What form of government would you prefer? The biggest modern alternate examples are China (I'm guessing you disapprove of their zero covid policy, but your comment is ambiguous), and Russia (which also seems worse than the US according to the criteria I could tease out from your comment).
So, what concrete alternative do you propose?
Why does democracy require free speech? Can I not vote for whoever I want even if I'm mute?
> So, what concrete alternative do you propose?
You get that there are many other countries in Western Europe that don't have as much free speech as the US right? You get that the lock down policies of many other Western countries seem Draconian relative to our policies right?
You get that giving me some of the most extreme examples of alternatives makes it seem like you are arguing in bad faith right?
Why do we need a brand new form of government? We didn't need a new form of government to ban saying "fire" in a theater.
I think it would be extremely difficult for the electorate to make educated decisions about who to vote for if speech supporting a certain candidate is suppressed, for example.
Free speech and the ability to vote are deeply intertwined. Without the ability to discuss candidates and issues openly, the electorate can’t make an informed, honest choice. If one candidate or side of the debate is suppressed or censored, that in and of itself affects the outcome of an election.
A prerequisite for a politician to experience consequences for lying is for people to be free to discuss the lie, persuade fellow voters that he is lying, and disseminate that fact freely.
You’re not going to prevent politicians from lying by limiting speech. You’ll achieve quite the opposite effect, actually.
Ask yourself why those voices of truth go unheard. Or why the politician’s lies continue without consequence. Is it not because of a lack of robust speech around the politician’s behavior?
Why doesn’t that robust speech occur? Sometimes it is suppressed. But more often, the root of the problem is that most people prefer to be lied to. Seeking and discovering the truth is hard work, and it is work that no person should outsource to a third party. Yet that is exactly what people do, when they rely on the press or media for the truth. Those organizations lie at least as frequently as the politician does.
Edit: What I'm suggesting is that free speech is protected against retribution from the government. The elected officials should be held to a higher standard. They are the government, and should not be protected against retribution from the voters. There should be serious penalties for any elected official who continues to make provably false statements after they've been pointed out.
If it’s not the voters who should hold these lying politicians to account, then who? Or what system would you put in place to ensure their honesty?
My question still stands: what would you change about our current system to fix these problems?
All 3 of these are non-substantive aphorisms that serve no discussion purpose. They are statements, bare ones at that, and do not pose a question or seek anything.
Universal recall would be some great low-hanging fruit to pick. As would algorithmic districting to deal with the gerrymandering problem so representatives are actually representative.
Our lying, corrupt politicians are selected from an electorate who themselves peddle lies and falsehoods on social media, and often choose to believe convenient lies that support whatever cause they want to believe in. That's not my opinion. It's an empirical fact, which you can go verify for yourself: you don't have to spend but five minutes on Facebook or Twitter to see that it is true.
The people that complain about lying, corrupt politicians are almost always the same people that peddle lies on social media. If these people truly want less lying, corrupt politicians, then a prerequisite would be for them to not engage in that behavior themselves. As I said, our politicians mirror ourselves, and they are selected from among us. We get the leaders we deserve.
Universal recall won't solve the underlying problem. We'll cycle through lying politicians more frequently under such a system, but the incentive to lie to get elected remains unchanged.
Algorithmic districting simply punts the issue to a different group of people, who will be just as corruptable as the current set of people who draw district boundaries. Who will write the algorithm? Who will set the rules under which the algorithm operates? At least under our current system, politicians accountable to voters each term set the boundaries. How will the people writing the algorithm be held to account?
This is false. I'm not sure where you get this idea from. The people that complain about lying, corrupt politicians are everyone. You did it in your reply. The "mirror ourselves" statement is defeatist and useless. There are honest people in the world. They are calling out lies and corruption every day. You do them the ultimate disservice to claim that they are "almost always the same people that peddle lies on social media".
Doctors, judges, witnesses in court cases and many others are held to higher standards of truthfulness than the average person. These are legally binding, and have real penalties. Why can't we hold politicians to the same standards?
If a witness in a trial is found to be lying, they can't resort to "Freedom of speech!" as a defense. They are charged with perjury. We should consider elected officials as being constantly under oath, and any dissembling should be treated as perjury.