> Chief among those hard-wired components, he said, is the Constitution’s focus on states, rather than individual voters, as the basic “representational unit.” That arrangement “shapes all the elements of our electoral and legal system,” Rana said: the House and Senate, the Electoral College, Supreme Court confirmations. And this arrangement is partly why the U.S. Constitution is among the hardest in the world to amend. It doesn’t simply undermine majority rule, he added; the minority it empowers are those who have historically weilded disproportionate influence in the political system.
This is by design. The United States is exactly meant to be that: states that are united, but independent. The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives. The expansion of the federal government, especially the powers of the executive branch, is the problem everyone seems to dislike (when their favored party isn't controlling this branch), and that's what needs to change
The United States is a flawed system designed to protect the feudal, mostly southern property based system. That’s why we killed millions over the ability to own humans, and the reactionary Senate blocked the most minor civil rights law (ie mobs may not hang people for summary justice).
These flaws have been continually amended. We can vote for Senators, corporations can operate across state lines, you can’t discriminate, etc.
Reactionaries perceive being unable to persecute people or exert their will as being executive overreach. Most rational people don’t share that perspective, which is why undermining the competence of the government and flooding propaganda everywhere has been a key priority for reactionary forces for the last generation.
So here we are, impossibly rich people can now impose their will with impunity. We’re in a new, undemocratic era.
This is a half-truth that obscures what makes The United States unique. From the day the constitution was signed, it was a compromise between competing economies, geographic incentives, cultures, religious movements, political philosophies, and individual ambitions. This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.
But a huge constraint on the current regime's aspirations is that they can only exercise power by sending federal officers and troops into states. We'd be in a much worse place if Stephen Miller could issue an order taking over local law enforcement every time someone harasses his goons.
Yes, but this tension has been there since the founding of the republic. The federalists wanted to centralize power (some much more than others), and the republicans (the "jeffersonians") bitterly opposed it. In his second term George Washington personally lead troops to Pennsylvania to put down the whiskey rebellion.
Zooming out of the 24h news cycle, "all power to a singular person" concerns seem far too overblown. Half the country hates Trump. He won the popular vote, but not by all that much (despite what he may assert). By comparison LBJ, FDR, and Nixon won ~60% of popular vote. Even if he were a young man, I don't think we're in any danger of a caesar.
Why would a small difference in voters supporting him or not matter if he has all the guns and fanatics willing to use them?
The number of Americans willing to check the other person on the ballot is a lot lower than the number of Americans willing to pick up arms when he ignores the law like all the other laws he ignores.
To be clear, a plurality of individual voters voted for Trump and Vance's electors. Trump still had less than 50% of all votes cast. At 64.1% turnout, that means that less than 32% (approximately) of eligible voters voted for Trump.
I think the scarier part is how utterly polarized the US is. The ratings are awful for trump, but it gets really scary when you zoom in.
80% conservateives at worst still support trump, while 7% liberal at best support him. Maybe someone can bring up polling to prove me wrong, but that is utterly unheard of levels of polarization. The only solace here is that independent voters are tanking, so in polls this close that can be the breaking point for all of this.
>Even if he were a young man, I don't think we're in any danger of a caesar.
The scary part is that he's not a young nor healthy man. He can blow the world up and not live to see the utter destruction he triggered. At least Caesar was assassinated and had to be on edge for years. Trump will have lived a full life never being punished and the world will burn afterwards.
From my reading of history the level of polarization was at least as high or higher during the early republic, and obviously higher leading up to and through the civil war. I don't know American history in any meaningful depth outside these two periods, but I suspect there were other periods of extreme polarization. I really don't think this is new.
Comparing the early republic to today is apples and oranges, disagreements and passions are supposed to go down as things settle down with time.
Instead, both parties display an obstinate lack of compromise and wishy-washy, unworkable platforms while the media is only happy to make all of it worse.
Increasing polarization is surely a symptom of problems and that needs to be analyzed, explained and addressed, not excused.
You make it sound like a civil war is a walk in the park, you do need more history and more imagination in order to understand the human cost of obstinance and shallow thinking.
The surface level reading of history is that everyone always agreed centralization of power is bad and operated in a gentlemanly way to further this principle, until Trump came along. But that's not the case at all. In the two parts of American history where I read more or less deeply (early republic and civil war), the factions bitterly vied for absolute power but were prevented from getting it through intangible American magic.
I didn’t say that. There’s been a few. Wilson, FDR, Jackson come to mind.
Trump is unique in that the previous folks predated the massive standing army and propaganda capabilities that exist today. The intangible magic is brave individuals and institutions. It’s harder for those individuals with the secret police and army running around.
That America works and keeps working for reasons nobody understands. We seem to make a ton of mistakes, and often act in the same way as far less successful countries do, but somehow keep coming out on top. It often feels like our success is despite our actions, not because of them. That's what I mean by "intangible American magic".
Much of that was always in dispute and while the “freedom of states” stuff has intellectual appeal and often prevails over shorter periods, the trendline has always been towards one nation.
In the post constitution era, 17 amendments were passed by the house, including an amendment that would make states supreme by law. 6 years after the constitution was ratified, Marbury v. Madison established judicial supremacy for interpreting law, 11 years after that, the court ruled in McCulloch v. Maryland that states are subordinate to federal power.
Political compromise got it done, but centralized power is necessary for survival and prosperity. Congress and the courts realized this immediately. Most of the realpolitik of “states rights” is really about wielding tyrannical power locally.
> Most of the realpolitik of “states rights” is really about wielding tyrannical power locally.
I thought it was so states could knowingly house illegal aliens or illegal drug businesses without doing anything.
Normally states wouldn't have that right, but I see many who think they should have it. Marijuana is still illegal and those undocumented immigrants are also illegal, more federal influence would make it so states cannot legalize those any more, is that what you want?
So states rights goes both ways, it lets states both be more progressive and more conservative than the average.
>I thought it was so states could knowingly house illegal aliens or illegal drug businesses without doing anything.
> Normally states wouldn't have that right, but I see many who think they should have it.
The states are not compelled to enforce federal law. Doing nothing about people violating federal law has always been a right of the states. You are trying to, or already have in your head, conflate non enforcing federal law, with actively violating state law.
Where marijuana is legalized, it means the State made it legal in terms of State law, not that it superseded federal law.
Zero States have made illegal immigrants legal. Some states stop going after them and assisting the federal government in their immigration duties.
You are talking about state's rights and have no idea what the boundaries of those rights even are.
Many states have made it such that there is no functional distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Identical drivers licenses, access to the same services, and indeed protection from federal enforcement of immigration law.
All of those things you’re mentioning are state services that they can offer to anyone because it’s not a federal issue.
This is what states rights look like and why the right is mocked for referencing it when they foam at the mouth once it’s used for things they don’t like.
It’s similar to people who claim the civil war was over states rights when southern states were pushing to have other state sovereignty ignored over their own laws when it came to returning slaves.
States cannot send their police officers to enforce immigration law, correct (see Arizona v. United States), but many states have gone further to make it illegal for their police forces to honor immigration detainers that federal agencies request when an illegal immigrant is arrested for a crime. That sure looks and sounds like a protection to me.
These people are released, which does make the job of federal agencies more difficult, requiring immigration enforcement action in the streets as opposed to the jailhouse. You prefer it in the street, apparently, but I can certainly understand how others may see how these types of actions start to look like States actively frustrating legal immigration enforcement action. Or that it is de facto circumvention if not de jure.
The states in question have zero obligation to help make the feds jobs easier. The people complaining about this situation feel entitled to other states using their resources to help the federal government enact policies that they want enforced nationwide.
This is why everyone rolls their eyes when conservatives crow about states rights. They don’t actually want state rights, they want their views enforced on the other states.
I’m actually for less of states independence from the feds on a bunch of areas, and immigration is probably one of them, but as long as this is a tool in the toolbox that conservatives are eager to use, I’m going to call them out for bitching about someone else doing the same thing.
Look, I’m not the one who supports street raids, that’s you. I’m not understanding your point anymore. Do you not want immigration law enforced at all?
An illegal immigrant commits a crime, say vehicular homicide. ICE lodges a detainer against this person, and the local PD refuses and instead releases the offender. As a result, ICE runs a tactical team out to go pick him up.
This is the outcome that you appear to believe is optimal, and you are intentionally using emotionally loaded words like "lenient" to attempt to guilt me into retreating from my position that this is, in fact, not an optimal outcome. In many cases like this additional crimes are committed before the offender is apprehended, crimes which are of course 100% preventable, without you and your "leniency".
>Tell me you at least recognize the difference between actively doing something against some group, and merely not helping them?
Technically speaking, you are right. These states are actively working against their own citizens, not the Federal government.
Your initial claim was that some States are merely "not assisting" the Federal government with their immigration duties, which is actually not a choice they get to make since the controlling caselaw (again, Arizona v. United States) prevents them from doing this even if they wanted to. Local cops cannot investigate immigration status, full stop. I point it out that some states actually go further, and passed laws that bar their police from doing the following.
Feds: hey you arrested individual_x, he's in the country illegally and oh by the way has a few other outstanding warrants, can you please hold him at the jail house, we're going to pick him up for immigration proceedings.
Cops: sure thing, let us know when you get here
And now we get.
Feds: hey hold that guy you arrested, he's got a standing deportation order from years ago, hold him until we get there.
Cops: No, in fact, we're going to let him go.
You continued to imply that banning the former is somehow preferable, even though the latter results in ... street raids.
I'm not really seeing how I'm the bad guy here, and honestly I think your real policy preference is simply that no immigration law is enforced at all. You should have the courage to say so, since that is quite clearly the policy preference for a large portion of the electorate, and possibly a majority of the Democratic Party.
> Feds: hey you arrested individual_x, he's in the country illegally and oh by the way has a few other outstanding warrants, can you please hold him at the jail house, we're going to pick him up for immigration proceedings.
> Cops: sure thing, let us know when you get here
> And now we get.
> Feds: hey hold that guy you arrested, he's got a standing deportation order from years ago, hold him until we get there.
> Cops: No, in fact, we're going to let him go.
You’ve accurately described how states who do not want to assist the federal government, send instructions to their employees on how to not assist the federal government
> You continued to imply that banning the former is somehow preferable, even though the latter results in ... street raids.
The latter results in street raids because of the choices of the federal government and the current leader. It is not an immutable law of physics that street raids have to happen.
This is abuser logic. Do what I want or I _have_ to hurt you.
> I'm not really seeing how I'm the bad guy here, and honestly I think your real policy preference is simply that no immigration law is enforced at all. You should have the courage to say so, since that is quite clearly the policy preference for a large portion of the electorate, and possibly a majority of the Democratic Party.
My preferred immigration policies are ones that brain drain the rest of the planet for my countries benefit.
I am calling out how states not enforcing federal policy for free is an example of states rights.
This comment chain started with me responding to `Jensson stating
> I thought it was so states could knowingly house illegal aliens or illegal drug businesses without doing anything.
> Normally states wouldn't have that right, but I see many who think they should have it.
Which is patently false if you believe in states rights unless you are a hypocrite or belief that states only have the right to believe in the federal governments commands
The states have nothing to do with your ignorant hysteria about foreigners. Unfortunately, the reactionary types have turned that into a dog whistle for their imposition on tyranny to deliver freedom, someday, maybe.
Marijuana is illegal. The states have largely chosen to change their laws on the subject as it was determined that it was creating more problems than it was solving. Additionally, the Federal government, while incapable of changing the law, loosened some of the disincentives for the states laws on the subject.
I see conservatives actively oppressing blue states right now. Somehow states rights do not protect civilians from being mistreated, kidnapped and shot by violent agents sent by conservative minority.
> This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.
Well, and the isolation of the country by oceans on both east and west, and by the glaciers to the North, which make invasion by any but Mexico or Canada unthinkably expensive.
As for prosperous, a vast, then-untapped swath of forests, thick humus deposited by glaciers, and mineral deposits, all serviceable by waterways unprotected by competing nations, did play a minor role.
> The United States is a flawed system designed to protect the feudal, mostly southern property based system
A lot of the constitutional factors you object to - like smaller states having voting power out of proportion to their population, or the constitution being difficult to amend - are also shared by Australia, yet Australia never had race-based chattel slavery.
(Dispossession and maltreatment of indigenous people isn’t really comparable because (a) the US had that too and (b) to the extent that influenced the constitutional architecture, it didn’t really influence the aspects you are complaining about.)
We killed millions over the ability to own humans because the north viewed it as a religious duty to do so. This is demonstrated in our national hymn, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which talks about how God is damning to hell the old south.
I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
The criticisms you rightly levy against the Senate are themselves decades old.
The idea that this era is especially defined by the aristocracy controlling the government is honestly just ahistoric.
> I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
It keeps coming up because in 2026 the compromises made to accommodate slave-owning states reverberate to this day.
The Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787 (at the Constitutional Convention) allowed slave-owning states to count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. This gave the slave-owning states more representation in the House and more Electoral College votes in presidential elections.
This allowed the south to create a voting block that blocked legislation that would have given the formerly enslaved rights that other Americans had.
The Civil War ended in 1865; black Americans in the south were second class citizens and lived under an Apartheid state for the next 100 years until the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965.
> We killed millions over the ability to own humans
"we" didn't kill millions; it's estimated that 750,000 soldiers were killed [1].
> The Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787 (at the Constitutional Convention) allowed slave-owning states to count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. This gave the slave-owning states more representation in the House and more Electoral College votes in presidential elections.
This is only true if you omit a frame of reference. The slave states wanted slaves to count 1:1 when assigning representatives. The free states wanted them to not count at all. From the point of view of the slave states (which is a perfectly valid point to claim as there isn't an objectively correct baseline here), the 3/5 compromise gave them less representation. So yes, from one point of view the 3/5 compromise gave some states more voice than they should have had. From another point it gave them less. That's what makes it a compromise.
> From the point of view of the slave states (which is a perfectly valid point to claim as there isn't an objectively correct baseline here), the 3/5 compromise gave them less representation.
This is not accurate, and there was a baseline: one man equals one vote.
It was a compromise because the northern states didn't want to count slaves at all because they're not allowed to vote; they were just property.
Of course, the South wanted to count slaves (for census purposes) as a person, even though they couldn't vote.
By allowing slaves to be counted as 3/5 of a person, it enabled the South to have more representation in the House, since the number of representatives is based on the population of the state.
If they weren't allowed to count their slaves, they would have had fewer representatives in the House and wouldn't be able to control legislation, etc.
They wouldn't have done it if it resulted in less representation in Congress.
> We killed millions over the ability to own humans because the north viewed it as a religious duty to do so.
No, we didn’t, because if that was the reason for the fight, it would have happened before the South, fearing the long-term prospects for the institution of slavery, not only seceded to protect it, but also preemptively attacked federal installations.
It was fought by the South over slavery and by the North over federal power. Both sides were fairly explicit about this at the time.
Of course, long after the fact, popular opinion on slavery has moved enough that people like to pretend the side that they prefer fought primarily for the opposite reason; the South over (opposition to) federal power and the North over (opposition to) slavery.
The above might seem a little shocking to non Americans, but consider the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation proclamation.
The first was because fighting merely for the preservation of the union was not enough to bolster moral. Union forces had been losing or winning pyrrhic victories and the common solider didn’t want to fight to force their southern cousins into a nation they didn’t want to be a part of.
So the stated rationale for the war was changed to be about ending slavey now.
However the emancipation proclamation only ended the practice in states that were in rebellion, which is not what you would expect from a country who had wanted to end slavery from the start.
Right, the Confederate leaders could easily have negotiated a shorter and cleaner surrender if they had wanted to. They didn't want to, because they were evil men who couldn't tolerate even the possibility that they might not be able to own other people.
Lincoln refused to negotiate with them, so not sure what you mean. He only accepted unconditional surrender by them. The southern states tried to negotiate with Lincoln before the war broke out but he refused and never budged on that.
I'm not sure where you've gotten this information, because it's completely untrue. For example, he made a quite famous offer to the southern states on September 22, 1862, in response to a major Union victory at Antietam. If any of them agreed to rejoin the Union before January 1, they would be welcomed back and allowed to keep their slaves under the pre-war status quo. But no state took him up on the offer, presumably because their leaders found it intolerable to live in a country where slavery might some day be banned.
> I'm not sure where you've gotten this information, because it's completely untrue. For example, he made a quite famous offer to the southern states on September 22, 1862
That offer was not to the confederacy, he refused to negotiate with the confederacy. Its very hostile if workers form a union and the employee gives a sweet deal to each of those workers to leave the union while refusing to talk to the union, its the same thing here refusing to negotiate with their representative is very hostile.
> If any of them agreed to rejoin the Union before January 1, they would be welcomed back and allowed to keep their slaves under the pre-war status quo. But no state took him up on the offer, presumably because their leaders found it intolerable to live in a country where slavery might some day be banned.
No, its because the states had formed a new union and they didn't want to betray that one. Lincoln refused to negotiate with them as a whole, he tried to negotiate with the parts. Its like telling enemy soldiers that they get a sweet deal if they betray their country and join yours instead, that will not get you many because most people refuse to betray their allies.
If Lincoln hadn't refused to negotiate with the confederacy as a whole likely the war would be much less bloody or maybe even fully avoided.
There was no reason to negotiate with the confederacy because these were US states.
Them leaving was a non starter. You claiming he refused to negotiate with them is just saying "Lincoln didnt capitulate to the Confederacy on the _one_ thing that was non negotiable".
> If Lincoln hadn't refused to negotiate with the confederacy as a whole likely the war would be much less bloody or maybe even fully avoided.
Confederates shot first at Fort Sumter. If they hadn't started a war over their desire to own people, it would have been avoided. You can sign up for your local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy here[1] if you want to keep peddling these revisionist views.
Good for him! The time for negotiation is before the war, not after you've been utterly destroyed. For him to give in to the slave-owning south having won a civil war at such high cost, would have been snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
So is this what the South teaches in school? Very interesting. Well, I'll try to respond in kind:
>I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
Yes, it's been more than 100 years. We know the history better than ever. The dividing point was slavery and Lincoln didn't really care about freeing them. He simply picked a side and wanted everyone to go along with it. He picked the North because Texas seceded from the union (again, over slavery) and Lincoln would not allow that to happpen. So that played his hand in choosing to eventually ban slavery.
Does your history mention that Texas was the one who seceded?
>The idea that this era is especially defined by the aristocracy controlling the government is honestly just ahistoric.
Do you not know what's happened the past year alone? We can argue over history, but this is happening before our eyes.
> Does your history mention that Texas was the one who seceded?
> We know history better than ever before.
Do we?
Trying to find why you isolated Texas. Perhaps due to Texas v. White case after the war? It was prominent South Carolinian politicians, led by the Rhett and Memminger schools, who decided their state was to secede (first) from the Union and disseminated delegates with their proposal for secession, The South Carolina program, to the other slave states for adoption. Texas would be the last of the deep South to secede on the first of February 1861, despite the determination of Governor Sam Houston.
As Texan/Georgian I have the highest doubt that any non specializing university degree is teaching the above. Perhaps I am missing context.
no. i went to public school in mississippi (both high school and undergrad) and learned the real reason behind the civil war. there are definitely some teachers and textbooks who emphasize the states rights narrative, but that doesn't represent education for the entire south becausee it's not a monolithic region.
> The dividing point was slavery and Lincoln didn't really care about freeing them.
lincoln wasn't interested in freeing slaves at the beginning of the war, but he decided to make it an issue once he realized how it could help win the war. (this is very simplified summary btw. dubois has a good argument about this in his book "black reconstruction in america")
> I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
read "forever free" by eric foner if you are interested in a better understanding. the institution of slavery and the institutions created in its place influenced a lot of our current system.
> I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
"These takes" are from the articles of secessions that the various states published on why they wanted to leave. Georgia:
> The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property […]
Mississippi:
> In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
> Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. […]
South Carolina:
> The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
Texas:
> […] Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. […]
Virginia:
> The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.
It’s a feature, not a bug. The United States federal government was set up as a representative republic, not a democratic republic, and not a democracy. We are supposed to be a federation of fairly-independent state governments with just enough federal scaffolding to keep the peace between the states. We were not set up with the intention of having a do-everything federal government ruling over the states.
This exactly. But the country never figured out how to deal with one state’s laws conflicting with another state’s laws (see the Fugitive Slave Act for example). The lack of resolution around conflict between the states (which remained unresolved even after a civil war was fought over it) is partly why the federal government began to grow as it took on the role of enforcing laws (like desegregation) that certain states would not.
Democracy comes in many flavours and it's very hard to see the US federal system as outside of that when it is composed of elected representatives.
It's not a direct democracy, it's not a democracy where each vote counts the same, but it certainly falls within the very wide definition of democracy -
"a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives."
OK but the constitution effectively cannot be amended now (the last one, in the early 90s, took 202 years to pass [no not a typo]) and we're stuck with what we have. The population also isn't even remotely good with the powers restrained by the 10th amendment and hasn't been since at least the 1930s and maybe even before that, and there is zero chance the court changes that.
So what is next. It seems the only option is to just use the courts to re-interpret the constitution, so that things like growing your own wheat is "interstate commerce" and so that stuff like a post-86 machinegun isn't an arm even within the context of being a member of (by federal statute) the unorganized militia.
Repeal the 17th amendment - popular election of senators - and all of a sudden it gets much easier for states to amend the Constitution in ways they want.
Popular election of senators has been a disaster, it essentially turned to the Senate from a deliberative body into a pure partisan body like the House.
Yeah, I think the people need a way to eject people without waiting for 2-6 years (or never for the supreme court). it needs to be a high bar, but if we use the same 75% state ratification to start up an impeachment process, it might keep some pressure under people who otherwise feel like they can run rampant.
It did. An average of 48 percent of Supreme Court rulings from 2010 to 2018 were unanimous. Another eight percent were nearly unanimous. That happens even though justices were appointed by different parties and the issues under discussion are normally complex and contentious. Clearly they can't be a partisan body if they so regularly agree despite having different politics.
But it's not clear how long that can be sustained now. The recent appointment of KBJ takes it in that direction. She has stated in court opinions that are themselves clearly unconstitutional, like:
"Having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.Ds and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States… These issues should not be in presidential control."
A SCOTUS judge should not be concerned with the "best interest of the citizens". That's not her job, that's the job of politicians. Making decisions on such a basis renders SCOTUS merely another House, but one that considers itself above the others in the power rankings. And what she's asserting is that the President should have no power over the executive branch, which is what Democrats want but isn't what the constitution says.
Not really. SCOTUS is mostly the same people. Eight years ago was 2018, people were whipping themselves into a frenzy about Trump, not much different to today.
There are many systems, the Australian Federation of independent States adopted a "Washminster" system based on both the UK Westminster system and the USofA Washington system.
Popular election of senators in the senate / upper house hasn't been a disaster there.
The Australian Electoral Commision as an independent body does a lot of heavy lifting towards keeping the washminster system running (no gerrymandering and a world class voting system).
Independent checks and balances are an essential part of any system of government.
The people vote in Representatives to debate policy, an independent merit based civil service carries it out, overwatched by independent scrutineers, judged by and independent legal system and enforce by a spectrum of LEOs and peace officers.
A feature of the Australian system (IMHO) is how rapid the churn on Prime Ministers can be ... the Washington system by contrast can't even toss out a corrupt felon grifting hard in public view.
The AEC did nothing to stop the Australian government trying to criminalize the views of its political opponents, so it's not doing all that much heavy lifting.
I don't think that solves what I see as the root problem, the national parties' control of the state organizations. The money would only need to be focused on the state politicians instead of them plus the senators.
This argument has always seemed odd to me. The 17th amendment first took effect in 1915, and the whole Senate had been directly elected by 1919. Are we really going to claim that the late 1910's are when things really went off the rails? For example, to your specific point here, it seems unlikely that this made amending the Constitution harder. Excluding the Bill of Rights and the 27th Amendment (each a special case for its own reason), there have actually been more amendments in the fewer years after the 17th was enacted.
It's also unclear why one would expect that the Senate would be less partisan if its membership were selected by state legislatures. State legislators have a lot more partisan loyalty than the rest of us, both because they tend to be more ideological and because they are deeply dependent on the party for future career prospects.
Holy shit, imagine of the whole of federal congress could be controlled with gerrymandering rather than just the house: the house through districts, and the senate through districts for state representatives. The fireworks would be insane.
Put another way: it would do nothing. If it did something, it would likely make everything worse, not better. Legislatures would pick the most partisan hack. They would be answerable to fewer, more partisan people. It would pour fire on an already tenuous situation.
It would also make congress significantly less representative of the country, but I guess that's the point.
My understanding is that states already have the ability to appoint presidential electors however they want. No need to repeal any amendment, if a state wanted to do things differently in that regard.
My proposed elector appointment algorithm is as follows. For each elector seat, summon 20 grand juries according to standard methods (distribute across various counties, weighted by population). Each grand jury spends a day getting to know one another, then appoints one member as a representative using approval voting. The 20 representatives from the 20 grand juries form a secondary grand jury, which also spends a day getting to know one another, then appoints one member as a representative using approval voting. This produces 1 elector. Electors serve 8-year terms, staggered so that their appointments occur midway through a presidential term when emotions are relatively placid.
If you persuade a few big swing states to adopt this approach for appointing electors, the nature of the presidential contest changes dramatically.
This is more along the lines of how the presidential elector system was supposed to work in the first place. Presidential electors were supposed to be leading individuals of the community, not otherwise involved in politics, exercising their independent judgement. That's what the founders intended.
Been saying this for almost two decades. State governments no longer have a direct seat and representation at the table. Federal mandates (coercion) like enforce this or don't get funds would never, or at least rarely, happen. It's also the only nonviolent way to dissolve the union, intentionally or through strangulation (state legislatures refusing to elect and seat senators, if a majority of them do this then a quorum can't be reached and funding dies).
> It's also the only nonviolent way to dissolve the union, intentionally or through strangulation (state legislatures refusing to elect and seat senators, if a majority of them do this then a quorum can't be reached and funding dies).
well, I'm never a fan of "this is hard so lets break/bend the rules" as a justification.
The constitution still can be amended. But congress has been in gridlock for 30 years so we can't even get over the first hurdle. Lets work on fixing that gridlock and then we can review if 38 states signing on is too big a burden. It was already a Herculean task convincing 10/13 states to accept the Bill of Rights.
Look, I'm a descriptivist, but my point is that there is nothing about the word "Republic" than implies representative democracy more than "Democracy." This distinction boils down to Federalist No. 10, when Madison uses the two terms differently... but he specifically says he's using these terms in a technical way to make a point:
>A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure, and the efficacy which it must derive from the union.
>The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic, are first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
He's using affected meanings, and he's going out of his way to say "varies from pure democracy" before referring to "pure democracy" as "democracy." Why is he doing this? Because the words mean the same damn thing!
People who are distinguishing them here are relying on peculiar definitions of these terms, which are largely peculiar to Americans-and I’d add, only some of them.
To an Australian or Briton or Canadian or New Zealander, “Republic” means not being a constitutional monarchy. I think it means something similar in a lot of other countries. Australia is a democracy but not a republic, because it has a King instead of a President. The US, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel (putting aside the Palestinian issue) are democratic republics, because they are democracies with Presidents instead of a King/Queen. China or North Korea are republics but not democracies; Saudi Arabia is neither a republic nor a democracy.
Wickard V Filburn is simply bad law... The federal government has way too much power and MUCH more than was ever intended. Its not a feature it is indeed a bug. One caused by the Supreme Court.
>The federal government has way too much power and MUCH more than was ever intended. Its not a feature it is indeed a bug.
we got bigger and thus we got permutational orders of issues arising as a result. We had to redo the articles of confederation within 20 years of their drafting and that was with 13 states.
Bug or feature, I see it as an inevitability as we grew to 50 states and multiple territories that the federal government would need a stronger hand today than in 1787. Of course, that hand shouldn't be bypassing every section of the constitution to serve the federal government itself. These are the exact fears that caused Shay and Whiskey way back in the day coming to fruition.
None of your opinion on the power of government requires the people to be cut out of the equation.
One could have a "small" federal government while having a popular vote for president and a reduced/discarded Senate.
And no, not everyone likes it when the federal government is "too big". Personally, I support social welfare and research programs at the federal level, as well as food safety and many other administrative functions there too.
I'm less supportive of "big government" when the executive declares itself the arbiter of the Constitution and all foreign wars and treaties.
Why does social welfare need to be handled at the federal level? There seems to be no explanation for why people insist on this other than that it must be so.
Even as of today, California gives aid to many states who fundamentally disagree with California's culture. Make social welfare state level and some states will simply starve.
It's like insurance: we all need to pool together and help everyone. And for it to work, we can't complain that some people get more help than others. It's a safety net, not floor. If everyone hit the net, the entire thing collapses quickly.
2nd reason is that people can move between the states easily. Imagine the logistical disaster of having a California worker work for a New York company. Which social security does this workers wages get deposited to? What if the worker moves to Arizona? What if the New York company opens a branch in Florida and that worker's department operates out of there?
It's a mess across state lines, and traditionally we have state disputes handled at the federal level.
> 2nd reason is that people can move between the states easily
There is no requirement that states have to let anyone in without any action. California can easily levy a tax so high that only contributing people can enter. They don't want to....
Social welfare needs to be handled at the same level that mobility exists, because otherwise all destitute people will bumrush the nearest jurisdiction that is giving out generous welfare benefits. The issue is most often seen at the city level (e.g. Bellevue “encouraging” homeless to go to Seattle), but more generous policies like housing-first will need to be federally administered to prevent the most generous states from getting bumrushed.
Exactly. I won't even say it's a good system, but it's a straw man he's attacking. Also, maybe i'm over sensitive but i feel like he's insinuating the constitution is wrong because it's inherently racist and elitist. Maybe i'm straw manning but sadly that choice of words often goes hand in hand with such ideas and reckless, poorly thought out solutions.
>i feel like he's insinuating the constitution is wrong because it's inherently racist and elitist.
The constitution suggests that "all men are created equal". it sadly needed several revisions to define what "man" is, though. And then some 150 years before we expanded "man" to represent "humanity" instead of "male".
The constitution isn't racist/sexist by the wording of its law, but the interpretations arguably were. And maybe are.
Nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so.
We had to spend a long, long time thinking and re-thinking this over. Sadly the trend as of late is to stop thinking altogether. I hope that changes.
> The United States is exactly meant to be that: states that are united, but independent. The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives.
That changed in the wake of the South's surrender at Appomattox: The Civil War Amendments explicitly gave the federal government expanded powers. Sure, the southern states were forced to ratify those amendments before Congress would recognize their representatives and senators. But they brought it on themselves; it was one of history's most-horrendous examples of FAFO. And the South was saved from far worse by Lincoln's and Grant's desire to be conciliatory and Andrew Johnson's malign views. (I read a tweet some years ago that Gen. Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn, with multiple passes.)
> (I read a tweet some years ago that Gen. Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn, with multiple passes.)
Nothing validates this view more than looking at the modern republican party. This is especially blasphemous to say after MLK day, who's life was dedicated to attempting the fix the injustices of the south, and who's death is entirely and inarguably a result of the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south). At minimum the traitors should have been hanged in public view. The desire to be conciliatory has never been less vindicated -- it's not like the south all the sudden decided to adhere to constitution, they had to be forced to anyhow. It's a nice sentiment, but it should have been left at that.
> the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south)
Well, the south was the only place where there were any appreciable amounts of nonwhite people. "White supremacy" was just "the way things are" in the north, because they pretty much only had white people.
In 1900, decades after the end of the Civil War, the south was about one-third black; every other region (midwest, northeast, west) were less than 2% black.
> This is by design. ... The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives.
So behavior of the system fails to meet its design goals? It honestly sounds like you kind of agree with the excerpt you quote.
> The expansion of the federal government ... [is] what needs to change
What are you proposing though? Even assuming the premise here, achieving said goals requires changes to lots of little details and incentives. It's not like there's a single potentiometer controlling Gov't Size™. So what are you actually suggesting?
Certainly, the details of fundamental electoral structure engage deeply with the operation of our government, and the legal scholars in the article seem to be honestly pointing out levers (and big ones at that) we could possibly pull to create a less expansive federal government, or whatever the goal may be.
Imagine a plane crashes and analysts start attempting a root cause analysis, discussing control system specifics and whatnot. To me, your stance reads like "This is by design. Plane parts are united but independent. Control systems were never intended to lord over every part of the plane. The expansion of control systems is what needs to change."
I mean... maybe? But even if we agree on that point, any random contraction of the control system seems unlikely to make a plane that flies better. We have to actually engage with the details of what's going on here.
> The expansion of the federal government, especially the powers of the executive branch, is the problem everyone seems to dislike (when their favored party isn't controlling this branch), and that's what needs to change
Yeah but it's not going to, because the modern environment deeply favors a stronger federal government, no matter how much people might complain about it when they don't control said federal government. Arguably it's not even a "problem" so much as an inescapable result of the fact that the world of 2026 is vastly different than it was 250 years ago. A country composed of independent but united states makes a lot more sense when the fastest means of travel between them was a horse rather than an airplane or when your best bet for sharing information was...also a horse...rather than the Internet.
The real question is how you work with a system based on the idea of independent states where political power results almost entirely on the distribution of states that align with one of two dominant national ideological camps.
Not having standing armies also creates structural problems (mostly getting invaded). There are only 21 countries without a standing army, and they're almost all micronations with <200k population (mostly tiny islands). Iceland is the only one of them with a GDP per capita worth mentioning, but it's also part of Nato, the largest military alliance in the world.
It's a permanent professional army, where are you getting this stuff? Switzerland has an air force and everything. They also have a large trained citizen militia but it's supported by a backbone of a professional standing army.
> They also have a large trained citizen militia but it's supported by a backbone of a professional standing army.
Less than 10% are full timers, the vast majority are conscripts and volunteers. Even officers generally aren't full timers[1].
All I'm saying is, there's a spectrum of 'Complete citizen militia, as envisioned by the framers of the US Constitution' all the way over to 'Standing army as it exists in the US today', and Switzerland is obviously much closer to the former than the latter.
This is why we originally instituted mandatory military service here in Sweden. To ensure that the army isn't representative of some special class, e.g. the nobility or the burghers etc.
This is by design. The United States is exactly meant to be that: states that are united, but independent. The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives. The expansion of the federal government, especially the powers of the executive branch, is the problem everyone seems to dislike (when their favored party isn't controlling this branch), and that's what needs to change