I had to use the Google for that. Answer accepted.
Saying the sun will eventually die is accurate. In all likelihood, it won’t happen for a long, long, long time. Therefore, I don’t worry about it. Now let’s talk about Global Warming.There’s scientific consensus, there’s evidence, etc.
One statement is a generic truth. The other statement is a specific prediction with facts to back it up. Your chicken little routine is the former.
Asahi: as someone who your authoritarians would try to lock up or kill just as fast as their authoritarians, should either come to power, there’s only one thing I have to say about, or to, you:
There’s no such thing as enlightened authoritarianism. The authoritarian is a tyrant by nature and by definition, motivated by desire to coerce other people into doing what s/he tells them, and lust for power over others is never an enlightened characteristic.
Amen.
Looking back at the last several posts, I think there was a misunderstanding. I wasn’t predicting that democracy would collapse next year; I was asked if I would be willing to revisit the prediction within a year, to which I replied yes. I think we will know more a year from now, though I think that the outcome of the congressional midterm elections will really be a key turning point one way or another.
But no, I am not, nor was I in previous post, suggesting that democracy would die within a year. I’ve been asserting that the Democrats have about a year (when the midterm elections take place) to implement the kinds of steps that I think are necessary to prevent our slide into illiberal (i.e. single party dominant) democracy, which is something that is typically difficult to reverse once it takes root.
If the Democrats fail to maintain control of Congress, we already know that the Republican party will obstruct. But what I think is going to be different this next time is that the Republican party will probably have more Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Lauren Boeberts, and Madison Cawthorns – at least in states where there isn’t a redistricting commission. The consequence of that is that Biden would be facing a congress controlled by a Republican party that is increasingly reckless.
If there’s one thing that my analysis might be overlooking, it’s the possibility that Republicans potentially over-play the ‘crazy’ card – that’s something that might make me hedge a little, but taking a broader view, there are other serious headwinds that democracy is facing, and not just in the United States, but globally, which itself is not an insignificant turn of events.
The factor that I believe will really pose the stiffest test for democracy worldwide is climate change. That’s because it’s an unprecedented problem with untold consequences, and yet it’s a problem that requires unprecedented levels of international cooperation. If we look at the pandemic as a comparatively smaller crisis that requires global cooperation in order to stop, I’d say we’ve already failed that test miserably, which doesn’t bode well for the kinds of havoc that global climate change will introduce. With markets crashing, with prices of everything from food to property skyrocketing, governments will be beating back the kind of public outrage that challenges the social contract – the priority won’t be on preserving the complicated, messy machinations of democracy; rather, the preference will be for political efficiency.
I can’t disagree with any of that.
In addition to that, fewer Republicans like Adam Kinzinger who is likely to be redrawn out of his job in Illinois.
And the consequence of having the reckless Republicans to deal with is that they could get into a budget spat, but unlike McConnell who actually has the IQ to know that bluffing about the fiscal cliff is one thing; driving the crazy car over the cliff is quite another. I worry deeply that radical Republicans would actually be dumb enough to push for a default on US debt just to get people angry at Biden. I mean, that’s one example. It’s going to be nasty, and that’s just the appetizer, I’m afraid.
If there’s something I’ll concede to being wrong about it’s that I thought Biden was striking the right balance between the progressives and the moderates. But frankly, I admit, I have been too moderate myself. My assessment was wrong to that end. The progressives were right: Biden should have doubled down, tripled down, on a hardcore progressive agenda and really tried to corral the moderate Dems in the Senate. Maybe he would fail, but at least he’d be trying. But this is no time for compromise.
Democracy can be a great form of government - it’s my preferred political system. But it’s not of much value if the citizens that we rely on to function autonomously can’t do so. It’s not of much value if they can’t do the work that is required to enable their leaders to govern effectively. People will naturally reject democracy if their representatives are hopelessly incompetent and corrupt, and that often happens when the people who vote for them are hopelessly ignorant.
Humans don’t necessarily have individual liberty (in the American sense of the term) as their highest priority. If you look, for instance, at El Salvador right now, you’ll see a country that is in the throes of a democratic backslide, and yet the people are fully supportive of what is essentially an autocrat. Why? Because representative democracy failed to deliver the goods.
I used to think that a constitutional monarchy was not such a bad thing. The people are represented and make most of the governmental decisions. The monarch provides stability. In practice, I’m not sure that any state ever got the balance right.
I have gradually come to the conclusion that parliamentary systems are better for pluralistic democratic societies than presidential democracies. We see “checks and balances” and co-equal branches as a virtue, but it can be a curse. Obstruction can positively impact government in terms of making sure that government doesn’t move too swiftly; however, obstruction can also paralyze government, reducing faith in a democratically-elected government’s ability to navigate crises.
The Framers incorporated “checks and balances” because they were students of the classical world. Greek and Roman democracies had these mechanisms. For all practical purposes, the Framers were trying something that hadn’t been done in 1800 years: establish a state based on democratic republican principles. There was representative government - our colonial statehouses imported those traditions from England. But we were establishing a nation-state on those principles.
We actually have a lot more data on efficacious democratic governance now, and presidential democracies are riskier propositions than parliamentary democracies.
Yeah, i agree that parliamentary governments seem better than our system. I think there’s a reason few countries try to copy the US Constitution.
I’m a Parliament guy, too, because, 74 million idiotic voters notwithstanding, I believe the US electorate wants the nation’s problems addressed in a positive and pragmatic fashion. A parliament holds the party in power accountable for its management decisions. And multi-member districts would help us get the government we deserve.
Asahi is right in that government inaction is possibly worse than taking the wrong actions.
I agree. Security and prosperity rank higher for most people. But besides the ongoing problems with authoritarianism, even if you get a relatively ‘good’ dictator running the country, they have to give up power at some point. And then you have no choice in who takes over.
Depends when and how they adopted their current system. The former Spanish colonies that became independent through wars and revolutions have copied the US system to a large extent; former British colonies became independent later, and generally started with a political system based on the British one; and countries that had pre-existing monarchies often preferred to keep them while becoming more democratic. They weren’t choosing in a vacuum.
ETA: I think there is too much emphasis placed on the system and not enough on the culture and institutions. You can try to set up a democratic government in a place like Afghanistan, and it will fail because the culture does not support it and the institutions are not developed. Whereas if those things are in place, then any of a range of systems will work fine.
I strongly disagree that Parliamentarianism is better than our system for a simple reason: Candidates are chosen by the party rather than the electorate. Imagine my member of Parliament here in the 90024 being from Illinois never having lived here and knowing nothing about local issues. The UK is an old nation and when the system was created the population was not diverse. This would never fly here because we are a huge nation with a wildly diverse population with divergent interests. Our Congresspeople actually help their constituents with local problems.
The other problem is the way that the party in power can manipulate elections by dissolving the government at the most favorable time to win reelection.
And do we really want to have more than one election every two years?
Why would a party hoping to win stand candidates unfamiliar with the districts?
And if the party in power calls an election at a “favorable” time , then perhaps they are simply governing well. Short campaigns have to be better for the nation than the interminable ones focused on fixed dates like we have here in the US.
Churchill represented 5 different districts in his time in Parliament. The Party has to approve the candidate running. There are no primary elections and if we had a parliamentary system here in the USA Obama would have never been President and Sanders would not have been allowed to challenge Hillary. Members are expected to be loyal to their Party first.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06111/
The UK recently changed the way that elections are held to more closely resemble our system with a few caveats.
The UK is making a mistake with that change. The changes they should be making instead should be to eliminate first past the post voting and single member ridings.
I’m not sure what you mean by “too much emphasis on systems and not enough on culture and institutions.” I think the latter two are important as well but a poorly designed system can cause the best democracies to slowly decay.
And I think that’s where the US is now and why I advocate for serious systemic change. It’s gonna be a long uphill fight.
I would certainly agree that a parliamentary system can be corrupted, just as a presidential system can. I’m not an expert on Israeli politics but from afar it seems that polarization is a problem there as it is here.
The problem presidential democracies have is that there is often a split government, which is less problematic in times when there’s more social and political cohesion. But when cohesion is lacking then the two branches compete for legitimacy, and this competition can lead to a race to see which branch can control the other.