I reject the hypothesis that the last 20 years are somehow worse than any other two decades in the history of liberal democracies. I accept that there may be unprecidented fears that usher in the expansion of the governments' powers.
"Citizens in the world’s liberal democracies now face an array of new or vastly expanded threats—terrorism, climate change, economic volatility, pandemics, and geopolitical instability. This is not just business as usual, the standard ebb and flow of historical events. It represents a level of citizen insecurity not previously experienced in the modern liberal democracies."
I think the depression and two world wars, the rise of fascism, and so on represent something that can be considered "previously experienced" by liberal democracies. Decades of threat of nuclear war almost certainly felt more like imminent destruction than climate change does today.
And terrorism, for all its terror, does not represent a true threat to any democracy, except insomuch as we give away our democracy --- which is the point that the article was trying to make, perhaps.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 9.6 ms ] thread"Citizens in the world’s liberal democracies now face an array of new or vastly expanded threats—terrorism, climate change, economic volatility, pandemics, and geopolitical instability. This is not just business as usual, the standard ebb and flow of historical events. It represents a level of citizen insecurity not previously experienced in the modern liberal democracies."
I think the depression and two world wars, the rise of fascism, and so on represent something that can be considered "previously experienced" by liberal democracies. Decades of threat of nuclear war almost certainly felt more like imminent destruction than climate change does today.
And terrorism, for all its terror, does not represent a true threat to any democracy, except insomuch as we give away our democracy --- which is the point that the article was trying to make, perhaps.