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Comment by chadash | Hacker News Reader

We talk a lot about separation of powers, the constitution, etc. in the US, but until pretty recently, we failed to appreciate the fact that democracy is largely a cultural thing. It works because we believe it works.

Go and read the Soviet Constitution of 1936 (Stalin) [1]. It talks about freedom of speech, freedom of press, assembly, demonstrations. It actually goes much further than the US constitution. It talks about the right to rest and leisure. Old age care. Education.

We all know that the reality of life under Stalin didn't quite live up to this. A constitution is just a piece of paper. It doesn't mean anything unless it is enforced. That's why I think we focus too much on things like originalism vs living constitution... the reality is that we should be focused on maintaining our democratic institutions which no longer look as secure as they used to.

[1] http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.ht...

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I think this fact is more well recognized outside the west than inside it. Fareed Zakaria predicted the failure of the democracy experiments in iraq and afghanistan back in 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom. Those predictions were widely shared among the Muslim diaspora in the U.S.

The british sent their criminals to Australia (a harsh island continent) and they turned it into a thriving liberal democracy. Meanwhile most democracies in the developing world struggle. Culture is destiny: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045923

> turned it into a thriving liberal democracy

Until Scott Morrison and the last three conservative governments undid some of that.

Most developing countries would be lucky to have the order and competency even of the Trump administration. We aren’t even talking about the same planet here in terms of what’s a functioning democracy.

In Bangladesh, the government is putting leaders of the opposition party BNP in jail (https://learngerman.dw.com/en/bangladesh-court-sentences-opp...), and even then it’s the most functional government the country has had in decades.

The Trump administration literally attempted a coup.

We left Bangladesh when it was ruled by a military leader that came to power in a coup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Bangladesh_coup_d%27état. January 6 bears no resemblance to the coups I'm familiar with. More like a failed peasant rebellion.

In some countries they call that Tuesday... And the coups often succeed too, and also have military involvement, and aren't embarrassingly poorly executed.

I'm not even talking failed states here, I'm talking about respectable developing countries like Thailand and Turkey. The United States, despite its numerous obvious shortcomings, has it pretty good when it comes to political stability and democracy.

> The british sent their criminals to Australia (a harsh island continent) and they turned it into a thriving liberal democracy.

A misconception. Most people who moved to Australia were not criminals. Contrast that with Germany, which turned itself into a genocide state through the influence of European culture.

> It actually goes much further than the US constitution.

The US constitution is specifically designed not to have an exhaustive enumeration of rights. Its terseness is its primary asset as it's solely a restriction on government authority with supreme power wielded by the populace. Every worker's paradise that tries to list all freedoms operates from the opposite principle that they are granted by government authority.

Go and read the Soviet Constitution of 1936 (Stalin) [1].

That would be a waste of time. Stalin had no intention to do anything of that and everybody knew where dissension would send them: jail, gulags, torture and death.

That's not "a cultural thing", that's just cynism and propaganda. A cultural thing is when everybody wants to make it work but it never really works as intended. But that's more like the government with its full coercion power is against it!

Government is part of culture, as there's a feedback loop where culture shapes it, and is shaped by it.

It can absolutely happen here, too, if we elect clowns who explicitly want to break the working parts of the system. The ones that have no intentions of making it work (Except in a way that serves them).

Laws and constitutions are indeed just pieces of paper, and carry no power in themselves. It's culture that ultimately decides whether or not they actually apply, and to whom.

The Stalin was in power, because of party victory in war. Not much to do with culture, they won and a lot to do with who wins the fight. The winner of war then driven the culture, sure, but the deciding thing was about power.

> A cultural thing is when everybody wants to make it work but it never really works as intended.

That is sometimes the difference between stated preferences and revealed preferences.

A lot of people say they want democracy but when they’re faced with a democratic outcome they find repugnant they’re willing to look the other way when anti-democratic forces try to make changes.

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