[jameslk]

> Chief among those hard-wired components, he said, is the Constitution’s focus on states, rather than individual voters, as the basic “representational unit.” That arrangement “shapes all the elements of our electoral and legal system,” Rana said: the House and Senate, the Electoral College, Supreme Court confirmations. And this arrangement is partly why the U.S. Constitution is among the hardest in the world to amend. It doesn’t simply undermine majority rule, he added; the minority it empowers are those who have historically weilded disproportionate influence in the political system.

This is by design. 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. 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

[Spooky23]

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.

[coffeemug]

This is a half-truth that obscures what makes The United States unique. From the day the constitution was signed, it was a compromise between competing economies, geographic incentives, cultures, religious movements, political philosophies, and individual ambitions. This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.

[skissane]

> The United States is a flawed system designed to protect the feudal, mostly southern property based system

A lot of the constitutional factors you object to - like smaller states having voting power out of proportion to their population, or the constitution being difficult to amend - are also shared by Australia, yet Australia never had race-based chattel slavery.

(Dispossession and maltreatment of indigenous people isn’t really comparable because (a) the US had that too and (b) to the extent that influenced the constitutional architecture, it didn’t really influence the aspects you are complaining about.)

[anon291]

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.

[efitz]

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.

[baubino]

This exactly. But the country never figured out how to deal with one state’s laws conflicting with another state’s laws (see the Fugitive Slave Act for example). The lack of resolution around conflict between the states (which remained unresolved even after a civil war was fought over it) is partly why the federal government began to grow as it took on the role of enforcing laws (like desegregation) that certain states would not.

[Nursie]

> not a democracy

Democracy comes in many flavours and it's very hard to see the US federal system as outside of that when it is composed of elected representatives.

It's not a direct democracy, it's not a democracy where each vote counts the same, but it certainly falls within the very wide definition of democracy -

"a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives."

[mothballed]

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.

[scoofy]

Republic, res publica, means state power comes from the people.

Democracy, dēmos kratos, means state rule comes from the people.

They mean the same damn thing. They are just two different words that mean not ruled by monarchs.

[jdsully]

Wickard V Filburn is simply bad law... The federal government has way too much power and MUCH more than was ever intended. Its not a feature it is indeed a bug. One caused by the Supreme Court.

[unethical_ban]

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]

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.

[FridayoLeary]

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.

[johnnyanmac]

>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.

[tosapple]

If it was elitist we wouldn't have the right to assemble or bear arms.

Some of us can do both, at once!

[dctoedt]

> 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]

> (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.

[xelxebar]

> 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.

[rainsford]

> 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.

[VikingCoder]

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]

Standing armies create structural problems. Many countries in Asia are constantly having civilian governments being overthrown by the army.

[Apreche]

Yes, it is by design. By the design of slaveholding states in the 18th century.