Oct 10 2007
Democracy Ain’t Giving You Want You Want? Then Scrap It.
I tell you what, the political heat in DC is causing a lot of people to lose it – and badly. We have the far right all in a lather because the country won’t bow down to their world view, so they go to the courts to make legislation they cannot pass in a Congress (war effort, NSA surveillance, you name it). And the far right has at times gone bonkers too – calling for Bush’s impeachment because he proposed legislation on immigration that doesn’t fit their world view. Impeachment from the left, impeachment from the right. And now Larry Sabato is so frustrated with our democracy he wants to scrap the whole thing:
If we really want to make progress and achieve greater fairness as a society, it is time for elemental change. And we should start by looking at the Constitution, with the goal of holding a new Constitutional Convention.
Sound radical? If so, then the founders were radicals. They would be amazed and disappointed that after 220 years, the inheritors of their Constitution had not tried to adapt to new developments that the founders could never have anticipated in Philadelphia in 1787.
Folks, it is not our process that is broken. It is no one is leading and everyone is pissing on each other and there is no dialogue. Compromise – the essence of governing, is now poison to the radicals left and right. Heaven forbid you agree with the enemy on anything. Traitorous actions like that can have you pilloried and run out of town.
The left and right are collapsing because they have lost credibility. They lost credibility because they used scorched earth propaganda tactics to tear them and their opponents down. Now no one trusts no one and no one dares reach across the aisle and be a traitor. Larry, changing our Constitution won’t fix what is wrong. And your impatience is simply another example of what is wrong. Some of us don’t want radical change, especially when pushed by radicals. And we don’t trust those in power to act in the best interests of us all because all they do is act out of self preservation. And we don’t want anger and frustration to drive historic decisions our children’s’ children will have to live with.
Things will begin to move when serious people start working seriously and bringing forth serious issues. We are at war with a enemy who wants to destroy our Constitution and the LAST THING we need is to oblige them. When the dems ran from Texas so they don’t have to face losing a vote it was the wrong way to support a democracy. And when calls for filibusters on judicial nominees where answered by some common sense moderates who were able to arrange a coherent, calm solution which gave this President all the judges he wanted, it was NOT supportive of democracy to pillory those who avoided the Constitutional showdown.
This idiotic, impatient, do-what-I-say-or-else brinkmanship has to come to end before it rips this country apart. A true patriot, a true believer in Democracy supports that democracy when it DOES NOT do what they want. Patriots support democracy when it is hardest, when they are in the minority. They don’t toss it out when they don’t get what they want! This is NOT the greatest generation ever. Not by a long shot.
If we did not scrap the Constitution and start over after the Civil War, I fail to see why we would do something like that now.
Terry – If you look at the changes made by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments (the reconstruction amendments) then in some very important ways we really did rewrite the constitution after the civil war. It’s a mystery why this little fact seems to have been edited out of all American History & Government classes – perhaps we enjoy the myth that we have always been thus too much. They weren’t just about slavery, for from it: for example, some seemingly innocent language at the end of the 14th is what did away with the idea that states are co-equal branches of government forever, and also gave Congress for the first time the power to enforce it’s laws everywhere without regard to what the States wanted. Those changes were huge, and in large part laid the foundation for the government we have today.
But Sabato is a great fool. He appears to have never studied or understood the Great Compromise of 1787, which was responsible for almost all of the “problems” with the Constitution he cites. As far as the military balance of power – he does not understand that he would institute a process that would cause the US to lose every war it ever takes part in. Military control by committee is always a disaster, and if Sabato would have studied Thucydides the way all of the founding fathers had he would have known that already.
The smaller states get a disproportionate advantage in the Senate and electoral college in order to balance out the huge economic advantage that the large states have. This is what the Compromise of 1787 was all about, and the entire reason we don’t have direct presidential elections and never will. The reason the large states agreed is that there would have been no country without this agreement, as the small states would have refused to join and the large states weren’t quite up to launching massive military campaigns of subjection. Sabato wants the small states to give up all the advantages they have left and hand everything over to the large states, including all say in any government policies. Why should they? Why would they, ever? The greatest part of the constitution is the fact that it is so damn hard to amend – virtually *Everyone* has to agree for that to happen, which is why it doesn’t happen much.
And if that chaps Sabato’s behind, then too bad.
And when calls for filibusters on judicial nominees where answered by some common sense moderates who were able to arrange a coherent, calm solution which gave this President all the judges he wanted, it was NOT supportive of democracy to pillory those who avoided the Constitutional showdown.
AJ, he didn’t get all the judges he wanted by a long chalk. He only got three.