every country’s liberals : that can’t happen here, we have the constitution

seemingly every constitution : article 69.420 or some shit “the president can just do whatever they want if they feel like it”

every founder of a country : suredstly no man wouldst doeth such a thing

@winter imagine believing that law means anything

@winter
the german constitution is a temporary one to be replaced once germany is unified

35 years later and that still hasn't happened


so like ignoring any other constitutional loopholes, the constitution can be replaced by one with none of the civil liberties presumably with a 2/3 majority (same as any constitutional amendment, a bar so low that the german constitution is probably the most frequently amended constitution)

@charlotte @winter Well, these are tradeoffs. Basically, you're sacrificing stability in exchange of being able to correct course on fundamentals of Germany. Believe it or not, sometimes you do want to be able to change the Constitution/Basic Law, because it can also help bring and extend rights, as well as e.g. change how powers are distributed and how territories are organized.

The problem is that, indeed, gaining access to the Constitution (or Basic Law or whatever) is like gaining ring-0 access. It can be used for better or worse. Wish there was a Constitution which had different tiers depending on e.g. restriction or expansion of rights, but alas.

@xerz @charlotte it’s been the US experience that if you make it hard to amend, you never get more rights added and they will take rights away without amending because they just can

@xerz @charlotte @winter if law could distinguish between restriction and expansion of rights, you wouldnt need amendments, you could just write “adding more rights is allowed, taking away rights isnt allowed” in there

one-line constitution, “the government should only do good things and not bad things”, problem solved

@angelmoder @charlotte @winter I don't think it's such a severe issue? We already have the distinctions between e.g. positive and negative rights/liberty with the required (in)action, claim rights vs liberty rights based on the party responsible for the enforcement of the rights, as well as of course individual and collective, political egalitarianism, etc.

So basically, we need to agree over how we'd define that first, then what the constraints would be. Personally I think both positive and negative rights are required, and the limit should be based on a rights hierarchy with self-determination, self-agency and positive liberty first (you first need to be someone before you can defend yourself, and that only concerns yourself and doesn't affect others beyond having to admit you exist and have rights), then negative liberty to exercise your already defined agency as a person.

@xerz @charlotte @winter i don’t think that has much to do with what im trying to get at
but im not sure what im trying to get at can be got at in this context

@angelmoder @charlotte @winter well, if it's a matter of trusting authorities: law interpretation and enforcement can be narrowed down by language, and in any case you can always provide a higher threshold mechanism to allow changes regardless

@xerz @charlotte @winter I feel like theres something fatally flawed in the notion of “rights”, but it cant be examined if “we” is the entity assumed to be controlling everything

@angelmoder @charlotte @winter rights are not what is right.

@xerz @charlotte @winter but arent the law-writers authorities?
i don’t know about you, but ive never sat down and helped write a law or a constitution

@angelmoder @charlotte @winter some questions are heavier than others;

@Maretove @charlotte @winter yeahh.. :c

@angelmoder @charlotte @winter loading tip user mentality.

@angelmoder @charlotte @winter You mean, that it feels like something granted instead of yours? Because rights can be defined either way ("natural", which are considered intrinsic, vs "legal", which are opt-in by governments)... you can also do things like e.g. assume all rights by default unless otherwise explicit, in a blocklist kind of way

and yeah, "we" is defined by the Constitution itself (see the concepts of sovereignty, citizenship, participation and suffrage)

@angelmoder @charlotte @winter tl;dr: it's all up in the air while making the Constitution itself, only limited by whichever existing law is obeyed

The law writers might or might not be authorities. If we assume they're legislators? Sure enough, but they're not necessarily either, and then the concept of sovereignty comes into play (e.g. shouldn't The People Trademark give the approval on defining themselves as a nation-state? that's what referendums are for, right?), as well as enforcement (defined by the Constitution itself, but ultimately subject to social dynamics)

@xerz @charlotte @winter i don’t think you understand my issue with “we”, its that it feels like youre talking as if youre the amalgamation of “society” or the concept of the “constitution”, and not as yourself
…perhaps i should’ve expected it, its really common after all

@angelmoder @charlotte @winter no, I use "we" as the set of societies, humanity or... whatever term we can come up to replace that with

we have to agree so long as politics exist, we don't get to choose this, societal dynamics exist regardless

@xerz @charlotte @winter i think the only interesting question is… do you want to agree?
not “we” . not “have to” . if you get a choice, what do you want?

…maybe its not easily answerable, but i still feel like its an interesting question to think about