful. I knew there would be consequences. They've not been as severe as I expected (yet).

I generally avoid debating Brexit with people; it's done and dusted. When it was still a live debate it was VERY divisive, because EU membership embraces so many aspects of life and politics. It's almost impossible to win (or lose) a Brexit debate.

But I'm not ashamed of my decision, so I'm prepared to stand up and defend it. I think a renewed Brexit debate would be off-topic here, though.

FTR, I have nothing against Poles or Hungarians. Their governments have never been aligned with what I thought were the EU principles, though. Greece acceded despite not meeting the financial requirements for membership; it was then financially crushed by Germany (more specifically, German bankers). That did cause me shame.

> the EU didn't embody the principles it claimed to stand for (and of which I approved).

But is it possible that you were holding it to a higher standard than you hold your own country to?

> Moderating the atavistic instincts of other countries isn't a good reason for being in a political union.

Turning that around, though: reducing the moderation on those atavistic instincts is not a good way to further the principles you claim to support. In any case, there are other, more positive, reasons to be an international trade and peace agreement than just a duty to look out for your neighbours.

> I have half a chance of voting them out. It's not possible to vote Hungary and Poland off the EU Commission.

But the problem isn't the nationality of the commissioners, because you're not a racist, right? The Council of Ministers only nominates the various members of the Commission, in agreement with the nominated President, and the 27 members as a team are then subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament.[0] So you had more chance of voting out an atavistic Hungarian or Polish commissioner (through your MEP, and President) than you had of determining the composition of Boris Johnson's cabinet (especially considering the more proportional voting system used by the EU).

> Greece acceded despite not meeting the financial requirements for membership; it was then financially crushed by Germany (more specifically, German bankers)

If Greece did not meet the financial requirements, it is because of fraud carried out by Greece itself, without the EU's knowledge[1]. Greece abusing its position in the Eurozone to leverage itself into an unsustainable economic position is not something you need to be ashamed of, no matter the nationality of the bankers who were Greece's creditors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greece#Eurozone_ent...

That's not right, in practice. Each member government appoints a commissioner. The Council of Ministers is nothing more than an ad-hoc meeting of relevant ministers from member governments, whose membership varies depending on what is being discussed. The parliament always approves all the proposed commissioners. The parliament can dismiss a commissioner, but only by dismissing the entire commission. This has only ever happened once, when it became obvious that most of them were crooks.

> fraud carried out by Greece itself, without the EU's knowledge

There was "fraud" by Greece; they weren't prepared to balance their budget. But actually everyone knew about it; it wasn't fraud in the sense of covert shenanigans. Government budgets tend to be public information. Germany, in particular, wanted Greece to accede.

What do you mean by that, exactly? Because EU votes are only proportional by country; each country is allocated a fixed number of seats based on its population, and each country only votes for its own representation. A UK vote has zero effect on the Hungarian MEP distribution.

Actually, to be clear, I haven't compared the Gallagher index[0] values of UK general elections and UK elections of MEPs, so I accept the possibility that quirks of the two systems and the UK political scene might mean that the real world outcomes don't match the theory.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallagher_index

The same is much more true for "well, this is essentially not a democracy anymore, and has some weird tendencies, but at least we're not forced to salute the flag every morning in school" style systems.

They're you, your neighbors, your coworkers, your family. Authoritarians are everywhere.

They won't outright support the surveillance state but they'll say things like "well, government gonna government amirite" when these dragnets get used against people they don't like (usually various breeds of petty criminals and scofflaws who aren't really harming anyone at their scale). And of course they act all outraged when the .gov is using the same mechanisms to go after stuff they do like.

If cognitive dissonance was a physical object I would bludgeon people with it.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/06/about-six-i...

[2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-americans-stand-o...

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/abortion-bans-may-violate-je...

[4] https://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/26087-abortion-nontract#w...

This argument, and arguments like it, miss the nature of the issue.

If abortion is the immoral killing of an innocent human being/person, as pro-lifers claim, then it doesn't matter if it's a Christian/jewish/other religious ritual [see note] (we don't allow child sacrifice even if it's a sincerely held religious ritual).

If abortion is amoral, simply removing unwanted cells/not violating the rights of any individual then and only then does the religious ritual argument for remaining legal make sense.

To summarize, the "religious ritual" argument only works if you presume that the pro-choice view is correct. If pro-life claims are correct it's irrelevant. This and similar arguments distract from the true issue and prevent people from understanding the other.

---

Note: I understand abortion isn't necessarily a "ritual" in Judaism, just that it's permitted (mandated?) in certain situations. I simply use the term "ritual" to signify either a ritual or a religiously allowed practice.

Yeah, but is it? Both legally and biblically, personhood starts at birth. Nobody I know of holds funerals for their miscarriage, or gives it a name. At least not for early stage miscarriages (which, as with abortions, are far, far more common than miscarriages and abortions late in the pregnancy).

However, more interestingly, do you think you could cite where (a) the Bible forbids abortion or (b) the Bible makes clear that life begins at any point prior to birth?

[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%202...

I too, am interested in this answer and have not misrepresented any biblical passages.

Given the above information, I don't find the idea that The Bible doesn't directly condemn abortion to be the gotcha that reddit atheists think it is. I think it suggests that life-at-conception was so obvious to the authors that they didn't feel the need to distinguish between abortion and murder, much in the same way that life-at-conception was mainstream biology until the moment it became politicized. The Bible doesn't go very in depth about the benefits of exercise, do we therefore interpret it to suggest we should all get fat, or is this just so obvious that the authors didn't bother to put it in? Should we start using 50 layers of abstraction and euphemism to believe that being fat is fine, just as we do with abortion (oh, we started doing that too).

Furthermore, (and this might surprise you if you are from an American context) most Christians in the world do not believe in Sola Scriptura, the belief that the Bible is the soul source of authority. We also venerate saints and the Church Fathers, and the Church itself (whether it be the Catholic Church or one of several Orthodox Churches), all of which we believe to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Abortion was condemned very early on by the Church Fathers. This is all to say that The Bible is not the soul source of authority for most of the world's Christians and therefore not the soul battleground for the religious debate on abortion.

Well, this is a pleasant, open minded start... but thank you for the references.

> much in the same way that life-at-conception was mainstream biology until the moment it became politicized.

I think most mainstream biologist believe that a fetus is living cells and, hence, life. Most mainstream biologists would not, and did not, agree that humanity begins a conception, similarly most would agree a human is dead upon brain death and not "alive" simply because the corpse still has a heart beat. This is a discussion that was foisted upon biology and politicized, not vice versa.

The abortion debate is a fundamentally a religious debate, so it's good to understand it from that point of view.

As an atheist, I have no qualms or guilt about choosing to pull the plug on any biological "human" without a functioning cerebrum and cerebellum.

The third trimester is when the abortion debate gets at all tricky for me.

If this is your idea of an open, honest debate you can keep it.

Mosaic law does distinguish between violently inducing a miscarriage (punishable by a fine to be paid to the father) and murder (punishable by death) in Exodus 21. It is unclear whether there was any penalty for a self-induced miscarriage, though that would not have been uncommon in other ancient societies.

"When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

Not only is the fine specifically a punishment for inadvertently hitting the woman (in the case where the child is not harmed), but it says "life for life", proving that children in the womb are considered alive and their death is a capital offence, just like killing an adult.

"When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that she has a miscarriage but no other injury occurs, then the guilty party will be fined what the woman’s husband demands, as negotiated with the judges. 23 If there is further injury, then you will give a life for a life"

The traditional Talmudic interpretation is that any harm to the fetus is to be punished with a fine, and any harm to the mother is punishable wound for wound: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/abortio....

> Not only is the fine specifically a punishment for inadvertently hitting the woman (in the case where the child is not harmed), but it says "life for life", proving that children in the womb are considered alive and their death is a capital offence, just like killing an adult.

I'm not sure what you're taking "so that her children come out" to mean, but it is usually understood as a reference to an induced miscarriage.

I took it to mean that the children are born prematurely. In any case, it doesn't say "so that the bundles of cells come out".

It seems like you're taking one literal interpretation of a specific English translation as the only legitimate reading. There is plenty of scholarship and commentary by ancient and contemporary authors who can shed light on how the text was read (and, in this case, upheld in a legal setting) in the original Hebrew.

Jumping immediately to an accusation of dishonesty is uncalled for.

Yes. That's not a viable fetus, and keeping it in the womb forever isn't going to change that

Their pro-life stance would hold A LOT more weight if they were out protesting wars and military spending, not to mention foreign occupation through military means and trying to have that money spent on humanitarian programs. I give credit to the Amish for at least being consistent (and no, I'm not religious).

[1] https://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_war.htm

I'm Christian, but I see no biblical argument against abortion. I'm not a fan of abortion, mind you; I think any abortion is a tragedy on some level, and unwanted pregnancies are better prevented than aborted, but sometimes medical complications simply make abortion necessary. And I'd rather leave the hard decisions in the hands of the people affected by them than having legislators force those decisions on them.

I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't agree with this statement. The narrative that abortion is used as a form of contraception is largely a false one, but accidents do happen. Most of the women who get abortions already have a child, surprisingly. [1] EDIT -> well, I was surprised, I guess I should say

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/14/upshot/who-ge...

You'd think, and yet there are pro-lifers who oppose abortion and yet also want to make contraception less accessible.

Not everybody has a rational or even logically consistent position in this.

Of course there is philosophical discussion that goes beyond that, but since making it a crime is a legal matter, it's probably within reason.

Even that can become fiercely political.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_and_activism_in...

Although it might be convenient to treat life as being somehow legally symmetrical, I think that is still a position that needs to be justified.

To give a strange analogy, if someone gathers all the materials needed to make a bomb, but doesn't mix them together, they can still be arrested for bomb-making, even though, in a strictly chemical sense, they haven't made anything that can donate.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/18/three-in-te...

> Why right-wing extremists’ favorite new platform is so dangerous. Telegram’s lax content moderation and encrypted chats make it a convenient tool for extremists.

https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-socia...

> In collaboration with anti-fascist research group the White Rose Society, the Guardian has tracked McLean’s activity through the rabbit warren of largely unregulated Telegram groups and found that he describes a vastly different version of his intentions.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where...

> Far-right groups move online conversations from social media to chat apps — and out of view of law enforcement

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-war...

> White supremacists openly organize racist violence on Telegram, report finds

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-t...

> Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot? Telegram and Signal, the encrypted services that keep conversations confidential, are increasingly popular. Our tech columnists discuss whether this could get ugly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/t...

> A report this week found that the messaging app had emerged as a central hub for several conspiracy movements espousing antisemitic tropes and memes, including QAnon, as well as others on the extreme right promoting violence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-...