Oh my yes.
And I don’t mean just to get rid of the guarantee of equal representation of the states in the senate, though there is that.
And I don’t mean just to get rid of the guarantee of equal representation of the states in the senate, though there is that.
I mean to revise and democratize the amendment process, itself.
Then we could try to restore a measure of constitutional integrity
to the country through some reachable mix of amendments to the constitution and
amendments to our government practice.
We could give up the vast structure of transparent lies we tell about the thing, right and left.
Would the small states especially resist for fear of the danger posed to their insanely disproportionate power in the senate?
Oh my yes.
But so would every anti-democrat in the country.
That would include nearly all of the libertarians and by far most of the liberals and conservatives.
All of them would resist to prevent changes to the constitution legitimating the Big Government the powers of which to control the economy democratically and in the people's name they wish to take over for the plutocrats they serve.
Too bad.
Drastic revision of Article V would be the best way to get out of the crisis of constitutional legitimacy now facing our country with the union intact.
Failing that, we could begin our reforms by making it a heck of a lot easier for congress to combine states into one, revising those parts of Article IV included solely to privilege those same small states that dug in their heels so successfully at Philadelphia, to our lasting harm.
The same kind of privilege any revision of Article V would have to take special care to remove by replacing the requirement for state consent to amendments with national plebiscites and perhaps additional plebiscites in equally populous regions of the country drawn up for just this purpose and having no other.
We could give up the vast structure of transparent lies we tell about the thing, right and left.
Would the small states especially resist for fear of the danger posed to their insanely disproportionate power in the senate?
Oh my yes.
But so would every anti-democrat in the country.
That would include nearly all of the libertarians and by far most of the liberals and conservatives.
All of them would resist to prevent changes to the constitution legitimating the Big Government the powers of which to control the economy democratically and in the people's name they wish to take over for the plutocrats they serve.
Too bad.
Drastic revision of Article V would be the best way to get out of the crisis of constitutional legitimacy now facing our country with the union intact.
Failing that, we could begin our reforms by making it a heck of a lot easier for congress to combine states into one, revising those parts of Article IV included solely to privilege those same small states that dug in their heels so successfully at Philadelphia, to our lasting harm.
The same kind of privilege any revision of Article V would have to take special care to remove by replacing the requirement for state consent to amendments with national plebiscites and perhaps additional plebiscites in equally populous regions of the country drawn up for just this purpose and having no other.
Forced to choose between the government we have and the
constitution that forbids it, which way would you go?
Why do you think there is such a huge distance between the two?
Because it is just way too hard to amend the thing.
And what if the right refuse to sacrifice their power by allowing such change?
Then alternatively, the populous states, mostly blue to deep indigo and left no alternative, could undo all the damage done by the Great Compromise that has so distorted our constitutional history by simply seceding, leaving the less populous states, mostly pink to brilliant red, on their own.
No more red state choke-hold on legislation in the senate, no more drastic over-representation of red states in the choice of judges and ambassadors and all officials requiring confirmation in that body, no more excessive power of the same red states over the choice of president and vice-president, and no more exaggerated power pro and con for the same states in the process of amending the constitution.
The populous states could form their own blue union, leaving the South and empty parts of the West to form their own desperately poor and absurd confederacy, if they refuse to join that new, blue union with power limited to their share of the whole population.
It would be best to given them not a dime of foreign aid, too; and to block immigration from them.
And to refuse them free trade and the right to come into our new country to find employment as guest-workers.
Let the South and the West try to struggle by in today's world, faithful to a federative constitution of their own design, handing over all power to a legislature representing only the greed of the plutocracy and the sexual neuroses of the Christian clergy.
And let the Northeast and West and Upper Middle West form a new nation with a new, nationalist constitution in which state governments would be reduced to the role Hamilton envisioned so very long ago, that of regional delegates of an omnicompetent and considerably more democratic national government.
And let that new, blue nation's new constitution be a hell of a lot easier to amend, so that it really can be the living constitution, enduring and adapting through the ages, we know a modern nation requires.
Any chance such a thing could happen?
Not a bit.
Our politics in every state is dominated by our national politics, and our national politics is dominated by the plutocracy.
Nobody and no party and no political movement can be so blue the donors run away and hope to win even a local election for dog-catcher.
And what American or global plutocrat really, in his heart of hearts, wants to face the prospect of dealing with so powerful and so blue a nation as that hypothesized blue nation of the coasts and the North would be?
Why do you think there is such a huge distance between the two?
Because it is just way too hard to amend the thing.
And what if the right refuse to sacrifice their power by allowing such change?
Then alternatively, the populous states, mostly blue to deep indigo and left no alternative, could undo all the damage done by the Great Compromise that has so distorted our constitutional history by simply seceding, leaving the less populous states, mostly pink to brilliant red, on their own.
No more red state choke-hold on legislation in the senate, no more drastic over-representation of red states in the choice of judges and ambassadors and all officials requiring confirmation in that body, no more excessive power of the same red states over the choice of president and vice-president, and no more exaggerated power pro and con for the same states in the process of amending the constitution.
The populous states could form their own blue union, leaving the South and empty parts of the West to form their own desperately poor and absurd confederacy, if they refuse to join that new, blue union with power limited to their share of the whole population.
It would be best to given them not a dime of foreign aid, too; and to block immigration from them.
And to refuse them free trade and the right to come into our new country to find employment as guest-workers.
Let the South and the West try to struggle by in today's world, faithful to a federative constitution of their own design, handing over all power to a legislature representing only the greed of the plutocracy and the sexual neuroses of the Christian clergy.
And let the Northeast and West and Upper Middle West form a new nation with a new, nationalist constitution in which state governments would be reduced to the role Hamilton envisioned so very long ago, that of regional delegates of an omnicompetent and considerably more democratic national government.
And let that new, blue nation's new constitution be a hell of a lot easier to amend, so that it really can be the living constitution, enduring and adapting through the ages, we know a modern nation requires.
Any chance such a thing could happen?
Not a bit.
Our politics in every state is dominated by our national politics, and our national politics is dominated by the plutocracy.
Nobody and no party and no political movement can be so blue the donors run away and hope to win even a local election for dog-catcher.
And what American or global plutocrat really, in his heart of hearts, wants to face the prospect of dealing with so powerful and so blue a nation as that hypothesized blue nation of the coasts and the North would be?
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