America’s Fragile Constitution • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s Fragile Constitution

#61

Post by dragontamer » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 5:24 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #58

dragontamer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental attribute of the Constitution is that it can change with the times. The Constitution has been "corrected" 27 times. There is nothing wrong with the US that cannot be fixed with what is right with the US. The Constitution is the same. If there are any flaws... then we can propose an Amendment and fix it.

>There is nothing wrong with the US that cannot be fixed with what is right with the US. Ok. If you really believe in America and the American people, then why shouldn't we do as the article suggests, and call a Constitutional Convention, or use an Amendment to shift to a more parliamentary system that better represents the will of the American people, with less waste and gridlock and greater efficiency and coherence…

Because your ideas suck. If you have an actual idea that will stop the gridlock in Congress, I'm all ears. But all you've done is complain and then throw out unreasonable assertions.

Second, I listen to CSpan virtually every day. The number of issues the typical Congressman goes through each day is huge. Whether you recognize it or not, Congress is a policy machine, with dozens of committees discussing many dozens of issues every day, roughly 10 hours a day.

The typical man, woman, or child in this country will NOT be able to keep up with the typical one-minute speeches. I dare you to keep up with the number of issues the House alone attempts to address each day.

http://www.c-span.org/search/?searchtype=All&query=one+minut...

Yes, 10-hour days, or even longer. We've got them recorded from early in the morning... with some committees continuing to air live till 8:00pm or later.

Senators and Representatives average 70 hours / week when in DC. When they break and go back to their districts, they are typically meeting with the locals and solidifying their thoughts for the next congressional section.

The first step to recognizing the problem is recognizing the job of Congress. They are doing their job of discussing... but are getting gridlocked on virtually every viewpoint. Congress's role as the center of debate and policy decisions is in-fact working... and working very well in my view.

IMO, what needs to happen is maybe a bit of decentralized debates across the country. Too many of these viewpoints are meeting in Congress, and the debaters "talk past" each other all too often. It almost sounds like Republicans and Democrats start from fundamentally different places on all of these debates.

But I don't know of any laws that would fundamentally solve the issue of "people from different places disagree with each other".

Re: America’s Fragile Constitution

#62

Post by agarden » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 7:22 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #53

_petronius wrote: post #15

> Even if we discount the failures of other presidential democracies, though, we should not dismiss the fact that the U.S. Constitution was modeled on a system that collapsed into civil war, and that it is inherently fragile. Not to mention the US descending into civil war itself (due to irresolvable conflicts over pro- and anti-slavery voting blocks in the federal government). I think people often forget that the US…

> I'd also argue that constitutional originalism is a very new concept And you'd be wrong -- some of the original authors were already speaking out against originalism in their own lifetimes, which they wouldn't have had to do if the approach hadn't already starting be applied. (And, in fact, some gave preemptive warnings about it even before the Constitution was ratified, so not only was it actually happening from v…

That sounds interesting. I'd really like to read those. What sources can I go to?

Re: America’s Fragile Constitution

#63

Post by ckozlowski » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 7:41 PM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #49

ckozlowski wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the idea of Congress impeaching judges frankly terrifies me, and given that Congress holds up most executive appointments as it is, I'm not sure they could do much more damage there. The Ethics Committees largely hand-slap only the most gross violations of their members. I see your intent there, but I'd much rather see Congress holding a higher standard of itself. If you're referring to the overreach of Federal…

> when I see one Congressmen one-upping another on how we need to be "tough" or have "no tolerance" for this or that, I'm little surprised that our police and intelligence agencies act the way they do. Puritanism dies hard. I'd say the constitution is working perfectly: the government we have is the one we deserve and one that really does reflect what this country, on the whole, wants. People in this country are stil…

I think that's a harsh way to put it (or maybe harsh to read) but I think you're largely correct.

Re: America’s Fragile Constitution

#64

Post by vacri » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:45 PM UTC

wtbob wrote: post #25

vacri wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ambiguous wording in some places; crazy electoral college method for elections that ensures a two-party system; and the fact that there have been over 20 things called amendments ... all suggest that there are things wrong with the American constitution. Does it mean it was a bad thing overall? No. But to say that there's nothing wrong with it is to say that nothing in it is stale - and regardless of your political l…

> crazy electoral college method for elections The Electoral College is not crazy; indeed, IMHO what we need is for the state legislatures to appoint their electors. What's crazy is the popular vote.

Perhaps I should have been broader with the criticism. Basically, it's a significant problem with the way US federal elections work that they basically enforce a two-party system. A nation of 300 million people that is somehow adequately represented by only one of two parties?

Not allowing for multipolar politics is a problem with the constitution. Mind you, things like 'winner takes all' is a problem with the EC specifically.

Re: America’s Fragile Constitution

#65

Post by vacri » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

ckozlowski wrote: post #21

vacri wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... I'm not sure how "it was a product of it's time" is an appropriate rebuttal to "bits of it are stale". I'm genuinely puzzled that you think I need a history lesson, given I characterised parts of it as stale, which I would have thought inherently included the concept "it was a product of it's time" - that things that were once fresh and relevant are no longer so.

My apologies. I thought the "stale" comment was directed at the third amendment in particular. Most of what I was offering my rebuttal on was this: >all suggest that there are things wrong with the American constitution. Depending on your interpretation of "Wrong", I'd either agree or disagree. But the general point I was trying to make was that I don't find too many flaws with the examples you provided, and with reg…

The thing is, you can appreciate a thing and admire it, and still see room for improvement. To claim there is nothing wrong with the US constitution (as the OP did) is to take a religiose view of it.

One other flaw I just put to wtbob below is that the way the document structures elections, the result is a two-party system that simply cannot adequately represent hundreds of millions of people of diverse backgrounds. Given that the document was raised explicitly in response to inadequate representation, that's a problem. Is it the worst problem ever in a constitution? No, but it is still an issue.

Edit: For comparison, here in Australia we have a couple of major parties, a couple of big minor parties, and a scattering of small parties all in government at the moment. Or in Germany, it's entirely normal for major parties to have to band together to form a majority in order to govern - from memory, Merkel's party gets about 25% of the vote, and has to create a coalition with other parties to get the majority required. There is space in these systems for new parties to rise, and the concept of "you're either for us or against us" is nowhere near as prevalent as in the US. These systems have their issues too, but they are more representative of their people due to their flexibility.

Re: America’s Fragile Constitution

#66

Post by InclinedPlane » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:56 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #30

InclinedPlane wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallacy here is that deadlocks are a bad thing, usually they are not. You don't want a slim majority being able to drive the government at a breakneck pace. When society is deadlocked, government should be too. You want action only when there is fairly broad agreement.

"Deadlock is good" works in a system where the disagreeing sides are reasonable and willing to debate and compromise to produce a solution with broader support. That is not the system we have: we have a fully-polarized system in which each major party's agenda consists primarily of ensuring that the maximum number of items from the other party's agenda to be enacted will be zero (I say "maximum", because rolling back…

The idea that any action is needed at all is often incorrect. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.

A perfect case in point, the patriot act and the department of homeland security. That represented action taken. Solutions developed. Where they the right actions and the right solutions? Not in the least. Would we be better off without them? Probably.

Re: America’s Fragile Constitution

#67

Post by tsotha » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 10:25 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #57

tsotha wrote: post #4

There's nothing wrong with the American constitution. The problem is we don't follow it any more.

Can you be specific when the "not following the constitution anymore" started?

It was a gradual change, but the big blow was probably Wickard, which essentially turned the states into satrapies of the federal government.

Re: America’s Fragile Constitution

#68

Post by mvymvy » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 10:38 PM UTC

ckozlowski wrote: post #16

vacri wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ambiguous wording in some places; crazy electoral college method for elections that ensures a two-party system; and the fact that there have been over 20 things called amendments ... all suggest that there are things wrong with the American constitution. Does it mean it was a bad thing overall? No. But to say that there's nothing wrong with it is to say that nothing in it is stale - and regardless of your political l…

It was a product of it's time. And there were real reasons at the time for a number of those elements. - 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…

A majority of the states appointed their presidential electors in the nation's first presidential election in 1789 by appointment by the legislature or by the governor and his cabinet. Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.

The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.

The current system does not provide some kind of check on the "mobs." There have been 22,991 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 17 have been cast for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector's own political party. 1796 remains the only instance when the elector might have thought, at the time he voted, that his vote might affect the national outcome. The electors are and will be dedicated party activists of the winning party who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors).

In a winner-take-all state, if Trump is nominated and wins in that state, his party's electors in that state will vote for him.

Re: America’s Fragile Constitution

#69

Post by mvymvy » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #38

wtbob wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> crazy electoral college method for elections The Electoral College is not crazy; indeed, IMHO what we need is for the state legislatures to appoint their electors. What's crazy is the popular vote.

Electoral College by design was supposed to fail. The creators of the Constitution never expected political parties to become a thing. The House of Representatives were supposed to elect our President, after the Electoral College became deadlocked. That was the design of the Constitution. The fact of the matter is, the Electoral College is NOT functioning as designed. But whatever, that's how the laws of this country…

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country.

The national popular vote winner would receive all of the 270+ electoral votes of the enacting states.

The bill ensures that every vote, in every state, will matter equally in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.

Every vote would matter in the state counts and national count.

The bill has passed a total of 33 legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states states with 250 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions possessing 165 electoral votes—61% of the 270 electoral votes necessary to activate it, including 4 small jurisdictions, 3 medium-size states, and 4 big states.

http://www.NationalPopularVote.com

Re: America’s Fragile Constitution

#70

Post by tsotha » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 11:47 PM UTC

mvymvy wrote: post #69

dragontamer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electoral College by design was supposed to fail. The creators of the Constitution never expected political parties to become a thing. The House of Representatives were supposed to elect our President, after the Electoral College became deadlocked. That was the design of the Constitution. The fact of the matter is, the Electoral College is NOT functioning as designed. But whatever, that's how the laws of this country…

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country. The national popular vote winner would receive all of the 270+ electoral votes of the enacting states. The bill ensures that every vote, in every state, will matter equally in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in…

It will also probably be thrown out by the courts, too. Compacts between the states have to be approved by congress.