America was built on the ideas of freedom and equality by slave owners who didn’t think women should be allowed to vote.
Don’t forget they were also terrified of democracy. The Senate is one of the most comically anti-democratic institutions ever concocted. Wyoming has as much power as California. I mean it beggars belief that anyone but a complete imbecile could agree to something like that.
It’s not democratic from a person level, but it is more democratic from a state level. At the time they hadn’t quite figured out if they wanted to be a country or a collection of states that sometimes work together.
Democracy is a system of government whose power is vested by the people (“demos”). Notice that the Senate does not legislate on behalf of people. Instead, it represents the interests of random land masses (clusters of zip codes). It is as stupid as it sounds and the exact opposite of democracy.
One of the main arguments by Senate proponents during the US founding was that democracy was unacceptable. “Government by the people for the people? What gives these people the right…” etcetera. If you want quotes I’ll dig them up, but that’s the vibe.
“Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. […]
No. In fact, two democracies have never gone to war with each other. Why would they?
Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes, and no man’s life or property will be secure." - John Adams (1807)
Ah, redistribution of wealth and moral progress, terrifying. In case it’s not obvious from these pathetic quotes, John Adams was a moron.
For an united states sort of setup having one level of government representing the states particularly makes sense to me. EU has a similar setup (but much more complicated) and a suggestion that it’d just be based on popular vote would cause a civil war.
The EU has a representative setup, which is democratic. Nothing like the US Senate, which is designed to rob people of representation.
Again, governments justify their existence by serving people, full stop, not arbitrary land masses. What’s next, a tertiary chamber of Congress for corporations?
The founding fathers were correct. A pure democracy is also known as mob rule. Anytime you can get 51% to agree with you, you can do whatever you like.
If 51% vote to take the homes of black people, that’s decided and done.
Which is why modern democracies are all some form of representative democracy. Which in theory is supposed to act as a sort of check and balance on the system.
I’m not following your argument, though I am slightly drunk. The disproportionate representation that’s the focus of the post means that less than 51% of the populace could wield the levers of power in the Senate. That’s minority rule, which is even worse than mob rule.
I get that mob rule is bad, and that we need checks in place to curb the possibility of abuses of power, but I see that as necessitating laws for super majorities and ranked choice or other ways of ensuring less extreme representatives getting into power.
Not exactly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise
Most places wanted no slavery.
The original tryanny of the minority was the planation owners that would not join beyond the Articles of Confederation unless they could continue with the slavery.
Women were still held down as they had been hisrorically, damn near everywhere. Not realy unique here.
Maybe it’s time you guys rewrote your constitution into something more modern instead of treating the old one as a holy scripture handed down from Olympus.
But I doubt that’ll ever happen.
Trump is about to rewrite our Constitution, just not the way it should be written.
Why do people pretend like a piece of paper matters. Trump has all the power and there are no checks and balances left. Imagine if he breaks the constitution, are zombie Washington, Jefferson and Franklin going to rise from the grave and enact vengeance?
Every rule that’s been broken was unbreakable until it was broken.
Now is definitely not the time to rewrite the constitution. Could you imagine what the powers that be would do to it?
I’d like the 1st amendment to be altered slightly. Sure, everyone should be free to speak without government sanction but that shouldn’t mean freedom to lie. Fox and the rightwing have been abusing the shit out of it for years.
This is a terrible, horrible idea. It would give the government the power to censor anyone and anything, and all they have to do is claim that the thing they are censoring is a lie.
Well treating lies to be as valid as fact has brought you half a population living in their own reality and Trump as president.
The document is open to interpretation. It can mean anything you want it to mean. For example, the first amendment is used to guarantee that unlimited amounts of money can be spent on election campaigns. So I’m not sure rewriting the thing would accomplish anything other than forcing the oligarchs to figure out new legal loopholes.
My teacher in middle school did specifically call out that it would take a project over several decades to co-opt the system.
Well, they’ve been going after the judgeships for decades.
Regulatory capture and citizens united both exist to undo those checks and balances. No system is immune to corruption.
Interestingly the US system was always more vulnerable to corruption, and everyone knew it. Our executive branch is far too powerful. That’s why when the US has engaged in nation building they never install governments like ours. Germany, Japan, Iraq, etc. the pentagon always insists on a parliamentary system, because they’re better in every way (less prone to grid lock, less prone to tyranny of the minority, weaker executive, etc.).
When I was growing up, they told us the US was the greatest country in the world. Now that I’m older, I realize it’s one of the worst in the Western world in nearly every statistic.
