I think the EU as a group of states seems to work quite well. Furthermore it seems like anti-democratic behaviour is getting punished now, too, if you look over to Poland. I'm quite optimistic that this will further improve.
Dude, what is your definition of "democracy" ? Because your opinion about Poland state seems to be really, really brain-washed. At best.
Democracy as in free election ? Perfect democracy here - one party won twice, other parties lost. You call it a problem ?
Democracy as in free speech ? Dude ! Wake up ! In Poland is so much free speech that it's boarding with anarchy ! Eg. almost decade of opposition internally and internationally literally urges to harm their own country just to retake power - without any gov punishment or something. Mrs. Merkel ex-pet, Tusk, literally calls for purges, without any law procedures ! Freedom bordered with anarchy !
Maybe you are aware judges here act as caste and they do whatever they want. Law is twisted at will here. Do not saying all the time, just when they want it. And that judges are official* opposition of elected party ! Judges ! Acting politically ! You call that despotism ? Or too much freedom ?
Do we have military state like in France ? No. Do we have censorship like in Germany ? No. Do we have problems with making government like Italy ? No. Do our PM resigned because of corruption and next PM promised silence and no more leeks like in GB ? No.
You see ? It's oasis of peace and happiness here compared to rest of the EU ;)
But tell me pls, what you have in mind about that "anti-democracy" in Poland ?
Only if Poland were the one doing the punishing. In this context, if I am correctly interpreting what the OP is referring to, the EU is punishing its member state Poland; Poland is the recipient of the punishment
Yes, European Imperium dark forces keep supporting anti-democracy here: they are on politically involved post-commie juries side, trying to prevent juries from being just third power of democracy; they tried to create illegal immigrants camps here; they constantly abuse union treaties like prohibiting polish drives equality; cretive treaties laws interpretations ? LOL; pushing minorities over-alle privilages and not based on actual reality pseudo-science like gender ? They do constantly. But where to moved "equality parades" from Berlin ? Obviously socialistic systemic method "resolved" minorities public shows in Berlin by terrorist attack threats... "No LGBT spheres" ? Faked and published by actual pro-LGBT zealot - but that's not a problem for fake-democratic EU owners to be another "reason" to punish Poland :>
You will have to be more specific, "democratic" is a grossly overlaoded term these days. When you write "democratic", do you mean "in accordance with the will of the majority of the population", or do you mean "in accordance with the will of unelected EU bureaucrats, the US Department of State, and media elites"?
I'm not sure what the form of government has to do with long-term, unintended consequences deriving from parents regularly choosing the characteristics of their unborn children. Would we have more or fewer: engineers, artists, short people, quirky people, homosexuals, religious people, etc?
We're talking about embryos here. I think you're well aware about the ongoing discussions on when those are to be considered humans and when not. That's not an easy topic, obviously, but I'm fairly confident that we won't throw babys in the garbage can if we don't like them but try to make those decisions as early as possible.
> I'm fairly confident that we won't throw babys in the garbage can if we don't like them
Why not? What exactly is the limiting criterion? Sentience is the main criterion that people who want to argue for animal rights and yet support abortion use, and it's a pretty squishy criterion. Already Peter Singer supports veganism and effective altruism (i.e., rebranded utilitarianism), and yet is perfectly okay with both abortion and infanticide, at least until the child gets "sentience".
- Every prosperous and civilized nation's last words