The Chinese are watching us

[ACH0225]

EU is 4th Reich because it is a government system run entirely by Germany and is in complete control of continental Europe.

[Ivan2006]

Interesting. I was not aware that the EU was 'run entirely by Germany'. In fact, I never heard about that and I don't know where that rumor would have come from.
Also I'd like to point out that the EU is NOT in complete control of continental europe. (though whether it should is a debate as old as the EU itself)

[ACH0225]

Any country with Europoor money in active use is a part of the 4th Reich.

[Ivan2006]

...
say that in Austria and you go to jail.
Maybe.
I'd need a lawyer to tell for certain.

[Archduke Daynel, PhD]

Austria does not seem to be a very free or democratic place, Ivan, if you don't mind me saying.

[Ivan2006]

I guess that depends on your definition of freedom.
We may not have as much 'freedom of speech' as places like the US but generally the parts where that freedom is restricted are there to stop inequality.
And thinking of it, calling the EU the '4th Reich' propably wouldn't get you to jail actually. But people wouldn't think it was funny either.

[Iv121]

The US is far too liberal when it comes to this, you can call freely to kill other people in the streets without fear of anything happening to you, and then when someone tries to tell you its bad you shout at him that he is stealing your freedom to say stupid things and claim that you live in some sort of North-Korean-like dictatorship ...

[Ivan2006]

pretty much what Iv said. However, I don't blame America.
I think the system is flawed.
If you compare laws to programs (which I think fits here very well), constitutions are the OS.
Now, the American constitution was basically the first of all modern democracies.
Therefore, you can say it's an early version of a Democracy-OS.
Now, as you propably know, every OS has bugs, that's why Microsoft continuously pushes updates for Windows.
However, America never even considered updating their OS and therefore fixing the bugs.
In the meantime, the bugs have been abused by various sides, resulting in various types of malware (aka corruption, lobbying, etc.) infiltrating the system and essentially parasiting it.
As a result, you get the 'freedom' that America has now.
If you look closely at the results of that freedom, taking into respect the US legal system as well, it turns out that in America, freedom can only be applied if you have enough money to hire a lawyer that can convince a jury of your freedom.
Ergo, a random worker who has trouble getting by won't ever be able to win any court, won't ever get his rights represented and doesn't have any chance of having a good life.
On the other side, if you successfully run a buiseness, you can basically do what you want. The laws allow you to do basically anything it takes to maximize your profit and you can in turn use that profit to hire lawyers to compensate for those cases where you actually did break the law. Or someone thinks you broke the law and is trying to convince a jury thereof while objectively you didn't. Or if you want to sue someone for some random reason I don't know.
I think you should get the basic idea.

On the other hand, European countries mostly started becoming democratic at a time when the flaws in the American system were already visible, so those systems already contain bugfixes, to get back to the IT-comparison. Also Europe mostly had a more successful socialist movement during the era of industrialization, resulting in better representation of the common man.
And it turns out the common man is not interested in being harassed, being discriminated against or, in post-WW2 Germany and Austria, having to deal with assholes who think Hitler was actually a nice guy. So they outlawed it. Not because some big fart decided it would benefit the countra because of [insert false reasoning here], but because the public opinion was in favour of outlawing assholeism.

[Error]

The only really free and democratic place is, in short, the Moon, because the lazy fraks on Earth are too stingy to come get you.

[ACH0225]

Man, am I glad the we Strigiforme run on a form of fascism. Democracy sounds really easy for the common plebs to take over.

[CMA]

[quote="Ivan2006"But people wouldn't think it was funny either.[/quote]
That's what makes it funny. Also, I got the saying from a German. The 'eqaulity vs freedom' thing is a very old argument, I say fuck it and use whatever makes people happier, which in my opinion is a decentralized semi-feudal thing.

[Iv121]

You mean holding slaves ? As if our current employment conditions are not bad enough ...

[Ivan2006]

sure, if you can make people happy in the 21st century using a decentralized semi-feudal thing...

[Archduke Daynel, PhD]

About EU being the 4th reich: (OC)

Spoiler:

[Chairman_Tiel]

pretty much what Iv said. However, I don't blame America.
I think the system is flawed.
If you compare laws to programs (which I think fits here very well), constitutions are the OS.
Now, the American constitution was basically the first of all modern democracies.
Therefore, you can say it's an early version of a Democracy-OS.
Now, as you propably know, every OS has bugs, that's why Microsoft continuously pushes updates for Windows.
However, America never even considered updating their OS and therefore fixing the bugs.
.

I'm gonna stop you right there, because the rest of your post seems contingent on this statement.

Do you have any idea what the constitutional amendments are? Or even bills, the very reason we have a large portion of the government to begin with? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but it renders what you're trying to say here pretty invalid seeing as our own government has been constantly changing in the handful of centuries it's existed - hardly the static, degrading entity you're attempting to establish it as here. Maybe not the radical paradigm shifts that Europe has experienced since Hitler's failed power snatch, but nonetheless the framework is there and to say it hasn't been actively utilized is a blatant falsehood.

On the other hand, I do agree that in your comparison you basically say we're too scared to fix 'bugs' that people exploit nowadays. Loopholes that existed and weren't thought important or even thought of at our OS's launch are being exploited now, and the tenets of our democratic system turn against us when it comes time to fix them. And of course, anyone that actually tries to get shit done and circumvent the shitstorm that is the legislative branch is inevitably going to be declared some sort of fascist. I know just the other day (that happened to be a few months ago) I saw a post essentially equating the US's new gun policy to the Nazis disarming Jews in the Nuremberg laws just prior to the Holocaust.

In my honest opinion, people are either gobbling up crap like that from both sides of the issue, or just not caring. And that's really a shame, because the entire point of a democratic system is to involve the populace in the government system, and too many people just don't make their voices heard to the point where the guy who's yelling the loudest wins in the end. If we were to compare the situation to gym class it'd be like 60% of the players walking off the court and eating twinkies because they don't give a damn, and so the ones that stay on that do are the ones that actually impact the game. Problem being the interests of a guy in the court don't necessarily represent those of the majority.

And then those 60% have the gall to complain about government policy and how they don't get what they want and how taxes are so high and how the current president is a *, etc. Really my only consistent concern when it comes to politics - too many of the population don't care for our system to work the way its supposed to, and those that do are often spoonfed 'trufax' like the example above with the Holocaust. When it comes down to it, I'm not sure which irritate me more, the genuine "sheeple", or the sheeple that just follow different shepherds and act like it's different.