Jun 17, 17 / Leo 00, 01 15:46 UTC
Another Asgardians take on the Constitution ¶
Let's get right into it. Sadly, this Constitution seems very poorly done both grammatically/orthographically and in terms of content, with parts full of feel-good - but legally meaningless - phrases and parts that are straight-up frightening in their implication. If this Constitution correctly reflects the intentions and values of the people currently in power, then god help us...
Only touching on my major issues, and this doesn't even include the meaningless fluff like "Asgardia is a country of free spirit" (what does that even mean? Has no place in a Constitution IMO) or unnecessarily complicated phrasing in order to sound more "official":
1. No option to vote "No" - Dealbreaker. Anyone involved with this decision should be disqualified from having anything to do with Asgardias legal/governmental future.
2. "Space Kingdom" - Sounds cool, in practice it's nonsense. Please be serious with this stuff. I will touch more on this later.
3. "Asgardia does not engage in politics, and has no place for political parties. But every Asgardian can freely participate in political life on Earth." - Either meaningless or despotic. Sure, everyone here can name a political party they don't like, but at its root, forming a political party is a basic cornerstone of a representative government by and for the people. Why not add "Asgardia is no place for labour unions, but every Asgardian can freely negotiate their working conditions" as well (/sarcasm)?
4. "Asgardia creates a new exclusively peaceful non-military and progressive history of the future space humankind." - Meaningless word salad, which from now on I will stop pointing out to avoid ballooning this post beyond all limits.
5. "If the rights of an Asgardian are infringed, including by an Asgardian governmental body, he/she has the right to seek legal protection in Supreme Space Court." - Citizens rights have to be guaranteed by a government body by default. Why is it the responsibility of the oppressed to seek protection? Such protection should be a given, not conditional upon anything!
6. "All citizens of Asgardia must comply with the Constitution, Asgardia’s laws and regulations, respect and implement its Supreme Values irrespective of their location, unless this results in violation of the law of the country in which they are located." - This would mean Asgardia asserting jurisdiction over other sovereign nations.
7. "Failure to perform citizenship obligations or failure to perform them properly may lead to permanent revocation of Asgardian citizenship" - Sounds fine, don't pay your taxes, we revoke your citizenship (/sarcasm).
8. "Asgardia supports its citizens in leading healthy lifestyles." - Not substantive criticism on my part, but just as an aside: Really? This makes it into the CONSTITUTION?
9. "Asgardian currency is freely exchangeable into all of the main global currencies on the free market on Earth in line with the law of Asgardia." - Unenforcable, unless you want to assert regulatory jurisdiction over all of Earths currency exchanges.
10. "Asgardia guarantees the rights of authors, inventors and users of intellectual property in harmony and balance." - Meaningless fluff. Define "harmony" and "balance" as it relates to property rights.
11. "governmental property that constitutes the wealth of Asgardian citizens used for the common good" - Say what? The wealth of Asgardian citizens constitutes governmental property, to be used for the common good?
12. "Prejudice during elections and referenda based on Earth country of birth, residence, citizenship, race, nationality, gender, language, wealth, creed or belief and other differences is prohibited." - Unenforcable (or Thoughtpolice), also nonsense. I can not base my vote on a candidates belief or their language? What if the candidate doesn't speak a language I understand?
13. "court protection of Asgardian citizens’ rights to run for office and be elected;" - Except, as we shall see later, to run for the highest office in the nation...
14. "Propaganda of superiority and inequality of people is prohibited. Asgardia prohibits racist, Nazi, fascist and other similar ideologies in their historical and new forms." - Sounds good, except you have just codified thoughtcrime in your Constitution. Which ideology this will be applied to is unforseeable. Why not, instead, defeat these ideologies in open debate?
15. "Asgardia prohibits the propaganda of immoral and antisocial behaviour, the production and circulation of information on any storage media which contains mass information that is harmful to morality and/or aims to undermine or diminish its Supreme Values." - again with the thoughtcrime. "Antisocial behaviour" can mean anything and nothing, the enforcement of this paragraph will be completely arbitrary.
16. "Any persecution for expression of views and convictions is prohibited, provided that such views do not contain propaganda of immorality, seek to undermine or diminish Supreme Values, threaten national security, incite violence, strife, demean the honour and dignity of individuals, disclose restricted information, and which is not otherwise specified by requirements for ensuring information security." - Great, let's have more of these specific terms like "propaganda of immorality", which aren't open to interpretation at all. And let's persecute people for hurting other people's feelings, because that will turn out well and won't lead to an authoritarian state....
17. "Asgardia’s national motto is “One Humanity, One Unity”." - I'm not the closest follower to the goings-on here, so correct me if I'm ill-informed. Was this voted on? If not, then change it because it's terrible.
Reason: added numbers to list