>IMPLYING
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2022
We have one. It inspired the American one.
However, imagine if the House of Representatives alone could change or alter amendments of the constitution, or it was able to decide by itself what constituted a violation of the constitution and could pass legislation and bills that, whilst inhibiting or reducing the overall rights afforded by it, didn't violate said rights based on technicality — That's basically what happened with England. A civil war and bloodless revolution/invasion within a span of about 30-40 years that centralised authority into the House of Commons giving it supremacy over the king and thus the ability to do anything really. (The civil war happened in the first place because the king wanted to arrested 5 members of parliament who were - correctly - suspected of aiding an invading army)
The gradual slide of democracies into tyranny or suppressions of freedom are a common trend, even in US history — FOPA 1986 made it illegal to own machine guns, which to me is a blatant violation of the 2nd amendment, and the Patriot Act violates the 4th. The main consistency with this trend are exponential rises in population, globalism in the 80s (which is when a lot of countries began implementing hate speech laws and such), and the lack of checks and balances in place for the main government body. Whilst you don't have a single dictator/king imposing their will on everybody anymore, you've switched it out for a communal dictatorship with decisions made by the party in charge, whereas once upon a time the king was supposed to balance out parliament and vice versa. America benefits from having equally powerful legislative bodies and executive with actual power; George Washington as president had more authority than the king he rebelled from, for example.
George Washington also opposed political parties because they would inevitably begin centralising power and acting in their own self-interests, which is how a lot of Western countries ended up where they are. Washington was pretty prophetic in his farewell address, saying that you'd eventually wind up with a "more formal and permanent despotism" with elected governments. An example from overseas: the whole reason the UK gov is able to arrest people for shit on twitter is because the Conservatives wanted to be able to arrest Leftists and Union agitators in the late 80s due to frequent strikes, then Labour bolstered it to arrest islamophobes in 2006 — it certainly vindicates Washington in my eyes.
The American system, and perhaps the Swiss system, are otherwise the best you can hope for when it comes to democracy/communal government in the long run since they impede attempts to unbalance government authority, and ensure people feel that their government is truly representative of them. When populations swell and governments hardly feel like they're representing 'people' but rather some amorphous concept they know as 'voters', the distance between those in power and the people they're supposed to represent widens and they begin to give less of a shit.
George Washington also opposed political parties because they would inevitably begin centralising power and acting in their own self-interests, which is how a lot of Western countries ended up where they are. Washington was pretty prophetic in his farewell address, saying that you'd eventually wind up with a "more formal and permanent despotism" with elected governments. An example from overseas: the whole reason the UK gov is able to arrest people for shit on twitter is because the Conservatives wanted to be able to arrest Leftists and Union agitators in the late 80s due to frequent strikes, then Labour bolstered it to arrest islamophobes in 2006 — it certainly vindicates Washington in my eyes.
The American system, and perhaps the Swiss system, are otherwise the best you can hope for when it comes to democracy/communal government in the long run since they impede attempts to unbalance government authority, and ensure people feel that their government is truly representative of them. When populations swell and governments hardly feel like they're representing 'people' but rather some amorphous concept they know as 'voters', the distance between those in power and the people they're supposed to represent widens and they begin to give less of a shit.
