Comment by abecedarius
6 hours ago
Increasingly wishing for this from a fictional constitutional convention:
> I note one proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent — the more impediments to legislation the better. But, instead of following tradition, I suggest one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let the legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority... while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere one-third minority. Preposterous? Think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command two-thirds of your consents, is it not likely that it would make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
> And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
30% of Americans would surrender every right they have if it meant someone who looks different would suffer slightly more.
Add money to politics - more accurately add even more money to politics - and see how this works out.
Concentrated interests want legislation favoring them at the expense of the easily-misled public. So what's your model by which repeal becoming less near-impossible makes the net damage from this dynamic greater.
This looks like something only a libertarian would like
>Increasingly wishing for this from a fictional constitutional convention:
There's an interesting, one-time shakeup that we could actually accomplish. While it's true that there will never again be another constitutional amendment... there's already one out there that will never expire, partially ratified. Completely beyond Congress's ability to rescind it or cockblock it. Article the First.
Were it to be ratified, nearly immediately (whenever the next Census is), the House of Representatives has over 6000 seats. So many that the existing party apparatus wouldn't be able to vet candidates or manipulate. Lobbyists, even, would have a hard time allotting the slush funds to bribe them all.
And what would it take to do all of this? Maybe 10 or 12 people hammering (gently) on some state legislator in Nevada or Kansas. Convince him or her to pass the resolution to ratify. Nothing more than that. A single state even attempting to ratify it would start the ball rolling, and no one would be able to stop it.
I love that book, and its teachings of cell structures for decentralized rebellion. But it is a libertarian fantasy. And we've seen in the US, particularly due to the voting-system-imposed two party cap, that bad faith actors will sabotage good government as a goal in itself. I'm not confident that we need to make it even harder to pass laws in the US. We need to have voting reform in the country to allow a real free market of political parties that accurately represent the will of the people, and hold true to the values that we have in our Bill of Rights such as freedom of speech and freedom to privacy and civil rights.