21–30 of 747 posts
But seriously, that would be interesting. Our Founding Fathers never intended there to be this entrenchment of two parties. It would make polarization harder because, well... what are the sides? It would also force greater civic participation to know what candidates actually stand for, and not just at the federal level.
At this point, is the difficulty in amending the Constitution actually a bug? Seeing the polarization, I could see our Founding Fathers deciding that's actually a feature right now because it prevents one side from getting the upper hand and telling the rest to stuff it.
House: 2 yr
President: 4 yr
Senate: 6 yr
President-term-limit: 8 yr
Supreme-Court justice: ~16 years (per Google for average term)
Constitutional Amendment: Hard. ~13.5 years between updates, potentially infinite duration. (231 years since Bill of Rights was added, 17 amendments since then)
Each of these allows for differing response-times to a changing world. If you're a control-theory engineer, you might view Congress and the President as a PID loop, where the President is P, the House is D, and the Senate is I.
The goal of the Constitution is to ascertain what the people want, in aggregate. This series of cascaded loops helps to serve that purpose.
At this point, is the difficulty in amending the Constitution actually a bug? Seeing the polarization, I could see our Founding Fathers deciding that's actually a feature right now because it prevents one side from getting the upper hand and telling the rest to stuff it.
Most of the drafters understood that it was important for a government's founding document to strike a balance between two unsustainable positions: immutability (leading to a sort of tyranny of the old and dead) and excessive mutability (leading to short-term thinking and political instability). Our current approach to amending the constitution has favored the former position, to poor effect.
"Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree." Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on man…
Not when refusing to compromise is your parties main platform.
At this point, is the difficulty in amending the Constitution actually a bug? Seeing the polarization, I could see our Founding Fathers deciding that's actually a feature right now because it prevents one side from getting the upper hand and telling the rest to stuff it.
The US founding fathers were so worried about a tyranny of the majority they built a system where a tyranny of the minority was likely to come to pass.
What are the amendements that they want to pass, but cannot?
* Equal rights ammendment
* DC representation
* Abolish electoral college
* one person one vote
* End the death penalty
* Campaign finance reform
What are the amendements that they want to pass, but cannot?
There are certain rights that are broadly popular, such as the right to birth control and the right to be gay, which are currently only protected by Supreme Court judgment. A member of that court explicitly called for reconsidering them. They are so broadly accepted that nobody even does polling for them, but there is so little chance of passing an amendment to protect them that nobody is even trying.
At this point, is the difficulty in amending the Constitution actually a bug? Seeing the polarization, I could see our Founding Fathers deciding that's actually a feature right now because it prevents one side from getting the upper hand and telling the rest to stuff it.
The easiest way to amend the constitution is to hold or pack the supreme court. That is dysfunctional. An easier to amend constitution, that better reflected the people's will, would likely reduce political polarization, as it would be possible to actually pass national laws that have 60 or 70% support.
What are the amendements that they want to pass, but cannot?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree. At this point though, each side tries to circumvent it anyways by at least stretching "interpretations", and the courts tend to allow it.
I'd rather have that than have the constitution easier to amend. Otherwise the whipping back-and-forth on constitutional issues as each party takes power would be extremely destabilizing and legally chaotic. It already is; don't make it worse.