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Ralph J Hodosh's avatar

If everything is identified in a state's constitution as a right, does that mean that the state would control every aspect of a person's life? If so, I could see where that would be attractive to those on the far left and the far right, where, of course, authoritarians tend to be found.

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Wayne Karol's avatar

Utopianism always seems to have a dangerous corollary: that if the world isn't as perfect as it could/ would/should be, it must be the fault of [insert your preferred villain].

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Ralph J Hodosh's avatar

Sometimes the villain is identified as the people themselves who are deemed not ready for the utopian new world. Therefore, the people must be made ready through education and those who cannot be educated must be eliminated. Of course, human nature and utopia being what they are, the people are never ready and the charade does not end well.

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Jeffrey Peoples's avatar

Wtf. No mention of Trump in this Persuasion article?

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TH Spring's avatar

Leftists never learn anything from history. They are unconcerned with reality. Just another sad example.

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Peter Schaeffer's avatar

The proposed new Chilean constitution wasn't 'libertarian'. It was 'woke'. The provisions weren't libertarian at all. However, they were woke. 'Libertarian fever dream'? More like 'Woke fever dream'.

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Wayne Karol's avatar

You appear to have misread. "Libertarian fever dream" is a reference to the old Pinochet-era constitution, not the proposed one.

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Peter Schaeffer's avatar

Yes, 'libertarian fever dream' was (apparently) a reference to the Pinochet era constitution.

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Dan Pinkel's avatar

Thanks for teaching me an important new word. I guess using this description the Pinochet constitution would be described as Euqsereugirruhc.

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Howard Ahmanson's avatar

Governments have a good function, but they cannot create resources or decree them in to existence. The only rights to resources that we can have are rights of property. And Jesus never said otherwise.

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RICH GOPEN's avatar

So what's next? Throw the baby out with the bathwater? Tear the whole thing up and start from scratch? It sounds to me like the proposed constitution could be treated as an ideal wishlist from which core principles (or rights) could be gleaned, trimmed, clarified, and refined into something practical. It does sound as though Chileans were wise to reject this over-the-top, utopian (or dystopian?) mess, but I do hope they will be wise enough to treat it as a very rough draft that they can learn from.

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