I've posted enough articles about Bukele in the "other news" thread that I figured it was time that he got his own thread.

I'm sure at this point everyone is aware that Bukele has performed something of a miracle in El Salvador-- transforming the country from one of the most dangerous in the world into one of the safest in the Americas, with a murder rate that is now about equal to Canada's.

El Salvador is also one of the only countries to adopt bitcoin as legal tender-- which is now reaping dividends as bitcoin is hitting record highs again. Just yesterday they approved a measure to eliminate taxes on foreign investments, and El Salvador is becoming the model for how poor crime ridden countries can turn themselves around.

Bukele isn't without critics though. He has suspended constitutional law and built a mega prison which houses some 60,000 suspected gang members-- many of whom are being held without charges and I think that poses some really interesting philosophical questions. How many people with face tattoos should be allowed to be locked up without charges so that non-face tattooed people can live without fear of violet crime? What are the circumstances in which constitutional law and basic liberties that we in the West take for granted (or used to take for granted) can be suspended?

Parliament has suspended some constitutional rights voting for the state of emergency, not Bukele, as per their constitution.

And parliament prolonged that 24 times already iirc (maybe we are at 25 already).

Most western constitutions allow for temporary suspension or compression of some constitutional rights during emergencies (however defined).

Even in the USA, even this rightwing SCOTUS, and other federal courts, when considering the case of churches closed because of covid , didn't even uphold religious rights as fully unalienable, it just required them never to be limited more than other rights because of covid ( i am simplifying).

And there we are talking about the most basic and clear of rights upon which the USA were founded, freedom of religion (which supposedly, in the text, is never alienable full stop no exceptions).

Governments in general never wanted fully clear rules to have maneuvering space to try to do as much as they wanted to during emergencies (and to define whatever they like as an emergency).

Nor is the concept of emergency objectively identified, it's just about what POTUS (or governors, or even mayors lol) decide it is, in the USA. Congress have very limit power of declaring an emergency linked to actual invasions or rebellions iirc.

In other countries it's parliament having very similar powers.

For me a subset of rights should be fully inalienable, which means no exception allowed full stop, invasions , war, natural disaster and so on included, for citizens not guilty of a crime.

Because the biggest actual emergencies of all usually come from the state.

Lol, Luciom.

"El Salvador is an interesting case for discussion of constitutional rights. Speaking of constitutional rights, here are several paragraphs about my pet issue, Covid lockdowns.

....

What were we talking about again? Oh yes, El Salvador. Interesting stuff. For example, during the great Covid lockdown of 2020, they made the churches close in Alabama."

Fwiw I never expected COVID lockdowns to not come up here (which I alluded to in the OP)....so I think it's ok.

uh? he asked a general question about when emergency can be used to suspend constitutional rights in the west at the end of the post, did you read that?

THIS

///What are the circumstances in which constitutional law and basic liberties that we in the West take for granted (or used to take for granted) can be suspended?///

and the covid emergency is the most salient recent such case in the west.

Then we can also discuss the recent suspension of very important rights in Ukraine for example, and the western reaction to that, and so on

Hmm
On
The one hand,

We're seeing an
Infringement on civil liberties on a large scale to the point where democracy could be
Forsaken, but otoh,
EL Salvador is much safer so I dunno.

Informative piece here

To the general question of "when can emergency be used to suspend rights", for some rights my answer is absolutely never.

Which rights? right to movement, association, speech, religion. I could be missing some , it's an open list because i never modeled this in detail.

Paradoxically a right which is very dear to me that i can see suspended in emergency is property rights. Obviously in very limited form , with full justifications, and draconian penalties in cases of abuse (like actual prolonged jail time for everyone responsible if courts find the state in tort).

But for ex a natural disaster requires areas to put in place rescue attempts of people and whatnot. If no public area is available nearby the state should be allowed to commandeer private land for that very temporary use, ofc minimizing the costs for the owner and /or compensating them and so on.

And i think the ban for 18 to 60 years old men to leave ukraine is worse than anything bukele did.

And afaik that wasn't the law in UK during ww2 or in other western democracies during wars.

I haven't actually been to El Salvador but I had a 5 hour layover at the airport last month, and if the attractiveness of the women working at the airport is any indication, then like half the women there could be considered hot. Bukele's wife might be just a bit above average.

I never got why religion is lumped in with all the other fundamental rights. What's so special about some ancient superstition which is objectively total bullshit that we need to protect the right of people to practice their silly rituals associated with it?

It's because the founding fathers understood that if the US was going to dominate the world, that it needed to be fairly pluralistic.

It could have been included inside freedom of speech and in a way in the american constitution it actually is (both are in the 1st amendment).

But the main idea is that in the west we had several atrocious wars, often among ourselves, because of religious bullshit, so we thought it would be smart to make it as illegal as possible to mess with one another on the basis of religion, while at the same time trying to avoid any religion to impose it's moral prefernces on people who weren't members of that religion.

But when you have a country that is founded by people fleeing religious persecution because they had particularly bizzarre religious views, is it that surprising freedom of religion is very important for that country?

OK. What country are you referring to in your last paragraph though? Not getting the reference. America wasn't founded by people fleeing religious persecution was it?

Yeah what they are doing there would not hold up constitutionally in the USA. Common sense is your covered with gang tattoos your in the gang and in prison you go. That would never fly in the USA or even at the border.

Did he not just win an election with 85% of the vote . I saw a feature on their new supermax prison strictly for gang members was very interesting

man the "pilgrim fathers" were religiously persecuted members of a micro-sect of puritans. The people on the "mayflower" ship.

Then other puritans came who wanted to change the church of england "from within".

Then there were Huegenots fleeing persecution from France

The pilgrims on the Mayflower were arguably fleeing as much or more so for the purposes of being allowed to persecute based on religion as they were fleeing from persecution because of their religion.

The Huguenot, who were actually a good 50 years earlier, could more reasonably be considered to have been fleeing from religious persecution.

The inclusion of religious freedom in the first amendment is less a result of the original pilgrims seeking such and more a result of wanting to avoid repeating the litany of violence in the name of religious persecution that was a part of pre-independence American history.

Democracy matters?

Common sense sure but that same common sense also holds that are going to be some gang-adjacent type people who have some tattoos and some gang-member friends who are getting caught up in crackdown-- and there are plenty of reasons to believe that's happened there.

It does and the democratically elected parliamend suspended some constitutional rights as the constitution allowed, and when a new election came, 85% of people agreed.

Can't be very much more democratic than that

Yes and if Bukele wants to be the great man he can be, he will address those issues when the emergency ends, make state amends, and retool procedures to reduce the chance of that happening in the future.

I am still on the fence waiting for that's and for me it's very clear he could fail abysmally, get drunk on power, and abuse rights even when no emergency exists.

That's a clear and present risk for him and his country. Let's see what happens shall we?

If you have a literature source covering your take I will gladly read it thanks

I've read various other pieces on this before but this is a good one I found when checking some things before making that post.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...ance-61312684/

Meh it's overrated.

Luciom can I ask you something? Do you like marching by any chance?