You ARE aware that this is the current situation, right? A few dozen people from Oklahoma telling millions of darkies in California "We are taking your political power off you so we can ignore you with impunity, Nah, Nah, Na, Nah, Nah.”
I’m not talking about who runs each body at any particular point in time. I’m talking about how the constitution makes the senate into an undemocratic roadblock with no solution under its framework.
Sure, but it’s a negotiated concession that is unchangeable. A country like the UK has had all kinds of negotiated concessions between the Monarchy and the public and/or their representation in the House of Commons. But they are much less trapped under prior agreements than a country like the US is, and as a result the power of the UK’s undemocratic institutions has dramatically declined over time.
Unfortunately in the US the constitution has written into it that the states must have equal senate representation and this can’t be amended.
I’m not proposing to do anything about it because there are no feasible solutions. I do generally have an ends-justify-the-means view of American politics and I think cynical tactics like ending the filibuster, using extensive executive orders, court packing etc. should be on the table, because I think the system is already fundamentally broken.
When exactly did the system break? What broke it? Since it basically hasn’t changed much from 1789 except to get more inclusive, there must be a time and reason. What did it? The 27th Amendment?
That’s been the case since before the Grapes of Wrath, or as even more eloquently put by @Exapno_Mapcase …
Well if there is no end than that must make it easy for you to not worry about the finding a mean.
But kick the apathy bug, do some creative, even lateral thinking.
What do you have, or can offer, that they might want so as they can give you what you want and they can think they got the better of the deal?
Uh, the system has become oodles more inclusive than it was in 1789.
~Max
I confess I’m not overly familiar with your document but in which clauses are those issues textualised?
In colloquial usage, I have always thought of suicide pacts as an agreement to commit suicide. So in that sense, no, I don’t think the U.S. Constitution has ever been a suicide pact. The United States is sometimes referred to as “The Great Experiment” or “The American Experiment”, but the residents thereof have generally been trying to make it work for (or assuming it will work in) the long run.
As a phrase, I’ve usually associated ‘the constitution as a suicide pact’ with suspension of habeas corpus.
~Max
How will we ever decide that the experiment has failed? When every black person in the country has been murdered by a cop? When every schoolchild has been shot with an unregistered assault rifle? I’m ready to call it a failed experiment sooner than that.
For it to be a legal constitutional amendment, you’d have to go in the direction of greatly lessening the powers of the Senate.
Give the confirmations to the House. And allow the House to overrule a Senate vote on a second or third reading (to use parliamentary terminology).
While I’m OK with that kind of tinkering, the practical results aren’t perfectly predictable.
Well, never, because we won’t ever agree on the failure criteria.
If, for an extended period of time, more Americans are emigrating, or seriously trying to do that, than non-Americans are trying are trying to immigrate to the U.S., a case could be made.
But who gets to define “extended period of time” and “seriously?”
Yeah, pretty much this. It was always broken. I guess arguably it worked as intended initially as a republic of powerful white men. Fortunately it’s been possible to make reforms to most of undemocratic aspects of it either through institutional means and/or in the fallout to the civil war.
To clarify my point, I think that unless the constitution is utterly scrapped (something I’m not advocating at this juncture), there will always . (Partly) as a result of that, there are plenty of underhanded tactics that are permitted under the system but are generally bad for political norms…
and not all of them fit this model - a lot of the US system doesn’t actually reward this kind of consensus building. A great example of this is DACA.
Right.
There’s a term we have for an unfalsifiable experiment. Um, what is that? Let me think…
You know, when I was a newbie learning my druthers on SDMB way, way back in the early naughties if some wet behind the ears furriner (and never was a local) would have the temerity, the gall, the naif to suggest that anything wasn’t absolutely, star spangley, awesome in the USA then they be summarily hauled into the Pit for a kicking and tar & feathering.
Methinks this current predilection for wearing hair shirts is most unedifying.
FWLIW, I’d prefer it stopped.
Who doesn’t miss the blind nationalistic ferver of yesteryear?
Yeah, that’s the cute answer. Let’s stiggit to DeSantis!
But it’s not a serious answer.
What are you talking about? You asked when the senate became a broken, undemocratic institution. The answer is, in 1787, when the small states threatened to take their ball and go home unless the senate enshrined disproportionate representation. It’s the only serious answer.
When the United States ceases to exist, I assume.
~Max
The serious answer you are seeking is to the question “Why did the larger States agree?”.
To which the answer is self-interest.
And despite periodic grumblings, that remains the correct answer 250 years later.
Exactly, the Senate was never designed to be democratic.
~Max