41–50 of 747 posts
Russia and China recently amended their constitution to ensure their respective leaders can stay in power permanently. Having some unchangeable bedrock in a country seems very valuable as we are all vulnerable to tyrants at some point in history.
I propose a constitutional amendment to ban political parties. ;) 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.
Call it whatever you want, you're going to get people with roughly aligned goals exercising their Constitutional right to peaceably assemble to pool their resources to enact legislation they want.
"Ban political parties" is about as much of a thought out solution as "fix problems".
Russia and China recently amended their constitution to ensure their respective leaders can stay in power permanently. Having some unchangeable bedrock in a country seems very valuable as we are all vulnerable to tyrants at some point in history.
Also, you call the US constitution unchangeable? It's quite laughable. Not only there is a bunch of amendments, but real power structures have changed as well. Starting from the increased size and power of the federal government as opposed to what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers, following by the two terms restriction on presidents, and ending with the creation of the central banking system, which arguably goes against the spirit of the Constitution.
I propose a constitutional amendment to ban political parties. ;) 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.
I'm excited about Ranked Choice Voting [1]. If it was adopted in more races I think we would start to see much more variety on issues rather than being limited to just two viewpoints (i.e. increased third party participation). 1. https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise Not when refusing to compromise is your parties main platform.
> refusing to compromise Unfortunately the left has won in this regard. The left moves so hard and fast to the left that even the right can no longer "refuse to compromise." If they don't, they are bigots at worst and uncultured, out of touch imbeciles at best.
"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…
This requires clarification. If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress. Since 1992 there have been 8 presidential elections. Republicans only won the popular vote once (2004) but also won the presidency in 2000 and 2016. Similarly, if you look at Congress, especially the Senate, Republicans have outsized power due to the additional votes that those in less populated/rural areas get.
The fact is that our Constitution reduces voting rights for those that live in populous urban areas and gives outsized voting rights to those that live in rural/sparsely populated areas. California has nearly 70 times the number of people as Wyoming, but they both get 2 senators. Even looking at the Electoral College, California only has 18 times as many electors as Wyoming, despite having 70x the people.
This rationale/compromise may have made sense in the late 1800s, but it's difficult for me to see how this is a good thing now. I wonder how many presidential elections we can go where the "winner" receives fewer votes than the "loser" before people seriously question what the purpose of our democracy is.
One other note, the equal-number-of-senators-per-state is the one thing that the Constitution explicitly forbids changing by amendment, the last clause of Article V.
Russia and China recently amended their constitution to ensure their respective leaders can stay in power permanently. Having some unchangeable bedrock in a country seems very valuable as we are all vulnerable to tyrants at some point in history.
I propose a constitutional amendment to ban political parties. ;) 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.
I would say go the other direction. A lot of European countries seem to have a lot of success with systems where political parties are officially part of the electoral system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise Not when refusing to compromise is your parties main platform.
> refusing to compromise Unfortunately the left has won in this regard. The left moves so hard and fast to the left that even the right can no longer "refuse to compromise." If they don't, they are bigots at worst and uncultured, out of touch imbeciles at best.
"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…
"But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here...For men will be...not open to any agreement"
Wouldn't hold my breath on this improving. To the contrary ..
It's going to continue to get worse.