Comment by mpyne
13 years ago
As another example, the U.S. is actually on its second government, not its first.
After the American Revolution we setup a government under the "Articles of Confederation". To put it bluntly, this new government sucked and was useless.
A convention was held to suggest improvements for the Articles; they decided instead to do it over again and propose a government that could actually stand the test of time.
The framers of this new Constitution then had to convince the rest of the country to adopt this different form of government. In the process of this debate and feedback it was decided to further specify Amendments that became known as the Bill of Rights to satisfy some reluctant states.
All of this happened peacefully.
The United States of America peacefully transitioned to its second form of government on March 4, 1789.
It hasn't been all peaceful, all the time, after ratification, but it should be in my opinion. We've managed to achieve so much as a nation with non-violent resistance and protest, there's no reason not to do that here to push for transparency.
Some political scientists would say we're actually on our third or fourth.
The third U.S. republic was created after the Civil War, with the passage of Constitutional amendments that made the Federal government unambiguously superior in power to the governments of the states.
The fourth U.S. republic was created during the Progressive Era, with the creation of the "regulatory state" in which significant authority over economic matters was delegated from Congress and the courts to regulatory agencies in the Executive Branch. This system evolved gradually over the years (with the biggest changes coming through Roosevelt's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society) into the system we live in today.
The changes wrought by the Civil War were unfortunately quite violent, but all the other changes have been peaceful, as you note. Our ability to reinvent our democracy in this fashion is a big part of why the Constitution has survived so long -- we can change how we govern ourselves in big ways without having to tear it up and start anew.