This is a hilarious 'just asking questions' concern that doesn't address the complete 180 in direction the US is taking and descending in to authoritarianism while moving against the world order it primarily helped build post WWII while threatening other liberal democracies like Canada and Denmark with invasions.
It's a complete false equivalence. ICE agents have straight up murdered two US citizens in broad daylight without consequence and you're querying the nature of some search warrants in the EU.
Now of course if somebody has a better alternative that's neither in the EU nor US (nor Russia, or China) that'd be interesting to hear about
Even then, there's no interesting conversation to be had unless we pretend it does.
What?
Currently it's just smaller pieces and no bigger agenda is visible (or even exiting). But there are constantly new regulations that would make an authoritarian coup (like currently in the US) easier.
For example: https://www.heritage.org/europe/commentary/europe-wants-be-t...
The EU is just one AfD win away from doing the same thing. It's not immune to this issue either, you have the same problem happening right under your noses.
Most European countries have parliamentary democracies.
It's not a winner-takes-all system ala presidential and semi-presidential republics where effectively individuals:
1. rule without opposition. There's no opposition it's not represented in that branch.
2. rule without even needing support of their own parties. The Italian prime minister or the German chancellor have to fight every day in parliament to have support of their parties and the other parties coalitions.
3. a single individual can claim popular mandate. In parliamentary systems you vote for parties/coalitions, not individuals
There's a reason why this authoritarian trend goes from the Philippines, Nicaragua, to Belarus, to Turkey, to Russia, to most African countries and now US. They are all presidential republics.
The last parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian has been...Sri Lanka. Almost 50 years ago. Presidential ones? It's basically every year.
Systems with winner-takes-all mechanics do not represent voters, and power is too concentrated.
Parliamentary democracies might be labeled as less efficient, that I can agree, but they have strong antibodies to such people.
See Austria or the Netherlands as examples where strong far right authoritarian-wannabes individuals became prime ministers...and then nothing happened and their governments didn't last.
We can cross our fingers and hope that nobody would work with them (I know that Germany's parties all have a pinky promise not to work with AfD), but it was only 10 years ago that everyone in the US was laughing at the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency – and now here we are, much sobered. These things happen, and AfD, or RN, or whoever, could wreak havoc to the EU from within the EU if they took power and started working with Hungary to block EU legislation, veto sanctions, defund programs and more.
So it would be incredibly hard for a political entity like AfD or RN to gain full and absolute power like the orange has achieved. Even in the worst cases, those parties usually only have ~30% popular support at most, which usually translates to at most ~30-40% of seats in parliament. Which means they cannot even get parliamentary majority, and probably can't get head of state either.
Americans just like to pretend things aren't that bad and they aren't the only ones falling into the abyss.
And then you have all kinds of charlatans that are basically Orban doubles. You hear the same stupid talking points and bullshit, the same cozying up with Putin. And to top it off, the USA has openly vowed to fuel and fund that fire of self destruction, so the billionaires can eat the corpse. Because that is where the term conservatism came from, to conserve the power of the king and the ruling elites, as a god given construct (the only original moral aspect of conservatism).
A similar (though currently a little bit less marked) trend can also be observed for the EU and EU countries.
Again this is a false equivalence, 'a little less marked' isn't close to imparting the true state of things and to be honest a little disingenuous.
The EU is not in full motion to dismantle democracy across her 27 states. The US should it not turn this around in the midterms is finished as a liberal democracy.
So 'ah yes but Hungary' doesn't persuade me even though I'll concede it's a problem for the EU. If Tisza is elected in April, Hungary will be on course to turn things around. So you're comparing 1 out of 27 to 50 out of 50 states.
I wish there was an easy way for me to bet against the imminent fall of the United States as predicted by so many internet commenters. I don’t like what the current administration is doing, either, but I would readily bet against all of these “the end is just around the corner” or “the empire is dying” takes in a heartbeat.
We can go on. EU is not a single country, not a single community of people.
>It's a complete false equivalence. ICE agents have straight up murdered two US citizens in broad daylight without consequence and you're querying the nature of some search warrants in the EU.
Maybe keep your US nonsense to yourself?
The way this particular part of our system works is downright horrifying, but it's exotic enough that very few people (even lawyers) will be familiar with it.
What the EU fails to realize is that rights have always been dennied due to the "great good". Nazi Germany did it. The USSR did it. China does it today.
So by claiming "there are good reasons" creates no distinction between them an authoritarians. They need to have a better reason.
I’m not particularly patriotic or bothered about nations in general, but the yanks can go take a hike.
If you're trying to say the eu isn't a saint either, sure.
I'm not trying to say anything about anyone else besides the EU. Therefore I'm certainly not trying to compare EU to anyone else.
I am an European pointing out issues with the local system, issues that many commenters here clearly aren't aware of given how many replies seem to think that they'll be just fine as long as they don't host in Hungary.
