You’re not going to find me defending American policy post-1950 or drone strikes, ever. I completely agree.
I just have an additional personal issue when the president executes, by name, US citizens with an executive order and no trial by jury. These are fundamentals of American law and history.
When confronted by a bully, we have two choices:
You’re all about the false dichotomies here.
Well, when you tell a story of a murderer murdering a child in cold blood and then say “y’all”… I mean what the fuck.
I can tell you why this american takes your non USAdian claims unseriously. It’s because you swap rapidly between individuals and groups for responsibility, and thus present an unfollowable chain of responsibility, as you lay shame at the feet of those who you tell wouldn’t want it any other way.
It just seems pretty ad hominem and like a game of semantics. It’s surely not helping the problem you claim passion for, is it?
Looking up my own country’s definitions was my starting point for my assertions. But maybe I just fell victim to my vague distrust of precedent-based legal systems - I did not look up precedent and court decisions for the American definition. I always feel like if I need to study a long history of court cases to figure out if something I might do is legal or not, then the law as written is too broad and insufficiently clear.
The US definition of treason is much better than what came before it. But I still prefer living under the Austrian law where there are specific prohibitions for voluntarily joining enemy armies, for passing on military secrets, for attempting to “change the constitution by force or threat of force” (that one is actually called High Treason), and a few others. There are of course more crimes that a traitor might commit, but they are crimes whether an enemy is involved or not. And our legal system is explicitly not based on precedent, only the written law counts, and I have a reasonable chance of understanding and therefore following it.
Current member of the working class? No, politics is a career. Born to a non-privileged background?
Well our current chancellor of Austria (Christian Kern, social democrat) is the son of a secretary and an electrician. He became a business journalist and then networked his way into politics. The vice chancellor (Reinhold Mitterlehner, conservative) is from the absolute elite… of a village of 500 inhabitants. Among the parents of former chancellor are construction workers, journalists, school teachers.
So no, I’m not convinced that the corruption is inherent in the system of representative democracy.
And yet, you make the the assumption in there that there might be a difference in protection depending on citizenship. Why do you limit your “first concern” to citizens? This makes sense for things that actually depend on citizenship, such as a right to vote, or maybe (a matter of debate in Europe) some social security related things. But it seems strange for fundamental human rights.
There are some subtle cultural differences about how things are usually phrased and maybe also some philosophical differences about the meaning of “citizenship”. With respect to my own cultural frame of reference, your statement sounds almost as bad as “as a white person, I am first concerned that white people are protected under the law”.
This is an example of how cultural differences that might be quite minor and, in the end, utterly irrelevant, lead to your way of putting things sounding commonsense and normal to most Americans, and positively offensive to many people from other countries.
But of course, if America, as a country that traditionally places a lot of value on the rights conferred by citizenship, fails to protect its own citizens where it previously “just” violated other people’s rights, you are justified in saying that it is cause for concern.
Precedent is an established fact of English derived legal systems. In theory (and I generally believe it) it helps counter bad law, clarifies the law, and allows it to change with the times. I’m not sure what Austria uses. Personally, I distrust Napoleonic (Roman) law systems where people aren’t presumed innocent and there is not necessarily a right to a jury trial.
So you wouldn’t hire a lawyer, a legal professional, to understand it and argue your case?
Because US law, historically, only holds sway in US territories on people within those territories who are usually citizens. I don’t expect my legal system to take the rights of Chinese citizens in China into account. That isn’t its domain.
Which fundamental human right are you referring to? Be specific.
US law has, again historically, said that non-citizens have the same protections as citizens, at least within US territory. It seems to get fuzzy when the actions take place outside of US territories because, generally speaking outside of war, the US doesn’t impose its legal system on actions outside of its territories. The post-9/11 world kind of fucked that all up though.
Citizenship is straightforward. You’re either, for the purposes of US law, a citizen of the United States or you are not a citizen. There’s no “philosophical” differences on its meaning. Citizens have specific rights and obligations, including the following of US law, even if they aren’t in the United States. If I murder someone overseas, I can still be prosecuted in the USA though, in practice, the US government will defer to the state where the act occurred unless it has a reason to prosecute on its own.
So you think Austrian law should apply to me in California?
False dichotomy. I haven’t gotten into my feelings about the US drone striking non-citizens. This isn’t a conversation about that, no matter how much you try to make it so. This is about the fact that, at the highest level, the US isn’t even protecting the rights of its own people, its citizens, which should always come first and foremost to the US government (which derives its legitimacy from its citizenry). Other people are a completely separate discussion but if a government won’t even protect its own citizens and follow its own laws protecting their rights, why would you expect it to then care about the rights and protections of non-citizens instead?
Doesn’t an official of [X country] shooting a citizen of [Y country], while the latter is in [Y country], without due process of law, generally fall into “act of war” territory?
“kind of” is a nice phrasing. all the global police actions aka undeclared wars aka cold-blooded executions destroyed (at least) my positive view of the US. it seems unlikely that the - more or less - working model as wellmeaning hegemon can be reconstituted ever again
the other way round seems to be fine, see e.g. the US trying to get Lauri Love. if I remember the details correctly a trial under UK law would result in a maximum sentence of 3 years, the US prosecution is throwing around absurd numbers like 99 years of prison.
Well, not to me and I’m not advocating for it.
Of course I would, if charged with a crime. I was talking about figuring out beforehand what I’m allowed to do and what might land me in prison.
Austria’s legal tradition comes from the Germanic side of Roman law. And OF COURSE there is a presumption of innocence in Roman law! That’s not an anglo invention, you know? If you remember nothing else from this conversation, remember that “in dubio pro reo” has existed in continental Europe for a loooong time. (Hint: it’s Latin!)
There are jury trials, and what’s more: there’s no plea bargaining. The prosecutor can’t scare me into admitting to a crime I didn’t commit. But I was really only talking about the fundamental difference of precedent vs. no precedent. Around here, If law needs clarifying or changing with the times, that’s parliament’s job.
The only difference that’s relevant to the discussion about treason is that codified laws in the US tend to be vaguer and threaten a larger range of punishments, because the details are clarified by precedent, whereas in civil law jurisdictions, the laws are written in a way that they can be applied without recourse to precedent.
W.r.t. to the drones, that’s the right to life and the right to due process. For some reason it is quite common for Americans to assume that their laws, which apply to American citizens, should distinguish between an American killing an American abroad and an American killing someone else abroad.
So I disapprove of the US president ordering a drone strike on someone in Yemen, just like I disapprove of the police shooting unarmed people. I don’t particularly care if the victims in the former case are American, or if they are white in the latter case.
No. But in order for American law to be not evil, I expect it to say something along the lines of “murder is illegal”, and not just “murdering American citizens is illegal”. I don’t doubt that it says the former, and I know that you agree with that. Yet you, and many other Americans, prefer to talk about it as if it was basically the latter, with the former added on as a nice but optional bonus.
So would I expect Austrian law to take the rights of Chinese citizens in China into account? Of course I would, in so far as the actions of people subject to Austrian law affect the rights of Chinese citizens in China. So if an Austrian uses video chat to pressure a child into sexual acts on camera, I’d expect him to be punished according to Austrian law, regardless of whether the child in question was in Austria or in China.
Either you talk about the drone strikes, or you don’t. I’m talking about how making the distinction between the drone strikes against citizens and non-citizens is slightly offensive to me. I wouldn’t go as far as @Wanderfound and claim that’s why people hate America; I’m not sure if there’s any causal link at all between Americans talking as if they only cared about citizens and the dark sides of American foreign policy.
Maybe there’s another cultural factor at play here. See, I know from previous conversations that you’re not (in any way) a bad person, and I know you’re being reasonable, and you’re saying things that many reasonable people, most of them Americans, have said before you.
So, please turn this around for me - what is it about my cultural upbringing that makes me take offense at statements like “American citizens on foreign soil being legally murdered without trial is rather more troubling from the point of view of an American citizen” or “as an American, I’m first concerned, when it comes to the law, that American […] citizens are treated as we should be legally”?
They really sound very “America first” to me.
And then getting exonerated by our legal system, making this a collective problem.
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