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Constitutions, at the end of the day, are just pieces of paper that can be ignored entirely. The 1977 Soviet Constitution was a landmark in human rights and freedom of expression, but nobody was kidding themselves that this was the reality of Brezhnev's USSR. On the other hand a country like the UK can wing it without a solid constitution at all - just a bedrock of tradition and past legal precedent - yet still remain (despite many glaring faults and recent backsliding) a relatively free country in global and historical terms.

What matters is that the society itself believes in the traditions of democracy, freedom and the rule of law. If that withers and dies, perhaps because people no longer consider these ideals to be as important as their pet ideologies, or because the citizens no longer share a common epistemological reality, or because oligarchs are given free reign to buy politicians, courts and media, then it doesn't really matter any more what your vaunted Constitution says.




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