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Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

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We aren't the ones who killed America. It was those damn Victorian traitors. We're America's orphans who, having learned from their parents' mistakes, have taken up the fully justified mission of vengeance against those murderous bastards.

Time to build a more perfect union!
 
MJ12 Commando said:
4. There are local governments which can have massively differing policies from the federal government that are also elected via some form of popular vote.
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Though, if that is something bad is still contentious. The centralist and federalist options are roughly balanced atm. And I do see value to let local populations organize themselves politically regardless of the intentions of the central government.

Of course, one doesn't need the US Constitution to do federalism. Mostly, I think "start from scratch" is simply the most pragmatical solution. If one is designing a constitution, then awkwardly trying to keep continuity to 300 year old concepts is just a further complication.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Dude, back in the 1930s various leftist groups literally backed Nazis over other slightly different leftists when they knew full well the Nazis were probably an existential threat and definitely were out to kill them. Victoria? Those are your competitors and rivals. Those fuckers over there with slightly different views? They're your enemies.

Fundamentally all of this tweaking along the edges doesn't fix the core issue, which is simply that the US constitution, by its very nature, allows you to declare very loudly that the government "isn't your government." It weakens the ability of the government to speak with one voice by distributing the 'public will' so broadly and giving so many independent branches that can all claim to speak with the authority of the people and that is basically core to the intent of the constitution.
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Well let's see, there's:

-The judiciary
-Two chambers of the legislature
-The presidency

Lots of democracies have an independent judiciary and it's not a problem.

So is the problem that the presidency is too strong and takes too much power from the legislature? Fixable. Having an independent executive is, again, not inherent disaster in all democracies.

Is the problem that the legislature is bicameral and that this is inherently disastrous? Well, if you say so, and that would be fundamentally harder to fix... but you could certainly at least limit the problems by preventing any blatantly abusive gambits.

...

Historically, the biggest political crises in American history have come about at specific times when the national population itself was divided along popular or territorial lines, usually territorial. That can happen to just about any country, as can ill-advised compromises with bad actors in the political system.

Weimar Germany, for instance, didn't collapse because it had a bicameral legislature; it collapsed because there were people in the system wiling to ally with Nazis, and enough of them to put a Nazi in power. Institutional structures matter, but people commonly matter too.
 
Susano said:
Though, if that is something bad is still contentious. The centralist and federalist options are roughly balanced atm. And I do see value to let local populations organize themselves politically regardless of the intentions of the central government.

Of course, one doesn't need the US Constitution to do federalism. Mostly, I think "start from scratch" is simply the most pragmatical solution. If one is designing a constitution, then awkwardly trying to keep continuity to 300 year old concepts is just a further complication.
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Theoretically this Constitution could include provisions that explicitly say there are certain things local governments can't do/violate/disregard. The old Constitution effectively had that though it also gave certain levels of delegation that were a problem/messy/unclear (see the 10th Amendment). That way the degree of local/regional flexibility is checked by having hard lines they can't cross, including doing things like federalizing the Bill of Rights or its equivalent from the get-go instead of the slow, creeping mess that's still happening OTL.
 
Susano said:
Though, if that is something bad is still contentious. The centralist and federalist options are roughly balanced atm. And I do see value to let local populations organize themselves politically regardless of the intentions of the central government.

Of course, one doesn't need the US Constitution to do federalism. Mostly, I think "start from scratch" is simply the most pragmatical solution. If one is designing a constitution, then awkwardly trying to keep continuity to 300 year old concepts is just a further complication.
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The problem isn't so much local political organization as the basic thrust of the Constitution being that states are actually totally independent governments which out of their own good will have granted some of their authority to the greater government, not locally elected subsidiaries of a greater government. There's a slight but meaningful difference in what that means. I don't mind local government, but I prefer an understanding that local government is actually an integrated part of the greater overall structure of government, and your state/municipal/provincial/regional/whatever you want to call it government isn't actually an independent entity from that greater government.
 
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[X][IDEALS] Social Democrat: Centered around the idea that it is the state's responsibility to ensure a bare-minimum standard of living, the Social Democrats add to the New Capitalist agenda with a push for a government guarantee of adequate housing, food, and water to all citizens -- itself a fairly titanic task. It remains rooted in the fundamental ideal of private enterprise. The Social Democrats have some interest in the potential of democratized workplaces and are willing to support them in an experimental measure.

[X][CRUSH] None. This is a democracy. If your ideology cannot make its case to the people in practice, it deserves to fail.

[X][CRUSH] Some of the central tenets of the founding government's ideology are written into foundational law, making it difficult for even violently opposed successor governments to fully roll them back without immense popular support.

[X][POWER] You are a devolved unitary state with subordinate governments formed or dissolved by central governmental decrees according to need

[X][TEXT] The Constitution serves as a broad guide for the structure of this document, and many legal concepts integral to it carry through, but it is rewritten from the ground up to serve its new situation rather than simply amending it until it fits.

[X][TEXT] The Constitution was utterly bereft of any kind of legal, political, or ethical merit and shall be cast into the trash heap of history where it belongs. We shall start anew from a blank slate.

[X][REVIEW] The new Constitution will serve just fine with a standardized system for proposing amendments.
 
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Versharl said:
It was more the bolded part about "no compromise." I'm generally not a huge fan of uncompromising ideologues.
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So this doesn't geled with you?

Beware always those who would be despots, under the false presumption that their desires and agendas are somehow more imperative than those of their fellows. A society that does not see to the needs and rights of all of its members is not a society - it is a crime.
 
Aranfan said:
I mean, "Liberty and justice for all" seems like the kind of thing that shouldn't be compromised on?
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"Liberty and justice for all of the people, except the ones I don't like" sounds like a hilarious compromise though!

Probably not super great though. Even if I would be totally down with people accidentally making a dystopian warlord state and slowly growing to become a freer nation that genuinely protects and nurtures its people over the long term, I don't think people are really willing to play that sort of slow 'character' arc.
 
LHB said:
The Electoral College which, as of 2000, had actually managed to elect two Presidents since the Civil War who didn't win the popular vote.

The Senate which gives land more power than people and explicitly cannot be removed even by amendment.

The 13th Amendment has the incarceration exception allowing for enslaving prisoners.

Redistricting is explicitly handed over to the states, ensuring gerrymandering will be a thing with very little in the way of meaningful checks.

The 2nd Amendment, as written, is vague and confusing leading to all kinds of problems around policy in that area.

Those are also, mind, just the top five off the top of my head that I can think of circa 2000.
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OK. Looking those over, the third and fifth problems are trivially fixable by amendment and neither actually has anything to do with @MJ12 Commando 's point which is about divided lines of authority in the government.

The fourth and fifth are trivially fixable with amendments.

The existence of the Senate is not trivially fixable, but there are a lot of ways to make it less of a problem. Say, by preferentially admitting city-states to the Union as single states, so that a given city is not outnumbered by its own rural hinterland except in the most remote areas.
 
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[X][IDEALS] Social Democrat: Centered around the idea that it is the state's responsibility to ensure a bare-minimum standard of living, the Social Democrats add to the New Capitalist agenda with a push for a government guarantee of adequate housing, food, and water to all citizens -- itself a fairly titanic task. It remains rooted in the fundamental ideal of private enterprise. The Social Democrats have some interest in the potential of democratized workplaces and are willing to support them in an experimental measure.
[X][IDEALS] Socialist: Having come to refer to a specific political movement rather than an entire branch of ideology, modern socialism is focused on giving the state the power to care for allcitizens, and claims that the modern Social Democrat platform does not go far enough in pursuit of this. It also calls for a massive investment into healthcare in order to revitalize the field and make sure that there are enough medical professionals to go around (long-term, they want free healthcare, but there needs to be enough of it first). They also grant unions extensive privileges over private employers. They are fervently in favor of democratized workplaces, and openly campaign in favor of granting them special concessions.

[X][CRUSH] None. This is a democracy. If your ideology cannot make its case to the people in practice, it deserves to fail.
[X][CRUSH] Some of the central tenets of the founding government's ideology are written into foundational law, making it difficult for even violently opposed successor governments to fully roll them back without immense popular support.

[X][POWER] You are a centralized federal state along the lines of the later United States.
[X][POWER] You are a devolved unitary state with subordinate governments formed or dissolved by central governmental decrees according to need

[X][TEXT] The Constitution was utterly bereft of any kind of legal, political, or ethical merit and shall be cast into the trash heap of history where it belongs. We shall start anew from a blank slate.
 
Simon_Jester said:
OK. Looking those over, the third and fifth problems are trivially fixable by amendment and neither actually has anything to do with @MJ12 Commando 's point which is about divided lines of authority in the government.

The fourth and fifth are trivially fixable with amendments.

The existence of the Senate is not trivially fixable, but there are a lot of ways to make it less of a problem. Say, by preferentially admitting city-states to the Union as single states, so that a given city is not outnumbered by its own rural hinterland except in the most remote areas.
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Except amending the Constitution is not a trivial process. Actually changing it is far from trivial by design both because of the existing problems with authority, the imbalances in the Senate and the ability for state legislatures from very thinly populated regions to hold everyone else captive. The Equal Rights Amendment's narrow failure is a perfect example of how non-trivial doing so is and dismissing those problems as trivial ignores how inherently rigid the Constitution actually is.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
The problem isn't so much local political organization as the basic thrust of the Constitution being that states are actually totally independent governments which out of their own good will have granted some of their authority to the greater government, not locally elected subsidiaries of a greater government. There's a slight but meaningful difference in what that means. I don't mind local government, but I prefer an understanding that local government is actually an integrated part of the greater overall structure of government, and your state/municipal/provincial/regional/whatever you want to call it government isn't actually an independent entity from that greater government.
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The question in which way legitimation derives is indeed important - i.e., is the country made up of smaller states who grant authority to it, or is the country sub-divided into smaller states granted autonomy? But even in the latter conception the state governments and administrations should nonetheless be separate organizations - 'independent entities' as you say. The whole idea of local autonomy is that single regions do not all need to follow federal policy in all regards, but have authorities to them they can use to make their own policy - which necessarily entails the possibility to make policy opposed to the central government, as long as it stays within their areas of authority.

Also, of course, tailor-made devolution by region, as the devolution option here implies, carries such problems with it as the West Lothian Question and unequal treatment of regions, i.e. some regions getting more rights than others. Really, I think an orderly federal structure is almost always better than piecemeal devolution.
 
LHB said:
Except amending the Constitution is not a trivial process. Actually changing it is far from trivial by design both because of the existing problems with authority, the imbalances in the Senate and the ability for state legislatures from very thinly populated regions to hold everyone else captive. The Equal Rights Amendment's narrow failure is a perfect example of how non-trivial doing so is and dismissing those problems as trivial ignores how inherently rigid the Constitution actually is.
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The counter-argument would be that the middle option gives us the freedom to change the Amendment process.

Though at this point, it looks academic. Ah well.
 
LHB said:
Except amending the Constitution is not a trivial process. Actually changing it is far from trivial by design both because of the existing problems with authority, the imbalances in the Senate and the ability for state legislatures from very thinly populated regions to hold everyone else captive. The Equal Rights Amendment's narrow failure is a perfect example of how non-trivial doing so is and dismissing those problems as trivial ignores how inherently rigid the Constitution actually is.
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Which is why you stick on a big grab bag of amendments right at the start of the process, while you've still got the people who convened to agree upon the document around.

The Bill of Rights passed literally ten amendments all at once, that made some pretty sweeping changes.

What I'm proposing is, simply, an extensive Bill of Bugfix (Amendments 27 through 40 or so) attached to the Chicago version of the US Constitution, eliminating certain egregious and useless faults in the old US system such as the Electoral College, gerrymandering, or the difficulty of removing a sitting president from office for crimes committed.
 
Antix_Shadows said:
if you're compromising, then did you vote for two options for economic plans?
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Yes I did. In fact I would've voted for Socialist as well but the people advocating it has dissuaded me from doing so due to the rhetoric used to advocate for such a system.
Aranfan said:
I mean, "Liberty and justice for all" seems like the kind of thing that shouldn't be compromised on?
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Of course not but there's a difference between my objection to a general "no compromise" and being unwilling to compromise on certain areas like fundamental human rights. I don't think we should compromise on human rights. I do think we should compromise on the general economic system.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Which is why you stick on a big grab bag of amendments right at the start of the process, while you've still got the people who convened to agree upon the document around.

The Bill of Rights passed literally ten amendments all at once, that made some pretty sweeping changes.

What I'm proposing is, simply, an extensive Bill of Bugfix (Amendments 27 through 40 or so) attached to the Chicago version of the US Constitution, eliminating certain egregious and useless faults in the old US system such as the Electoral College, gerrymandering, or the difficulty of removing a sitting president from office for crimes committed.
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At that point you might as well just write a new Constitution from scratch.
 
Simon_Jester said:
The existence of the Senate is not trivially fixable, but there are a lot of ways to make it less of a problem. Say, by preferentially admitting city-states to the Union as single states, so that a given city is not outnumbered by its own rural hinterland except in the most remote areas.
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But you would have to change the part where state borders can't be redrawn without consent of the states, right? That may work in a devolved unitary system, but that system would have to rewrite those clauses anyway.
 
Versharl said:
Yes I did. In fact I would've voted for Socialist as well but the people advocating it has dissuaded me from doing so due to the rhetoric used to advocate for such a system.
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I've been saying "Democracy good, therefore democracy in workplace good." and "Studies show democratic workplaces more efficient and productive". I'm not sure why these are so terrible?
 
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