In many of his books, Thomas Sowell criticizes how the Warren court's rulings on criminal justice allegedly led to a great spike in crime. For example, the requirement to give Miranda warnings or to provide people who cannot afford a lawyer one free of charge.
While Sowell claims that these rulings had no basis in the Constitution, which may well be the case, I'd like to discuss the substance of the matter.
Given the persecution being faced by Derek Chauvin, Donald Trump and the January 6 protesters, I wonder if the Warren court protects the rights of defendants enough, because it does not seem to be doing much to protect people's rights.
The government can spend tens of millions of dollars 'investigating' you, frivolously indict you, and if you manage to beat the charges, you have bankruptcy to show for your pains. Because if you have been a responsible citizen and saved money, you won't count as impecunious and the government isn't going to pay for an ineffective lawyer for you. So you lose all your money as well as years of your life being dragged through a court.
Basically, they can destroy a man de facto if not de iure, and that only if they do not manage to find a sympathetic judge and jury.
Counterarguments could be of course, to point out in Sowellian style that more rights for criminal defendants is not a 'solution', but merely a trade-off. While you hedge against tyranny and make fewer innocent people go to jail, you also further undermine the ability of the government to prosecute legitimate criminals who terrorize neighborhoods.
Democrats fuck us, Republicans fuck us, here in Europe, all 10 parties in any given country fuck us.
The question is: how do we prevent them from abusing power and fucking us? And please don't tell me "get people into office whom I like". Yeah, I'd like morally perfect philosopher kings to be in power as well, but we're not getting that now or ever. The only thing we can do is to try to design such systems, institutions and societal responses that the very bad men who are inevitably in power will be forced to do the right thing.
Have a MAD situation with the entire population where everyone has access to enough weaponry to level a city block./s
The non sarky answer, you can't. Humanity simply cannot handle large scale population leadership and control without going full authoritarian and/or rule by fear. You'll have a few exceptions in history but that just proves what a miracle it is to find ONE person capable of doing that.
It'd be better if democracy was limited to towns scale only and have everything else done by AI because they at least work on logic.
You’re dismissing “good leaders” as impossible and then immediately asking for the impossible. There is no such thing as a government that is suitably empowered to carry out its core functions while also having no vulnerability to corruption and liberalism.
Obviously, invulnerability to corruption and 'liberalism' (the US Constitution being liberal, I assume you mean modern liberalism) is impossible. But you can make a state at least somewhat resistant to it.
However, good leaders are indeed impossible. I think we'll all admit that Trump is not 'good' in the traditional moral sense, as good as he may be in office. And even there he's an extreme outlier. Most who claim they'll be good in office won't be, and I'm generous because I'd rather say 'all'.
Which is why the solution is to eliminate the worst of the problem in order of how shit they are, and leftists are the biggest issue today.
The harsh truth is that people with that kind of power can rarely be uprooted and kept at bay for long unless you have sufficient power to stop them.
Or, are clever and devious enough at least to distract or otherwise deter them through trickery. Though this has its obvious limits.