this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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The state will always hold authority against individuals. There is nothing wrong with that per se, as long as the state gets that authority from the people by democratic means.
How do you determine from where the authority derives? Also, In your mind, can democracy look like anything other than western bourgeois democracy? And, if so, what are the mechanisms of democracy that imbue it with the anti-authority characteristics that counteract specific utilization of violence/authority?
Also, what are the appropriate measures of violence/oppression that a state can take on when dealing with, for example, foreign invasion/aggression before they switch over to authoritarian (despite claiming to be defending democracy)?
How do I determine where a states authority derives from? By looking at the state of democracy. If the state has functioning democratic processes, it gets most of its authority from the people, otherwise it doesn't.
Democracy in and of itself doesn't have "mechanisms" to prevent violence or authoritarianism. If anything, the past has shown how fragile it is. It is up to the people to constantly monitor the state of democracy and step in when things get authoritarian. Democracy is little more than the idea that the power should come from the population at large, rather than a small subset of it.
I don't see how an invasion would justify any amount of oppression of the population. The only appropriate violence is that which is necessary to repell the invaders.
What are those democratic processes? How are those functioning democratic processes not mechanisms that are intended to solidify a public mandate and prevent resistance to policy by the population?
If Democracy is fragile how does one protect it? What are the tools that one can use to defend democracy? Habeus Corpus suspension act of 1863, overreach or necessity? Where is the line? If there are "democratic actions" and "authoritarian actions" that are separate from an authoritarian state or a democratic state then presumably we can look at history and determine where this line is.