You’d think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it’s key ideology.
Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.
Sure, but that’s not what I’m saying. You said that forbidding a Nazi salute would be against the first amendment. I’m only saying that IF Nazi symbols were to be outlawed then the freedom of speech should not equal to freedom from breaking the law.
It does, though, because such a law would be struck down as unconstitutional. The First Amendment doesn’t just protect lawful speech; it protects all speech and the American government just barely carved out an exception for inciting violence. These amendments are part of the constitution, which stands above and restricts the rest of American law. If you made a law saying that Nazi symbols were illegal, your law would (at least theoretically) be illegal and struck down in court and people would retain the freedom to use Nazi symbols. You might take issue with that, but if only legal speech was allowed then… the government could just make any speech it doesn’t like illegal.
You talk about amendments as if they couldn’t be amended.
They could be, but that would require another amendment, or in other words either a 2/3 majority in both houses or 2/3 of all state legislatures. You’d never get that many people to give up their right to free speech, because as soon as you put one kind of speech on the table all speech is on the table. Would you trust Trump with that kind of power?