The far-right populist Alternative for Germany party rejects a values-based foreign policy, just as much as it rejects NATO and the US. That approach has attracted the attention of Beijing.
Democracy lives off of discourse between opposing views.
The inference here is that both views are of equivalent merit which is very much not true. This idea is called The Paradox of Tolerance. If a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant.
Except… That’s not what democracy relies on. Democracy relies on discourse of views, even if they are unpopular. Tolerating only the prevailing opinion isn’t a democracy, it’s an autocracy.
I mean, in practice, there are always limits to the discussion. Something like a constitution, a set of shared base beliefs that allow people to have the same base language to engage in a productive discussion, otherwise it turns into a mob discussing whether the vaccines work or not and no conclusion is reached. In a controlled environment or in a parliament, it’s possible to have these wide-view from-first-principles discussions of society. Not in mainstream media and certainly not online, as you’ve probably seen in any unmoderated forum.
The inference here is that both views are of equivalent merit which is very much not true. This idea is called The Paradox of Tolerance. If a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant.
Except… That’s not what democracy relies on. Democracy relies on discourse of views, even if they are unpopular. Tolerating only the prevailing opinion isn’t a democracy, it’s an autocracy.
I mean, in practice, there are always limits to the discussion. Something like a constitution, a set of shared base beliefs that allow people to have the same base language to engage in a productive discussion, otherwise it turns into a mob discussing whether the vaccines work or not and no conclusion is reached. In a controlled environment or in a parliament, it’s possible to have these wide-view from-first-principles discussions of society. Not in mainstream media and certainly not online, as you’ve probably seen in any unmoderated forum.