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> truisms about guardrails, the universal love of the Constitution, and so on. As an aside, I actually think the US is an extremely well set up liberal democra

> truisms about guardrails, the universal love of the Constitution, and so on. As an aside, I actually think the US is an extremely well set up liberal democracy compared to alternatives, and unlike many places that have just gone off the rails in one direction or another, the country has stayed relatively balanced under pressure. I think the increasingly intense hyperpartisanship we're seeing is actually the system struggling to maintain normalcy, sort of like how a control circuit might have to produce increasingly high internal currents to deal with some disturbance.

anigbrowl 4y ago
I think the US has been long-lived not because of any great institutional superiority but because the country essentially started with a free continent of unspoiled natural resources whose indigenous occupants were few in number and technologically unsophisticated. Australia is a somewhat similar example. Huge and largely empty tracts of land make a big difference; recall that many early settlers in the US sought their fortunes there because they did not have good economic prospects in Europe, eg because of primogeniture. I'd suggest that the potential emergence of internecine conflict here is a reversion to the mean of political development. This pattern has been observed before in history by professional imperialists like John Baggott Glubb, and also by scholars like Peter Turchin, though I haven't read enough of his work to comment. 'The Fate of Empires' is a short essay by Glubb and well worth your time. http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
- version_five 4y ago
  Compared to Australia and Canada the US has done much better to preserve liberal democratic norms and (vs Canada, I don't know about Australian politics) has a functional system that lets voters toss out a government that they don't like. (Canada only has one political orientation, even if there are two parties). Definitely what you say is a big factor but the US also has a stronger constitution and system of checks and balances vs peers
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    Canada has three parties with a strong and direct impact in policy, and in many provinces there are even more. As far as Canada having less lattitude in political orientation it's a simple result of the Canadian electorate being pretty close in opinion to one of the big three (except in Québec, but there are other parties there).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

anigbrowl 4y ago

I think the US has been long-lived not because of any great institutional superiority but because the country essentially started with a free continent of unspoiled natural resources whose indigenous occupants were few in number and technologically unsophisticated. Australia is a somewhat similar example. Huge and largely empty tracts of land make a big difference; recall that many early settlers in the US sought their fortunes there because they did not have good economic prospects in Europe, eg because of primogeniture. I'd suggest that the potential emergence of internecine conflict here is a reversion to the mean of political development. This pattern has been observed before in history by professional imperialists like John Baggott Glubb, and also by scholars like Peter Turchin, though I haven't read enough of his work to comment. 'The Fate of Empires' is a short essay by Glubb and well worth your time. http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf

version_five 4y ago
Compared to Australia and Canada the US has done much better to preserve liberal democratic norms and (vs Canada, I don't know about Australian politics) has a functional system that lets voters toss out a government that they don't like. (Canada only has one political orientation, even if there are two parties). Definitely what you say is a big factor but the US also has a stronger constitution and system of checks and balances vs peers
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  Canada has three parties with a strong and direct impact in policy, and in many provinces there are even more. As far as Canada having less lattitude in political orientation it's a simple result of the Canadian electorate being pretty close in opinion to one of the big three (except in Québec, but there are other parties there).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]