Senators are elected for six year terms. Are they supposed to resign two years into the second one?
Reseve all other powers to the states. Districting on geographic boundries. No omnibus bills. Optional-preferential voting.
Aus and the USA made opposite decisions on Federalism. Aus decided to let the states continue to be independent, with a few listed powers given to the federation. USA decided to bocome a new country, with a few listed powers given to the states. Both decisions had the opposite effect to that intended: in both cases, the few enumerated rights have extended to include lots of new and unexpected things. In the USA, the states have become more powerful than ever intended. In Aus, the federal government has become more powerful than ever intended. I don’t have a strong opinion on which is better, but it offends me that the clear intention of the founders has been subverted so comprehensively.
Districting is one of the warts on the face of American Politics, leading to entrenched power structures, divisive politics, and corrupt self-interest. Changing it would be a fundamental change to the way American politics works.
Omnibus bills and earmarks are the other great wart on the face of American Politics, partly as a result of the districting and federalism structure. If all government is taking money away from some people and giving it to other people, the effect of earmarks and omnibus bills in the USA is taking money away from some people and burning it.
Finally, optional-preferential voting is a way of making run-off elections easy to manage. But it has the effect (not perfect) of getting people involved who would otherwise be dis-enfrachised, which reduces the partisianship and fringe craziness of politics.
This is almost entirely inaccurate to me. The states were strongest in the earliest years of the American experiment. States’ rights were so strong, in fact, that the Articles of Confederation (the precursor to the American Constitution) gave the Federal authority virtually no power. This was the great problem of the Articles and why the states got together to craft a Federal structure with some teeth (the Constitution).
The Constitution still went out of its way to limit Federal power, in fact stating that only enumerated, limited powers were conferred to the Federal government and that all other powers rested with the states. It read that the Federal government was in essence limited by the states:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Thus you have a United States that, for a very long time, actively thought little of the Federal government. Outside of war and expansion and foreign policy there was little need for it. Everything else was largely left to the states.
This all changed during the Civil War, to an extent, and during WW2 to a much greater extent. Now the Federal government is seen as very large and powerful and the very notion of states’ rights is ridiculed. Slavery kinda fucked everything up.
I don’t know much of Australian political history but the way you described it sounds basically just as I described American political evolution. The clear notion of the American Founders was for a limited federal government with all non-enumerated powers granted to the states. This intention has been undeniably subverted in modern times.
I was under the impression that this would be the ideal situation we’re envisioning. Every time a question of this nature comes up, I pick something to the effect of eliminating religion. That’s the ideal. If people want to come in and say it wouldn’t work, that’s fine, but the point is we don’t know how it would work if it was put into practice. The USSR had other issues that contributed to their downfall. There are societies which are perfectly fine without the rampant amount of religion was have here. I’m shooting for an ideal, I don’t think its a good argument to take a terrible example of what bad might happen and prop that up as what will happen. I’d prefer it if people imagine how things would be better, or at the very least balance out the negatives with the positives
On one hand, the USSR tried to suppress religion and put a bunch of madmen in charge. On the other hand, without a strong religious influence, many people will develop a fairly equitable system without resorting to faith. It could happen, its not all doom and gloom
I feel that your question misses the point because it implies I am the one initiating some religious suppression and that religion does no harm. The reality is that religion is all around us and their followers actively and happily try to force their religion on everyone, causing great harm. Yet the society hasn’t crumbled.
An atheist government forcing its non-beliefs on everyone would be better, as people will object (as atheists do now to religious rule), but they’ll still live their lives. Society won’t crumble, it will be better. Is it not an indictment of religion that atheists can be essentially barred from office (if not in the letter of the law, but certainly in practice) and stripped of power for even mentioning they are atheist yet people move on with their lives, but speak one word of possibly restricting religion and everyone assumes that we’ll have a civil war? To me, that shows just how impossible it is to reason with religious people. They are fine oppressing everyone else but they are not fine with even the hint of their own rights being deferred.
I think people are not genetically predisposed to religion. I think if atheists were in charge and instituted an atheist government, people will be just fine. Obviously there are a million things that can go wrong but just because religion is being told to be kept at home is nothing bad in itself, and rulers who are atheist making the laws and enforcing them are perfectly fine as we have the contrary right now and no civil war has erupted between the faithed and unfaithed. It will have to be done slowly, a bit at a time, but it is possible to have a perfectly civil and moral society without religious people running the show. Atheists are in that position right now and we haven’t killed anyone over it. Religious people would do well to learn from our example
I think we have to recognize that the current system is screwed beyond repair. It worked out fine for 200 years, then one party decided it could game the system and refuse to compromise no matter what branches they controlled or didn’t.
I would prefer a parliamentary system. In the House of Commons, have roughly double the number of representatives that the states currently have. Let’s say your state will get 20 seats. Then each party that wants to compete would submit a list of 20 names in order 1-20. Voters would choose statewide and vote by party, not by person. Let’s say Party A gets 47%, Party B gets 34%, Party C gets 12%, Party D gets 6%, Party E gets 1%. Then by proportion, Party A gets 9.4 seats, Party B gets 6.8 seats, Party C gets 2.4 seats, Party D gets 1.2 seats, and Party E gets 0.2 seats. Then you round in favor of the parties with the most votes, and the final split is 10-7-2-1-0. The top 10 names in Party A’s list get seated, the top 7 from Party B’s, and so on. No gerrymandering, and minority parties get a voice.
Membership in the Senate would run much the same way, with the national parties nominating a list of candidates and the proportions in the Senate would match that of the aggregated Commons. Both chambers would have the same party splits. The majority party or caucus in the House would appoint a Prime Minister, to be in charge of all domestic affairs and budgetary matters. The people would elect a Foreign Affairs President to act as commander-in-chief and conduct diplomacy. This person would act as Head Of State and live in the White House, while the PM would live at Blair House. The terms of the Commons would be 2 years, the Senate 6 on the staggered system as is today. The PM and FAP would serve as long as they get elected (the national FAP election would be on 4 year cycles)
The court would be much like today, selected by the PM, confirmed by the Senate, but the most senior justice would be retired any time party control changes or 10 years elapse, whichever comes first.
The states would be modeled after the federal government, except there would be only one governor, to be elected statewide and serving a 6 year term. This would give equal opportunity to the party that fares well in the midterm elections and the party that doesn’t. No gerrymandering at the state level either, voters vote by party statewide and the state commons and senates assigned by proportion as done today.
Campaigns would be limited to 6 months, all money to be raised by private citizen donations of no more than $100 per person, corporate donations would be banned.
Exactly what parts of the Constitution / US government would you change to achieve this goal?
Because even if one accepts your take on how the US currently operates, it’s hard to see how that’s anything more than a function of the people themselves, their personal belief systems and political opinions, not of any constitutional provisions.
This is a very clear example of bigotry: you’re making unfounded and negative generalizations about a large group of people. While there are absolutely some religious folks whose religions are causing great harm, please explain the harm that Reverend Jasmine Beach-Ferrara causes by bringing her religion into the public sphere, or the harm caused by Reverend William Barber’s practice of religion in the public sphere.
There’s a crapload wrong in this paragraph.
First: an atheist government could function perfectly well without forcing non-beliefs on anyone. An atheist government is simply a government with no embedded religious beliefs. Even a government comprising primarily atheist individuals would not need to force non-beliefs on anyone. You’ve excluded a middle.
Second, the prejudice SOME religious folk have against atheists is no more an indictment of religion than your bigotry against religious people is an indictment of atheism. Religious people, like atheists, are perfectly capable of being tolerant members of a diverse society, living and letting live. THe prejudice some religious people have against atheists is only an indictment of those religious people.
Finally, if you’ll note, the calls for civil war against your proposal in this thread are coming from atheists. It shows nothing whatsoever about how impossible it is to reason with religious people.
More bigoted nonsense. The two most influential campaigners against oppression in North Carolina are not only religious people, their professions are religious professions. I’ve heard both of them speak, and they mention equality for nonbelievers when they’re talking about equality for folks in North Carolina. They are far less okay with oppressing other people than you demonstrably are.
But the government today doesn’t force religion on everyone, that would be more like the Taliban. Certainly you must accept that there is a middle ground between a fully secular government which is uninfluenced by religion, but which allows individuals to believe what they want, versus one that will arrest those who try to start a church.
The former I could easily get behind, the later would be impossible without some form of totalitarianism.
You’re from space, aren’t you?
Actually, while they don’t have the shifting real-time computerized tallies, SNTV (single non-transferable vote) and STV (single transferable vote) are ways of dealing with that very concept, just usually not in 435-seat constituency. I think I’ve heard of SNTV at-large constituencies with over 50 seats, somewhere…
So I step out of my time machine, with the magic power to change the USA Constitution in one regard and enforce that.
The new constitution is four words: GO HOME TO ENGLAND.
The more I think about this, the more absurd it becomes to try to build a “more just version” of a polity that was never for the people of N. America, but only for Anglo-European invaders, colonists, and conquerors.
Yeah, 'cause the British never exploited their imperial subjugates.
If you were expecting modern democratic inclusivism to magically appear out of thin air in the late 18th century, the real world would like to have a word with you.
But I get it, the Founders were evil slave-owning paternalists and therefore the entire system they devised is devoid of merit.
Find me the perfect human being and I’ll gladly follow his blueprint for society.
I don’t think that was his point. I believe he was saying the American descendants of European settlers should have returned back to Europe and left the Americas to the descendants of its pre-Columbian settlers.
I’m not sure though why the descendants of Siberian settlers have a better claim than the descendants of English settlers. I guess the Siberians got there earlier but there were several waves of settlers crossing the Bering Strait when it was dry land so I’m assuming the earlier Native Americans were probably conquered by later Native Americans. There were certainly many examples of one Native American group conquering territory that had belonged to another Native American group in the period before the Europeans arrived on the scene.
I think you’re arguing too strongly in favor of states rights and ignoring an important leg of the balance. You’re treating it as just an issue of what powers the federal government has vs what power the state governments have. But the text doesn’t limit it just to the two entities. It explicitly says that powers not held by the federal government are held by the states “or to the people.”
That’s a major distinction. The Constitution recognized that there are powers that neither the federal government nor the state governments held. There are powers that are held directly by the people. The Bill of Rights and its equivalents in state constitutions recognize this - they declare that there are rights that no government can take away from an individual. And when the Constitution was ratified, it was not sent to the state governments. It was sent to popular conventions that were separate from the state governments so that the people and not the states enacted the Constitution. This indicates that the writers of the Constitution did not see the states or the national government as the primary seat of sovereignty - it was the people who were sovereign. That’s why the Constitution was declared to be for “We, the people” and not “We, the states”.
As a practical matter the people often find it difficult to express their collective power. For this purpose they generally act through the government. But the people have a choice in whom to delegate their power. They can choose to delegate it to state governments or to the federal government. In the early decades of the United States, the people generally chose to delegate their power to the states. in recent decades, the people have more often chosen to delegate their power to the national government. But it’s still the powers of the people we’re talking about, not an issue of state vs federal powers.
Well put, Nemo.