"In 1991 following a decision by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, Appenzell Innerrhoden (AI) became the last Swiss canton to grant women the vote on local issues."
Notice how it was a court decision, not a result of the political process. I'd say 1991 is a bit too late to have full voting rights for women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...
Google returned zero results– did you misspell it? Google usually can't find documents for misspelled rare words
What I admire about the Swiss is how they live and let live - they may disagree with the neighbour, but let them be.
Please.
The idea you’re dismissing is that of allowing small groups of people rule themselves which does mean some will use unconventional ways they consider best. Note that the Apenzellers didn’t hinder anyone who disagreed to leave or refuse to trade with them. They also didn’t force their way onto others.
Switzerland was once just a bunch of small independent nations in a military alliance, which allowed them decentralisation and having multiple competing systems, without everyone having to do it one way. If you have that, you must agree that your neighbour may live in a way you disagree with - but in exchange they will let you live in a way they disagree with, as I’m sure many from Apenzell think of the Züricher.
I imagine the Apenzellers argued that the job of the state is military protection. Conscription means the state forces you to give your life for it, and voting rights for conscripts means soldiers will only go to wars they collectively agree with, effectively ruling out wars of aggression. That’s how it was in my country, but I’m not familiar enough with Apenzell (except for their cheese) to talk about their history in this depth.
So I found your comment disingenuous and that's why I left a sarcastic remark, not aligned to HN rules sure, but yeah I did it. Also, if you think HN is an excellent place and not tainted, I have no words.
Edit: Grammar, wording.
HN is not perfect, but it’s far from the norm online regarding good faith rational discussion, and I’ve certainly witnessed people here accepting and learning facts and from rational arguments.
Firstly "accepting a law" implies - in western liberal democracies - a legislative process in which a law is proposed and accepted by some kind of parliament. This is not what happened here - in Switzerland, laws can be given to the population directly by non-parliamentary, non-governmental organisations in referenda, which then become binding. The law you are referring to was accepted by the general Swiss population with about 51% of the votes yesterday.
2. The law is not specifically forbidding women particularly forbidding to wear burkas. It forbids anyone to hide their faces when in public (with the exceptions of traditional customs, e.g. during carnival season). The basic idea behind this is that in a free society, we meet each others face to face. This generally good idea was abused by right-wingers to point out that this prevents visible Islamisation of an ultimately christian-conservative country, and by left-wingers to imply it was sexist and islamophobic.
3. Men and women can still wear whatever they like ... in private. In public, all societies have acceptable clothing standards. Try going out wearing nothing but three straps of leather and a gimp mask in front of a school, anywhere in the world, and see what happens.
A little tyranny of the majority is not always a bad thing.
You can read this in a positive light or a negative light. I know a guy who had that surgery done as an adult and it was incredibly painful and took a while to fully heal. I want to say it was almost a month. You could certainly argue that it's a lifetime of pain if it's done and you don't like it but that's likely a slippery slope in some regard.
I can agree that we should probably be doing a better job of explaining to parents the pros and cons of each so they make more informed, realistic choices but some of the outrage rhetoric around circumcision is a bit much.
Medical science is very clear about both male and female genital mutilation: lots of risk and potential harm, not real benefits.
And this does not grow back like nails and hair. It's not a fashion. It's literally putting a knife in your baby because some old culture prescribes it. No problem with that: just do it when the kid reaches the age of consent.
Freedom of religion may not constitutionally compete with bodily integrity (nor with freedom of expression (blasphemy)).
This is more of a tangent, but I would contest the idea that "accepting a law" implies that it is passed by a parliamentary body. This was maybe true in the 1800s, but not today when plenty of western liberal democracies have some form of direct democracy with electoral referendums on important issues. Some (e.g. California) have a system roughly comparable to Switzerland, although it's obviously at the state level in the case of CA.
Imho that was the deciding part.
If it's the latter, that's a reason for them to seek help from the authorities.
The Swiss rule their house, and let others rule theirs, and this is what I mean with living and letting live.
My point is that while the majority of Swiss cantons decided to not have gender restrictions on voting, they allowed Apenzell to keep being the weird one, and in response the people of Apenzell don’t force their way onto others. If I don’t want my neighbour to tell me how to run my household, I must also not force them. Apenzell didn’t force their way into the Züricher.
Although in the end, the people of Apenzell were forced to change their way.
You and I probably agree that a 12yo should not have the right to decide what the state should do with its might, but the argument is the same regarding how the legal voting population of this tiny state of 16k citizens decide to expand who gets to vote in their local elections.
What I say is that I’m impressed by the federal government of Switzerland for allowing even such a tiny group such self determination to select who can vote in local elections - until the UN forced them to conform in 1991 that is. I think this is why they don’t have civil wars when they disagree - they instead let others do their thing and the cantons run their competing systems simultaneously.
Regarding your question whether I would think it was ok to have a Swiss canton where local government was ran by one person, it’d be ridiculous but I would not think it’s right to use force to stop it, unless that local government hindered anyone from leaving. This is at least, as you have identified, the logical conclusion of the argument I am making, and the Swiss did until 1991. In reality no single person would likely run it well, and it would end up an economic disaster, and sooner or later change. Instead of coercion letting a hundred seeds grow, before separating the wheat from the chaff
And if the simplest solutions to problems of governance become violence, rather than the system itself, then you have failed at the main purpose of government.