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The self-assured certainty imbedded in the tone of this article belies the pride manifest in such a view that prefers the novel application of modern intellectu

The self-assured certainty imbedded in the tone of this article belies the pride manifest in such a view that prefers the novel application of modern intellectual enlightenment to the time tested bulwark that is our iterative and flexible legal foundation. The fact that it sees the pain and dysfunction as symptoms of a systemic/endemic flaws is telling of a mentality similar to seeing children as inconvenient drains on environmental integrity or child-birth as merely some destructive medical condition from which women should be spared any time such is possible. This kind of pride and double guessing of the 'anti-fragile' system that is emergent from the US Constitution is the very thinking that's going to cause more problems for our nation than the forward thinking policies of the Greenspan era that gave us snapshots of prosperity through propping intellectual ideas RATHER than promoting true progress as it comes with all it's warts and growing pains. You don't win the future by throwing what's survived into the trash bin on account that it's not pretty or efficient enough for your liking or your intellectual enlightenment.

maratd 13y ago
> The fact that it sees the pain and dysfunction as symptoms of a systemic/endemic flaws is telling Indeed. One of the greatest strengths of the US Constitution, one of the reasons it is the oldest constitution in use to date, is the fact that it stemies government. That dysfunction is what has led to the extraordinary prosperity experienced by the United States.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  > That dysfunction is what has led to the extraordinary prosperity experienced by the United States. I think this is a rather simplistic view of history. Supposing that American history unfolded along Australian lines (no revolution, eventual unification by vote, constitutional bicameral monarchy with fused executive), I expect that it would still have wound up as the richest and most powerful nation in history. The USA straddles what is, quite simply, the best place on earth for agriculture and trade. No other country in the world has better internal navigation by river. No country has such a vast bowl of rich soil red reliably by rain from two massive mountain ranges draining into the interior. No other country in the world has so many ideal ports. There are more good ports on the American Atlantic coast than there are on the European Atlantic coast. It is difficult to make and sustain an argument that, once British institutions took root in such fertile conditions, the USA was never destined to be very wealthy and successful.
  - halostatue 13y ago
    As I said in a sibling comment to this, it's also an incorrect view of history. That said, I'm not sure I agree with your assessment—if the U.S. had not had a revolution and had instead followed a Confederation model (e.g., the formation of Canada in 1867), I'm not sure that there would be a single nation in the land occupied by what is now the U.S., but more likely a few smaller nations. Other things could have also easily prevented the U.S.’s fate as the most powerful nation in the world, as for most of its existence, the U.S. was powerfully isolationist (at least outside of the North American continent) and inward-looking.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      Australia formed out of independent colonies out of simple expediency (eg, unified customs to improve trade). Americans have been a sufficiently practical people that similar considerations would, I think, eventually have brought them together.
      - halostatue 13y ago
        Fair enough; I'm looking at it more from the Canadian perspective with Québec thrown into the mix, which hasn't always been an enthusiastic partner with the rest of Canada. If the U.S. hadn't been a single nation, I personally believe that the regional differences between east and west would have resulted in different nations being formed longitudinally split roughly along the Mississippi river in what is now the U.S. and somewhere along that same longitude in Canada.
- incompatible 13y ago
  In what way is the US government stymied? I don't see much difference compared to other democratic systems. Just count the number of laws and regulations.
- halostatue 13y ago
  That’s a nice axiomatic assumption made based on faulty observations. Not only are the facts to support that assumption not in evidence, the facts that exist about the history of the U.S. government show that (a) dysfunction is not the normal mode of operation of the U.S. government and that (b) the extraordinary prosperity of the U.S. since about 1930 has been to increasing levels of federal government involvement and investment in both infrastructure projects (e.g., the interstate highway system, the Internet, advances in medicine and sanitation) and social projects (the social safety net, some basic medicare services, education investment as a whole, desegregation and civil rights in general). The U.S. has not been this actively dysfunctional for at least eighty years, and more likely for about 160 years (and the secondary reasons for the dysfunction 160 years ago are not too dissimilar to the reasons for dysfunction now, as ways of life and economic growth are deeply threatened by modernization). I’m not sure that we've seen sustained partisanship for this long ever in the history of the U.S. (about 18 years since Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich’s clashes in ’95). Further, it’s questionable how sustainable the “prosperity” in the U.S. is over the 18–20 years, as has been well documented. Most of the money has flowed away from the middle class (the proverbial rising tide) and toward an already wealthy upper-upper class. That the U.S. and its constitution have survived several shorter periods of hyper-partisanship and a civil war suggest that it is, as a document, more resilient than the article suggests, but there has been a sea change in the U.S. where I no longer recognize the country of my birth and can foresee the day when I choose no longer to be a U.S. citizen because I no longer identify with what it has become.
  - VaedaStrike 13y ago
    RE your point a) this gets into the semantics of the term dysfunction. I think if we did a point by point walk through of any given portion of the history of US government one could find a bounty of examples of dysfunction. It would simply be a matter of choosing what portions of history you wished to look closely at. and RE your point b) This is a far bigger set of assumptions and faulty observations. Firstly not all of those projects constitute a singular 'success' rather than simply the emergent of some system that produces a wide range of results. The funding is simply a component of that and the ultimate determining factor as to whether or not the net result of that funding was better than other alternatives that could have existed in it's absence is something that's not easy to quickly determine. Reminds me of getting a large and extremely demanding client. Certainly one may be gaining far more money than they ever did prior to having said client, but if the demands and side effects of having the client are too high then even the masses of money one makes, when placed in context to the big picture and the actual desired ends, may not result in an optimal, or even a positive, end. One needs but look at state welfare in Europe to see an example of this. The state takes care of people and one of the fall outs is that individual persons, beyond what they are obligated to give through taxation, help their fellow countrymen at far lower rates than they do in less socialized nations. There's always unseen costs.
jacques_chester 13y ago
> the time tested bulwark that is our iterative and flexible legal foundation. Other traditions are time tested too. I note that Australia didn't fall into a brutal civil war within 8 decades.
- austinz 13y ago
  The Chinese dynastic system lasted for thousands of years, until it stopped working because it turned out to be a shitty system that couldn't cope with the demands placed upon it by a rapidly changing and industrializing world. So I don't even feel that 'time tested' is a particularly good criterion.
  - VaedaStrike 13y ago
    The Chinese dynastic system was never designed to be an iterative, democratic system that aimed at providing the pursuit of hapiness. Our system has lasted through changes equal in turbulence to that which we are going through now, just a different flavor of it. The Industrial Revolution as merely a single example.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    What? China has had thousands of years of rotating cycles of stability and ruinous wars.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      Though, to be fair, a good chunk of those dynasties lasted a few hundred years. :P So clearly we should have dynasties and a couple wars of succession to devastate the nation every 50-100 years. Something about the blood of patriots and tyrants. 20 years?
    - austinz 13y ago
      There are philosophical and bureaucratic similarities among almost all of the major/dominant dynasties after Qin that disappeared after the Qing fell and probably won't come back ever again. But I could have chosen a better example.
npsimons 13y ago
The self-assured certainty imbedded in the tone of this article belies the pride manifest in such a view that prefers the novel application of modern intellectual enlightenment to the time tested bulwark that is our iterative and flexible legal foundation. Not to mention the conceit that we are automatically smarter than those of the past merely because of progress. The framers were smart. More importantly, they worked hard. They studied history, thousands of years worth, all sorts of forms of governments, what worked, what didn't. To throw that all out and say, "hey, let's run the country like a startup mixed with IRV, because we're modern and know better!" just smacks of arrogance. Sure, you can write a new constitution from scratch; first, do your homework and study all the other governments that have ever been. You've got all that modern technology at your disposal (which the founders didn't), so don't complain about the workload.

maratd 13y ago

> The fact that it sees the pain and dysfunction as symptoms of a systemic/endemic flaws is telling Indeed. One of the greatest strengths of the US Constitution, one of the reasons it is the oldest constitution in use to date, is the fact that it stemies government. That dysfunction is what has led to the extraordinary prosperity experienced by the United States.

jacques_chester 13y ago
> That dysfunction is what has led to the extraordinary prosperity experienced by the United States. I think this is a rather simplistic view of history. Supposing that American history unfolded along Australian lines (no revolution, eventual unification by vote, constitutional bicameral monarchy with fused executive), I expect that it would still have wound up as the richest and most powerful nation in history. The USA straddles what is, quite simply, the best place on earth for agriculture and trade. No other country in the world has better internal navigation by river. No country has such a vast bowl of rich soil red reliably by rain from two massive mountain ranges draining into the interior. No other country in the world has so many ideal ports. There are more good ports on the American Atlantic coast than there are on the European Atlantic coast. It is difficult to make and sustain an argument that, once British institutions took root in such fertile conditions, the USA was never destined to be very wealthy and successful.
- halostatue 13y ago
  As I said in a sibling comment to this, it's also an incorrect view of history. That said, I'm not sure I agree with your assessment—if the U.S. had not had a revolution and had instead followed a Confederation model (e.g., the formation of Canada in 1867), I'm not sure that there would be a single nation in the land occupied by what is now the U.S., but more likely a few smaller nations. Other things could have also easily prevented the U.S.’s fate as the most powerful nation in the world, as for most of its existence, the U.S. was powerfully isolationist (at least outside of the North American continent) and inward-looking.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Australia formed out of independent colonies out of simple expediency (eg, unified customs to improve trade). Americans have been a sufficiently practical people that similar considerations would, I think, eventually have brought them together.
    - halostatue 13y ago
      Fair enough; I'm looking at it more from the Canadian perspective with Québec thrown into the mix, which hasn't always been an enthusiastic partner with the rest of Canada. If the U.S. hadn't been a single nation, I personally believe that the regional differences between east and west would have resulted in different nations being formed longitudinally split roughly along the Mississippi river in what is now the U.S. and somewhere along that same longitude in Canada.
incompatible 13y ago
In what way is the US government stymied? I don't see much difference compared to other democratic systems. Just count the number of laws and regulations.
halostatue 13y ago
That’s a nice axiomatic assumption made based on faulty observations. Not only are the facts to support that assumption not in evidence, the facts that exist about the history of the U.S. government show that (a) dysfunction is not the normal mode of operation of the U.S. government and that (b) the extraordinary prosperity of the U.S. since about 1930 has been to increasing levels of federal government involvement and investment in both infrastructure projects (e.g., the interstate highway system, the Internet, advances in medicine and sanitation) and social projects (the social safety net, some basic medicare services, education investment as a whole, desegregation and civil rights in general). The U.S. has not been this actively dysfunctional for at least eighty years, and more likely for about 160 years (and the secondary reasons for the dysfunction 160 years ago are not too dissimilar to the reasons for dysfunction now, as ways of life and economic growth are deeply threatened by modernization). I’m not sure that we've seen sustained partisanship for this long ever in the history of the U.S. (about 18 years since Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich’s clashes in ’95). Further, it’s questionable how sustainable the “prosperity” in the U.S. is over the 18–20 years, as has been well documented. Most of the money has flowed away from the middle class (the proverbial rising tide) and toward an already wealthy upper-upper class. That the U.S. and its constitution have survived several shorter periods of hyper-partisanship and a civil war suggest that it is, as a document, more resilient than the article suggests, but there has been a sea change in the U.S. where I no longer recognize the country of my birth and can foresee the day when I choose no longer to be a U.S. citizen because I no longer identify with what it has become.
- VaedaStrike 13y ago
  RE your point a) this gets into the semantics of the term dysfunction. I think if we did a point by point walk through of any given portion of the history of US government one could find a bounty of examples of dysfunction. It would simply be a matter of choosing what portions of history you wished to look closely at. and RE your point b) This is a far bigger set of assumptions and faulty observations. Firstly not all of those projects constitute a singular 'success' rather than simply the emergent of some system that produces a wide range of results. The funding is simply a component of that and the ultimate determining factor as to whether or not the net result of that funding was better than other alternatives that could have existed in it's absence is something that's not easy to quickly determine. Reminds me of getting a large and extremely demanding client. Certainly one may be gaining far more money than they ever did prior to having said client, but if the demands and side effects of having the client are too high then even the masses of money one makes, when placed in context to the big picture and the actual desired ends, may not result in an optimal, or even a positive, end. One needs but look at state welfare in Europe to see an example of this. The state takes care of people and one of the fall outs is that individual persons, beyond what they are obligated to give through taxation, help their fellow countrymen at far lower rates than they do in less socialized nations. There's always unseen costs.

jacques_chester 13y ago

> the time tested bulwark that is our iterative and flexible legal foundation. Other traditions are time tested too. I note that Australia didn't fall into a brutal civil war within 8 decades.

austinz 13y ago
The Chinese dynastic system lasted for thousands of years, until it stopped working because it turned out to be a shitty system that couldn't cope with the demands placed upon it by a rapidly changing and industrializing world. So I don't even feel that 'time tested' is a particularly good criterion.
- VaedaStrike 13y ago
  The Chinese dynastic system was never designed to be an iterative, democratic system that aimed at providing the pursuit of hapiness. Our system has lasted through changes equal in turbulence to that which we are going through now, just a different flavor of it. The Industrial Revolution as merely a single example.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  What? China has had thousands of years of rotating cycles of stability and ruinous wars.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Though, to be fair, a good chunk of those dynasties lasted a few hundred years. :P So clearly we should have dynasties and a couple wars of succession to devastate the nation every 50-100 years. Something about the blood of patriots and tyrants. 20 years?
  - austinz 13y ago
    There are philosophical and bureaucratic similarities among almost all of the major/dominant dynasties after Qin that disappeared after the Qing fell and probably won't come back ever again. But I could have chosen a better example.

npsimons 13y ago

The self-assured certainty imbedded in the tone of this article belies the pride manifest in such a view that prefers the novel application of modern intellectual enlightenment to the time tested bulwark that is our iterative and flexible legal foundation. Not to mention the conceit that we are automatically smarter than those of the past merely because of progress. The framers were smart. More importantly, they worked hard. They studied history, thousands of years worth, all sorts of forms of governments, what worked, what didn't. To throw that all out and say, "hey, let's run the country like a startup mixed with IRV, because we're modern and know better!" just smacks of arrogance. Sure, you can write a new constitution from scratch; first, do your homework and study all the other governments that have ever been. You've got all that modern technology at your disposal (which the founders didn't), so don't complain about the workload.