America’s Fragile Constitution

...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. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution.... It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does... Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.[0]

He means that the Constitution will continue until no other form of government but despotism is possible, not that it leads to despotism.

Also note that despotism and tyranny are not exactly the same form of government (the main relevant difference is that despotism can be benevolent), and that the distinction would have been more significant in Franklin's time.[1] I think that a more modern phrasing would be something like:

...the Constitution will be administered well for a while, and will last until the country becomes so corrupt that only a despot could maintain order.

[0] http://www.usconstitution.net/franklin.html

[1] http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/politics/what...

edit: formatting

I'd argue this has eroded in recent decades due to lack of transparency, which has greatly hindered the third branch, the Judiciary, from being able to act as effectively as it might have otherwise.

- The electoral college was mean to provide a bit of separation between the population and election to the Presidential office. Remember, in the 1790s, direct election of what was envisioned as a powerful post worried many. While it is largely a formality now, the electoral college provided a degree of separation to allow for cooler heads to prevent the spontaneous election of someone unfit. (Personal thought: If Trump somehow gets the nomination, I motion that this be the perfect test of that body's powers.)

- I'm not sure what one can take issue with regarding the amendment process. It's ensured that the document has remained flexible over the years, and was a mechanism created from the outset to fix flaws and limitations known even then. The inclusion of this process could be seen as a nod to the charges Mason and others brought that the new Constitution did not do enough to protect individual liberties. There was not enough broad support at the time to determine what they should be, and the US needed a better system quickly to replace the Articles of Confederation. The amendment process allowed them to move forward and tackle the issue at a later time.

- In Revolutionary times, communications were either in person, or by letter. British soldiers stationed in the cities roamed in public, making meetings to discuss the state of affairs dangerous and difficult. Speaking of anything relating to disobedience to the King and Government in England was an arrestable offensive, a little cause or warrent was needed. So the private home was the preferred location.

Well now imagine that a new directive has been passed, and now a police officer has been assigned to live with you. It's all in the context of providing housing, but he is watching, listening, and will report a disloyal word up to his superiors. It's 18th century persistent surveillance, and the colonists were outraged.

That amendment today seems silly, (it's rarely been directly contested in court) but it's immensely important to establishing a Right to Privacy because of it's intent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Amendment_to_the_United_...

I don't see this so much as a issue with the modeling of the Constition, but the larger unresolved question of slavery in the United States. They largely "kicked the can" with that question in the Constitution with the "Three-Fifths" rule, but I'd argue that the scene was set for a clash regardless.

I might go a step further and say that the Constitutions wasn't fragile, but because it established a strong Federal system, it set the stage for the conflict to come because the Southern states would now be accountable to Federal law, whereas slavery might have persisted under the Articles.

In my opinion, did it have a hand in the war to come? Yes. Was it the cause? Far from it. The war settled not only slavery, but any lingering questions of the supremacy of that document, and it's never been questioned since.

Soviet Russia from 1946-1990 was never a super power, it was in fact weaker in every objective respect than Russia has been the last ten years. Most of the image of it being a super power was propaganda that turned out to be completely false - namely that they had a powerful economy and global military projection ability. Nearly all of their economic output figures were fraudulent. That fraud became apparent with the collapse. This was a country that for 40 years couldn't even keep its grocery stores stocked properly.

On a subjective basis, for about 20 years the USSR seemed powerful, but only when compared militarily to Western Europe, Japan and China which had all been decimated. Compared to the US they were not.

By 1960-1965 West Germany's economy was already bigger than the USSR. By 1965, the US economy (possessing ~50% of all global manufacturing) was at least five times larger than the USSR economy.

From 1950-1990, the USSR's economy was highly isolated, low on innovation and weak, susceptible to constant threats of famine and shock (to say nothing of the things Stalin did domestically). You could see that both in their technology and products. The US post WW2 was a global export monster, highly connected, with a very inventive economy, to go with the global reserve currency. The US achieved by 1970 a median household income of about $45,000 (in 2014 dollars) - something nations are only beginning to catch up to now. Needless to say, the USSR median household income was a small fraction of that.

After WW2 the US had a truly global military position. It had North and South America almost exclusively as its sphere of influence. It had military bases in Japan and Germany. It had a system of global alliances spanning from Canada to the UK to France to Germany to Australia to Japan. The USSR had nothing even remotely like that, their few actual allies were weak and fragile.