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

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This might sound stupid, but wouldn't it be possible to write a constitution with an expiration date?

Something like "every 30-50-100 years the constitution should be rewritten from scratch, in agreement between all parties currently existing", as a way to make certain the document doesn't become outdated and actually represents the current views on ethics, morals and/or political views?

Basically a way to allow things to change without the need for revolutions/civil wars and to combat political inertia.

I recently read an article that made some good points about reasons for every law to come with an expiration date, and i thought " why don't we take it to the logical extreme?

@PoptartProdigy would that be possibile?

While searching I also found this

Thomas Jefferson believed that a country's constitution should be rewritten every 19 years. Instead, the U.S. Constitution, which Jefferson did not help to write (he was in Paris serving as U.S. minister to France when the Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia), has prevailed since 1789.

"Jefferson thought the dead should not rule the living, thus constitutions should expire frequently, but the fact is that the U.S. Constitution quickly became enshrined by the public and is the oldest constitution in the world," said Zachary Elkins, a professor of political science at Illinois.
 
Pittauro said:
This might sound stupid, but wouldn't it be possible to write a constitution with an expiration date?

Something like "every 30-50-100 years the constitution should be rewritten from scratch, in agreement between all parties currently existing", as a way to make certain the document doesn't become outdated and actually represents the current views on ethics, morals and/or political views?

Basically a way to allow things to change without the need for revolutions/civil wars and to combat political inertia.
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It creates another problem, which is that reliability and continuity of government and of laws is also extremely important for stable government. And if you throw the constitution out every few decades and have it rewritten from scratch you do create the issue that continuity of government is not guaranteed.
 
Well maybe not throw it out entirely. A great deal of it would likely still be useful, the new generation would be editing the parts that no longer work as intended. Or even stright up don't work.

It's worth discussing.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
It creates another problem, which is that reliability and continuity of government and of laws is also extremely important for stable government. And if you throw the constitution out every few decades and have it rewritten from scratch you do create the issue that continuity of government is not guaranteed.
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That's a good point, but there are always trade-offs in any choice. This would give (I believe) extra flexibility to the new country, and I expect that most of the times most of the previous constitution would be copy-pasted, with mostly minor modifications. It's mostly a way to FORCE discussion on the adequacy of the current constitution.

Alternatively, stable constitution but laws with expiration dates, so that they MUST ALWAYS BE UPDATED.
 
I actually like the idea of a constitutional review every few decades. It would give it a great deal of staying power. Of course, it would have to be fleshed out in greater detail after we have solidified our position.
 
Mandated constitutional review seems like a good idea, honestly. Not sure how it'd work, but eh.

Anyway, I think I'll be inclined to vote Social Democracy (seems like a good compromise between welfare, legitimacy, and the market), and Little-to-No Crush (we believe in Democracy, and Freedom). I remain flexible on centralization and the Constitution, and will probably vote whichever way the wind blows for that.

What I do not want is to go full Stalin. It'd be a betrayal of our principles, and would probably provoke revolt in both the Capitalists and Communists.
 
So I just realized that Legitimacy applies to how well foreigners take us claiming to be the USA, not how other US successor states view us.
 
Aranfan said:
So I just realized that Legitimacy applies to how well foreigners take us claiming to be the USA, not how other US successor states view us.
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I think it applies to US successors too. NYC and NCR aren't necessarily gonna want to join up with authoritarian communists, especially if they employ tactics similar to the Victorians. Legitimacy is 'how much like the old US are we,' and the question is just as, if not more, relevant to other successors as it is to foreign powers.
 
NotAlwaysFanfic said:
I think it applies to US successors too. NYC and NCR aren't necessarily gonna want to join up with authoritarian communists, especially if they employ tactics similar to the Victorians. Legitimacy is 'how much like the old US are we,' and the question is just as, if not more, relevant to other successors as it is to foreign powers.
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No, I mean. The "scrap constiution, start over" option explicitly says it taps into the spirit of revivalism. Which means that it helps us with whoever's set up in Cairo (where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers join) even tho it's Legitimacy --.
 
"We all declare for liberty but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing."- Abraham Lincoln.
We would do well remember this. There are whole college courses on this topic alone. Americans have many sincere held and very different notions of liberty. Conservatives, liberals, socialists, communists, capitalists hold different notions of freedom. Even people such as these reactionary Victorians and the 1860s Confederates have notions of liberty and freedom as alien and bizarre they seem to us. Not every notion of liberty is worth preserving. The First Civil War saw the triumph of Lincoln and the Union's notion of liberty over the false Confederate notions of liberty that conveyed the power to do as they please with other men, and the products of the other men's labor. Hopefully, this new conflict shall see the triumph of our notions of liberty over the false reactionary notions of liberty held by the Victorian regime and their Russian masters.

However, allowing Americans to have their own notions of liberty and put them out on the marketplace of ideas is one of the traditional freedoms of the country despite not always living up to it. We should not mistake honest dissent for treason and be prepared to accommodate the beliefs of as many Americans as possible on a practical level. Majority rule and minority rights. Conservative capitalists and staunch communists should not fear for their life, liberty, property, and future if they are in the minority.
 
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[ ][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.
[ ][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 all citizens, 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.
[ ][CRUSH] None. This is a democracy. If your ideology cannot make its case to the people in practice, it deserves to fail.
[ ][POWER] You are a centralized federal state along the lines of the later United States.
[ ][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.
 
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[ ] Plan Northern Union

[ ][IDEALS] Social Democrat

[ ][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.

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

[ ][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.

This is what I'm going to be voting for. It's basically what I had in my Write-up a while back, and it should lead to a relatively stable state capable of defending itself and caring for it's people, while not terrifying away others.
 
Also, I would like to point something out: It's not that every single communist movement was inherently biased towards totalitarianism - it's that every single non-authoritarian communist or socialist movement was crushed by either the totalitarians or the capitalists, and the totalitarians were the only ones capable of surviving the capitalist onslaught. Just look at what happened to Salvador Allende of Chile, Villeda Morales of Honduras, and the CNT-FAI in Spain.
 
gutza1 said:
[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 all citizens, 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][POWER] You are a centralized federal state along the lines of the later United States.
[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.
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Moratorium.
 
gutza1 said:
Also, I would like to point something out: It's not that every single communist movement was inherently biased towards totalitarianism - it's that every single non-authoritarian communist or socialist movement was crushed by either the totalitarians or the capitalists, and the totalitarians were the only ones capable of surviving the capitalist onslaught. Just look at what happened to Salvador Allende of Chile, Villeda Morales of Honduras, and the CNT-FAI in Spain.
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To be honest, that's not the best argument when we're about to fight a totalitarian regime.
 
gutza1 said:
Also, I would like to point something out: It's not that every single communist movement was inherently biased towards totalitarianism - it's that every single non-authoritarian communist or socialist movement was crushed by either the totalitarians or the capitalists, and the totalitarians were the only ones capable of surviving the capitalist onslaught. Just look at what happened to Salvador Allende of Chile, Villeda Morales of Honduras, and the CNT-FAI in Spain.
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Just pointing out the oldest, most enduring single organization that could be classed as communist (though the union would deny it based on principles of being non-sectarian anti-capitalists unionists) in the United States is (as of present day OTL) is the IWW and they're staunchly bottom-up grassroots democrats who favor direct democracy at every level. They've been around since 1905 and are actually (in present day outside of this quest) seeing a major boom in membership thanks in part to Trump getting elected funny enough.

It's also worth pointing out the non-totalitarian options tended to also rise in places where US/insert here intervention was powerful enough to upend them. If the Bolsheviks or the CCP were directly democratic in nature from the start and throughout their revolutions there's little outside powers would've been able to do to crush the Chinese or Russian Revolutions simply due to overwhelming logistical problems. The problems facing Chile or the CNT/FAI were less of ideology and more of geography, sadly.
 
[ ][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 all citizens, 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 enoughof 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.

[ ][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.

[ ][POWER] You are a centralized federal state along the lines of the later United States.

[ ][TEXT] The old Constitution had its flaws, but it was a document of many strengths as well. It lasted two and a half centuries. We shall honor that and preserve the original. Our changes will be amendments, as intended, with our population approving them as specified in the text.
 
Whats the point of going non-capitalist anyways?
Theres no distinct advantage, while going capitalist gives us max Legitimacy which is only good, rather than negative (Social Demo being second best)
 
Ghostdevil said:
Whats the point of going non-capitalist anyways?
Theres no distinct advantage, while going capitalist gives us max Legitimacy which is only good, rather than negative (Social Demo being second best)
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We don't get rosneft calling the shots in our economy? It explicitly says that going capitalist opens us up to foreign economic domination.

Edit: Also morality.
 
Ghostdevil said:
Whats the point of going non-capitalist anyways?
Theres no distinct advantage, while going capitalist gives us max Legitimacy which is only good, rather than negative (Social Demo being second best)
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Being Capitalist means that democratic and normal businesses are on a level playing field, which pisses off the Communists and Socialists here.

Aranfan said:
We don't get rosneft calling the shots in our economy? It explicitly says that going capitalist opens us up to foreign economic domination.

Edit: Also morality.
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They can't take over if we don't open to the outside before we build up.
 
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Aranfan said:
We don't get rosneft calling the shots in our economy? It explicitly says that going capitalist opens us up to foreign economic domination.
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Exactly, choosing New Capitalism is a recipe for ending up as a bananna deep dish pizza republic dominated by some foreign business interest
 
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