The You Can't Make This Shit Up Department

[Dystopia]

1. Citizens shall possess the right to freely associate with one another without requiring any authorization, on condition that such associations are not intended to promote violence and their purposes are not contrary to the criminal law.

The purpose of criminal law is to prevent crime, therefore an association promoting crime is not allowed, I don't see the problem, it clearly goes against the finality of criminal law

2. Associations shall pursue their purposes freely and without interference from the public authorities and shall not be dissolved by the state or have their activities suspended, except in such cases as the law may provide for and then only by judicial order.

some associations need a judicial order because they treat more serious matter of need to be analyzed first, for instance a foundation with welfare purposes must be authorized because the court will see if the money and patrimony are enough to fulfill those purposes and there are no underlying objectives

See the parts bolded. They make these provisions meaningless. Associations shall not be dissolved unless we pass a law authorizing it - seriously?

Associations can be dissolved if they threaten public order, that's how it works, these interventions from the State are rare. Some associations need authorization because they need to be analyzed before their approval, that's how it works. your bold doesn't change anything and specially considering this is an article in about 300 it's not going to change the whole course of the constitution without a systematic interpretation

---

We had a far right party and it was banned after evidence was presented that they were fascists and members of underground (not so much now) nazi organizations throughout europe... For atheists? No of course not, but how does atheism relate to fascism? Being an atheist doesn't make you go against democracy or fundamental rights, it just makes you lack belief in gods or disbelieve gods. We didn't lose rights because of atheism, we lost them because of fascism.

And this is not a short step since the constitution only forbids fascism associations, not any other kind of associations, so such a ban wouldn't apply to anything else. What happens here is the same in germany, and my bet is that there are probably similar restrictions in spain, italy and former fascist states, and probably france and so on and other formerly invaded countries.

I don't think something I support will be considered equal to hate speech, hate speech is not criticizing something, hate speech is deliberately promoting racism, hate and segregation of people. As far as I know, attempts to implement communism and marxism-lenininsm failed and gave origin to totalitarian regimes, yet communist and marxist-leninist parties are perfectly legal, so I don't think the restrictions go to far.

This is where not only our national philosophies, but you and I disagree.

I do not entrust the government with the power to ban any speech because I do not trust it (or anyone else) to determine what kind of speech is so dangerous that it should be banned. And speech includes: speaking in public in favor of any idea whatsoever including hate speech.

We too have examples of bad ideas which we still allow to be openly spoken of. Our country once had something as or more terrible than fascism: slavery. The Constitution forbids slavery. But it is quite legal to give speeches promoting the idea of slavery here. One could even start a campaign to get the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery) repealed. No one does, at least as far as I know. But we also had a Civil War of succession. Speaking openly of succession is both legal and not terribly uncommon.

The fact that your constitution only bans one kind of speech--fascism is no guarantee that it won't ban other kinds of speech later. Didn't you tell me that your constitution is easily amended by the legislature?

It is banning the expression of certain ideas that opens the door to totalitarianism because it allows the party in power to repress all criticism. Banning dangerous speech is the hall mark of totalitarianism. Witness: Nazi Germany, the former Soviet, China, Korea, Iran. Banning public speech is not a tool I care to give any government for any reason.

It can't be easily revised, it needs 3/5 of voting to start a revision and then 2/3 to approve each article - And did you forget our material limits? Those limits can't be violated, therefore not a single revision can go against the principles I mentioned yesterday. Since keeping democracy is a revision limit, it's not possible for the government to implement a totalitarian regime without violating the constitution. This is why revision limits exist, to prevent the State from compressing rights

We have a disagreement alright, it's not useful to keep debating this, and it's equally useful for me to make philosophic statements regarding the legitimacy of the article forbidding fascist associations, I got to work with what I have got.

This ban is been here since 1976 and no more restrictions were added, no problems have arose from this article, the same happens in germany. Germany took it too far sometimes, they even banned a laser tag kind of game because it was against human dignity. Search the omega case of the ECHR (european court for human rights)

---

All I got was that you are free to associate, except when the government says you can't.

Yes, and the government says you can't if you threaten public order. So what?