When Americans Abandon the Constitution
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Thus, there seem to be a broad array of Americans who no longer feel invested in the guiding document of their polity, which might augur tumultuous times as factions strive towards some new foundation for a country.
Can't be surprised if it's from The Atlantic :/
It may be that the Constitution is no longer a viable means of ensuring the peaceful transfer of power and of facilitating good-enough governance. It certainly has failed dramatically in the past to prevent civil strife. Is there an amendment that can fix whatever is wrong with the current situation and bring the elites back to the same page?
What is wrong with the current situation?
The fundamental problem is that the USA now thinks of itself as a direct democracy rather than a representative democracy and that modern technology has fueled the worst populist instincts of our population, creating an atmosphere ripe for demagoguery and factionalism. The Constitution had a solution for this — the indirect representation of the Senate, who up until the 17th amendment were chosen by the local state representatives. Indirect representation was meant to prevent “mob rule”. There is now no real difference in the makeup of the Senate and House of Representatives.
Undoing the 17th amendment would only result in even worse corruption and factionalism, but the idea of indirect representation is the correct idea.
After batting ideas around with GPT4 for a while, it seems one palatable amendment might be a three-fold change: 1) a 1-term term limits for Senators, 2) forbidding party primaries for Senate elections, and 3) changing Senate elections to Senate nominations, where any candidate who receives more than 20% of votes is sent to the current Senate for confirmation — the existing Senate, including the outgoing Senators, decide which of the nominees are to be confirmed. Confirmation is done Papal style — nobody goes home until the new Senators are confirmed by 2/3 majority.
Combining a 1-term limit with Senate self-confirmation means that more candidates have a chance of becoming a Senator without having to resort to demagoguery or factionalism, and that over time the composition of the Senate will trend away from power hungry individuals to civic-minded servants.
The Senate Renewal and Integrity Amendment:
*Amendment XXVIII*:
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the Senate more than once.
Section 2. No political party shall hold a primary for the nomination of a Senate candidate.
Section 3. For the election of Senators:
(a) Any candidate receiving more than twenty percent of the popular vote in their respective state shall be considered as a nominee.
(b) Upon receiving the list of nominees, the Senate shall convene in a closed session. Confirmation of a nominee requires a two-thirds majority of the Senate. Senators shall cast their votes anonymously. This process shall continue until a nominee is confirmed. Senators shall remain in session without adjournment until the confirmation is achieved.
(c) Outgoing Senators shall retain their voting privileges for the purpose of confirming their successors.
Section 4. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Is it news that some extremists on either end want to tear everything down? No. Is it news that one of two political parties has rallied around a plan to tear it all down? We haven't seen that since the, perhaps first, civil war.
Ideologically, the fact that the constitution represents a compromise with slave holders has become increasingly intolerable for democrats. Anti-racism as a principle has become more important than rule of law or cultivating a shared respect for the fundamental law.
None want to burn it all down. This is for genuine fear of those who want fascism to encourage mob violence, discrimination and deny law and order to minorities.
Puritans are not the anarchists in this story. Little Nazis are trying to normalize revolution and idol worship as somehow universal.
Lying to kill the constitution is their main tactic.
Your left leaning democrats are like our center-left government parties in terms of ideology. The Dems as a whole are slightly center right. Your Republicans are like our far right fringe parties.
Especially after how they handled their presidents insurection, the Republicans in my eyes should be unvotable for anybody who cares about democracy. And they should remain unvotable until they do some soul-searching. But this also includes things the GOP does outside of Trumps sphere of influence. E.g. look at the list of the worst gerrymandered states or at how the right tries to stop people from voting. If not enough people vote your party the democratic way would be to adjust which positions you offer to them, but the GOP seems like it would rather adjust their electorate.
Even if I liked the positions the GOP holds I would hate the idea to let them rule me, because this smells of "ignore what the voter wants". To theie credit, they managed to divide the electorate so much with culture-war bs that a big part of them actively want to become peasants under absolutist rule if it just meant the other side will lose.
Welcome to your role as either a Nazi or a Mao-style communist. Lying is not a creative writing class.
Currently, those electors are selected based on a popular vote as a matter of state law. But that could be changed by the state legislatures at any time, because ultimately the power rests with them to select the federal president.
If he had perhaps sought to convince those state legislatures to change their electoral process to favor him, that could have been constitutional. But the actions he undertook in his role as the head of the federal executive branch is clearly and egregiously in violation of the constitutional delegation of authority to state legislatures. Just because state law could be changed doesn't mean that the law was changed.
And that is why he stands indicted for election interference in Georgia, it's why I hope he'll be indicted in other states, and why I hope he'll be in state penitentiary before January 2025. Because he's a criminal who has zero respect for the constitution. He even said it:
> Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.
He literally called for the termination of the constitution, and you're here saying that we really need to be focused on how an inscrutable segment of "far left voters" might possibly dislike the constitution even though you have no evidence to show on that?
It’s a shame that “have you no decency, sir?” would fall on deaf ears in Congress in this day and age.
Looks like you missed the part where the US Congress has no control over how the 50 states select electors.
And yet none of these people have any real power, nor any party really backing their convictions, nor are they actively working to disenfranchise people and dismantle democracy. Absolutely a false equivalence.
The Republican party is unquestionably the party of Trump. And Trump demands to be king of America, no matter the cost.
In places where there are restrictions on speech, we see it abused against citizens. For example, in Islamic countries with blasphemy laws, they are weaponized against the opposition. Germany aggressively prosecutes people using anti-Natsoc laws and anti hate speech laws on what seems like a very politically biased basis https://web.archive.org/web/20230316140458/https://www.nytim....
If government has a method to arrest and silence people it doesn't like, it will find a way to use that method. I think the US is already hopeless so technology is the solution.
Not really. Threatening to pack the Court may have violated custom, but did not violate the Constitution itself, since Congress has the power to set the number of justices.
This actually highlights the more fundamental problem: the constitution is structurally imperfect and, really, is totally inert without accompanying norms and customs to make it mean something.
Unfortunately, the debate about what those norms and customs should be and how they should be developed and enforced is spoiled by philosophical and tribal gulfs that seemingly cannot be bridged.
The threat of court packing didn’t destroy the constitution. It was the Supreme Court decisions made under the threat of court packing.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230915001212/https://www.theat...
Flushing and switching to Google | Quad9 | AdBlock DNS might fix that for you.
Whether he actually said that, or merely behaved accordingly is really irrelevant.
The Constitution has been shredded for the last quarter of a century. But political parties and most people just don't care about that. The US is in a death-spiral. Look around you. Is this the way things were back in 2000?
I think society was more cohesive in 2000. Multiculturalism, globalism, and technological changes (example: the filter bubble) have eroded cohesion not only in the US, but also in other populous, ethnically diverse societies.
Yet, I think this “death spiral” take is a touch dramatic. Our short history is lined with one constitutional crisis after another.
Which is why this article is kind of absurd, in my opinion, as it tags the right / Republicans as those who are abandoning the Constitution.
Every poll or social study I've seen shows that progressives - especially the younger generations - have views similar to yours i.e. not much reverence for the Constitution, the founders, etc. They are most likely to believe that freedom of speech is less important than moderating "hate speech." They believe the 2nd amendment right to bear arms is ridiculously out of date in a modern society, etc.
I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them ...
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
etc.
https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a7s3.html
Forget your polls & social studies .. the actual OG Founder had not much reverance for the Constitution and would likely be appalled by your apparent raising up of it onto a sacred pedestal.
That isn’t what I read.
His prediction was that the constitution will fall because of corruption. People fighting back against corruption wouldn’t have “appalled” him.
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" - Trump
In particular, the Presidential system has failed badly in almost every non-US country it’s been tried in, because it’s inherently unstable when there is a forceful President and polarized political parties. It may be failing us today in the US. https://delong.typepad.com/linz_perils_presidencialism.pdf
Barring some extremists who call FDR “radical”, I cannot see the case for “both sides ism” It’s apparent to me that ONE party has chosen attempting to gain ABSOLUTE POWER in lieu of helping the nation or staying true to the constitution.
The stacked Supreme Court is a point in case: McConnell blocked Obamas single appointee that he had a right to appoint and this was a violation of the constitution.(no mention of election calendar in appointments)
Trump then railroaded through Congress an unprecedented 3 justices! Unheard of. Absolute power grab. No surprise that they overturned Roe v Wade.
I see América on the precipice and the GQP trying to push it over the edge.
If Trump gets in in 2024, we won’t see presidential elections again. He admires banana republic dictators and hates due process
I don’t like to be one sided, and certainly have heard people on the left falling for the idea that due process isn’t necessary to make important enough changes (in there opinion), I.e. supporting extreme judicial activism, institutional capture by ideologues, etc.
But elements of the Republican Party are preparing to wash away formal and legal limits and bipartisan/non-partisan fire walls to unfettered power for their faction, in an organized way, if they get Trump elected. [0]
A lot has been learned about the vulnerabilities of our voting and executive branch systems.
Those efforts are unlikely to evaporate post-Trump.
It is a rather scary time.
Scary enough for a recent Republican presidential candidate to express great worry about his own party.
That’s a colossal red flag.
And I see the far left’s less extreme loss of respect for the constitution as counter productively providing right extremists with soft targets for their own otherwise manufactured “alarm”.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/conservatives-aim-...
Especially because of the dubious nature of the first one. The vacancy lasted over a year, because the opposition party refused to vote. This is an enormous shift in power, for purely partisan reasons.
It was not illegal, but it's a complete breakdown of any sense of civil order. It's "fair" in the sense that two can play at that game, but that would lead to a complete logjam of the system.
Had it not been for that, he'd have nominated two members of the Court in a single term. That would be more than most, but not nearly the push of a permanent partisan majority with explicit intent of marginalizing the opposition.
This is simply false. For instance, Hoover successfully appointed 3 justices and only served a single term. Taft appointed 6! Harding appointed 4 despite only living 2 years of his term.
"Unprecedented in recent times" is weaselly but accurate. "Unprecedented" gives those who don't know better an inaccurate picture of the past and makes those who do know better wonder what else you're confidently wrong about.
None of that is to say I don't object to the shenanigans - I do.