If you’re a big believer in the mythological principles of US government, the idea of people electing representatives shouldn’t be seen as a diminishing of the state. State power is endowed by the creator to the people.
Legislatures aren’t states. The governor is the head of state executing the laws of the people as expressed by the legislature.
If you're a believer in the somewhat more modern American ideal of a purely populist government then yes, the current Senate makes more sense, but then it doesn't make sense as to why the Senate grants equal power to each state no matter how populous.
This has been an argument since the beginning. The thinnest layer (Confederation) was found non-viable and was replaced by a somewhat thicker layer after about six years. There was a lot of argument then, and a lot of argument after the fact, leading to thinning and thickening of the layer.
> but then it doesn't make sense as to why the Senate grants equal power to each state no matter how populous.
Or, under the previous system, why Senators were elected for 6 year terms when they would more easily represent the states' current interests with 2 year terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee%E2%80%93American_wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Indian_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion - Note that this last one was a Civil War.
The US is currently in 24th place on the corruptions index: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022/index/usa
And it seems that corruption was not unknown in the states during the Confederacy period, and is claimed to have increased during the Confederacy: https://www2.byui.edu/i-learn/examples/AF_beforetext.pdf
> Between 1776 and 1787 corruption in state governments increased. States where debtors gained control of the legislatures issued large quantities of paper money which depreciated rapidly in value. In Rhode Island the small farmers in the assembly adopted a Force Act requiring creditors to accept the money at original value. Creditors in other states were also discriminated against by mortgage stay laws which prevented mortgage foreclosures for indefinite periods. The problem of factions within a republic, that was supposed to be solved by keeping republics small like the states, seemed became acute as legislatures became controlled by one faction or another and those factions passed discriminatory legislation.
> There were many disputes and tensions between the states that arose over foreign and interstate commerce. The states began using their power to levy tariffs after the war when England dumped such quantities of cheap goods in America that domestic producers were threatened with ruin. As the tariffs were not uniform among the states, commerce gravitated toward such low-tariff states as Rhode Island. Other states, jealous of this trade, began levying retaliatory tariffs against the goods of those favored states. Merchants and manufacturers wanted an end to destructive interstate tariffs and commercial rivalry, as well as aid in their dealing with foreign governments. States also began to argue with each other over the control of rivers and ports so essential to foreign and interstate trade; causing more bitter disputes between the states.
I got the bookends, you can address "global economic whipsaw manipulation, climate crisis, mass incarceration, widespread poverty" if you want.
I normally wouldn't have copy and pasted that much text, but I thought I'd save anyone the time of having to scroll through a 63 page PDF.
And would it have been preferable if any colony could, itself, decide to start a confrontation? "in 1786 the Kentucky militia launched the first major frontier military action since the end of the Revolutionary War."
To save you the effort: I am familiar with US history.
You bet. And I will keep on keeping on into the future. Though I've probably reached my limit for this back-and-forth.
Calling a 10 year war a 1 year war is "familiar with US history"?
Let's go to another confederated country as an example of what might have happened had the US stayed under the Articles of Confederation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Switzer...
It looks like, after the founding and expansion of Switzerland, they had to deal with a number of civil wars (at least one involving no conflict, though others had deaths), as well as periodic wars with surrounding great powers.
I’ve read some interesting opinions on the internet. But I have never heard anyone advocating a pro articles of confederation position.
Had that stuck around, the US would be a dominated an expansionist New York, surrounded by some expanded British colonial entity in the west. The south would be a backwater set of post-colonial agricultural colonies.
I'd recommend hitting up the Library of Congress. I've found a lot of fraudulent versions of Founder writings online, but the Library of Congress should have digital scans of the originals.
Imagine a world where a judge in a post-colonial agricultural colonies tried to tell someone in the modern western world that because the Lord of the universe was very upset about abortion drugs, they were henceforth banned. That judge would be laughed at and life in the civilized world would go on.
I’m not seeing how the AoC would have prevented any of those things. (In respect to some of the global effects, they might have made it more likely the US was part of the global peripheries rather than great power in respect to them, but that doesn’t really change the global situation, just the local experience, and if you think the periphery experience of those things is better…I don’t know how to help you.)
America built in its own rotten boroughs problem as part of the foundation
It removed one of the big checks of "checks and balances" fame.
> Legislatures aren’t states. The governor is the head of state executing the laws of the people as expressed by the legislature.
I'd watch that clusterfuck on pay-per-view. But sure, it'd still be an improvement if you want governors to appoint them.
It occurs to me after typing this that when you said “as entities” you were probably alluding to this dichotomy.
I disagree on the point that the states have cleaned up their act, what has happened is that the Federal government has taken on more power and responsibility from the States, for better and worse.
Meanwhile, people have become more disconnected from their state politics and only focus on the federal. Up to the point of blaming the federal government for not acting when it is the state's responsibility.
Rather, you've just got these people who are, at the time of the government's founding, equally powerful (at least in sum) to the government — thus, peers to the government. These people can do whatever they like; they can even have their own private standing armies et al, because your own standing army — the military — isn't powerful enough yet to prevent that.
Thus, you have to give these powerful people a seat at the table, or they'll challenge the legitimacy of your government (or maybe even just get together to overthrow it.) Maybe that's even what they were just doing, until you got them to calm down and talk to you.
One might say that the whole process of establishing a government out of a feudal or contested state, is the bringing of these "peers" to a common table, convincing them that it's in their best interests to solve their problems with the nascent government using plain in-the-open debate, rather than violence or subtle manipulation.
Whereever the peers meet to have that open debate, then, is a de-facto "House of Lords." It doesn't need any laws about it to make it so. The laws grow up over time to enshrine what would be happening regardless.
And in that light, the way "appointment to" a Westminster-system House of Lords works, makes total sense. The government isn't granting people a seat at the table just because; rather, it's tracing the transfer of political power through dynastic inheritance (and explicitly stamping whoever received it with a heritable noble title, so that there's no argument about who the government thinks received the political power.) This is also why noble titles can be extinguished — if nobody directly inherits a lump of political power, then there should no longer be a seat at the table for "the person who currently holds that lump of political power."
The ideal end to a House of Lords, AFAICT, is that eventually all the noble titles go extinct; all the seats are removed; and the House becomes obsolete. I'm not aware of that having ever happened yet anywhere, but it seems to be the intention from the start of every government.
(The American system, at first glance, is incompatible with this end; but it could in theory have approached it, if the American people had been less fans of federalism, and had instead insisted that their own states revert to territories in exchange for seats allocated in a central parliament. I think this could have even been likely, in an alternate world where any of the colonies went down a monarchic or oligarchic route with their state governments.)
Isn’t this “lump of power” just monetary wealth, property, social connections etc? Why does it have to be passed onto a relative instead of any other individual the current power holder chooses?
Rarely people were "adopted". But generally because any relative who might be in line to the power would also have enough power to object to the inheritance passing to another. The hundred years' war was bad enough between two states. Having it within a state is not something the state wants.
In est, your "social connections" — Grey's "keys to power" — value stability of their own powerful positions in your government (or noble house, or family-run utility company/industry monopoly, or whatever other forms lumps of power can take.)
The key-holders' own political power exists regardless, but whether it translates to active ability to affect change right this moment depends on favor of the current ruler. Who better to place their bets on, then, as a replacement for a ruler who will continue to favor them — a ruler who will ensure the stability of the previous ruler's power base — than someone the previous ruler has been grooming for that very job from birth?
But I would argue that, at least for non-totalitarian states, there's also another, more interesting and crucial influence on what makes power legitimate.
When governments and noble houses generate revenue and get things done through free people who they employ or contract — not slaves or serfs or indentured servants — then it's the opinion of those free people on who is the legitimate next ruler, that actually determines who the legitimate next ruler will be. In a non-totalitarian state, a ruler cannot rule without the will of the people. To do otherwise provokes a populist-led revolution to abolish the seat of power altogether.
Looking at how lines of succession of royal seats of power work/are calculated can be enlightening, because there's a certain point where the rules cross over from "what anyone actually a part of the current royal house would want" into "what the population thinks makes someone a legitimate heir."
(The particular thing the population thinks makes someone a legitimate ruler, is usually a result of a centuries-long propaganda campaign by those in power; but no individual who wants power can entirely overwrite that belief during a succession crisis, which is the important thing here.)
Here's the way this works for the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46N-bulO-aM
Note in the above, the people that get referred to as "royals" and have little crown icons. Those are the people that the existing ruler grooms as potential replacements, trying to get them established in the minds of their power base.
But note how there are so many other candidates to succession outside of this small group. These other candidates are there not because the royal family would rather transfer power to them, but rather because the will of the people in this case is to follow this weird rule (patrilineal primogeniture) wherever it takes them. (Which is a kind of rule-utilitarianism, in the sense that a society notoriously following this rule wherever it may lead, tends to result in the fewest wars of succession.)
If Westminster gets hit with a nuke one day, and all the current UK "royals" die — and then some con-artist pops up who was living in Morocco, and claims that they're the secret son-by-marriage-twice-removed of the Earl of Sandwich — then what that person is trying to do, is to claim legitimacy in the eyes of the people. They don't hold any of the current "keys to power"; but they think they might be able to step into those relationships and be accepted by those "keys to power", if they can first get the people who work for those key-holders seeing them as the key-holders' new legitimate boss.
This is also true when deciding who initially forms government in a feudal/contested state. Who "won" the War of the Roses, between the houses of Lancaster and York? The entirely-separate House of Tudor. The houses of Lancaster and York, through their violent conflict, ended up killing all the groomed male heirs of both houses — making them both invalid choices for succession in the eyes of the people (because patrilineal primogeniture), and in the eyes of the "keys to power" (because no established relationships left with anyone in those houses.)
And yes, this all still applies even in a country with democratic elections.
Most modern democracies are templated off the Westminster system, and so don't directly elect a president, but rather elect a legislature who in turn appoint a Prime Minister, like a corporate board of directors appointing a CEO. Guess who's getting appointed? Someone with established relationships with keys to power; perhaps hereditary ones. (Consider: Justin Trudeau.)
For countries that directly elect a president and have term limits, the choice might seem to be more in the hands of the people... and often is, at the country's founding. But you then get a primacy of political parties as noble-house-esque government-in-waiting entities, each trying to find and groom politicians into figureheads for the "party line", such that it's actually the party, and not the individual, that establishes the continuous key-holder relationships and carries them forward. The political party acts in lieu of a noble dynasty as the immortal entity conferring stability-of-power to key-holders.
The one way in which political parties aren't just noble houses, is that they will sometimes voluntarily allow outside entities who don't "toe the party line", to come in and take over for a bit — if those outsiders hold their own lumps of power. For a noble house, this would be suicide—they'd be "overwritten" by the outsider's new dynasty. But a political party will continue on just as they were afterward... but now having absorbed and digested the key-holder relationships that the outsider brought with them, into itself. (Consider: Donald Trump.) Though, note, noble houses do absorb external key-holder relationships — they do it through political marriages.
Says who?
From Red Roulette:
> The struggle pitted Xi Jinping against an official named Bo Xilai. Both were sons of Communist "immortals", veterans of Mao's revolution. And both owed their careers to a Party decision made in 1981 and pushed by a high-ranking Communist named Chen Yun to establish a special office in the Party's personnel department called the Young Cadres Section. That section's purpose was to ensure that the sons and daughters of senior Party members were given good positions in the government and the Party. "If our sons and daughters succeed us," Chen Yun declared, "they won't dig up our graves."
> The Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989 gave this work added urgency. A key lesson that the red aristocracy drew from that turmoil was that, as the saying went, "you can best depend on your own kids." Each leading family chose an heir to be groomed for political leadership. Nominated by their fathers, Xi and Bo rose through the Party ranks.