It is appropriate that you connect the right to life issue with protection of human rights, slavery, and discrimination such as the antisemitism of eighty years ago. I think your focus there, the set of points you raised is spot on.
Just going by the words on the page, whatever it is you were thinking but didn’t write, though it’s quite humorous, perhaps, the framing of it as a protecting mental health issue. Although, there aren't two sides to a moral issue; one just has to choose your side.
It’s not a mental health issue, but a maternal health issue. And the political issue is different than the moral issue. I am personally against abortion, but I don’t think the way we achieve less abortion is by regulation—in fact that has other moral side effects. Like my neighbor who lost her baby but had to wait until she was in a life threatening condition before a doctor would help her safely manage the loss because of the way the regulation was written. Maternal health needs to be considered alongside infant life, both are important moral issues to consider when weighing the political issue.
I had never really thought of framing our divide along the lines of people who want "high tax for high service" [I would summarize this as people who are seeking more social collaboration and interdependence] and those that want to do their own thing as self-sufficiently as possible. Something about this framing has the nice effect of casting either choice as valid, and both complementary to each other.
Anyway. I read this after reading Bryce's piece. Whether you call it anarchist or not, there's a common strain of thought in all these pieces that goes back to reducing base unit of governance and, in the process, building everyone's atrophied muscle for direct democracy. I'm all for it.
I'm on board with this. I've found that I've been moving my political ideas towards the idea that more, smaller independent entities connected to a larger entity is the best approach. I'd likewise like to see a more powerful EU with more member countries inside of it, i.e. split Spain into its more historical nations (Catalonia splits off but remains part of EU), South France separate from rest of France, Scotland split off, etc. But all members of EU with more power at EU level.
Same model could apply to the US, more smaller states, a little less power at the Federal level, but overall more balance. Freedom of commerce and movement.
We definitely need to do something! Our political system is currently corrupted by money, and that certainly needs to change. If we stay in the current framework, here are my ideas on how our political system needs to be reformed. I do recognize how hard it would be to change our political system in this way given the elected officials are the ones directly benefiting mightily from our current system.
The Electoral College system should be abolished, so not only voters in 7 swing states decide our presidential election. Campaign finance reform is also desperately needed. Citizen United needs to be repealed, and all campaigns should be publicly financed. Open election primaries, RCV in general elections, 10 year term limits at every level, annual grading of all elected officials based on what they committed to when elected, and mandatory retirement at age 75 like most public companies would be welcome changes. This would take the power back from the affluent, corporations, political parties, and international bad actors + keep extremists out on the edges where they belong in any well functioning society.
However, I’m also intrigued by this idea of changing the state boundaries and number of states to bucket concentrated groups of common perspective voters enabling them to tax/spend as they see fit for the desired services demanded by their citizens in their own state or area. Orchestrating these types of changes would also be tremendously difficult. I’m not sure which would be harder though.
Your idea for a ten year plan and a board with no politicians is interesting. I’m assuming the board members would have to be voted on, so aren’t they quasi politicians in order to seek approval and votes from our citizens? Also, I’m concerned a 10 year plan may not be long enough perspective to make the best long term choices, although it certainly would be much better than the current 4 years.
I do agree state tax autonomy is more important than redrawing any borders. Obviously, we need to do something to eliminate the corruption of money in our current system !
I'm not sure, that's a good question. Maybe the board members are those who make the plan (and can adjust it as necessary), but I'd prefer to move away from voting on who those specific people are because it would limit us to charismatic people rather than the better architects. I'd also imagine you can't plan toooo far in the future, and that the parties are preventing us from doing that more than the term limits. If we focused on solving certain problems rather than what a certain party believes about it, maybe long-term planning wouldn't be as difficult?
I agree with abolishing the electoral college, repealing Citizen United, and publicly financed campaigns. We definitely need open election primaries, and I love ranked choice voting (though I'm open to alternatives as well—I want to research these options more!)
Your ideas for reformed political terms are interesting, but I wonder what you would think about the idea of getting rid of politicians altogether? As in, my idea to vote for a 10 year plan for the government (and the board of people that put it together and will run it), rather than one specific politician: https://www.elysian.press/p/we-need-to-get-rid-of-politicians
All of these changes, including redrawing state lines, are difficult. But we've done a lot of very difficult things. The first step is to see if any one idea can reach mainstream interest, if so, the political capital will come. In my mind, state tax autonomy is more important than redrawing state lines, but if we do the former, it might be an interesting segway into the latter?
I like the idea of more local representation and authority as a general rule. if we permanently reduce immigration our national population could actually shrink. I don't know what that means in terms of politics I do know that it would eventually be a fiscal disaster given demographics.
Creating new states to maintain more even representation between two sides of a political divide reminds me of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, and the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and led to the rise of the Republican Party. The Missouri Compromise admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state, and states were admitted with a view to keep things even until 1854 when the specious popular sovereignty doctrine caused "Bleeding Kansas."
I wonder if we could create a balance in new states that wouldn't have to be revisited every so often the way it was before the Civil War. Perhaps giving more authority to the states, as you suggest here and develop more in your post "US states should have autonomy" post, would keep them from fighting over the federal government so fiercely every four years.
Your bigger point, of course, is that people will get more of what they want without moving if we had smaller states. That would be a relief.
Right, it's kind of odd to think of the concept of "keeping the balance" when that balance is shifting all the time. At the same time, we know that metropolitan areas are liberal and rural areas are not, and Colin Woodward's cultural divides have remained relatively stable. I wonder if we could make one herculean effort to change state lines, and could then remain relatively stable in that new formation. I think the need for flexibility would help, but we also don't want to cause a big ruckus every year.
I love how you incorporate Woodward‘s 11 nations into your analysis. I love his book (and Fischer’s Albion’s Seed before it). It’s like a good personality assessment: it gives us an objective and inoffensive way to talk about our differences.
Interesting thoughts. I'm going to have to spend some time thinking about it to decide how I feel about the proposal. I'm working on a LibGuide on democracy as a final for this class I'm taking on information literacy for my master's in library and information studies degree and one of the sections will be on theoretical changes that could be made to our democratic system and I think I might link to this as a resource.
I love the topic of "theoretical changes that could be made to our democratic system" —that's something I think about a lot, and this is certainly one idea. I'll be curious to know what else you come up with! Can you share with me when you're done?
Yeah, most definitely! There will also be sections on different democratic theories, comparative politics research on existing democracies (like studies comparing proportional representation and single member district pluralities), theoretical democracies (think of like completely new systems based on sortition and the like), and then the big one will be on democracy and the field of library and information science.
It is appropriate that you connect the right to life issue with protection of human rights, slavery, and discrimination such as the antisemitism of eighty years ago. I think your focus there, the set of points you raised is spot on.
It's certainly controversial and I understand both sides of the issue. Here I was thinking of how this issue affects maternal health.
Just going by the words on the page, whatever it is you were thinking but didn’t write, though it’s quite humorous, perhaps, the framing of it as a protecting mental health issue. Although, there aren't two sides to a moral issue; one just has to choose your side.
It’s not a mental health issue, but a maternal health issue. And the political issue is different than the moral issue. I am personally against abortion, but I don’t think the way we achieve less abortion is by regulation—in fact that has other moral side effects. Like my neighbor who lost her baby but had to wait until she was in a life threatening condition before a doctor would help her safely manage the loss because of the way the regulation was written. Maternal health needs to be considered alongside infant life, both are important moral issues to consider when weighing the political issue.
I had never really thought of framing our divide along the lines of people who want "high tax for high service" [I would summarize this as people who are seeking more social collaboration and interdependence] and those that want to do their own thing as self-sufficiently as possible. Something about this framing has the nice effect of casting either choice as valid, and both complementary to each other.
Anyway. I read this after reading Bryce's piece. Whether you call it anarchist or not, there's a common strain of thought in all these pieces that goes back to reducing base unit of governance and, in the process, building everyone's atrophied muscle for direct democracy. I'm all for it.
The labels are limiting but the solutions we present don't have to be. Our solutions could very well work for all ideologies!
I'm on board with this. I've found that I've been moving my political ideas towards the idea that more, smaller independent entities connected to a larger entity is the best approach. I'd likewise like to see a more powerful EU with more member countries inside of it, i.e. split Spain into its more historical nations (Catalonia splits off but remains part of EU), South France separate from rest of France, Scotland split off, etc. But all members of EU with more power at EU level.
Same model could apply to the US, more smaller states, a little less power at the Federal level, but overall more balance. Freedom of commerce and movement.
Yes! It could definitely work in the EU too.
We definitely need to do something! Our political system is currently corrupted by money, and that certainly needs to change. If we stay in the current framework, here are my ideas on how our political system needs to be reformed. I do recognize how hard it would be to change our political system in this way given the elected officials are the ones directly benefiting mightily from our current system.
The Electoral College system should be abolished, so not only voters in 7 swing states decide our presidential election. Campaign finance reform is also desperately needed. Citizen United needs to be repealed, and all campaigns should be publicly financed. Open election primaries, RCV in general elections, 10 year term limits at every level, annual grading of all elected officials based on what they committed to when elected, and mandatory retirement at age 75 like most public companies would be welcome changes. This would take the power back from the affluent, corporations, political parties, and international bad actors + keep extremists out on the edges where they belong in any well functioning society.
However, I’m also intrigued by this idea of changing the state boundaries and number of states to bucket concentrated groups of common perspective voters enabling them to tax/spend as they see fit for the desired services demanded by their citizens in their own state or area. Orchestrating these types of changes would also be tremendously difficult. I’m not sure which would be harder though.
Your idea for a ten year plan and a board with no politicians is interesting. I’m assuming the board members would have to be voted on, so aren’t they quasi politicians in order to seek approval and votes from our citizens? Also, I’m concerned a 10 year plan may not be long enough perspective to make the best long term choices, although it certainly would be much better than the current 4 years.
I do agree state tax autonomy is more important than redrawing any borders. Obviously, we need to do something to eliminate the corruption of money in our current system !
I'm not sure, that's a good question. Maybe the board members are those who make the plan (and can adjust it as necessary), but I'd prefer to move away from voting on who those specific people are because it would limit us to charismatic people rather than the better architects. I'd also imagine you can't plan toooo far in the future, and that the parties are preventing us from doing that more than the term limits. If we focused on solving certain problems rather than what a certain party believes about it, maybe long-term planning wouldn't be as difficult?
I agree with abolishing the electoral college, repealing Citizen United, and publicly financed campaigns. We definitely need open election primaries, and I love ranked choice voting (though I'm open to alternatives as well—I want to research these options more!)
Your ideas for reformed political terms are interesting, but I wonder what you would think about the idea of getting rid of politicians altogether? As in, my idea to vote for a 10 year plan for the government (and the board of people that put it together and will run it), rather than one specific politician: https://www.elysian.press/p/we-need-to-get-rid-of-politicians
All of these changes, including redrawing state lines, are difficult. But we've done a lot of very difficult things. The first step is to see if any one idea can reach mainstream interest, if so, the political capital will come. In my mind, state tax autonomy is more important than redrawing state lines, but if we do the former, it might be an interesting segway into the latter?
I like the idea of more local representation and authority as a general rule. if we permanently reduce immigration our national population could actually shrink. I don't know what that means in terms of politics I do know that it would eventually be a fiscal disaster given demographics.
I definitely don't think we should permanently reduce immigration. I think we should permanently increase it. For the reasons you mention!
Creating new states to maintain more even representation between two sides of a political divide reminds me of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, and the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and led to the rise of the Republican Party. The Missouri Compromise admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state, and states were admitted with a view to keep things even until 1854 when the specious popular sovereignty doctrine caused "Bleeding Kansas."
I wonder if we could create a balance in new states that wouldn't have to be revisited every so often the way it was before the Civil War. Perhaps giving more authority to the states, as you suggest here and develop more in your post "US states should have autonomy" post, would keep them from fighting over the federal government so fiercely every four years.
Your bigger point, of course, is that people will get more of what they want without moving if we had smaller states. That would be a relief.
Right, it's kind of odd to think of the concept of "keeping the balance" when that balance is shifting all the time. At the same time, we know that metropolitan areas are liberal and rural areas are not, and Colin Woodward's cultural divides have remained relatively stable. I wonder if we could make one herculean effort to change state lines, and could then remain relatively stable in that new formation. I think the need for flexibility would help, but we also don't want to cause a big ruckus every year.
I love how you incorporate Woodward‘s 11 nations into your analysis. I love his book (and Fischer’s Albion’s Seed before it). It’s like a good personality assessment: it gives us an objective and inoffensive way to talk about our differences.
Right, it helps us understand that there are many cultures in America, and our past still has a bearing on our present and how we turned out.
Interesting thoughts. I'm going to have to spend some time thinking about it to decide how I feel about the proposal. I'm working on a LibGuide on democracy as a final for this class I'm taking on information literacy for my master's in library and information studies degree and one of the sections will be on theoretical changes that could be made to our democratic system and I think I might link to this as a resource.
I love the topic of "theoretical changes that could be made to our democratic system" —that's something I think about a lot, and this is certainly one idea. I'll be curious to know what else you come up with! Can you share with me when you're done?
Yeah, most definitely! There will also be sections on different democratic theories, comparative politics research on existing democracies (like studies comparing proportional representation and single member district pluralities), theoretical democracies (think of like completely new systems based on sortition and the like), and then the big one will be on democracy and the field of library and information science.
Ooooooh this sounds right up my alley! Thank you for offering to share it with me when you're done. (And we have a post on sortition coming up!)
It's coming ... https://rocanada.substack.com/p/the-heartland?r=xbq8f
.