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So... big win for AfD last night: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4zejgz3z9o. How important is this?
Since I'm not one to closely follow European politics, at first I thought this meant that they had won control of the entire national parliament. But then I noticed that, no, it's just one state election, and they're still short of a majority. In every other state, they have far less support, and every other party is still maintaining a rule to never work with them, so the AfD is still effectively shut out of power everywhere.
I suppose it's another sign of their trajectory, though. They seem to win more and more votes in every election. I remember when, not long ago, they were an extreme minority fringe party. Now they get enough votes that it's difficult for the other parties to form a coalition without them.
Is this a sign that the people of Germany are secretly longing to Nazi again? I doubt it. They seem to still be, on the whole, an extremely leftist-liberal nation. Pro-immigration, pro-welfare, anti-militarism, anti-nationalism, and anti-nuke. So I wonder how much this surge in support for AfD is driven by immigration, or how much of it is just them being the only real conservative party that gives voters an alternative to the status quo?
I also wonder what the AfD would actually do if they came into power? There's a big range between "slightly restrict immigration" and "force all the immigrants to pack up and go home." I suspect they haven't entirely figured it out themselves, since for now they're still just a protest vote. Not to mention how they'd have to figure out their policy on every single other policy issue. It's easy to make big promises when you have no actual power to deliver on them.
But I don't know! Maybe I'm wrong. I really don't know much about German politics, I just saw this and I thought it was interesting. Anyone else have thoughts?
Trump has made me very fatalistic about this. The two options seem to be the following:
Some of the issues with the right never doing anything I think comes down to the US believing in Adam Smiths invisible hand and not state power.
The US administration has lowered foreign born population by a few million people for the first time in I believe a century we have had a decline.
For a system that believes in the private sector this is still impressive. It’s much easier for an activists to go to let’s say George Soros and raise a few billion dollars to start a ngo that operates in Central America to abuse immigration loopholes to get people in than it is for the federal government to deport millions. You can’t go to the Koch Brothers and raise a few billion to deport people privately for various reasons. Even ardent anti-immigrationists would see giving the Feds the power to check papers and deport on site as an evil infringement on their own rights though potentially a necessary evil.
I seriously doubt how much the private sector could enforce immigration restrictions. Many of the loopholes that get abused when D's are in power are explicitly written into the legal code as statutes. The solution is to overwrite them!
I remember a conversation we had on this, where your argument was 'you just need to write better laws'.
But that's not how politics works. That very well may be the case how legislation works, but any set of laws can be worked around, given motivation and cooperating actors in a supposedly impartial system. There is no system of rules of which is invincible to the people who operate within it. If you have a system of perfect rules which is immune to shenenigans, please share it with the class. If the solution is so apparent, why don't people just make laws with no loopholes at all?
I never claimed well-written laws will be a silver bullet that will work 100% of the time. But yes, they do help quite a lot. The last 10 years has seen a parade of executive orders from both sides trying something egregiously illegal, and then the courts shredding it. Then they try again, but it's with a watered-down version that sort-of survives.
This ideology of legal nihilism, that laws are all fake and have 0% influence on anything is not backed by recent history.
You're making a legalist argument for a society that has arguably abandoned it. Even the Romans, who were scrupulously so, could not stop Caesar with their laws, with all the religious sacrality they put into obeying it.
I would not call it an ideology, but a fact. The laws do not constrain the great, but the small. I'm sorry, Cato. You've lost this argument thousands of years ago. The Americans of today are hardly more moral or law-abiding than the Romans, much less the Americans of yesteryear. Some would argue a lot less.
How does John Marshal refute Andrew Jackson?
Society hasn't abandoned laws. Court cases end up being important or outright decisive in US immigration conflicts all the time.
Would you tell the Cherokee that? Would your legalist argument somehow undo the Trail of Tears? I'm sure the interned Japanese were happy when Korematsu was overturned, but I think the interned Japanese would rather it not happen in the first place. But I belabor the point. You don't want to be convinced. I bring up all of these examples because it is an example of the law being bent around the interests of the state at the time. By motivated actors, within the system, who ignored the plain American constitution to do as they pleased.
And you refuse to recognize it. It's infuriating. The liberal administration before Trump ignored the plain reading of the law, but somehow you still insist that a carefully written piece of legislation will magic them into compliance. No, that's not going to happen. You would be naive to believe that men would be constrained by laws, especially if they believe they are moral in the breaking of it. Liberals go on how conservatives no longer believe in the rule of law, but don't admit to their own shamelessness in this regard. There are areas of which federal law does not apply. They are called sanctuary cities.
You think conservatives will ever believe that the liberals will act in good faith, after trying everything in their power to cheat them?
That trust is not coming back.
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In defense of @TheAntipopulist, laws can be a weight on one side of the scale.
It’s kind of like when you sign a waiver to not sue when you bungee jump. You’re not really waiving away your right to sue. But when you do sue, the waiver might slightly influence the jury/judge.
This attitude is only useful when it is clear eyed. Punting on executive action because you need a new law is naive. But laws are still better than nothing.
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