I think a lot of that programming and political action was because at the time there was genuine fear of communism taking over in the US and other western nations (like it already had in Eastern Europe).
Yes, IIUC, that was one of the things that mobilized a lot of IMHO positive education/propaganda.
It may not have always been for the most noble of reasons (e.g., a very wealthy person not wanting to be disrupted), but the fascism-is-bad messages are still great messages.
I think people do tend to forget the meanings of the important words over time though. For example:
Democracy = elect whoever the people actually want to elect, even if you don't like their choice. (Some people reapply that definition to the word "populism". No, it's real democracy to elect the people's choice.)
Censorship = intentionally suppress certain ideas and messages
Propaganda = choosing what to publish (or even publishing lies) to intentionally create or support a particular worldview or narrative, especially one that favors certain political people or groups (as opposed to simply publishing truth to keep those in power accountable)
Fascism = the state tells you what to do, not the other way around
Liberty = the people choose what to say and do with their own lives, without interference by the state (besides enforcement of laws written by democratically elected legislators)
Justice = everyone is equally accountable to the law regardless of who they are. This especially includes legislators and rich/powerful people.
> Democracy = elect whoever the people actually want to elect, even if you don't like their choice.
That rather rules out what happens in, say, the USofA, where entrenched party politics limits the choice of the wider population to those few candidates that are backed.
> Some people reapply that definition to the word "populism". No, it's real democracy to elect the people's choice.
Populism isn't democracy, democracy isn't populism; it's generally used to describe a cynical political strategy of appeal to the broadest, lowest common denominator instincts, to gain support from a base who at best get little more than lip service toward addressing their real needs. Frequently associated with strawmen and strawissues as a focus of common manufacted enemy, etc.
> > Democracy = elect whoever the people actually want to elect, even if you don't like their choice.
That rather rules out what happens in, say, the USofA, where entrenched party politics limits the choice of the wider population to those few candidates that are backed.
It’s also weird in that the candidate with the most votes might not win. The electoral system is weird.
In the EU, European Union, member countries are voting on EU positions .. whether it's weighted or unweighted, it's a collection of N countries voting, not a collection of N millions of people voting.
Similarly in the USofA, formed as a union of states to have a common government for those things that are agreed to superseded individual state interests.
I live in a country with mandatory voting - everybody (of age, save for those convicted of _serious_ crime) votes, and ranked proportional voting.
Compulsory voting offends the sensibilities of a number of USofA citizens, but there is a strong case to be made for it, ranked voting does a lot to avoid two party Hotelling's law quagmires where major parties barely represent anybody and yet MySportingTeam divisions dominate.
That's not weird at all. Democracy as the word is commonly used does not require direct popular vote, let alone at the highest tier of government. Every "democratic" country I'm aware of uses a more complicated scheme.
Then you've got the part where the US was never billed as a "democracy" to begin with but rather a "democratic republic".
What's weird to me is how quickly a group with an advantage will attempt to discard compromises and other agreements once they have what they wanted.
Agreed on all points. The USofA is very far from true democracy. For starters, the NGO networks and a lot of unelected bureaucracy are the real government authority by quite a margin -- all of whom are directly opposed to and working against the US Constitution.
> NGO networks and a lot of unelected bureaucracy are the real government authority by quite a margin
In a well structured government for the people by the people such groups are as essential as military, as law enforcement, as health professionals, etc.
Politicians debate policy and advocate on behalf of representatives.
Unelected civil servants put policy into practice and need to be immune from the cycle of elected officials, just as the military needs to be.
All these groups, military, judges, civil service need to be held to high standards and subject to scrutiny with respect to professional conduct.
The USofA looks a bit off to outsiders in many respects, not simply tipping. So many elected positions that aren't merit based and seemingly immune to standards and termination for misconduct.
> the government routinely searches the personal property of innocent people if they think that search will yield information about a suspect.
If that's true, it's a direct violation of the fourth amendment. I'll paste it here for convenience:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Well, "routinely" should have been interpreted to mean "routinely, after showing probable cause and obtaining a warrant". Law enforcement obtains warrants for that routinely, that is, it's not an exceptional case for them to do so.
That includes an explicit carve-out for reasonable searches. And given "innocent until proven guilty" any search is technically targeting innocent people in hopes of yielding information about a suspect. Sometimes that's a reasonable thing to do.
Sounds plausible. Someone internally likely has AI sales numbers to meet, so creating new subscriptions and adding "AI" to them can help juice AI-related numbers toward that quota.
Maybe there's a third way. What about a company owned by a "perpetual purpose trust" - i.e. a trust with a defined purpose that is legally binding. It's the only shareholder, so no extracting value and all profits have to comply with the trust's bylaws in how they are used. Patagonia (US company) is one example of this; it's profits are legally bound to go toward environmental causes.
Bosch and Zeiss in Germany are comparable - they are Verantwortungseigentum (Steward-Ownership).
This being flagged (presumably because it's "religious"?) seems incredibly short-sighted. Like flagging a "guess the US president" as being too political.
Thank you. I was overjoyed at the initial response and surprised and disheartened to see it get flagged. I emailed HN's moderators to get clarification and see if there's anything I could have done better.
Online grooming happens on a gigantic scale in Europe. It just doesn't get the headlines it should. And parents don't care to protect their children. They're busy.
> parents don't care to protect their children. They're busy.
That is horrifying. Dictatorial takeovers feed on vulnerable and naive kids. Mao's Red Guard, Hitler Youth, the Bolsheviks, the Komsomol ... the spread of communism and other evil forms of government has always been fueled in large part by youth organizations and organizing efforts.
This is a really cool idea. My only gripe is that Win32 is necessarily built on x86. AArch64/ARM is up and coming, and other architectures may arise in the future.
Perhaps that could be mitigated if someone could come up with an awesome OSS machine code translation layer like Apple's Rosetta.
There's not much x86 specific about Win32 and you can make native ARM Windows programs for years already. WinNT was designed to be portable from the start. Windows/ARM comes with a Rosetta like system and can run Intel binaries out of the box.
Someone should create a minimal, nearly-headless macOS distribution (similar to the old hackintosh distros) that bootstraps just enough to manage the machine's hardware, with no UI, and fires up the Apple virtualization framework and a Linux VM, which would own the whole display.
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