It's interesting. There are few European countries where I can unconditionally refuse to speak to police or refuse them to search my home or person without a warrant. We don't have CCTV cameras like they do in the UK. And when it comes to being able to overthrow your government yourselves, much of Europe has the same sham democracy we do. (Berlusconi? Seriously? Twice?) We have guns, but the parts of Western Europe who really wanted to overthrow their governments within recent history were able to get all the guns and explosives they wanted too. So it's hard to really say one is any better than the other.
The European Court of Human Rights has established that the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination applies.
All over Europe elections are held at least every 4th or 5th year and governments are regularly overthrown, in Italy more often than anywhere else, I think.
> The European Court of Human Rights has established that the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination applies.
Interesting. But the details of that certainly differ from country to country, at least judging from the reaction to James Duane's "Don't Talk To Police" video. For instance, in the UK, if you refuse to answer police questions, statements you make in favor of your innocence can be thrown out because you didn't mention them to the police under questioning. So the "right to remain silent under police questioning" is much weaker in the UK.
> All over Europe elections are held at least every 4th or 5th year and governments are regularly overthrown
We have elections every other year, so I'm curious why that's considered a point of difference between Europe and the US. The issue is whether the electoral system can effect real change or whether it's fixed by the rich and powerful, e.g. by owning a large chunk of the country's media and continuing to run those and other private businesses while serving as Prime Minister.
To make my usual point: the UK does not have a singular legal system; England and Wales has a separate legal system to Scotland, which is itself separate to the legal system in Scotland. People frequently claim the English and Welsh legal system is the "UK legal system".
For example, when it comes to police questioning, until two years ago, there was no requirement to provide a lawyer under Scots law (though there were various other safeguards, which Google can likely tell you better than I!).
it's even more for local positions. To be fully participant in the US government hierarchy (primaries, generals, local, state, federal), you're voting twice a year. Summing up across jurisdictions, the US has something like 5 million discrete elections a year.
not only that, the EU president is unelected - it rotates between the premiership of different states. That would be (somewhat) like Louisiana voting for its governor and having that governor be president of the US for some number of years. So much for 'overthrowing' governments.
