Now sure, they might have been wrong, and they're weren't infallible, but if you're seeking to overturn that, you probably need something more compelling than 'the internet has increased the flow of information'. It was the increased flow of information with the printing press that brought about the Enlightenment in the first place.
Now to be clear, I'm obviously not advocating human rights violations, and strict governmental control ... I'm only pointing out that things like 'freedom of speech', while awesome and right IMO _may_ not exactly be the root cause of this age of prosperity.
With several eastern European countries trending in an authoritarian direction (and Turkey pretty far along that path already) I am worried about the effect that Chinese prosperity without democratic ideals will have.
You can question the methodology, but then you have to make an argument as to why Norway, New Zealand, Finland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the US and other mature social democracies which routinely top these rankings are not good places to live. Very few citizens of those countries would choose to live in Xi's China instead.
China has massively westernized and expanded its freedoms.
Sure, it still had a long way to go, but at least these days the Chinese government isn't arresting professors en mass and forcing them to work on farms.
Yes, this literally happened. It was called the cultural revolution.
As bad as humans rights and freedoms are in China, I think people really underestimate just how much worse they used to be.
There is a still a gulf between China's view of personal freedom and the West's view. It's also reasonable to be concerned that they will be moving away from the West's democratic ideals in the near future, seeing as their President just claimed the power to govern for life.
The question is whether or not they will always be playing catch up, and whether or not that's directly related to the personal freedom of their citizens.
Anyways, I'm not seeking to overturn it. I said specifically in my comment "I'm not saying we should get rid of it".
I just think we should be open to modifying any part of the Constitution. Many people refuse to consider this and think of parts of it as sacred doctrine. The first and second amendments, in particular.
The Constitution is hard to change precisely because it's hard to get widespread consensus on changes to such fundamental precepts of our society. Especially in a country as big and diverse in viewpoints as the U.S.
Given the current level of division in our society, I'm not open to modifying any part of the Constitution right now.
I don't know that people are unwilling to _modify_ it, but rather to _violate_ it. I honestly personally would be pretty happy with no 2A, but unless the specific majorities required for an amendment agree with me, I'm strongly against violating it ad-hoc. The rule of law is simply a lot more important than any given policy.
But we already are and have been for a very long time (the 2A has no limitation as tintypes of arms), and, more importantly, we’re violating the premise it rests on regarding reliance on the citizen militia without which it makes no sense (and we've been doing that for longer.)
I fully agree that the amendment process has to be used. I would be in favor of a 28th amendment placing well thought out limitations on the 1st or the 2nd amendments. Assuming I thought that the limitations it was placing on them were good limitations.
