- cross-posted to:
- endlesswar@lemmy.ca
- cross-posted to:
- endlesswar@lemmy.ca
A new report has found serious concerns about the state of global democracy as more countries slip in democratic performance.
Global patterns show that democracy around the world continued to weaken last year, according to a new report.
The Global State of Democracy 2025, published by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), analyzed democratic performance in 173 countries in 2024.
In the report, 94 countries — or just over half of those surveyed — showed a decline in at least one of the key democracy indicators between 2019 and 2024, the report said. In comparison, only a third made progress.
You just described the United States as intended there at the end. The whole thing was designed to be something more like the EU than what it is today.
The articles of confederation were stupid and worked terribly
Fair. The same style of organization was the intention under the constitution still. Just a little bit tighter wound.
The idea always was that people should be free to live in a place where they agree with the laws, so each state would have broad powers to organize itself and make its own laws and then every person could decide to live in a place that was organized in the way they wanted. The Federal Government was only to handle military (which is still constitutionally not supposed to be a standing army, but congress votes to maintain it every two years), international relations, regulate relations between the states themselves and tariffs. This has always been the traditional republican position, and time has proven the wisdom behind it. But now it’s too late to turn back I think.
That’s an accurate summary of history, but I gotta disagree with
Even after we scrapped the articles of confederation and moved halfway towards an actual union of states we had a civil war a few decades later because we were too afraid to confront slave state governments and tell them that shit was unacceptable. And then we did a half-ass job of Reconstruction.
This country’s best moments imo has been the rare instances we get decent and capable people in the federal government who are able to push progress all the way out into rural backwaters, e.g. New Deal public works programs in the Tennessee valley and west Texas, Brown v the Board and Obergefell v. Hodges setting an enforceable standard for basic human rights even though it made places like Mississippi and Alabama big mad, Great Society programs bringing huge improvements to education and childcare through things like Head Start and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, etc.
It’s hard to remember because we haven’t had a good one in about five to six decades, but when the US federal government gets it shit together and stops turning brown kids into skeletons for two seconds it is actually capable of great things.
For me the wisdom is that for all the good a strong federal government could do, it inevitably was going to be used for ill and we are seeing that play out in real time. Which is what traditional republicans always said.
But to a point I do think the founding sin was writing in the constitution that all men are created equal and still allowing slavery. Many (if not most? I’m not sure here I know they all owned slaves as that was the thing to do at the time) who signed that paper knew that this sin would destroy the union and it’s obvious they were right because all of American history has been the shockwaves of allowing slavery instead of making it illegal from the very beginning, and to this day it is still playing out. Thats what happens when you weave in contradictions into the foundation of your country, event those contradictions cannot coexist.
But it’s not like ills that are just as bad and worse haven’t and won’t continue to happen without a strong federal government. A weak federal government leads to Shay’s rebellion, rise of the KKK, gilded age, great depression, etc. Someone needs to be in charge and if they don’t step into the vacuum bigots and business will.
Absolutely.
Definitely. So much so that many people today directly associate greater state autonomy with the institution of slavery, as though if states were granted even slightly more autonomy, slavery would inevitably return and that they two things cannot exist without one another.
Listen to yourself, you sound like the European colonizers who justified their takeover of territory that was not theirs by claiming that they were “bringing civilization and enlightenment to backward savages.” “Progress” through force and violence is a concept that needs to be left in the past.
Except these are states that explicitly signed on to this constitution, not some innocent sovereign country. It’s not problematic at all to collectively enforce what they’re constantly trying to weasel out of.
It hasn’t even been oppression or exploitation, the quality of life for those populations has always objectively improved. You won’t catch me shedding a tear for slave plantation owners getting their property broken up and redistributed. Good riddance to the Jim Crowe business owners. Let’s absolutely have armed poll watchers ensuring the voting rights of minorities.
Don’t fall for the conservative crocodile tears that pour out when we infringe on their right to keep citizens uneducated, sick and poor.
When most of the states “signed on,” women couldn’t vote and black slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person.
Until the people you consider “weasels” decide they’re tired of a government forcing them to comply with policies they don’t agree with and so they take over said government and start using it to enforce their ideas on the populace.
A strong central government that can be used to enforce the voting rights of minorities can also be used to oppress said minorities. A strong state is only as good as the people who control it.