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I heard nothing in the video clip about "doing away with the Constitution." I heard that he advocates amending the Constitution for some instances (exactly what is not detailed in the clip) and also advocates reforming the tax code (which is actually a great thing).
Zakaria also claims there are "antiquated" elements of the Constitution. I think this is true, especially the Electoral College. I have yet to hear a viable, legitimate reason why we can vote for every other office in government by popular vote but for the Presidency.
In the clip he also advocates for us to look to other nations and pick out good and bad things and adjust those to our system of government. I don't necessarily find this to be a bad idea - in fact, this is what the Founding Fathers did. They looked around at the systems of government and chose the goods and the bads.
I watched his junk show on CNN's GPS one morning and he pretty much alluded to that. He wants us to be like Iceland and have a constitutional convention to completely write it up
They sure want to try. They want Communism AKA Pure Democracy where mob rules. It's the only way the Left will ever get their way.
Ah... Marxist, particularly of the Leninist/Maoist variant would fundamentally disagree since the stated goal is for the development of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" ruled by a vanguard party. So if you can point to a single marxist regime past or present that has ever believed in, advocated, much less allowed popular elections, please by all means point them out.
You know, I wish just for once that when people throw around terms like communist, socialist, fascist they would have at least taken the time to at the very least to have read the original treatise that form the basis of these political belief systems. It would be so absolutely ****ing refreshing to be able to debate with knowledgeable individuals even ones that you disagree with but who had at least some basic knowledge of the topic.
Other than 2 times in history (note: I am not counting the Jackson/Adams and Hayes/Tilden elections because those were mired in several other issues besides EC vs. popular vote), the eventual President of the US has won the popular vote. I fail to see how popular vote then changes election results.
And, by the way, your argument would also involve elections of state governors, US senators, mayors of cities, etc. Everything should be an electoral college?
Why the electoral college is a good thing.
Many people see elections as simply choosing the person or persons to lead our country. And in the simplest terms, that's true. But it's not the whole story. Elections are about choosing people to represent us, and they are about establishing a discourse. Candidates aren't just profiles of what they support and what they don't support. If that were the case, then we wouldn't need campaigns or even names on ballots. Just each one's profile on the ballot, and we vote. Candidates are people. And they are seeking to represent our interests in government, to be our spokesperson. And that's a very important, very serious job. So the election process gives us a chance to gauge this person, to evaluate not only his or her positions, but also his or her character. Every candidate is trying to say what we want to hear, it's up to the voters to test that candidate, to question the candidate, to engage the candidate in a conversation.
The conversation. That's what the Founding Fathers wanted. To tie our elected representatives to the people who selected them. The process of winning an election isn't just about telling people what a candidate is going to do for them, the process is also about the people telling the candidate what they want done. The idea of breaking down the process to a state level, since electors in the electoral college are state level, was so that candidates were forced to have the conversation on a state level. How the states chose electors has always been up to the state. And that can be changed on the state level. Winner take all does not have to be the practive.
But the Founding Fathers were not done there. They recognized that democratic elections invariably favor urban areas. Urban interests are always dominant in government affairs. People in urban settings always outnumber people in rural locales. So they cleverly weighted the electoral college, just slightly, to provide a little incentive to Presidential candidates to include rural areas in the conversation. It's not a strong incentive. And the primary system we have set up, with certain states taking precedence, means that if you're rural and in a late-primary state, you'll in all likelihood not be getting much attention from candidates.
The kicker, though, is that if we go to a purely popular vote, then EVERY Presidential candidate will work hard to address urban problems, will work hard to represent urban interests, and rural interests will NEVER be important. We will, essentially, be relegating rural areas to second-class citizenship, because they will effectively be excluded from the conversation. So even though the electoral college doesn't help much, doesn't make all that much of a difference, it's slight impact is still valuable to the American system, a system that isn't supposed to have second-class citizens.
For the presidential elections every vote should count the same. We are all equal citizens of US. It does not matter if a person lives in the city, at a farm or in a cave. Also, the winner takes all (state electors) should be changed. A vote in LA cannot weigh less then one in WY.
Senate is a different matter and all states regardless of population numbers should be represented by the same amount of senators.
Other than 2 times in history (note: I am not counting the Jackson/Adams and Hayes/Tilden elections because those were mired in several other issues besides EC vs. popular vote), the eventual President of the US has won the popular vote. I fail to see how popular vote then changes election results.
And, by the way, your argument would also involve elections of state governors, US senators, mayors of cities, etc. Everything should be an electoral college?
Just on a national level. "A Republic, if You Can Keep It" (http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/659-qa-republic-if-you-can-keep-itq - broken link)
Quote:
The Founding Fathers supported the view that (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) "Men ... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." They recognized that such rights should not be violated by an unrestrained majority any more than they should be violated by an unrestrained king or monarch. In fact, they recognized that majority rule would quickly degenerate into mobocracy and then into tyranny. They had studied the history of both the Greek democracies and the Roman republic. They had a clear understanding of the relative freedom and stability that had characterized the latter, and of the strife and turmoil — quickly followed by despotism — that had characterized the former. In drafting the Constitution, they created a government of law and not of men, a republic and not a democracy.
For the presidential elections every vote should count the same. We are all equal citizens of US. It does not matter if a person lives in the city, at a farm or in a cave. Also, the winner takes all (state electors) should be changed. A vote in LA cannot weigh less then one in WY.
Senate is a different matter and all states regardless of population numbers should be represented by the same amount of senators.
In a democracy, votes cast by urban citizens invariably weigh more than votes cast by rural citizens. It's a simple fact that democracies favor urban interests. The majority lives in urban locales. The majority rules. The electoral college isn't about favoring rural voters. It's about redressing the natural imbalance imposed by the democratic process.
We have representitive problems also.In a multi party system you could have an absolute majority government with let's say 30% of the popular vote. It happens this way. In each riding {US district} you have 5 candidates. The winner gets 25% of the vote. He wins, it does not matter what % of the vote he gets. Whoever gets the most votes wins.
Or let's say there are 2 left of center or progressive parties running and one conservative. The progressive vote total could be way larger than the conservative vote and they could possibly not win one single seat. During the 90's that is what happened to the conservative forces. they were split amoung 3 parties. They have now become one party and they are ruling the roost.
The biggest inequity in the USA political system is the Senate of course. The voter in Wyoming, his vote has the same power as over 30 California voters. This is for sure not a democracy but no one should claim the USA is in fact a democracy. It's republican form of government is different from a true democratic system. In the USA system it's for sure much harder to effect reform of any type but at the same time it's also very difficult for any one faction to dominate totally, even if they are the majority. Jefferson even had a fear of "The tyranny of the majority". That's how serious he took the freedoms of the individual against the state.
We have representitive problems also.In a multi party system you could have an absolute majority gobernment with let's say 30% of the popular vote. It happens this way. In each riding {US district} you have 5 candidates. The winner gets 25% of the vote. He wins, it does not matter what % of the vote he gets. Whoever gets the most votes wins.
Or let's say there are 2 left of center or progressive parties running and one conservative. The progressive vote total could be way larger than the conservative vote and they could possibly not win one single seat. During the 90's that is what happened to the conservative forces. they were split amoung 3 parties. They have now become one party and they are ruling the roost.
That's why I don't support a FPTP voting system. I support an Instant Runoff Vote for 450 House seats by district, Senate Seats, and the Presidency. For 50 additional house seats, it would be national popular vote by party.
Quote:
The biggest inequity in the USA political system is the Senate of course. The voter in Wyoming, his vote has the same power as over 30 California voters. This is for sure not a democracy but no one should clasim the USA is in fact a democracy. It's republican form of government is different from a true democratic system. In the USA system it's for sure much harder to effect reform of any type but at the same time it's also very difficult for any one faction to dominate totally, even if they are the majority. Jefferson even had a fear of "The tyranny of the majority". That's how serious he took the freedoms of the individual against the state.
The filibuster ability needs to be removed from the Senate.
We have representitive problems also.In a multi party system you could have an absolute majority gobernment with let's say 30% of the popular vote. It happens this way. In each riding {US district} you have 5 candidates. The winner gets 25% of the vote. He wins, it does not matter what % of the vote he gets. Whoever gets the most votes wins.
Or let's say there are 2 left of center or progressive parties running and one conservative. The progressive vote total could be way larger than the conservative vote and they could possibly not win one single seat. During the 90's that is what happened to the conservative forces. they were split amoung 3 parties. They have now become one party and they are ruling the roost.
The biggest inequity in the USA political system is the Senate of course. The voter in Wyoming, his vote has the same power as over 30 California voters. This is for sure not a democracy but no one should clasim the USA is in fact a democracy. It's republican form of government is different from a true democratic system. In the USA system it's for sure much harder to effect reform of any type but at the same time it's also very difficult for any one faction to dominate totally, even if they are the majority. Jefferson even had a fear of "The tyranny of the majority". That's how serious he took the freedoms of the individual against the state.
They all feared the tyranny of the majority. That's why we have a Bill of Rights. Jefferson also feared the tyranny of the federal government. He believed in states' rights. And the Senate is not an inequity at all. The Senate is one of the balance mechanisms protecting states from the federal government. A democracy is not a perfect system of government. It is deeply flawed. The larger a country, the larger the population, the more deeply flawed a democracy becomes. That's why we are a republic. It's an acknowledgment of the flaws inherent to democracies, and an attempt to redress those flaws. The majority invariably squashes any dissension, any non-conformity, if those who dissent, those who don't conform are not protected. The Founding Fathers were ALL, each and every one, a dissenter. They spoke out in dissent against the British monarchy. They revolted against the injustice of a system that didn't give people a voice. And they had the foresight to recognize that each person's voice has to be protected, because otherwise no one's voice is protected.
Other than 2 times in history (note: I am not counting the Jackson/Adams and Hayes/Tilden elections because those were mired in several other issues besides EC vs. popular vote), the eventual President of the US has won the popular vote. I fail to see how popular vote then changes election results.
And, by the way, your argument would also involve elections of state governors, US senators, mayors of cities, etc. Everything should be an electoral college?
That isn't what was implied. The electoral college is a failsafe to keep any single group-think from taking over the Presidential election. Do you think the midwest would get a fair say in elections if NY, LA and SF controlled every election? That's how a popular vote would play out.
The founding fathers are given little credit for being smarter than todays elitists. That's why the constitution erks them so badly.
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