Think your speech there would have quelled the insurrectionists on January 6th?
I’m not sure it is. The fact that California has ~12% of the U.S. population, but only ~10% of the U.S. electoral votes is a problem. But that’s the problem with the Electoral College, which is a historical relic that has far outlived its usefulness. Presidential elections should be purely by popular vote.
However I feel a bit differently about the legislative branch. If you’re going to have state-based legislative blocks (and I’m open to the idea that maybe we shouldn’t), then one sub-branch that is equally representative as a leveling factor seem reasonable to me. Tyrannies of the majority have their own problems. On the other hand expanding the House to more than 435 to better capture population differences I’m fully onboard with.
This is not going to be a sectarian conflict based on religion or ethnic group. Those are more difficult to change. You can change your political beliefs at the drop of a hat.
Or one really based on region, slave states versus free states.
If we head down that road, a whole bunch of people will either game the system or start lying about their actual political beliefs.
Trump’s directness was certainly helpful to conserving democracy. It is odd to think of people like Pence as heroes for modestly doing their duty, but in this instance they acted heroically. Others with more discretion but less charisma will fail to be as popular. They might receive the same shoddy advice but will lack broad support. The sentries are now at a higher level of alert.
The most concerning thing is the average Republican reportedly sees nothing so wrong in what happened as to change his (her/their/Shazam) views in public. In private, “the joke” is that one can compromise one’s principles while viewing it ironically. Ain’t that a corker?
Yes, that’s correct. I think reading this board that a lot of US posters think the US Civil War is a standard example of a civil war. It wasn’t. It was a well-defined secession war.
Civil wars in other countries have been much more messy and dangerous, triggered by sectarian, ethnic or ideological divides. The fact that those issues are present in the US, but not defined by territory, doesn’t make a civil war unlikely. It means that if a civil war comes, it could be much more destructive to society than the US Civil War was.
Don’t think of Gettysburg. Think Bosnia, or Sarajevo, or Northern Ireland, only playing out in the US.
I think that tyrannies of the minority have far more.
Demographic minorities are not being protected by this set-up, in fact, actual minorities are often the ones harmed most. That small groups of people have outsized influence over the lives of the rest of the country is not a feature, it’s a bug, a bad one.
I think @Whack-a-Mole was speaking of the Senate, where a bill passed by the people’s representatives in the House go to die, unless the minority (both in terms of Senate seats and population represented) graciously permit it to be considered.
I probably wouldn’t argue with that. The preference is to try and avoid either 
. Politics shouldn’t be a zero sum game. The fact that it is on the way to becoming so is the most depressing part off our modern political scene. However structurally political offices should balance. Drop the Electoral College and maybe expand the House and I have no inherent issues with the Senate as currently configured.
If the response to that is “well, that will never happen”, then by the same token reforming the Senate is impossible as well.
So you’re content that 16% of the population control the Senate?
Lately I’ve been mulling over the thought that the Founding Fathers were afraid of the tyranny of the majority so much they went overboard and we’ve wound up with a tyranny of the minority instead.
Not sure how to get to the middle path, though.
I agree 100%.
In the past, on this message board, I have argued that we need to protect against the tyranny of the majority. Madison wrote eloquently about it.
And, clearly, the US government was explicitly setup so small states could not be steamrolled by big states.
But I think we can see how this has gone too far.
When the senate was considered the more deliberative body and they would work towards compromise the system worked ok.
Then filibusters became trivial to pull off and republicans decided they would never, ever compromise.
And here we are. Clearly the system has broken.
I am, yes. Not every section of every branch of government needs to be proportionate IMHO. It’s just important that significant sections with real balancing power be. Assuming we think states as currently configured should mean something, anyway. I mean I personally think Rhode Island probably shouldn’t exist as a distinct national polity. If you want to talk completely re-configuring the U.S., I might be interested in reading such an exercise.
But if we’re going to continue to go down the old “states are distinct entities” then I have no problem with a body where each state gets an equal say at some level.
Expanding the house is comparatively easy, and it is something that I would advocate for.
Changing the electoral college is almost as hard as changing the senate, but honestly, expanding the house will help to even that out anyway.
And yes, you are right that reforming the senate is extremely difficult, but that doesn’t mean I can’t point to it as a significant contributor to the problems that our nation faces.
It’s hard when that very tyrannical minority that you are trying to eliminate doesn’t want you to.
Fair enough. It’s just that the Senate is the more powerful house, so population is greatly downplayed in the overall equation. It does mean that the US is a republic, not a democracy, in my opinion.
(As an aside, this is why I was never onboard with the reformers who wanted a “Triple E Senate” in Canada, even though it would have benefitted my province. I could never see why Prince Edward Island should have the same power as Ontario. I didn’t think it would be healthy for our democracy.)
And the senate has significant power. Nothing happens without the senate’s consent. And with the filibuster, it’s even more extreme, as it only requires an even smaller minority to derail anything.
I’ve never really been “down” with that. It makes more sense to do as every other country does and have administrative districts, rather than entities that think that they have sovereign status. And even if you are down with that, the current setup doesn’t give them equal say at some level, it gives them that say at the highest and most important levels.
Ireland did not rise to the level of civil war according to this author. The US will not either, as this article cogently and eloquently explains.
The article both is a strawman, and a false comfort.
To the first, no one said it is unavoidable, only that it seems likely with the direction things are going. And I would say that to sit back in complacency and say it is impossible is far more dangerous.
The second is that, as the author says, "There was a horrible, 30-year conflict that brought death to thousands and varying degrees of misery to millions. There was terrible cruelty and abysmal atrocity. There were decades of despair in which it seemed impossible that a polity that had imploded could ever be rebuilt. " It’s hard to say that that’s better than an actual civil war. Many people would actually call it one, and correcting them as their loved ones lay dead in a burned out home would be rather distasteful.
As the author goes on to state, the right is primed and ready for a civil war, and even if that doesn’t mean that what a historian removed by decades from the strife calls a civil war breaks out, lots of people still die, are injured, or have their lives destroyed by the violence that they are looking to perpetuate.
Unfortunately, the best way to avoid the violence is actually for the right to win at the polls. If they already control the government, then they don’t need to resort to violence to take it. If Democrats win in the midterms, expect a significant uptick in violence. If Democrats hold the White House in 2024, expect full out assaults on our centers of government by paramilitary groups of nationalists and supremacists. How that turns out is up in the air, but people on both sides will die in the attempt.
That it’s not technically a civil war will be little comfort to the millions of Americans who will suffer through these assaults on our country.
I can see violence coming from reactionary victories, too. Winning elections, and cover from the government make violence against undesirables much easier to carry out. Like the historical and contemporary racial violence in places where the government looks the other way—new stuff that resembles the Tulsa race massacre.
This could then easily morph into a two sided fight, with organized groups defending, and preemptively attacking reactionary groups and their government supporters.
Americans are sometimes asked “Is this country on the right track?”. Since World War 2, there are only about five years where a majority of Americans thought “yes”.
Even avoiding semantics, most Americans who like the idea of toughness recoil at its reality. Most have much to lose and little to gain by embracing anarchy or advocating violence or terrorism. The genuinely tough generation fighting world wars wanted stability, and elected elderly and experienced governors in the 1950s. They had seen conflict and did not like it much.
What would really be gained and lost by American conflict? Mainly the widespread wealth and high quality of life which is the envy of most of the world. Of course this is imperfect.
Fair, if people think that the government is on their side, and will not stop or prosecute them for doing so, I can certainly see repeats of race riots and massacres as white supremacists act openly against their targets.
The Democratic side would be almost entirely defensive. They are the ones with cities and infrastructure and large crowds of people to be targeted. Even if they want to take the offense, heading out into the countryside and burning down some barns isn’t going to have the same sort of impact as blowing up city buildings and shooting up schools full of children.