The Constitution forbids the seditionist from running, but our seditionist-appointed SCOTUS decided otherwise. Our Constitution should ban political parties, private funding of elections, and FPTP voting, but it doesn't.
fifth flaw- gerrymandering, whereby parties get to draw electoral maps in order to select voters, as opposed to the voters selecting parties. sixth flaw - the equivalence of "spending money" with "free speech", thereby giving the rich and large corporations greater political power than the less well financially endowed. seventh flaw - the concept of "filibustering" whereby one Senator can effectively sidetrack a bill indefinitely absent a supermajority in favour. there's more flaws, but dinner's almost ready
i would add underrepresentation. The last time the number of seats was increased in the house of representatives to its current configuration of 435 seats ( minus a temp increase in seats in 1959-1962 when hi ak became state) was 1911 and the population was around 98 million. 114 years later the population of the US is 330 million that means you had one house representative for every 225,000 people in 1911 now you have one representative for every 759,000 people in 2024. while in the UK you have 600 members of parliament for 68 million people or 1 representative for every 105,000 people.
Gerrymandering should be illegal. It should be left to an independent body of citizens of the states, instead of the guvernor, it's to much power in the hand of a single person.
Ronald Reagan was faced with a economicial crisis he had to face. Stagflation and the loss of profit trend due to super powerfull unions gave him no choice. It's was that or losing the cold war and potensialy dying. Trump is in politics today because we need someone to represent the ideas of Reagan, in the current super left leaning, Western world order. Trump is overthinking on realpolitk.
To add to your point of minority rule, most of the USA also use plurality voting, so called "first past the post". This have led to a de facto two party system, where it is very difficult to challenge the two biggest parties. So some Americans vote for one of the two parties, not necessarliy because it is the party they really prefer, but because they see it as the lesser evil, out of the two realistic alternatives.
I think in almost all regards a parliamentary system is superior to how we do it in the US. But given the federation of states nature of the USA I think it is essentially impossible to change to such a system. The good news is that there are other improvements that are easier to make, and the constitution itself leaves the manner of voting to the states (which is bad news in other ways but won't get into that here). Already Alaska and Maine use ranked choice voting instead of first past the post and a number of other states are in the process of trying to change to RCV.
I believe that the President should be elected by a national popular vote. No segregation or weighting of any sort for the states and therefore no swing states, no breakdowns, just the raw number of people voting for the candidate.
@@I3orrovv popular vote would be even worse than electoral for a country as massive and diverse as america. Imo, America needs to invent something new, a whole new system for voting, to represent their diverse population better, and also get rid of the two party problem.
That is exactly why I'm voting this year. And the basis on which I chose the candidate. It's my first time voting too, and for the lesser of two evils (one is very very evil and has literally quoted Hitler directly and then defended his statement as true)
The US Constitution created a government that was modeled in Great Britain. The president = the KIng, the Senate = House of Lords, the House Representative = Commons. Britain during the 19th century made their legislature more representative, the US never did. For most of the history of the US the legislatures ignored part of the US Constitution when they preferred. The conservative movement has encouraged a complete lack of trust in government institutions. The lack of trust has become a superpower for the GOP.
Twaddle. The Founders encouraged a healthy skepticism of government, and events have often proven that skepticism to be completely justified. Never has any conservatives "encouraged a complete lack of trust in government institutions". That is a common nonsense argument promulgated by the Left. The Left believes that anything short of full and unquestioning support of an all-powerful centralized government is to call for anarchy. So unless we agree that the government has a right to force us to drive an electric vehicle, we support civil war? Do better.
And to be even fairer... republicans have been doing their best since Reagan to make sure that government and justice is broken and dysfunctional, except for the rich and powerful.
An excellent explanation of our flaws. Sadly, if we try to buy a new bike now, the people with power will get us a unicycle with a spike for a seat that charges our credit card when we peddle and shocks us if we try to get off. Then they'll sell tickets to watch us to their rich friends and take bets on who falls off first.
I've just got to your channel and already watched some of your videos. What an amazing work, man. Congratulations and, please, keep producing them. Kudos from Brazil.
You forgot one important flaw: the way the members of the House are elected. In electoral districts, of which the borders are drawn by politicians. Their main goal is of course to secure their seat, which leads to gerrymandering. 90% of the members of the House are elected in districts that are either overwhelmingly democratic or overwhelmingly republican. So the only election that a politician really has to win is the primary. This leads to the polarization in American politics that we see today.
This was a very well made video. I love how you put your references in the description. I think it's great when content creators do this as it allows the viewer to do their own evaluation. I've subscribed!
Excellent work on this video. The analysis is spot on, and your metaphor at the end about the big wheeled bicycle got updated with the two wheel bicycle 🚲 is outstanding. Keep up the good work
why? the Word, ‘democracy’, has to be establish in the Constitution, the supreme Law of the Land, of the United States of America be for it can be; but Republic is all ready establish in the Constitution; in Republican, establish in Article IV Section 4 since 17 September 1787, which is a Law Word and Form, Class and Office; that is the issue with civil hu man slave vassals in Europe and the United States of America: too stupid enemies and been that way for thousands of Years; hu man : highest unintelligent minus and nothing idiot liberal specie : stupid enemy : h u m a n s e : hu man s e : hu man 🖕🏻;
@@paulrodgers252 We are some European countries which in recent times have become fairly good democracies. Through the years we have also seen fascism and dictatorships of one kind ore another. We like democracy better.
It's like this, a single European country like France or Germany is just a single block. The USA isn't a single block country like that, it's more like a really strong alliance of currently 50 allied otherwise sovereign countries called "states". States like Wyoming wouldn't allow the system to change. Just like in 1860, all the states affected would attempt to secede, and a 2nd Civil War would occur, and NO ONE wants that.
As a non-American I was amazed when the electoral college system was first explained to me. It made sense 250 years ago, but it's clearly not what the Americans need now. But there is zero chance of the Constitution changing when when the only people who can change it are benefiting from it NOT changing.
Exactly. The republican party has blocked all attemps of reformation because it holds great power in some little rural "white" states that tend to be more conservative. Thus, those little states end up with a desproportionate amount of electoral votes, compared with the electoral votes granted to states with bigger and more diverse populations, that tend to vote more liberal, like california. That way, the votes of people of the little WASP states end up with 2 or 3 times the power of the votes emited by people in the bigger ones. It's surreal.
End the electoral college system and you will end the Union. The small States won't stay in the Union and neither will Texas or Florida. The electoral college is part of the glue of the Union.
America is not a single government, but a multi-level system of governments. Each level serving a different purpose. The Federal government is a government that services the people at large by governing the state governments. The state's government governs the people in that state. That's why the Federal government is a mixture of offices chosen by citizens and by state governments operating as separate groups other than citizens. The US Federal government's job is to keep state governments from violating citizen's rights, and to mediate disagreements between state governments and citizens, but not to govern the people directly. This is why the original 10 Amendments are a list of what governments will not do, and not what they will do. Federal government should never directly enforce any laws against citizens. The Federal government should be directing state governments what is to be done and the state governments accomplish those tasks in ways prescribed by that state's law. In case of a disconnect the judicial branch should mediate and deference should always go to the citizen's rights, then Federal gov's needs, and then state gov's needs. There's more to the system, but those are the generic steps.
Flaw one is designed that way, feature not a bug, since the system was never really intended as a direct democracy, you select representatives who in turn, represent you (think what you will of it) Flaw two has only occurred because the number of congressional seats are frozen and not apportioned as they were originally constitutionally delegated, one seat per 20-30 thousand people, *and* most states adopted winner take all, except Maine and Nebraska. And flaw four is a result of the legislature giving up a lot of its powers either on purpose (so they’re not directly accountable) or by accident, the Supreme Court was never intended to dictate laws, merely dictate the constitutionality of laws. Side note, if flaw two was rectified as I’m suggesting, there would be 18,600 electors or there abouts, and a similar number of congressmen, combined with the electoral systems in Maine and Nebraska, it would give rise to third parties (they’d actually win electors and seats in congress) and make presidential elections much fairer.
There are absolutely things we need to change in this country, like overturning Citizens United, stopping practices like gerrymandering, adding term limits to the Supreme Court, max terms for Congress, and demolishing the filibuster. I would stop short of a full unabashed democracy because tyranny of the majority is a thing. It's not as obvious in a smaller country where you would think that the majority of the people is representative of the country as a whole, but here, it's much more spread out and people in large cities have a very different culture, mindset, and priorities than those in less populated regions. These notions should be balanced in government, though that's usually much harder than it sounds. NY is a great example of this issue where NYC massively influences and determines laws and policies for everyone because of their population and tax base, but that doesn't mean that many of those same laws and regulations actually make sense in the rest of the state and can occasionally be harmful.
Civilization is not the US's strong point. A civilized country is measures by the way the majority protects the minorities, because they understand that in different situations, everyone could be in a miniority position. Maybe it's elderly vs the young, maybe it's people of color vs whites, maybe it's people who like hotdogs vs pizza, things you may think are trivial now, but become relevant later. US need a coalition rule, with proportional representation. In which parties can represent more various causes. In coalition governments, the bullies will be punished for neglecting minorities, and it will be harder to form a coalition when parties have no respect for the country as a whole. If there were 5 parties, with roughly 10-30% each, at least 2 would have to work together. And if the biggest party gets 35% but is not able to work with the rest, then 2 or 3 parties can still form a coalition without them. Mellow out the pointy bits. Work together in stead of stand in opposite corners. Tyranny of the majority is a thing for sure. Republicans are showing their colors in the Project 2025 piece. Pure divisiveness. It's a trainwreck in progress imo. Coalitions and proportional representation can root out these 50/50 least bad choice options. Create blocks of opposition to the status quo. Vote for people who support these ideas, run for office. Americans or American'ts...
You're so afraid of tyranny of the majority that you create a tyranny of the minority instead. What you need is not minority rule, but majority rule that ensures a diverse representation backing it
@@Pandrogas no, the only real problem is that the US is too big to be governed as a single democracy. And the rise of mega cities has vastly complicated this. In a direct democracy we would almost immediately collapse into a number of conflicting city states. There has always been strong resistance to our constitution, but changing it in a diverse, multicultural, multiethnic population would rip us to shreds. Compromise would not be possible.
No, he doesn't. Like a typical Nordic and Germanic, he doesn't understand how a WASP thinks. Unlike the Scandinavian countries, democracy is not tied to mob rule. That's why Bush won over Gore. If you got more votes than your opponent that means you lost.
It survived 200 years and now the country's suffering "Because" of it? This the most illogical arguement I've ever heard. The country isn't going downhill right now because of the constituition. HELL, THIS COUNTRY ROSE TO BECOME THE SUPER POWER OF THE WORLD BECAUSE OF THIS CONSTITUITION. The current political landscape, The current generation and the current disregard for the constituition is what's bringing the dire crisis in this country. We need to enforce the constituition more, not change it. If something has worked for 200 yrs and brought prosperity, then if it suddenly stops working then there's probably an external cause at work.
@@altrshakib9449 Things don't work forever boomer change is only constant it's like saying I lived for 70 years with prior evidence I will live forever😂😂.
This was a great breakdown of the obvious flaws in the US Constitution, and you managed to avoid US Federalism, which is functionally even more confusing and ridiculous in how it restricts the Federal Government’s ability to respond to nation-wide issues in the already unlikely event that all necessary factors line up to allow significant reform.
Lets not forget that this country has had an civil war. If you try to take away more power from the states, you will get a second civil war. The U.S.A was never meant to be like this, The federal goveŕnment was only supposed to have authority over militart, foreign affairs, external trade etc. What you are asking for, goes against the fundamental wishs of our founding fathers
Federalism is exactly what you described. The USA is DESIGNED to have a weak central government. The USA is made of individual sovereign states. Alexis de Tocqueville described the states of the USA as laboratories of democracy, where every state can promulgate the best laws for its land.
States are not soveriegn in the sense of being their own nation, they were under the Articles of Confederation. Under the constitution states are governed by the Feds. However its like you said, the Federal Gov is supposed to be a limited government. How things have changed. The constitution is not perfect but i think the main reason why america is going to shit rn is due to the Federal government getting too much power, as the anti federalist predicted when the constitution was being debated, before it was ratified. Too much spending, voting agaisnt the peoples intrests by going to war/funding proxy wars, bailing out banks, banks that should not have given out loans that they knew would keep people in debt. Spending more money than we make, which makes the Treasury bond intrest rate go higher each year, basicly fucking over all of us and the future of generations of this country.
To be fair, state and local governments in the US are far more experimental and can play around with more democratic voting systems. The problem is the lack of national media coverage, keeping most Americans ignorant of these innovations. The biggest flaw isn't the government, it's our society and its "information economy." Historically, attitudes and culture change before major reforms, policy shifts, and revolutions. Americans are experiencing this divergence but haven't found a coherent way to correct this dissonance.
“Wow to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state. Freedom, private enterprise, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish “ ~ Frederic Bastiat Let’s hope this archaic Constitution survives!
Yep, these issues are well-known to Americans who are paying attention. The way I think about it the US constitution is Democracy ver. 1.0 Early Access while other democracies in the world have upgraded to ver. 2.0 or higher, with a lot of the bugs removed. One thing you didn't mention is Gerrymandering, which allows minority rule deciding seats in congress. Some have proposed a Second Constitutional Convention of the United States to fix a lot of these issues in one fell swoop. But I'm pretty sure that happening is at least as unlikely as individual amendments being passed. Even if you could guarantee majority rule, that only works if the majority are well informed and not easily influenced by deceptive propaganda. In other words it still won't work without ensuring most voters have some degree of media literacy. That's a function of the educational system in the US, and, for various reasons, that's broken too. PS. Fun fact: The old-fashioned style of bicycle you talked about is called a "Penny-farthing".
@@dragonf1092communist? if you are a right-wing stooge and you have no argument whatsoever just throw the word communist out there and pretend you won the argument. desperately grasping at straws. btw, we get it. youre an authoritarian stooge who hates democracy and wants to hand all your rights over to oligarchs.
Thanks for a good summary. We do know all of these things: everything in this video are, fortunately, well known by the American public at this moment... whether reforms are possible or not we can only hope of course.
Imo, the winner-takes-all way most states distribute their electors is a far bigger contributor to the problem than the way smaller states have proportionally more electors. With the electoral college and winner-takes-all in all states, the lowest amount of votes you could win with is about 22% Even if every state had a perfectly proportional number of electors, if those electors would just go to whoever had the plurality in the state, you could still win by getting a plurality in states that together make up half the population. That could be about 25% of the population voting for you, and then winning the election. Meanwhile, if you have the same number of electors, but they're divided in each state proportionally amongst the candidates using D'Hondt method, the smallest number of votes you could win with would be about 39% If you don't do it via electors, but just attach a weight to each vote such that all votes in a state combined have a value equal to the number of electors the state would have in an electoral college, then the smallest number of votes you could win with is about 44% And if everybody just had a direct vote for president that was equally weighted, it's 50% (All cases assume an equal percentage voter turnout in all states, and only the 2 major parties receiving votes) As you can see, the winner-takes-all system is far more impactful. On top of that, it also creates the whole concept of "swing states" as those could "swing" one way or another despite being close to 50/50, whereas having any sort of proportional system of (virtually) dividing the electors would mean those "swing" states send about half of their (virtual) electors for one party and half for another. It also alienates "blue voters" in "red states" and vice versa. And whilst it's not at all required of states to use the winner-takes-all system, it's rather disadvantageous for a state not to use it when most states do. A blue or red state would disadvantage their preferred candidate and make it less likely their preferred choice wins if states on the other side do use it. A swing state would risk losing its influence, as instead of being a large amount of electoral votes that could go one way or the other and thus something candidates want to secure, then candidates probably will only be able to win or lose a few electors depending on their performance, so it's not that important. And the bigger the state, the more of an impact it will be
3 or more parties and low voter turnout could allow much less than 22% of the voting age population to decide the result, the lower limit is close to zero which is why Ranked Choice Voting and incentives or mandatory voting really is needed.
@@glike2 already mentioned that these numbers were based on no 3rd party votes, and yeah, I should have said percentages of the vote rather than of the population. The point of the percentages was more to illustrate the impact the various parts have, and showing that the winner-takes-all part is much more damaging than the electoral college. I get wanting the best, but even just better can already make a huge difference. If we do want best: proportional when there is more than a single spot, Condorcet if there's only 1 spot (such as presidential). Instant runoff/single transferable vote is better than first past the post, but definitely not best.
You bring up a good point about when the constitution was written a lifetime appointment would be around 15 years. They couldn't posable have imagined that number would of double. If everyone is so insistent on following the constitution to the letter, the way it was intended, then a term of 15 years on the bench should a " lifetime appointment ". Just like a " life sentence " to prison doesn't always mean until you die when your eligible for parole after a set amount of years have been served. Everyone needs to stop looking to the Supreme court for answers and start thinking for themselves.
The Continental Congress was held hostage by the smaller population states. This was because folks identified with their state first, and as Americans less so. Making things worse, (less fair) was the three-fifths compromise, where slaves were counted as population which gave the slave states disproportionately more representation. The next blow was when the # of representatives in The House was capped at 435. Originally, the # of representatives was 1 per 30,000 inhabitants. By todays population, that would mean 11,000 representatives! That number would be impractical, but if we went with, say, 1 representative per 300,000, we'd have a little fairer representation.
5:02 the 2nd flaw??? It is. Not a flaw. Legislatively speaking it demands that the majority of the big states (hours of representative) AND the majority of the small states (Senate) agree before passing law... An excellent idea. For president, it theoretically would do the same thing IF the electoral votes were not pooled for the entire state; but key in the Congressional district. This would give every registered voters "2" votes for president. One vote, the voters of the House district decide. Then a larger pool of voters for each Senate district are counted. But originally intended, the popular vote controlled the house number of electoral and the state legislators would have controls over the Senate number of electors.
This is tremendously obvious to most anyone outside of America. However, the supreme court and its ability to use the constitution as the final arbiter of justice has reinforced the idea that no change needs to ever be done to said constitution. Meanwhile, I happily live in a neighbouring country that has a constitution that was written in modern times, with the full knowledge of the pitfalls of the American constitution. Nevermind how countries with similar constitutions have long since seen its weaknesses exploited, leading to outright tyranny and grotesque mockery of democracy in general. Primarily Germany and the Philippines as examples. The irony of course, is that on its current course, outright revolution, leading to complete reform of the government, is the likeliest outcome instead of a more calm and reasoned re-writing of that document with better modern philosophy.
The constitution CAN be changed that’s the thing. The issue is it requires a 2/3 majority of states for it to be ratified. The issue is what is being pushed to change the constitution is almost unilaterally against the interest of 50% of the population. If you refuse to work with half the population, you SHOULDNT be able to make large sweeping changes that affect Americans all over the world. WORK WITH US. We all agree change is needed but you need to compromise. You want to limit gun ownership? Okay. But how about instead of banning firearms entirely from private citizens, you offer free of cost licenses that be granted after training. You also remove all restrictions on what firearms we can own. Yes, this includes automatic rifle, sawed off shotguns, machine guns etc. If the argument is truely about safety this should suffice because a trained population will know how to safely store and operate their firearms. If that is too dangerous how about we ban automobiles while we are at it given they kill more people than firearms do in America every single year, and are the leading cause of death for teenagers and young adults? However this won’t ever be proposed because both sides absolutely cannot capitulate. Y’all need a 100% wish list filled and a full unconditional surrender for you to even try and it’s pathetic. The constitution protects 151 million people from harming the way of life of 149 million people It is SUPPOSED to slow you down.
My grandfather was born right at the end of WWII in rural Sicily. He came to this country with nothing and built himself a life, a house, and a family. He knew how to live. He always told me, every other country in the world is older than America, and has changed their "constitutions" over the years. Yet, America, being the youngest nation, in its arrogance, thinks it unnecessary to change its own constitution. And then to have the audacity to tell those elder countries how to do things
@AE-sy1pn grandfather, and while he was critical of our countries policies, it was from a place of care and concern for it's future. He was very politically active in his local community and was always challenging ineffective and outright hurtful policies.
@@AE-sy1pn A foreigner who had lived many years in a foreign country and experienced its positives and negatives has settled in our country, and is providing feedback that is backed by his wisdom and life experience. As Americans, we would be fools to dismiss this feedback as "trash talk". Most of the wise people in the world are born outside our country and we should perhaps listen and change.
@sujaireddy4311 I'm an American that has lived in foreign countries. I'm not some guy that has never left the USA. I've lived abroad for a total of 8 years. Multiple countries. What experience do you have? I think I'm qualified to give my opinion...
Maybe we need to put the Constitution in context.. originally, it was an agreement about Slavery (3/5 a person, Missouri Compromise and Fugitive Slave Act)
The last 2 aren't in the Constitution. And the 3/5 compromise was there because the Southern States wanted slaves to count as people for representation but not for taxes, and the North wanted it the other way around, so they compromised. The Constitution was written to establish the system of government our country would have. It was not about slavery.
While I agree with much of what is here, I disagree that we need to alter the first amendment in order to allow campaign finance reform. The problem lies not with the amendment, but with how it has been willfully misrepresented. In fact, campaign finance reform would actually *increase* freedom of speech. Equating donations with speech essentially results in the drowning out of the speech of those with less money-ie, it hinders their freedom of speech. The first amendment doesn’t give us the freedom to yell anything into the void-everyone everywhere has that freedom. Rather, it gives us the freedom to be heard in the “public square”-something that money in politics *prevents*. What we need is a new amendment clarifying how campaigns will be financed so it is done fairly, and poor people can have their candidates heard too.
Any candidate with a certain number of endorsing signatures should simply get a certain amount of money from the city/state/... for their campaign, and _no_ other funds should be allowed to be used, not even their own money. Allowing donations for campaigns opens up the doors for corruption right at the very beginning of the election process.
Good video. Especially that you didn't miss the most important part, the US Supreme court being the only true legislators during gridlock. The fact that Trump when he lost the election in 2020 tried to bring legal challenges in front of the court to get them to overturn the results, or the fact that they stopped a recount in 2000 along partisan lines, are examples of the fact that they not only wield power far greater than the legislative, but maybe even greater than that of the president. If an american has a problem they wanna fix, or a policy they wanna enact, they probably need to replace SCOTUS before anybody else.
That's because it's a republic not a democracy, and for good reasons. To prevent tyranny of the majority, meaning protecting the local sovereignty of states, and not consolidating an oversized landmass into one total state. New York has no business subjecting Idaho to policies just because it has a bigger population. The constitution is an agreement between sovereign states (which should function almost like separate countries) to play nice and work more cohesively together in regards to currency, military defense, and legal procedures. So to change that agreement, the states as a whole would have to agree, regardless of differing population sizes between them. But the federal government has of course overstepped its bounds in every way it wasn't meant to, as governments always do.
A republic is a type of democracy. One might even call a republic a “representative democracy” to distinguish it from a “direct democracy”. All republics are democracies.
@@acommenter6737 Why bother? Stephen obviously repeated some conservative argument he read elsewhere without researching or he just doesn't care. It's pointless.
The Constitution is often called “A Bundle of Compromises.” It was designed to get enough states to ratify it. Thus, it gives 18th century concessions to comparatively less populated states.
Regarding majority rules - If you look at EU parlament then you find out that small states also has big and not proportional representation. This is normal in Federal System like EU or USA. Other example - in UK for example party that win elections almost never get 50% votes. Usually betwen 30% ad 40% is enough to get majority in parlament. In 2024 Labor party get 33.7 and take control over UK. Regarding guns and money in politics this is a problem with interpretation of constitution. Not constitution itself. Filibuster is not part of constitution but just a normal law - Senat rules. Overall constitution was change 27 times. So it is possible to change it and adjust over time.
Looking at the UK, Labour got in power with even less votes. and a huge majority of seats with very few votes. So it's not just the USA like Mr Chemerinsky claims. And btw, telling the car freak nation's people to buy a new bicycle when they don't even have an old one... Not the best choice of analogy here 😅 Thumbs up for a great video and for summarizing exactly why the USA's system is broken.
Thanks for your comment! Yes, parliamentary systems can also have smaller portions of the vote leading to a government. However, this differs fundamentally from how the U.S. president is chosen. In a parliamentary system, a coalition of parties-together representing a majority-typically forms the government. Even if one party receives a minority of the popular vote, they must collaborate with other parties to establish a government that represents a broader spectrum of voters. If that coalition falls, so does normally the government. In contrast, the U.S. electoral college allows a single candidate to win the presidency outright without needing a majority coalition. This single candidate gains executive power, unchecked by coalition needs, which doesn’t reflect the majority will as closely as in a parliamentary system. Does that make sense? I originally planned to have a section in the essay clarifying this distinction but decided to leave it out. Cheers!
@@TheMarketExitthat's kind of the point - coalitions tend to keep each other in balance. That's another flaw in American politics, consisting of basically only two parties. On the contrary, in Dutch Parliament there are currently 16 (!) different parties, with 4 not very fond-of-each-other parties in coalition, which also brings its own challenges.
@@TheMarketExit Yes, I get this, thanks for the response. But the UK really is a first past the post system, and you don't even need coalitions there unless you're really doing badly. Labour won 411 seats out of 650, for just 33.7% of the votes. Same issue as the USA. Of course, this is the party/parliament election, not a presidential election, it's not exactly the same. But it's the same issue, and not a democracy by a long shot. Democracy is pretty simple imo, one person one vote. Unfortunately, changing to real democracies would kick a lot of powerful people of the gravy train, so just like in the USA, it's never going to happen.
@@abnormaalz I'm 'enjoying' the agitated word fights in Dutch parliament, provided bite-sized from Maarten Van Rossem's YT channel. Just like USA chambers, it's becoming a clown show. Very good for the trust of people in their governments and almost-democracies./sarcasm BTW, if anyone ever wonders how it's possible the USA allows Trump to walk free, just look at how extremely patient and lenient the Dutch are in letting complete wacko Thierry Baudet run free instead of sticking him into an asylum. He makes Marjorie Taylor Greene look perfectly sane.
@@TheMarketExit The biggest problem with the U.S. Constitution is that it "outlaws" religious tests for public office. It enables religious indifferentists or evil "religious" persons to make sure that they aren't excluded from the possibility of power. It also sends the INCORRECT message that religion is irrelevant.
I feel like, the sooner we realize that the symptoms aren't the cause - that Orange didn't break the system, but rather, that a broken system produced Orange in the first place - the better prepared we can be to weather its inevitable breakdown, and maybe build something better in its place... Because, right now, it feels like we're living in this very old (or poorly built) building that has rotten failing foundations, and so the building has started to noticeably shift towards its inevitable structural failure, causing burst pipes, shorted electrical wiring and floor-to-ceiling cracks in the walls, but rather than going into the basement, inspecting the foundations and come to the conclusion that we need to evacuate, most of us are upstairs blaming old pipes, bare wires and shoddy plaster for wrecking our home, or maybe some of us are at least being proactive enough to at least try upgrading the pipes and wiring, before they cause flood or fire, or we're trying to plaster over the growing cracks faster than they're spreading. But, by the end of the day, every day, we fall further and further behind as more and more of the ceiling falls on our heads at the dinner table. We are at a point in our history, where if we are to survive into a next - or better - era, we need to completely redesign and rebuild our house, on new sturdier foundation rated for the weight of our size, needs and technology, completely from the ground up. And in this new house, we can reserve a reverent space for a museum, where we can keep sacred chunks of our old foundations, pipes, wires and plaster, to remember where we came from, and what we survived.
Look, the problem is that orange might introduce small changes of his own and, bit by bit, cripple more the american democracy. A new goverment of his own might stop applying inconvinient laws, reform others with the help of republican dominated congress and senate, purge public employees that don't agree with him, fill the military with loyalists, create a militarized anti-immigrant force, also filled with loyalists, that can be repurposed later to by pass the local police and repress the american population, etc. I hope you get the picture. In Venezuela, Hugo Chaves destroyed the local democracy, not with a gigantic swipe, but bit by bit.
Fortunately, I think he's too old to achieve that. But in the future, another charismatic extreme-right winger populist might do it. The potential is there.
The problem is, to get enough R (D) senators/congressmen to vote for a better system if that may/should diminish the power of their party, possibly stripping many of these persons of their comfortable politicalpoaition.
@@joeybru New political forms, and/or improvements to the conditions of the common man, have never been gained by asking permission, nor have they been gained as a benevolent gift from those at the top. History teaches us what this moment is, and what needs to be done.
Hi Andres, again a great video, I felt in love with your channel instantly, I watched all of your videos in like 2 days :D and I have shared your channel with most of my friends! I have to admit, I beg to differ about the popular vote argument. I don't have high views about the legitimacy of USA elections, yet the point about electoral vote is because it (was) is a federation of states that have their autonomy. For example, in the EU parliament you have Luxembourg has 6 seats with 650k, and Germany has 96 seats with 85mils. You can argue that whatever EU parliament decides is undemocratic as it does not represent the popular vote in the whole EU. From my gymnasium class called "The constitution" in my hometown in Serbia, like 15+ years ago, our teacher brought this discussion, and we had a debate, and my takeaway from his teachings was that the small states have to have incentives to stay in the Union/Federation, imagine Luxembourg or Cyprus, or Wyoming or Vermont back in the days, they would easily decide to leave the union (federation) if there was not a protection of them as a minority guarantied in the Constitution. Cheers!
Thanks for your comment! You make a good point. I'd argue, however, that the EU is quite different from the US-it operates more as a coalition of sovereign states with significant autonomy retained. The EU parliament has far less centralized power. Interestingly, some have argued that if polarization in the US continues, it might make sense for the US to move toward a more EU-style union. In that case, the overrepresentation of smaller states wouldn’t be as problematic. Cheers b0za!
I tell people all the time that we HAVE to consider others as citizens of the US. Leaders do not just affect the country they govern they affect EVERY worldly connection that country has.
Exactly. The electoral college and equal senate seats were put in purposely so that the smaller states have some influence, and without these, there'd be no USA.
The American way of life is the brightest, when people put their differences aside, and work together, to build, repair, grow, thrive. Any politician who disagrees with this is not cut from the same cloth as I.
That's the ideal but it's not the reality. Politicians are bought and paid for and ever since Citizens United the Supreme Court has securely cemented the Billionaire class as the rulers.
And this is why you should never base a system of rules on the honor system. There are no mechanisms to make sure that the rules are enforced. You can’t just rely on the fact that everyone’s going to do the right thing all the time. It only takes one bad actor for this entire system of rules to collapse and that to me is not a good system of rules.
@@jordanwhite8718 We literally have the best system in history for holding accountability to our corporations, yet, people constantly vote people in based on social issues, and then those people take the systems away little by little over time.
The constitution was designed to protect the American people from the government. This wasn't mentioned in your critique of the constitution. I saw your focus being placed on the rigidity/unchanging nature of the constitution. Now more than ever we need protection from big government, how do you suggest we achieve that?
@@Pixelarter The Bill of Rights and other sections were included or added to provide protection from a tyrannical government. It was also written to protect private property instead of feudal property.
I not from USA and 'am amazed at how their election works, thanks for this video But... the bicycle thing feels weird, cus then you got cars, airplanes and so on. And again, but, from one bicycle to another it feels like they dont even think in living Imperialism behind. And a sleepy one can go to another universe in a dream, so I dont get the vehicle thing Anyways the information is amazing, perfectly explained, I amazed with it good work
"My preferred candidate didn't win this time. All is lost." This reminds me of when The Stonne praised the electoral college when Obama got in, but then called it a tool of white supremacy when Trump got in.
When the US occupied Germany, Japan, Iraq and (temporarily) Afghanistan, it set up parliamentary or semi-parliamentary regimes. Never their own quasi-monarchical Presidential system. That says a lot about revealed preferences and the impossibility of amending the US constitution.
Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947: ‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’
The elector system makes sense when the state governments are all separate and the federal government is limited. The issue with our government is too much government at the federal level.
The filibuster existed before the 70s, the only thing that changed in the 70s was that they went from 2/3rd majority to force a vote on a measure, to what it is today 3/5ths majority.
No, the biggest change was when all one senator needed to do to filibuster was to "declare" the filibuster instead of holding the the floor continuously and speaking while the filibuster was in effect.
Democracy as Kleisthenes invented it in 507 BC would mean that among the ENTIRE populace, all deciding committees would be RANDOMLY selected again and again. Please look it up. It was called isonomy. No country on Earth has true democracy, we're just oscillating betwenn aristocracy and tyranny.. I know there is grief involved, why we still do not want to learn and see.
We a constitutional republic. We have a 2 party system that will vote for their donors rather than the people who have elected them we are in a twisted form of oligarchy, where each side paints the other as "traitors, anti democratic, facist, marxist, ect" this keeps the cycle going, allowing each side to remain in power indefinitly. The news seems to amplify this affect. Both sides dont respect the bill of rights when its a right they disagree with. So our rights get slowy eroed away over time.
As a form of federative balance, Brazil has 3 senators per State and 3 for the Federal District. Proportionality by inhabitants is in the Chamber of Deputies with a minimum number for less populous states (8) and a maximum for more populous states (70), but there is an attempt to increase the numerical representation of the most populous states. In this country, it is precisely the Federal Supreme Court that has been preventing the advancement of illiberal agendas that are contrary to fundamental rights. The court was essential in preventing the coup d'état that the last president attempted and which almost won a second term (barely).
Feels so much like home. Here in France, the actual Prime minister has been chosen from a party that has finished fifth at the last elections, everything's normal too, democraty is healthy all around the world ^^
The strictly limited DEMOCRACY is not simply "majority rules" It is, by design, the majority rules ONLY when it is exercised in accord with The Declaration's terms; which is the equal security of every one's rights. Simply, whomever or whatever is on the ballot MUST be proved towards the equal protection of every person's rights. If that is not proved, then it matters not how many people want it; it is never to see a ballot.
The US is a Republic not a Democracy,and one of the main differences is that Republics does protect minorites where as in a Democracy there is no such thing as one group being proteced from the rest. So of course the US is ran by a minority,in this case the rich who own almost all means of production and other assets, i don't see why people are so surprised by it.
But minorities in the sense of state populations, not ethnically So Rhode Island was protected from Pennsylvania. The original problem was how to get states to join a union while giving up some of their sovereign authority yet still be protected from the whole in those powers reserved.
It's a Democratic Republic. That's why you have things like religious exemptions from medical policies. Technically you can exempt yourself from any public policy that violates your Constitutional rights. People just don't know how to enforce that and the government will pretend they don't have to obey the constitution if you don't know how to force their hand. Hint. Pull their bond. There were towns during covid who got entire school districts to back off the vaccine mandates by threatening the city's bond.
republic means that the the ones who make the laws (legislative), those that put them into practice (executive) and those who control they are being folllowed (judicial) are different entities, unlike an absolute monarchy where the king is in charge of all of that. Most countries are (or claim to be) both democracies and republics.
The senate is suposed to have a fixed number of representatives for each state because they do not represent the population of the state but the state itself. That's the idea in Brazil, at least. However, the congress counter balances it and each state has a number of seats in the congress proportional to the population of the state. The main work is done in congress and the senate representatives review the work and make sure that it is in each state's interest to approve or not. In this case it's not about what the population want but what the state needs, because sometimes the population does not understand the consequences of what they want. In Brazil we have 3 senators per state, and half of the senate rotates every 4 years. Of course it's flawed because it is still the population who votes for the senate so they should represent the population, but we don't have a two-party system like in the US, so senators are from 12 different parties, which may form coalitions temporarily. The republicans x democrats in the US is also problematic in the sense that if you are conservative in terms of morals but you are progressive in terms of economics, you have to sacrifice one of your views (kinda, I still think the democrats are very conservative in many ways in both morals and economics). Then in Brazil we have a lot more centralized politicians which maybe are against abortion and homossexuality but are in favor of wealth transfer through social welfare programs or the other way around. But the president is elected with majority rule, congress and senate members are elected similarly. There can be vote transfer inside parties for congresspeople, so if a party candidate gets more votes than needed to be elected, they can transfer the excess votes to a second candidate at the party's choosing to check if they can get an extra seat (this also means that people can vote to the party itself instead of voting for someone specific). But I'm just an ecologist so take anything I say with a grain of salt.
The US Constitution was never intended to implement democracy. It was meant to implement a republic. Democracy is majority rule. It's two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. It's not a flaw. It's a feature. The founding fathers ABSOLUTELY DID NOT WANT a majority rule system. There are plenty of these systems in the world. If you don't like the US' system, there are plenty of others to choose from. If we had majority rule, then every election would be determined by LA, New York, and Chicago. The rest of us wouldn't even need to vote. Then all the farms in the "flyover states" could have their farms turned into green spaces, and we could all starve.
@@gearhead366 Not sure what this has to do with socialism. You said that votes in the flyover states _should_ count more that votes cast in New York City and LA.
We are actually not a democracy we are a republic. There is a difference and there is good reason why that is the case. Democracies are very unstable and will generally be quickly replaced by an oligopoly followed by a dictatorship of some sort. The way that a republic is designed, changes are more slow to implement and well thought out. I believe the biggest issue with the US is we the citizens are giving up our rights. We cannot also be treated as a conglomerate as those in rural areas have different needs than those who live in the city. That is why a democracy won’t work because it would isolate those who live in rural areas
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1F3OGIFnW1k/mqdefault.jpg)
The Constitution forbids the seditionist from running, but our seditionist-appointed SCOTUS decided otherwise. Our Constitution should ban political parties, private funding of elections, and FPTP voting, but it doesn't.
All Democrats are seditionists.
I agree. But I don't see that happening.
That's because it's a Court Ruling that he can't run and not in the Constitution that he can't.
fifth flaw- gerrymandering, whereby parties get to draw electoral maps in order to select voters, as opposed to the voters selecting parties.
sixth flaw - the equivalence of "spending money" with "free speech", thereby giving the rich and large corporations greater political power than the less well financially endowed.
seventh flaw - the concept of "filibustering" whereby one Senator can effectively sidetrack a bill indefinitely absent a supermajority in favour.
there's more flaws, but dinner's almost ready
the video already talks about 2/3 of these...
i would add underrepresentation.
The last time the number of seats was increased in the house of representatives to its current configuration of 435 seats ( minus a temp increase in seats in 1959-1962 when hi ak became state) was 1911 and the population was around 98 million. 114 years later the population of the US is 330 million that means you had one house representative for every 225,000 people in 1911 now you have one representative for every 759,000 people in 2024. while in the UK you have 600 members of parliament for 68 million people or 1 representative for every 105,000 people.
The Filibuster has nothing to do with the Constitution. It's entirely a product of the rules of the Senate.
Ditto gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering should be illegal. It should be left to an independent body of citizens of the states, instead of the guvernor, it's to much power in the hand of a single person.
Ronald Reagan was faced with a economicial crisis he had to face. Stagflation and the loss of profit trend due to super powerfull unions gave him no choice. It's was that or losing the cold war and potensialy dying. Trump is in politics today because we need someone to represent the ideas of Reagan, in the current super left leaning, Western world order. Trump is overthinking on realpolitk.
To add to your point of minority rule, most of the USA also use plurality voting, so called "first past the post". This have led to a de facto two party system, where it is very difficult to challenge the two biggest parties. So some Americans vote for one of the two parties, not necessarliy because it is the party they really prefer, but because they see it as the lesser evil, out of the two realistic alternatives.
I think in almost all regards a parliamentary system is superior to how we do it in the US. But given the federation of states nature of the USA I think it is essentially impossible to change to such a system. The good news is that there are other improvements that are easier to make, and the constitution itself leaves the manner of voting to the states (which is bad news in other ways but won't get into that here). Already Alaska and Maine use ranked choice voting instead of first past the post and a number of other states are in the process of trying to change to RCV.
I believe that the President should be elected by a national popular vote. No segregation or weighting of any sort for the states and therefore no swing states, no breakdowns, just the raw number of people voting for the candidate.
@@I3orrovv But why such a diverse country needs one human as president? It would be better to have high representative parlament, woundn't it?
@@I3orrovv popular vote would be even worse than electoral for a country as massive and diverse as america. Imo, America needs to invent something new, a whole new system for voting, to represent their diverse population better, and also get rid of the two party problem.
That is exactly why I'm voting this year. And the basis on which I chose the candidate. It's my first time voting too, and for the lesser of two evils (one is very very evil and has literally quoted Hitler directly and then defended his statement as true)
An excellent summary of the structural issues diminishing the US's democracy.
The US Constitution created a government that was modeled in Great Britain. The president = the KIng, the Senate = House of Lords, the House Representative = Commons. Britain during the 19th century made their legislature more representative, the US never did. For most of the history of the US the legislatures ignored part of the US Constitution when they preferred. The conservative movement has encouraged a complete lack of trust in government institutions. The lack of trust has become a superpower for the GOP.
I've always said that the only thing they did was change the titles.
Twaddle.
The Founders encouraged a healthy skepticism of government, and events have often proven that skepticism to be completely justified. Never has any conservatives "encouraged a complete lack of trust in government institutions". That is a common nonsense argument promulgated by the Left. The Left believes that anything short of full and unquestioning support of an all-powerful centralized government is to call for anarchy. So unless we agree that the government has a right to force us to drive an electric vehicle, we support civil war? Do better.
to be fair the democrats have done little to encourage trust in government institutions the last few terms.
@@ADobbin1 That is because two party rule insures a wealthy capitalist minority is always in power.
And to be even fairer... republicans have been doing their best since Reagan to make sure that government and justice is broken and dysfunctional, except for the rich and powerful.
An excellent explanation of our flaws.
Sadly, if we try to buy a new bike now, the people with power will get us a unicycle with a spike for a seat that charges our credit card when we peddle and shocks us if we try to get off. Then they'll sell tickets to watch us to their rich friends and take bets on who falls off first.
Okay, I snorted outloud when I read this! To true, my friend.
😵💫😵💫😵💫👍🇺🇸
And you won't Buy the bike. It will be yours on a subscription model, where you can pay for extras like a seat if you're middle class.
@@NexStageChannel snorting along. 😅
WONDERFUL EXPLANATION!!!
A lot of effort into this video - great work
I've just got to your channel and already watched some of your videos. What an amazing work, man. Congratulations and, please, keep producing them. Kudos from Brazil.
You forgot one important flaw: the way the members of the House are elected. In electoral districts, of which the borders are drawn by politicians. Their main goal is of course to secure their seat, which leads to gerrymandering. 90% of the members of the House are elected in districts that are either overwhelmingly democratic or overwhelmingly republican. So the only election that a politician really has to win is the primary. This leads to the polarization in American politics that we see today.
This was a very well made video. I love how you put your references in the description. I think it's great when content creators do this as it allows the viewer to do their own evaluation. I've subscribed!
Excellent work on this video. The analysis is spot on, and your metaphor at the end about the big wheeled bicycle got updated with the two wheel bicycle 🚲 is outstanding. Keep up the good work
Great video essay. Thank you for distilling the problem so succinctly .
We are millions of Europeans who for decades have been asking why USA doesn't change itself inself into a real democracy.
why? the Word, ‘democracy’, has to be establish in the Constitution, the supreme Law of the Land, of the United States of America be for it can be; but Republic is all ready establish in the Constitution; in Republican, establish in Article IV Section 4 since 17 September 1787, which is a Law Word and Form, Class and Office;
that is the issue with civil hu man slave vassals in Europe and the United States of America: too stupid enemies and been that way for thousands of Years;
hu man : highest unintelligent minus and nothing idiot liberal specie : stupid enemy : h u m a n s e : hu man s e : hu man 🖕🏻;
Because we are a constitutional republic not a communist democracy, democracy is a B.S. lie spit by communist terrorist traitors.
@@paulrodgers252 We are some European countries which in recent times have become fairly good democracies. Through the years we have also seen fascism and dictatorships of one kind ore another. We like democracy better.
Lets not pretend in Europe we are not turning into a neoliberal playground with the reach eating the large share of GDP and therefore politics as well
It's like this, a single European country like France or Germany is just a single block. The USA isn't a single block country like that, it's more like a really strong alliance of currently 50 allied otherwise sovereign countries called "states". States like Wyoming wouldn't allow the system to change. Just like in 1860, all the states affected would attempt to secede, and a 2nd Civil War would occur, and NO ONE wants that.
As a non-American I was amazed when the electoral college system was first explained to me. It made sense 250 years ago, but it's clearly not what the Americans need now. But there is zero chance of the Constitution changing when when the only people who can change it are benefiting from it NOT changing.
Exactly. The republican party has blocked all attemps of reformation because it holds great power in some little rural "white" states that tend to be more conservative. Thus, those little states end up with a desproportionate amount of electoral votes, compared with the electoral votes granted to states with bigger and more diverse populations, that tend to vote more liberal, like california. That way, the votes of people of the little WASP states end up with 2 or 3 times the power of the votes emited by people in the bigger ones. It's surreal.
Erm do a constitutional convention? Lol the constitution literally permits you to CHANGE
End the electoral college system and you will end the Union. The small States won't stay in the Union and neither will Texas or Florida. The electoral college is part of the glue of the Union.
America is not a single government, but a multi-level system of governments. Each level serving a different purpose. The Federal government is a government that services the people at large by governing the state governments. The state's government governs the people in that state. That's why the Federal government is a mixture of offices chosen by citizens and by state governments operating as separate groups other than citizens. The US Federal government's job is to keep state governments from violating citizen's rights, and to mediate disagreements between state governments and citizens, but not to govern the people directly.
This is why the original 10 Amendments are a list of what governments will not do, and not what they will do. Federal government should never directly enforce any laws against citizens. The Federal government should be directing state governments what is to be done and the state governments accomplish those tasks in ways prescribed by that state's law. In case of a disconnect the judicial branch should mediate and deference should always go to the citizen's rights, then Federal gov's needs, and then state gov's needs. There's more to the system, but those are the generic steps.
Not necessarily true. Research the Article V Convention of the States project.
As an American with a degree in Political Science, this video is absolutely on point. Massive reform is in order.
Flaw one is designed that way, feature not a bug, since the system was never really intended as a direct democracy, you select representatives who in turn, represent you (think what you will of it)
Flaw two has only occurred because the number of congressional seats are frozen and not apportioned as they were originally constitutionally delegated, one seat per 20-30 thousand people, *and* most states adopted winner take all, except Maine and Nebraska.
And flaw four is a result of the legislature giving up a lot of its powers either on purpose (so they’re not directly accountable) or by accident, the Supreme Court was never intended to dictate laws, merely dictate the constitutionality of laws.
Side note, if flaw two was rectified as I’m suggesting, there would be 18,600 electors or there abouts, and a similar number of congressmen, combined with the electoral systems in Maine and Nebraska, it would give rise to third parties (they’d actually win electors and seats in congress) and make presidential elections much fairer.
There are absolutely things we need to change in this country, like overturning Citizens United, stopping practices like gerrymandering, adding term limits to the Supreme Court, max terms for Congress, and demolishing the filibuster.
I would stop short of a full unabashed democracy because tyranny of the majority is a thing. It's not as obvious in a smaller country where you would think that the majority of the people is representative of the country as a whole, but here, it's much more spread out and people in large cities have a very different culture, mindset, and priorities than those in less populated regions. These notions should be balanced in government, though that's usually much harder than it sounds.
NY is a great example of this issue where NYC massively influences and determines laws and policies for everyone because of their population and tax base, but that doesn't mean that many of those same laws and regulations actually make sense in the rest of the state and can occasionally be harmful.
Civilization is not the US's strong point. A civilized country is measures by the way the majority protects the minorities, because they understand that in different situations, everyone could be in a miniority position. Maybe it's elderly vs the young, maybe it's people of color vs whites, maybe it's people who like hotdogs vs pizza, things you may think are trivial now, but become relevant later.
US need a coalition rule, with proportional representation. In which parties can represent more various causes. In coalition governments, the bullies will be punished for neglecting minorities, and it will be harder to form a coalition when parties have no respect for the country as a whole. If there were 5 parties, with roughly 10-30% each, at least 2 would have to work together. And if the biggest party gets 35% but is not able to work with the rest, then 2 or 3 parties can still form a coalition without them. Mellow out the pointy bits. Work together in stead of stand in opposite corners.
Tyranny of the majority is a thing for sure. Republicans are showing their colors in the Project 2025 piece. Pure divisiveness. It's a trainwreck in progress imo. Coalitions and proportional representation can root out these 50/50 least bad choice options. Create blocks of opposition to the status quo. Vote for people who support these ideas, run for office. Americans or American'ts...
By implementing those changes, you would ensure that the United States live under the "tyranny of the majority". I'd be careful what you wish for.
You're so afraid of "tyranny of the majority" that you instead choose tyranny of the minority
You're so afraid of tyranny of the majority that you create a tyranny of the minority instead.
What you need is not minority rule, but majority rule that ensures a diverse representation backing it
@@Pandrogas no, the only real problem is that the US is too big to be governed as a single democracy. And the rise of mega cities has vastly complicated this. In a direct democracy we would almost immediately collapse into a number of conflicting city states. There has always been strong resistance to our constitution, but changing it in a diverse, multicultural, multiethnic population would rip us to shreds. Compromise would not be possible.
Fantastic video, as always. It was very well explained and I love the graphics.
The American Dream remains to be a Dream
cue someone to copy/paste that george carlin quote here
@@brokenrecord3095 “They call it the american dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” - George Carlin
Man, this Swedish guy gets it. Good summary of where we are at. I don't see us finishing out the century with the constitution we have.
No, he doesn't. Like a typical Nordic and Germanic, he doesn't understand how a WASP thinks. Unlike the Scandinavian countries, democracy is not tied to mob rule. That's why Bush won over Gore. If you got more votes than your opponent that means you lost.
I, personally, don't see our current constitution surviving the decade.
It survived 200 years and now the country's suffering "Because" of it? This the most illogical arguement I've ever heard. The country isn't going downhill right now because of the constituition. HELL, THIS COUNTRY ROSE TO BECOME THE SUPER POWER OF THE WORLD BECAUSE OF THIS CONSTITUITION. The current political landscape, The current generation and the current disregard for the constituition is what's bringing the dire crisis in this country. We need to enforce the constituition more, not change it. If something has worked for 200 yrs and brought prosperity, then if it suddenly stops working then there's probably an external cause at work.
@@altrshakib9449 Things don't work forever boomer change is only constant it's like saying I lived for 70 years with prior evidence I will live forever😂😂.
If the constitution is edited again, it'll just make the rich richer and those in power, stay in power longer or immune to law's backlash.
This was a great breakdown of the obvious flaws in the US Constitution, and you managed to avoid US Federalism, which is functionally even more confusing and ridiculous in how it restricts the Federal Government’s ability to respond to nation-wide issues in the already unlikely event that all necessary factors line up to allow significant reform.
Lets not forget that this country has had an civil war. If you try to take away more power from the states, you will get a second civil war. The U.S.A was never meant to be like this, The federal goveŕnment was only supposed to have authority over militart, foreign affairs, external trade etc. What you are asking for, goes against the fundamental wishs of our founding fathers
Federalism is exactly what you described. The USA is DESIGNED to have a weak central government. The USA is made of individual sovereign states. Alexis de Tocqueville described the states of the USA as laboratories of democracy, where every state can promulgate the best laws for its land.
States are not soveriegn in the sense of being their own nation, they were under the Articles of Confederation. Under the constitution states are governed by the Feds. However its like you said, the Federal Gov is supposed to be a limited government. How things have changed. The constitution is not perfect but i think the main reason why america is going to shit rn is due to the Federal government getting too much power, as the anti federalist predicted when the constitution was being debated, before it was ratified. Too much spending, voting agaisnt the peoples intrests by going to war/funding proxy wars, bailing out banks, banks that should not have given out loans that they knew would keep people in debt. Spending more money than we make, which makes the Treasury bond intrest rate go higher each year, basicly fucking over all of us and the future of generations of this country.
@@bunnystrasse Looks at TX, our states are laboratories of tyranny.
This idea that the best laws promulgate is false.
To be fair, state and local governments in the US are far more experimental and can play around with more democratic voting systems. The problem is the lack of national media coverage, keeping most Americans ignorant of these innovations. The biggest flaw isn't the government, it's our society and its "information economy." Historically, attitudes and culture change before major reforms, policy shifts, and revolutions. Americans are experiencing this divergence but haven't found a coherent way to correct this dissonance.
An excellent video that identifies key weaknesses in the American political system.
I live in the USA, we have no business lecturing other countries about democracy.
Well, you guys have bombs.
But yet you do, almost everyday all over the world
You should stay out of Age of Consent bullcrap too since America also allows Child Marriages under federal laws.
To be fair there are many less democratic countries
The press agents for big government do . US citizens don’t.
the red frame in the thumbnail made me think I'd already watched this video and therefore I almost didn't click on it...
“Wow to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state. Freedom, private enterprise, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish “
~ Frederic Bastiat
Let’s hope this archaic Constitution survives!
*Woe
Another great video, thank you, it just shows how messed up things get when we do not wish to improve what we inherent
Yep, these issues are well-known to Americans who are paying attention. The way I think about it the US constitution is Democracy ver. 1.0 Early Access while other democracies in the world have upgraded to ver. 2.0 or higher, with a lot of the bugs removed. One thing you didn't mention is Gerrymandering, which allows minority rule deciding seats in congress. Some have proposed a Second Constitutional Convention of the United States to fix a lot of these issues in one fell swoop. But I'm pretty sure that happening is at least as unlikely as individual amendments being passed. Even if you could guarantee majority rule, that only works if the majority are well informed and not easily influenced by deceptive propaganda. In other words it still won't work without ensuring most voters have some degree of media literacy. That's a function of the educational system in the US, and, for various reasons, that's broken too.
PS. Fun fact: The old-fashioned style of bicycle you talked about is called a "Penny-farthing".
We are a constitutional Republic not a communist democracy.
Dude, the US is the perfect dictatorship..... Its not a democracy 1.0 in any way
@@dragonf1092communist? if you are a right-wing stooge and you have no argument whatsoever just throw the word communist out there and pretend you won the argument. desperately grasping at straws.
btw, we get it. youre an authoritarian stooge who hates democracy and wants to hand all your rights over to oligarchs.
God bless you
@@dragonf1092 that is a red Herring, a Republic is a form of democracy
Thanks for a good summary. We do know all of these things: everything in this video are, fortunately, well known by the American public at this moment... whether reforms are possible or not we can only hope of course.
Even in the EU smaller countries are overepresented.
Imo, the winner-takes-all way most states distribute their electors is a far bigger contributor to the problem than the way smaller states have proportionally more electors.
With the electoral college and winner-takes-all in all states, the lowest amount of votes you could win with is about 22%
Even if every state had a perfectly proportional number of electors, if those electors would just go to whoever had the plurality in the state, you could still win by getting a plurality in states that together make up half the population.
That could be about 25% of the population voting for you, and then winning the election.
Meanwhile, if you have the same number of electors, but they're divided in each state proportionally amongst the candidates using D'Hondt method, the smallest number of votes you could win with would be about 39%
If you don't do it via electors, but just attach a weight to each vote such that all votes in a state combined have a value equal to the number of electors the state would have in an electoral college, then the smallest number of votes you could win with is about 44%
And if everybody just had a direct vote for president that was equally weighted, it's 50%
(All cases assume an equal percentage voter turnout in all states, and only the 2 major parties receiving votes)
As you can see, the winner-takes-all system is far more impactful.
On top of that, it also creates the whole concept of "swing states" as those could "swing" one way or another despite being close to 50/50, whereas having any sort of proportional system of (virtually) dividing the electors would mean those "swing" states send about half of their (virtual) electors for one party and half for another.
It also alienates "blue voters" in "red states" and vice versa.
And whilst it's not at all required of states to use the winner-takes-all system, it's rather disadvantageous for a state not to use it when most states do. A blue or red state would disadvantage their preferred candidate and make it less likely their preferred choice wins if states on the other side do use it. A swing state would risk losing its influence, as instead of being a large amount of electoral votes that could go one way or the other and thus something candidates want to secure, then candidates probably will only be able to win or lose a few electors depending on their performance, so it's not that important.
And the bigger the state, the more of an impact it will be
3 or more parties and low voter turnout could allow much less than 22% of the voting age population to decide the result, the lower limit is close to zero which is why Ranked Choice Voting and incentives or mandatory voting really is needed.
@@glike2 already mentioned that these numbers were based on no 3rd party votes, and yeah, I should have said percentages of the vote rather than of the population. The point of the percentages was more to illustrate the impact the various parts have, and showing that the winner-takes-all part is much more damaging than the electoral college.
I get wanting the best, but even just better can already make a huge difference.
If we do want best: proportional when there is more than a single spot, Condorcet if there's only 1 spot (such as presidential).
Instant runoff/single transferable vote is better than first past the post, but definitely not best.
Tak Anders
“No democracy last forever” er hermed røget på min “læseliste” 📚🤓😊
You bring up a good point about when the constitution was written a lifetime appointment would be around 15 years. They couldn't posable have imagined that number would of double.
If everyone is so insistent on following the constitution to the letter, the way it was intended, then a term of 15 years on the bench should a " lifetime appointment ".
Just like a " life sentence " to prison doesn't always mean until you die when your eligible for parole after a set amount of years have been served.
Everyone needs to stop looking to the Supreme court for answers and start thinking for themselves.
The Continental Congress was held hostage by the smaller population states. This was because folks identified with their state first, and as Americans less so.
Making things worse, (less fair) was the three-fifths compromise, where slaves were counted as population which gave the slave states disproportionately more representation.
The next blow was when the # of representatives in The House was capped at 435. Originally, the # of representatives was 1 per 30,000 inhabitants. By todays population, that would mean 11,000 representatives!
That number would be impractical, but if we went with, say, 1 representative per 300,000, we'd have a little fairer representation.
Wow, I’m amazed. You know so much more about our constitution then almost all Americans. Very informative and well done.
5:02 the 2nd flaw???
It is. Not a flaw.
Legislatively speaking it demands that the majority of the big states (hours of representative) AND the majority of the small states (Senate) agree before passing law...
An excellent idea.
For president, it theoretically would do the same thing IF the electoral votes were not pooled for the entire state; but key in the Congressional district. This would give every registered voters "2" votes for president. One vote, the voters of the House district decide. Then a larger pool of voters for each Senate district are counted.
But originally intended, the popular vote controlled the house number of electoral and the state legislators would have controls over the Senate number of electors.
Let's get this channel to 1mil subs
This is tremendously obvious to most anyone outside of America. However, the supreme court and its ability to use the constitution as the final arbiter of justice has reinforced the idea that no change needs to ever be done to said constitution.
Meanwhile, I happily live in a neighbouring country that has a constitution that was written in modern times, with the full knowledge of the pitfalls of the American constitution. Nevermind how countries with similar constitutions have long since seen its weaknesses exploited, leading to outright tyranny and grotesque mockery of democracy in general. Primarily Germany and the Philippines as examples.
The irony of course, is that on its current course, outright revolution, leading to complete reform of the government, is the likeliest outcome instead of a more calm and reasoned re-writing of that document with better modern philosophy.
The constitution CAN be changed that’s the thing. The issue is it requires a 2/3 majority of states for it to be ratified. The issue is what is being pushed to change the constitution is almost unilaterally against the interest of 50% of the population.
If you refuse to work with half the population, you SHOULDNT be able to make large sweeping changes that affect Americans all over the world.
WORK WITH US. We all agree change is needed but you need to compromise.
You want to limit gun ownership? Okay. But how about instead of banning firearms entirely from private citizens, you offer free of cost licenses that be granted after training. You also remove all restrictions on what firearms we can own. Yes, this includes automatic rifle, sawed off shotguns, machine guns etc.
If the argument is truely about safety this should suffice because a trained population will know how to safely store and operate their firearms. If that is too dangerous how about we ban automobiles while we are at it given they kill more people than firearms do in America every single year, and are the leading cause of death for teenagers and young adults?
However this won’t ever be proposed because both sides absolutely cannot capitulate. Y’all need a 100% wish list filled and a full unconditional surrender for you to even try and it’s pathetic.
The constitution protects 151 million people from harming the way of life of 149 million people
It is SUPPOSED to slow you down.
Modernity is overrated.. if anything, America will return to its republican roots, end empire, and end the bureaucratic state..
This is a must watch and, one of the best videos all year.
The United States needs a new bike! What a great metaphor. Great video. 🔥🔥🔥
My grandfather was born right at the end of WWII in rural Sicily.
He came to this country with nothing and built himself a life, a house, and a family. He knew how to live.
He always told me, every other country in the world is older than America, and has changed their "constitutions" over the years. Yet, America, being the youngest nation, in its arrogance, thinks it unnecessary to change its own constitution. And then to have the audacity to tell those elder countries how to do things
so your father came here willingly, prospered and then trash talked the country.
@AE-sy1pn grandfather, and while he was critical of our countries policies, it was from a place of care and concern for it's future. He was very politically active in his local community and was always challenging ineffective and outright hurtful policies.
@@AE-sy1pn only a fool blindly worships a country. A real patriot isn't afraid to point out the flaws and then change them for the better
@@AE-sy1pn A foreigner who had lived many years in a foreign country and experienced its positives and negatives has settled in our country, and is providing feedback that is backed by his wisdom and life experience. As Americans, we would be fools to dismiss this feedback as "trash talk". Most of the wise people in the world are born outside our country and we should perhaps listen and change.
@sujaireddy4311 I'm an American that has lived in foreign countries. I'm not some guy that has never left the USA. I've lived abroad for a total of 8 years. Multiple countries. What experience do you have? I think I'm qualified to give my opinion...
Maybe we need to put the Constitution in context.. originally, it was an agreement about Slavery (3/5 a person, Missouri Compromise and Fugitive Slave Act)
The last 2 aren't in the Constitution. And the 3/5 compromise was there because the Southern States wanted slaves to count as people for representation but not for taxes, and the North wanted it the other way around, so they compromised. The Constitution was written to establish the system of government our country would have. It was not about slavery.
Another great video, man
Excellent video🎉
Well researched and well presented. Comment for the algorithm lol
I loved your ending comment. ❤
Spirit of '76 y'all!
While I agree with much of what is here, I disagree that we need to alter the first amendment in order to allow campaign finance reform. The problem lies not with the amendment, but with how it has been willfully misrepresented. In fact, campaign finance reform would actually *increase* freedom of speech. Equating donations with speech essentially results in the drowning out of the speech of those with less money-ie, it hinders their freedom of speech.
The first amendment doesn’t give us the freedom to yell anything into the void-everyone everywhere has that freedom. Rather, it gives us the freedom to be heard in the “public square”-something that money in politics *prevents*.
What we need is a new amendment clarifying how campaigns will be financed so it is done fairly, and poor people can have their candidates heard too.
Any candidate with a certain number of endorsing signatures should simply get a certain amount of money from the city/state/... for their campaign, and _no_ other funds should be allowed to be used, not even their own money. Allowing donations for campaigns opens up the doors for corruption right at the very beginning of the election process.
💡Great content as always!
Again a great video!
Good video. Especially that you didn't miss the most important part, the US Supreme court being the only true legislators during gridlock. The fact that Trump when he lost the election in 2020 tried to bring legal challenges in front of the court to get them to overturn the results, or the fact that they stopped a recount in 2000 along partisan lines, are examples of the fact that they not only wield power far greater than the legislative, but maybe even greater than that of the president.
If an american has a problem they wanna fix, or a policy they wanna enact, they probably need to replace SCOTUS before anybody else.
Greatest explanation of us election system i've ever saw. Thank you mate!
That's because it's a republic not a democracy, and for good reasons. To prevent tyranny of the majority, meaning protecting the local sovereignty of states, and not consolidating an oversized landmass into one total state. New York has no business subjecting Idaho to policies just because it has a bigger population. The constitution is an agreement between sovereign states (which should function almost like separate countries) to play nice and work more cohesively together in regards to currency, military defense, and legal procedures. So to change that agreement, the states as a whole would have to agree, regardless of differing population sizes between them. But the federal government has of course overstepped its bounds in every way it wasn't meant to, as governments always do.
A republic is a type of democracy. One might even call a republic a “representative democracy” to distinguish it from a “direct democracy”.
All republics are democracies.
@@acommenter6737 Why bother? Stephen obviously repeated some conservative argument he read elsewhere without researching or he just doesn't care. It's pointless.
This is an excellent video. Thank you! ❤
The Constitution is often called “A Bundle of Compromises.” It was designed to get enough states to ratify it. Thus, it gives 18th century concessions to comparatively less populated states.
Regarding majority rules - If you look at EU parlament then you find out that small states also has big and not proportional representation. This is normal in Federal System like EU or USA.
Other example - in UK for example party that win elections almost never get 50% votes. Usually betwen 30% ad 40% is enough to get majority in parlament. In 2024 Labor party get 33.7 and take control over UK.
Regarding guns and money in politics this is a problem with interpretation of constitution. Not constitution itself.
Filibuster is not part of constitution but just a normal law - Senat rules.
Overall constitution was change 27 times. So it is possible to change it and adjust over time.
Looking at the UK, Labour got in power with even less votes. and a huge majority of seats with very few votes. So it's not just the USA like Mr Chemerinsky claims. And btw, telling the car freak nation's people to buy a new bicycle when they don't even have an old one... Not the best choice of analogy here 😅 Thumbs up for a great video and for summarizing exactly why the USA's system is broken.
Thanks for your comment!
Yes, parliamentary systems can also have smaller portions of the vote leading to a government. However, this differs fundamentally from how the U.S. president is chosen. In a parliamentary system, a coalition of parties-together representing a majority-typically forms the government. Even if one party receives a minority of the popular vote, they must collaborate with other parties to establish a government that represents a broader spectrum of voters. If that coalition falls, so does normally the government. In contrast, the U.S. electoral college allows a single candidate to win the presidency outright without needing a majority coalition. This single candidate gains executive power, unchecked by coalition needs, which doesn’t reflect the majority will as closely as in a parliamentary system. Does that make sense?
I originally planned to have a section in the essay clarifying this distinction but decided to leave it out. Cheers!
@@TheMarketExitthat's kind of the point - coalitions tend to keep each other in balance. That's another flaw in American politics, consisting of basically only two parties. On the contrary, in Dutch Parliament there are currently 16 (!) different parties, with 4 not very fond-of-each-other parties in coalition, which also brings its own challenges.
@@TheMarketExit Yes, I get this, thanks for the response. But the UK really is a first past the post system, and you don't even need coalitions there unless you're really doing badly. Labour won 411 seats out of 650, for just 33.7% of the votes. Same issue as the USA.
Of course, this is the party/parliament election, not a presidential election, it's not exactly the same. But it's the same issue, and not a democracy by a long shot. Democracy is pretty simple imo, one person one vote. Unfortunately, changing to real democracies would kick a lot of powerful people of the gravy train, so just like in the USA, it's never going to happen.
@@abnormaalz I'm 'enjoying' the agitated word fights in Dutch parliament, provided bite-sized from Maarten Van Rossem's YT channel. Just like USA chambers, it's becoming a clown show. Very good for the trust of people in their governments and almost-democracies./sarcasm
BTW, if anyone ever wonders how it's possible the USA allows Trump to walk free, just look at how extremely patient and lenient the Dutch are in letting complete wacko Thierry Baudet run free instead of sticking him into an asylum. He makes Marjorie Taylor Greene look perfectly sane.
@@TheMarketExit The biggest problem with the U.S. Constitution is that it "outlaws" religious tests for public office. It enables religious indifferentists or evil "religious" persons to make sure that they aren't excluded from the possibility of power. It also sends the INCORRECT message that religion is irrelevant.
Exceptional! I appreciate the brevity!
Excellent work, thank you!
I feel like, the sooner we realize that the symptoms aren't the cause - that Orange didn't break the system, but rather, that a broken system produced Orange in the first place - the better prepared we can be to weather its inevitable breakdown, and maybe build something better in its place...
Because, right now, it feels like we're living in this very old (or poorly built) building that has rotten failing foundations, and so the building has started to noticeably shift towards its inevitable structural failure, causing burst pipes, shorted electrical wiring and floor-to-ceiling cracks in the walls, but rather than going into the basement, inspecting the foundations and come to the conclusion that we need to evacuate, most of us are upstairs blaming old pipes, bare wires and shoddy plaster for wrecking our home, or maybe some of us are at least being proactive enough to at least try upgrading the pipes and wiring, before they cause flood or fire, or we're trying to plaster over the growing cracks faster than they're spreading. But, by the end of the day, every day, we fall further and further behind as more and more of the ceiling falls on our heads at the dinner table.
We are at a point in our history, where if we are to survive into a next - or better - era, we need to completely redesign and rebuild our house, on new sturdier foundation rated for the weight of our size, needs and technology, completely from the ground up. And in this new house, we can reserve a reverent space for a museum, where we can keep sacred chunks of our old foundations, pipes, wires and plaster, to remember where we came from, and what we survived.
Look, the problem is that orange might introduce small changes of his own and, bit by bit, cripple more the american democracy. A new goverment of his own might stop applying inconvinient laws, reform others with the help of republican dominated congress and senate, purge public employees that don't agree with him, fill the military with loyalists, create a militarized anti-immigrant force, also filled with loyalists, that can be repurposed later to by pass the local police and repress the american population, etc. I hope you get the picture. In Venezuela, Hugo Chaves destroyed the local democracy, not with a gigantic swipe, but bit by bit.
Fortunately, I think he's too old to achieve that. But in the future, another charismatic extreme-right winger populist might do it. The potential is there.
The problem is, to get enough R (D) senators/congressmen to vote for a better system if that may/should diminish the power of their party, possibly stripping many of these persons of their comfortable politicalpoaition.
@@joeybru New political forms, and/or improvements to the conditions of the common man, have never been gained by asking permission, nor have they been gained as a benevolent gift from those at the top.
History teaches us what this moment is, and what needs to be done.
Hi Andres, again a great video, I felt in love with your channel instantly, I watched all of your videos in like 2 days :D and I have shared your channel with most of my friends!
I have to admit, I beg to differ about the popular vote argument. I don't have high views about the legitimacy of USA elections, yet the point about electoral vote is because it (was) is a federation of states that have their autonomy. For example, in the EU parliament you have Luxembourg has 6 seats with 650k, and Germany has 96 seats with 85mils. You can argue that whatever EU parliament decides is undemocratic as it does not represent the popular vote in the whole EU. From my gymnasium class called "The constitution" in my hometown in Serbia, like 15+ years ago, our teacher brought this discussion, and we had a debate, and my takeaway from his teachings was that the small states have to have incentives to stay in the Union/Federation, imagine Luxembourg or Cyprus, or Wyoming or Vermont back in the days, they would easily decide to leave the union (federation) if there was not a protection of them as a minority guarantied in the Constitution.
Cheers!
Thanks for your comment! You make a good point. I'd argue, however, that the EU is quite different from the US-it operates more as a coalition of sovereign states with significant autonomy retained. The EU parliament has far less centralized power. Interestingly, some have argued that if polarization in the US continues, it might make sense for the US to move toward a more EU-style union. In that case, the overrepresentation of smaller states wouldn’t be as problematic. Cheers b0za!
I tell people all the time that we HAVE to consider others as citizens of the US. Leaders do not just affect the country they govern they affect EVERY worldly connection that country has.
I really enjoy your videos!
when people says something like that it makes you think that they do not want a Democracy but a Dictatorship
So informative. Great video.
Wow this was done SO well
Dude doesn't get it. Each state IS arepublic. Independent on all issues except the Constitution.
Exactly. The electoral college and equal senate seats were put in purposely so that the smaller states have some influence, and without these, there'd be no USA.
The American way of life is the brightest, when people put their differences aside, and work together, to build, repair, grow, thrive. Any politician who disagrees with this is not cut from the same cloth as I.
Sounds nice and rosy, but doesn't fix any of the issues of our systems today. So we can choose to try to fix it, or continue to live in a fantasy.
That's the ideal but it's not the reality. Politicians are bought and paid for and ever since Citizens United the Supreme Court has securely cemented the Billionaire class as the rulers.
@@wavey61 Like I said, not cut from same cloth.
And this is why you should never base a system of rules on the honor system. There are no mechanisms to make sure that the rules are enforced. You can’t just rely on the fact that everyone’s going to do the right thing all the time. It only takes one bad actor for this entire system of rules to collapse and that to me is not a good system of rules.
@@jordanwhite8718 We literally have the best system in history for holding accountability to our corporations, yet, people constantly vote people in based on social issues, and then those people take the systems away little by little over time.
Great video. Thank you.
The constitution was designed to protect the American people from the government. This wasn't mentioned in your critique of the constitution. I saw your focus being placed on the rigidity/unchanging nature of the constitution. Now more than ever we need protection from big government, how do you suggest we achieve that?
Build the trade unions and a labor party.
It wasn't! It was to protect the oligarchy of landowners!!
The common American people were never in the plans.
@@Pixelarter The Bill of Rights and other sections were included or added to provide protection from a tyrannical government. It was also written to protect private property instead of feudal property.
Thank you for this. So good.
I not from USA and 'am amazed at how their election works, thanks for this video
But... the bicycle thing feels weird, cus then you got cars, airplanes and so on. And again, but, from one bicycle to another it feels like they dont even think in living Imperialism behind. And a sleepy one can go to another universe in a dream, so I dont get the vehicle thing
Anyways the information is amazing, perfectly explained, I amazed with it good work
"My preferred candidate didn't win this time. All is lost."
This reminds me of when The Stonne praised the electoral college when Obama got in, but then called it a tool of white supremacy when Trump got in.
When the US occupied Germany, Japan, Iraq and (temporarily) Afghanistan, it set up parliamentary or semi-parliamentary regimes. Never their own quasi-monarchical Presidential system. That says a lot about revealed preferences and the impossibility of amending the US constitution.
Iraq wrote their own Constitution... I know, I was there...
Are they set up what would be acceptable do the people who live there
We are not a democracy but a constitutional republic
Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947:
‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’
High quality stuff as always - do you take any volunteers to help with the videos?
Hey, thank you. reach out on hello@andresacevedo.com -- maybe we can collaborate
Article 3 definitely needs to be redone!
The elector system makes sense when the state governments are all separate and the federal government is limited. The issue with our government is too much government at the federal level.
Those words mean nothing today, the highest bidder gets their way. You can't get in government unless you can be bought and that's how they like it.
Democracy works the same world wide. Majority toils around so that few people can live a good life
The filibuster existed before the 70s, the only thing that changed in the 70s was that they went from 2/3rd majority to force a vote on a measure, to what it is today 3/5ths majority.
No, the biggest change was when all one senator needed to do to filibuster was to "declare" the filibuster instead of holding the the floor continuously and speaking while the filibuster was in effect.
@ Yeah that’s right, I think the fact that u don’t even have to debate during a filibuster makes the whole institution even more undemocratic.
Incroyable !
Democracy as Kleisthenes invented it in 507 BC would mean that among the ENTIRE populace, all deciding committees would be RANDOMLY selected again and again. Please look it up. It was called isonomy. No country on Earth has true democracy, we're just oscillating betwenn aristocracy and tyranny.. I know there is grief involved, why we still do not want to learn and see.
We a constitutional republic. We have a 2 party system that will vote for their donors rather than the people who have elected them we are in a twisted form of oligarchy, where each side paints the other as "traitors, anti democratic, facist, marxist, ect" this keeps the cycle going, allowing each side to remain in power indefinitly. The news seems to amplify this affect. Both sides dont respect the bill of rights when its a right they disagree with. So our rights get slowy eroed away over time.
As a form of federative balance, Brazil has 3 senators per State and 3 for the Federal District. Proportionality by inhabitants is in the Chamber of Deputies with a minimum number for less populous states (8) and a maximum for more populous states (70), but there is an attempt to increase the numerical representation of the most populous states. In this country, it is precisely the Federal Supreme Court that has been preventing the advancement of illiberal agendas that are contrary to fundamental rights. The court was essential in preventing the coup d'état that the last president attempted and which almost won a second term (barely).
Depressing and informative video.
Great overview.
A video dripping with excessive ignorance.
good work, thank you
Great Video.
Feels so much like home. Here in France, the actual Prime minister has been chosen from a party that has finished fifth at the last elections, everything's normal too, democraty is healthy all around the world ^^
What would a new bicycle would look like?
Create a video investigating that question.
And how much greater/better would it be?
The strictly limited DEMOCRACY is not simply "majority rules"
It is, by design, the majority rules ONLY when it is exercised in accord with The Declaration's terms; which is the equal security of every one's rights.
Simply, whomever or whatever is on the ballot MUST be proved towards the equal protection of every person's rights.
If that is not proved, then it matters not how many people want it; it is never to see a ballot.
The US is a Republic not a Democracy,and one of the main differences is that Republics does protect minorites where as in a Democracy there is no such thing as one group being proteced from the rest.
So of course the US is ran by a minority,in this case the rich who own almost all means of production and other assets, i don't see why people are so surprised by it.
That's not what republic mean
But minorities in the sense of state populations, not ethnically
So Rhode Island was protected from Pennsylvania. The original problem was how to get states to join a union while giving up some of their sovereign authority yet still be protected from the whole in those powers reserved.
Plutocracy actually
It's a Democratic Republic. That's why you have things like religious exemptions from medical policies. Technically you can exempt yourself from any public policy that violates your Constitutional rights. People just don't know how to enforce that and the government will pretend they don't have to obey the constitution if you don't know how to force their hand. Hint. Pull their bond. There were towns during covid who got entire school districts to back off the vaccine mandates by threatening the city's bond.
republic means that the the ones who make the laws (legislative), those that put them into practice (executive) and those who control they are being folllowed (judicial) are different entities, unlike an absolute monarchy where the king is in charge of all of that. Most countries are (or claim to be) both democracies and republics.
The senate is suposed to have a fixed number of representatives for each state because they do not represent the population of the state but the state itself. That's the idea in Brazil, at least. However, the congress counter balances it and each state has a number of seats in the congress proportional to the population of the state. The main work is done in congress and the senate representatives review the work and make sure that it is in each state's interest to approve or not. In this case it's not about what the population want but what the state needs, because sometimes the population does not understand the consequences of what they want. In Brazil we have 3 senators per state, and half of the senate rotates every 4 years. Of course it's flawed because it is still the population who votes for the senate so they should represent the population, but we don't have a two-party system like in the US, so senators are from 12 different parties, which may form coalitions temporarily. The republicans x democrats in the US is also problematic in the sense that if you are conservative in terms of morals but you are progressive in terms of economics, you have to sacrifice one of your views (kinda, I still think the democrats are very conservative in many ways in both morals and economics). Then in Brazil we have a lot more centralized politicians which maybe are against abortion and homossexuality but are in favor of wealth transfer through social welfare programs or the other way around. But the president is elected with majority rule, congress and senate members are elected similarly. There can be vote transfer inside parties for congresspeople, so if a party candidate gets more votes than needed to be elected, they can transfer the excess votes to a second candidate at the party's choosing to check if they can get an extra seat (this also means that people can vote to the party itself instead of voting for someone specific). But I'm just an ecologist so take anything I say with a grain of salt.
Thanks for reminding me the electoral college still exists.
Excellent!
The US Constitution was never intended to implement democracy. It was meant to implement a republic. Democracy is majority rule. It's two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. It's not a flaw. It's a feature. The founding fathers ABSOLUTELY DID NOT WANT a majority rule system. There are plenty of these systems in the world. If you don't like the US' system, there are plenty of others to choose from. If we had majority rule, then every election would be determined by LA, New York, and Chicago. The rest of us wouldn't even need to vote. Then all the farms in the "flyover states" could have their farms turned into green spaces, and we could all starve.
So you don't like equality. Got it
@@sbnwnc Ah... the cry of the socialist. Got it.
@@gearhead366 Not sure what this has to do with socialism. You said that votes in the flyover states _should_ count more that votes cast in New York City and LA.
Having a open border is tearson
So is being owned by the military industrial complex
We are actually not a democracy we are a republic. There is a difference and there is good reason why that is the case. Democracies are very unstable and will generally be quickly replaced by an oligopoly followed by a dictatorship of some sort. The way that a republic is designed, changes are more slow to implement and well thought out. I believe the biggest issue with the US is we the citizens are giving up our rights. We cannot also be treated as a conglomerate as those in rural areas have different needs than those who live in the city. That is why a democracy won’t work because it would isolate those who live in rural areas