Yeah - it’s not the best example. Unfortunately I’m not that creative so it was what I came up with. The thrust of my comment was about the increased level of authoritarianism being put forward. For **BG **maybe that’s a positive. I find the idea rather fascist.
Baloney.
The Boston Tea Party was the act of rich merchants protecting their monopoly, and very little else.
But like quite a few things later included in the Declaration, it made great rabble-rousing propaganda.
I’d change the whole “slaves count as 3/5 of a person” rule. Clearly, a slave should count as 2/3 of a person.
Oh, no, wait, maybe slavery shouldn’t be allowed at all? Nah, that’s just crazy talk.
But I would definitely get rid of the electoral college.
septimus, you should know better to insult another poster. Warning issued and don’t protest that you didn’t mean it that way.
I read septimus’ comment as “you seem to be outside the consensus viewpoint” rather than saying the poster was irrational. And I would agree with ITR that economic freedoms should have constitutional protection, so the comment would apply to me as well - and no insult taken.
What? “Fascist” means adjusting the tier at which decisions are made from elected local officials to elected federal officials? That has nothing at all to do with fascism.
Oh, baloney yourself. It adjusted taxes (more specifically, the subset of taxes called “import duties”), without allowing American merchants to have a say in that adjustment of taxes. That’s almost exactly what I wrote before. Don’t read something into my post that’s not there.
Yeah, I’m not seeing the insult in what he said, either: it sounds to me as if he’s including ITR among rational observers, saying that most of the group ITR is in would see things differently. But maybe I’m reading it wrong.
(Edit: at the very least, I’m not seeing anything there that implies ITR is NOT a member of that group. If he’d said, “quite different from that of most Americans,” would that imply that ITR wasn’t American?)
Sorry everyone. The past few days have been crazy. Reading up on your posts now.
I doubt I’ll have anything to contribute, but thanks to everyone who’s typed out their ideas. I’m really pleased I asked.
It’s more central control, reducing the distribution of control. Here, from m-w:
If on one end of the spectrum you have fascism and the other you have anarchy, BG’s suggestion is closer to the fascism side than the status quo.
And Oscar Mayer back at ya. The Tea Act did almost nothing with taxes except let those imposed on tea by the Townshend Acts stand. The taxes imposed by the latter were strongly opposed on a wide basis and led to things like the Boston Massacre.
The Boston Tea Party was a “rebellion” of wealthy tea merchants who saw their livelihood about to be undercut by British rulings in favor of the East India Company, and decided to stage and foment a “tax rebellion” to cover the real nature of their opposition. Which is why the modern-day Tea Party is so perfectly self-named.
No, it’s not. The key part of “fascism” is rule by a dictator. His proposal has nothing to do with that.
I think you’re objecting to a peripheral issue on unsound grounds, but I’m not going to continue responding because I don’t think you actually rebutted what I said, and anyway it’s peripheral.
I am using the term similarly as authoritarian. His proposal is more authoritarian, thus my call out to fascism. Call it Fascist-lite TM 
Anyways - this is a lot of text about a quip.
I would invite the psychotic branch of the English establishment to come here and rule as in the Good Ol’Days.
After a few years of crippling blood sucking as only they know how, those noble feelings of liberty, of freedom for everyone (+/-), of a true and honest to God beginning, all would vigorously spring as in a new age of splendor. For another decade or so.
All bills must be about one subject. No tacking on unrelated things to get them passed or rejected together. Also, the titles of all bills must reflect the subject of the bill - no catchy acronyms. And lawmakers should be required to read what they are voting on.
Except it’s not at all more authoritarian, since people are still voting for their officials. If you’re voting for your officials, you’re not in an authoritarian system (absent things like election fraud, of course).
I’m not saying it’s authoritarian as a binary choice. I’m saying it’s further on the spectrum towards authoritarianism. Voting is only one aspect. Remember that BG stipulated that states could be disbanded, reformed, etc. without local involvement. I’m not quite sure the disagreement here.
Presumably the local involvement would be that the local people who live there got to vote for the national government making the decisions. They get just as much control as they’d have under a more decentralized system; it’s just that everyone gets a say in what happens everywhere, instead of only locals getting a say in a local issue.
It’s neither more nor less authoritarian, since it has nothing to do with whether a system is authoritarian.
But that isn’t as much control. It’s easier for a movement to gain sway in a smaller population. Especially when it is a locally-generated movement addressing a matter of particular relevance to people in that locality. If you had to convince >50% of everybody to make any change, some things would take a lot longer and others would never happen at all.
So the new system is inherently more conservative, not inherently more authoritarian. This new criticism is both more accurate and more likely to trouble Brainglutton :).
N.B.: This thread is not about what the FFs intended. It is about what system we would devise now, with the benefit of nearly two and a half centuries of hindsight.