America is currently ann argument against popular democracy. Before we concede that electoral politics don’t work in a world with social media, maybe we can give increased prosecutorial discretion a chance. The alternative, after all, is just more authoritarian.
We have non-FPTP jurisdictions. They still default to partisanship. (The problem is probably too many elections, not enough reliance on appointment and selection by lot.)
There’s a reaction throughout the entire west to free trade and immigration. In America, a plurality of voters supported the guy who promised mass deportations and tariffs, and now they’re getting exactly what they voted for. Maybe they won’t like the results, maybe they’ll be thrilled with them. The results will simply inform the next vote. What’s deeply broken are european systems that are trying to maintain liberalism at the expense of democracy.
But not all the european countries. Denmark and Sweden have retrenched on liberalism in the area of immigration—Denmark’s youngest generation is now more Danish than the population as a whole—and have largely solved the political polarization over the issue. That’s democracy working very well.
Sure. And when the Athenians recalled Alcibiades [1] or put Socrates to death, that was democratic. I’m not arguing it’s not democratic. I’m arguing those were self-destructive acts that show the system didn’t work.
Note that I’m making a distinctly illiberal argument. In that, I dovetail with Trump’s supporters.
Voters being able to override elite consensus to effectuate change to make the country more like what they want is the system working!
If immigration were the only thing this administration were doing we wouldn’t be having this debate.
The system isn’t working. We’re deterministically heading towards a world where we’re poorer and less secure based on policies (tariffs on Europe, Canada and Mexico) and people (Lutnick, Hegseth) that weren’t ever brought up in the election. Even if that had been campaigned on, the fact that the majority chooses stupid policies is an indictment of electoral politics. If the system “working” leads to its own destruction, it doesn’t work.
And that's certainly liberal - that is the same foundation of classical liberalism and modern left-wing liberalism.
It's absurd to suggest otherwise; it's pointless arguments about verbiage. Nobody wants mob rule, nobody thinks of democracy without human rights and indvidual freedom, either scholars or the general public.
> It’s about people being able to vote to live in the kind of society they want.
Why should they get to decide en masse what people do individually? That's just dictatorhip of the majority, of the mob. Freedom is what the US and democracy are about.
> Democracy is not about free trade, or protecting immigrants, or the like.
It is; it's about freedom.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this.
We don't have honor as a social parameter any longer, so lives and fortunes lack the oomph of honor.
Granted, we also avoid the historically evinced drawbacks of honor-based societies, but we seem to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
The problem that prosecutorial discretion will have to overcome is selective enforcement, or the perception thereof. The right wing European media is claiming this was common practice across parties. Now I don't know the truth of it, but it is a hard thought to get out of ones head, and a hard negative to prove.
wrt Le Pen, I find it noteworthy that evey English news article I have read avoids describing the actual crime [1], Which does seem more substantial than 99% of the Trump cases.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2024/09/30/w...
That said, in what ways do you think France is different?
This means the POTUS can decide who gets investigated and charged for a crime, and who doesn't get investigated and who gets charges dropped.
The executive can investigate its enemies, and ignore or drop charges for its friends.
Prosecutors are formally under executive control but since 2013 the justice minister should not give orders on individual cases.
France has an additional layer of independence compared to the U.S. because of the juge d’instruction (investigating judge), who is supposed to be independent from the executive like the courts judges, unlike prosecutors.
I say in principle because judges are appointed in France and not elected (similarly to federal judge in the US from what I understood). The executive as some control through appointments and career advancements but they are not supposed to use it to sanction or reward the judges.
The effectiveness of these independence mechanisms remains a subject of active debate, as evidenced by the relatively recent changes made to them.