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> Chief among those hard-wired components, he said, is the Constitution’s focus on states, rather than individual voters, as the basic “representational unit.”

• VikingCoder 9mo ago
  If I'm not mistaken, there was not supposed to be a standing army. If you have a standing army, that creates a whole rats nest of problems. And ps, I've talked to people who think we shouldn't have a standing army, and I frankly think they're insane.
  • rayiner 9mo ago
    Standing armies create structural problems. Many countries in Asia are constantly having civilian governments being overthrown by the army.
    • adgjlsfhk1 9mo ago
      Not having standing armies also creates structural problems (mostly getting invaded). There are only 21 countries without a standing army, and they're almost all micronations with <200k population (mostly tiny islands). Iceland is the only one of them with a GDP per capita worth mentioning, but it's also part of Nato, the largest military alliance in the world.
      • mullingitover 9mo ago
        Switzerland has no standing army and they have a respectable GDP. You could pull off a “Switzerland but with defensive nuclear second strike capability” model in this era and it’d work fine.
        • adgjlsfhk1 9mo ago
          Switzerland has a standing army with ~150k active personel, upon which they spend 1% GDP, and which includes a half year conscription https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Armed_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Armed_Forces.
          • mullingitover 9mo ago
            Right, but it’s a citizen militia rather than a permanent professional army.
            • qcnguy 9mo ago
              It's a permanent professional army, where are you getting this stuff? Switzerland has an air force and everything. They also have a large trained citizen militia but it's supported by a backbone of a professional standing army.
              • mullingitover 9mo ago
                > They also have a large trained citizen militia but it's supported by a backbone of a professional standing army. Less than 10% are full timers, the vast majority are conscripts and volunteers. Even officers generally aren't full timers[1]. All I'm saying is, there's a spectrum of 'Complete citizen militia, as envisioned by the framers of the US Constitution' all the way over to 'Standing army as it exists in the US today', and Switzerland is obviously much closer to the former than the latter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Armed_Forces#Personnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Armed_Forces#Personnel
    • impossiblefork 9mo ago
      This is why we originally instituted mandatory military service here in Sweden. To ensure that the army isn't representative of some special class, e.g. the nobility or the burghers etc.
• efitz 9mo ago
  It’s a feature, not a bug. The United States federal government was set up as a representative republic, not a democratic republic, and not a democracy. We are supposed to be a federation of fairly-independent state governments with just enough federal scaffolding to keep the peace between the states. We were not set up with the intention of having a do-everything federal government ruling over the states.
  • mothballed 9mo ago
    OK but the constitution effectively cannot be amended now (the last one, in the early 90s, took 202 years to pass [no not a typo]) and we're stuck with what we have. The population also isn't even remotely good with the powers restrained by the 10th amendment and hasn't been since at least the 1930s and maybe even before that, and there is zero chance the court changes that. So what is next. It seems the only option is to just use the courts to re-interpret the constitution, so that things like growing your own wheat is "interstate commerce" and so that stuff like a post-86 machinegun isn't an arm even within the context of being a member of (by federal statute) the unorganized militia.
    • efitz 9mo ago
      Repeal the 17th amendment - popular election of senators - and all of a sudden it gets much easier for states to amend the Constitution in ways they want. Popular election of senators has been a disaster, it essentially turned to the Senate from a deliberative body into a pure partisan body like the House.
      • FridayoLeary 9mo ago
        Which is something people arguing to make the house of Lords fully democratic don't appreciate.
        • efitz 9mo ago
          Senators aren’t hereditary and never were; they used to serve at the will of elected officials but were isolated from electoral influences.
• Spooky23 9mo ago
  The United States is a flawed system designed to protect the feudal, mostly southern property based system. That’s why we killed millions over the ability to own humans, and the reactionary Senate blocked the most minor civil rights law (ie mobs may not hang people for summary justice). These flaws have been continually amended. We can vote for Senators, corporations can operate across state lines, you can’t discriminate, etc. Reactionaries perceive being unable to persecute people or exert their will as being executive overreach. Most rational people don’t share that perspective, which is why undermining the competence of the government and flooding propaganda everywhere has been a key priority for reactionary forces for the last generation. So here we are, impossibly rich people can now impose their will with impunity. We’re in a new, undemocratic era.
  • anon291 9mo ago
    We killed millions over the ability to own humans because the north viewed it as a religious duty to do so. This is demonstrated in our national hymn, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which talks about how God is damning to hell the old south. I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old. The criticisms you rightly levy against the Senate are themselves decades old. The idea that this era is especially defined by the aristocracy controlling the government is honestly just ahistoric.
    • dragonwriter 9mo ago
      > We killed millions over the ability to own humans because the north viewed it as a religious duty to do so. No, we didn’t, because if that was the reason for the fight, it would have happened before the South, fearing the long-term prospects for the institution of slavery, not only seceded to protect it, but also preemptively attacked federal installations.
      • 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
        The US Civil War was way too long and bloody to claim it was just a war fought over a few federal installations.
• FridayoLeary 9mo ago
  Exactly. I won't even say it's a good system, but it's a straw man he's attacking. Also, maybe i'm over sensitive but i feel like he's insinuating the constitution is wrong because it's inherently racist and elitist. Maybe i'm straw manning but sadly that choice of words often goes hand in hand with such ideas and reckless, poorly thought out solutions.
  • tosapple 9mo ago
    If it was elitist we wouldn't have the right to assemble or bear arms. Some of us can do both, at once!
  • johnnyanmac 9mo ago
    >i feel like he's insinuating the constitution is wrong because it's inherently racist and elitist. The constitution suggests that "all men are created equal". it sadly needed several revisions to define what "man" is, though. And then some 150 years before we expanded "man" to represent "humanity" instead of "male". The constitution isn't racist/sexist by the wording of its law, but the interpretations arguably were. And maybe are. Nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so. We had to spend a long, long time thinking and re-thinking this over. Sadly the trend as of late is to stop thinking altogether. I hope that changes.
• Apreche 9mo ago
  Yes, it is by design. By the design of slaveholding states in the 18th century.
• unethical_ban 9mo ago
  None of your opinion on the power of government requires the people to be cut out of the equation. One could have a "small" federal government while having a popular vote for president and a reduced/discarded Senate. And no, not everyone likes it when the federal government is "too big". Personally, I support social welfare and research programs at the federal level, as well as food safety and many other administrative functions there too. I'm less supportive of "big government" when the executive declares itself the arbiter of the Constitution and all foreign wars and treaties.
  • anon291 9mo ago
    Why does social welfare need to be handled at the federal level? There seems to be no explanation for why people insist on this other than that it must be so.
    • rangestransform 9mo ago
      Social welfare needs to be handled at the same level that mobility exists, because otherwise all destitute people will bumrush the nearest jurisdiction that is giving out generous welfare benefits. The issue is most often seen at the city level (e.g. Bellevue “encouraging” homeless to go to Seattle), but more generous policies like housing-first will need to be federally administered to prevent the most generous states from getting bumrushed.
    • johnnyanmac 9mo ago
      Even as of today, California gives aid to many states who fundamentally disagree with California's culture. Make social welfare state level and some states will simply starve. It's like insurance: we all need to pool together and help everyone. And for it to work, we can't complain that some people get more help than others. It's a safety net, not floor. If everyone hit the net, the entire thing collapses quickly. 2nd reason is that people can move between the states easily. Imagine the logistical disaster of having a California worker work for a New York company. Which social security does this workers wages get deposited to? What if the worker moves to Arizona? What if the New York company opens a branch in Florida and that worker's department operates out of there? It's a mess across state lines, and traditionally we have state disputes handled at the federal level.
• xelxebar 9mo ago
  > This is by design. ... The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives. So behavior of the system fails to meet its design goals? It honestly sounds like you kind of agree with the excerpt you quote. > The expansion of the federal government ... [is] what needs to change What are you proposing though? Even assuming the premise here, achieving said goals requires changes to lots of little details and incentives. It's not like there's a single potentiometer controlling Gov't Size™. So what are you actually suggesting? Certainly, the details of fundamental electoral structure engage deeply with the operation of our government, and the legal scholars in the article seem to be honestly pointing out levers (and big ones at that) we could possibly pull to create a less expansive federal government, or whatever the goal may be. Imagine a plane crashes and analysts start attempting a root cause analysis, discussing control system specifics and whatnot. To me, your stance reads like "This is by design. Plane parts are united but independent. Control systems were never intended to lord over every part of the plane. The expansion of control systems is what needs to change." I mean... maybe? But even if we agree on that point, any random contraction of the control system seems unlikely to make a plane that flies better. We have to actually engage with the details of what's going on here.
• dctoedt 9mo ago
  > The United States is exactly meant to be that: states that are united, but independent. The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives. That changed in the wake of the South's surrender at Appomattox: The Civil War Amendments explicitly gave the federal government expanded powers. Sure, the southern states were forced to ratify those amendments before Congress would recognize their representatives and senators. But they brought it on themselves; it was one of history's most-horrendous examples of FAFO. And the South was saved from far worse by Lincoln's and Grant's desire to be conciliatory and Andrew Johnson's malign views. (I read a tweet some years ago that Gen. Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn, with multiple passes.)
  • undeveloper 9mo ago
    > (I read a tweet some years ago that Gen. Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn, with multiple passes.) Nothing validates this view more than looking at the modern republican party. This is especially blasphemous to say after MLK day, who's life was dedicated to attempting the fix the injustices of the south, and who's death is entirely and inarguably a result of the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south). At minimum the traitors should have been hanged in public view. The desire to be conciliatory has never been less vindicated -- it's not like the south all the sudden decided to adhere to constitution, they had to be forced to anyhow. It's a nice sentiment, but it should have been left at that.
    • gottorf 9mo ago
      > the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south) Well, the south was the only place where there were any appreciable amounts of nonwhite people. "White supremacy" was just "the way things are" in the north, because they pretty much only had white people. In 1900, decades after the end of the Civil War, the south was about one-third black; every other region (midwest, northeast, west) were less than 2% black.
• rainsford 9mo ago
  > The expansion of the federal government, especially the powers of the executive branch, is the problem everyone seems to dislike (when their favored party isn't controlling this branch), and that's what needs to change Yeah but it's not going to, because the modern environment deeply favors a stronger federal government, no matter how much people might complain about it when they don't control said federal government. Arguably it's not even a "problem" so much as an inescapable result of the fact that the world of 2026 is vastly different than it was 250 years ago. A country composed of independent but united states makes a lot more sense when the fastest means of travel between them was a horse rather than an airplane or when your best bet for sharing information was...also a horse...rather than the Internet. The real question is how you work with a system based on the idea of independent states where political power results almost entirely on the distribution of states that align with one of two dominant national ideological camps.