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September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

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Re: September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

#71

Post by EasyMark »

klipt wrote: post #20
IncreasePosts wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have legislated racial gerrymandering which that would do nothing to combat. The simple fix against gerrymandering is to get rid of the concept of districts and just let people vote on house members at the state level, and have enough representatives that one populous locale couldn't dominate the reps

Proportional representation as used by many parliamentary democracies solves gerrymandering.

It doesn't solve it, but it does make it much more difficult and should allow a 3rd party to get some power and possibly even a 4th one. I can see the republicans easily have a split of MAGA off as its own thing as more republicans grow disillusioned with the current chaos and thuggery.

Re: September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

#72

Post by yibg »

mmooss wrote: post #29
yibg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately people as a mass, don’t tend to learn from history. Or at least forget the lessons from history fairly easily. Maybe we are doomed to repeat the same historical lessons.

The US has been a 'democratic republic' for almost 250 years, so many generations have learned. Such government has thrived in every culture and place, from East Asia to South Asia to almost all the Americas, many parts of Africa, Europe of course. Somehow, democracy works exceptionally well - far better than any alternative ever has - and is resilient. ... unless the people are somehow convinced that it is not, that…

Yet seemingly a large part of the population has forgotten the lessons from even 8 or 9 decades ago, the sequence of events that have led to events of the 30s and 40s.

Democracy is also not that old as far as human history goes. Empires and kingdoms have lasted longer, even individual ones.

Re: September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

#73

Post by ctrlp »

dang wrote: post #60
ctrlp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't do this. I know it's frustrating, but it's against the site guidelines (more than one, actually) and only makes the threads worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yes, ok, sorry dang. I promise to only post thoughtful comments that add value with the absolute minimum sprinkling of sarcasm. I do believe I'm trying to contribute to a diversity of opinion on HN and make arguments that others might not have encountered before, but I see that I've violated some of the rules. I've read and committed the guidelines to memory now. Can you please unthrottle me? It's hard to engage in substantive back-and-forth if I can't post more than a couple of times a day.

Re: September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

#74

Post by mmooss »

koolba wrote: post #63
mmooss wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has been a 'democratic republic' for almost 250 years, so many generations have learned. Such government has thrived in every culture and place, from East Asia to South Asia to almost all the Americas, many parts of Africa, Europe of course. Somehow, democracy works exceptionally well - far better than any alternative ever has - and is resilient. ... unless the people are somehow convinced that it is not, that…

Representative democracy only works when the people of the nation actually drive the formation of said government. The last 70+ years have shown that it explicitly does not work when imposed by third parties. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, and Vietnam are all examples of this failure. It’s not that those people should not have a say in their government. It’s that they clearly don’t have the coordinated will to organ…

> Afghanistan, Iraq

Afghanistan never had an effective democratic government; Iraq may have one now.

> ... Iran, China, and Vietnam are all examples of this failure.

China, and Vietnam never had democratic governments or anything like them. Iran has had some semblence of one, but on a limited basis (ultimate power lies with religious leaders, who can even ban people from running in elections).

But parts of China have had very successful democratic governments - in Taiwan currently and formerly in Hong Kong.

> there’s clearly something different about all those places that it didn’t quite end up the way the rest of us would consider acceptable.

Why is there something 'clearly different'? There are many explanations. All the evidence we have is that people in China love and preserve democracy whenver they can.

Re: September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

#75

Post by dang »

ctrlp wrote: post #73
dang wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this. I know it's frustrating, but it's against the site guidelines (more than one, actually) and only makes the threads worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yes, ok, sorry dang. I promise to only post thoughtful comments that add value with the absolute minimum sprinkling of sarcasm. I do believe I'm trying to contribute to a diversity of opinion on HN and make arguments that others might not have encountered before, but I see that I've violated some of the rules. I've read and committed the guidelines to memory now. Can you please unthrottle me? It's hard to engage in s…

Ok, done!

Re: September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

#76

Post by kurikuri »

themgt wrote: post #23
mullingitover wrote: post #14

This is very timely, and reminds me of George Washington pleading for Americans to beware party politics in his farewell address[1], where he willingly surrendered power and went home: > The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.…

> The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. > Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversi…

> Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or very remote relation.

Right, but the implication he makes is now vacuous, as the precondition of ‘remote relation’ was no longer true once the world became ‘smaller’ through improvements in transportation, logistics, and communication.

Re: September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

#77

Post by ctrlp »

dang wrote: post #75
ctrlp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, ok, sorry dang. I promise to only post thoughtful comments that add value with the absolute minimum sprinkling of sarcasm. I do believe I'm trying to contribute to a diversity of opinion on HN and make arguments that others might not have encountered before, but I see that I've violated some of the rules. I've read and committed the guidelines to memory now. Can you please unthrottle me? It's hard to engage in s…

Ok, done!

Thank you!

Re: September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

#78

Post by jaybrendansmith »

Amezarak wrote: post #43
mullingitover wrote: post #14

This is very timely, and reminds me of George Washington pleading for Americans to beware party politics in his farewell address[1], where he willingly surrendered power and went home: > The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.…

Washington was mad about political parties because his federalist-aligned coalition was collapsing. He resigned because of his declining health and because it was no longer obvious he could win if be ran again, and he feared the resulting reputational damage. There was extreme political contention at the time and Washington’s administration was becoming increasingly controversial. This very deeply bothered him, becau…

That's an interesting take. Washington did not support the federalists in all things, in fact he likely prevented most of their extremist actions while he was in power. The citizen Genet affair had concerned him greatly, because Jefferson had invited the French in against the wishes of the state department. Sort of like Trump cozying up to dictators like Putin now, he worried about people putting faction over country, or putting themselves over the constitution. Your disapproval of Washington does explain a lot to me about how we've gotten to our current point, and tells me that he was not wrong to worry.

Re: September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

#79

Post by chasil »

jdougan wrote: post #21
chasil wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I would think, each state could set their own requirements for voting, and some ownership of land was also a requirement from what I remember. So Google suggested "who could vote in 1789” and the top result was from the Regan library. https://reagan.blogs.archives.gov/2022/03/29/road-to-the-vot... Reading... "The most common requirements for voter eligibility was that each prospective voter had to be a whit…

That essay is not well worded. They're confusing property in general with land specifically, with wasn't universal across the States. As I understand it, some States' property requirements could be met with non-land assets. See [1] for an interesting overview of the situation in New Jersey. The following quote makes no sense if property was restricted to land-only: > Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars and…

Alas, the search engine has led us astray once more.

Re: September 17, 1787: "A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

#80

Post by eszed »

klooney wrote: post #45
eszed wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. However, parliamentary democracies have a better track record of stability than federal structures (modeled after that of the US). Adjust for cultural and historical differences as you see fit, but the US has heretofore been an outlier.

Matt Yglesias wrote a great summary of this awhile back- https://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doom...

That's the very article I remembered, but couldn't find, when I wrote my comment.Your google-fu is better than mine!
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