Most Americans do not realize this, but the presidential majoritarian system is actually very rare amongst Western Democracies. Instead, a combination of parliamentarism and proportional representation, as practised in most continental European countries, provides a more robust and workable (as well as more broadly representative, and less plutocratic) model of democracy.

American reformers would do well to read, learn, mark and inwardly digest the Constitutions of Spain or Germany.

http://www.respublica.org.uk/articles/future-conservatism-0

We humans are all broken, beset by our weaknesses but trying fitfully to live morally and fruitfully. Long exposure to temptation wears us down to slow yielding and finally abandonment to the imagined fruits of our temptations. Once abandoned, we are again tempted to strongly defend and continue our destructive choice. Without correction/help from our friends and associates, we are doomed unless we are somehow not strongly tempted.

Our elected despots are human, and I stipulate they were all driven by the most upright motives when they began. That was then, this is now. Temptation has taken it’s toll.

Given the practicalities, there is no way we can recover our original “innocence”. The details of gerrymandering etc. would defeat any move to change things significantly. We are on the long ski jump, with only rocks at the bottom.

Money is the life blood of our elected despots, even considering the 7/24 run of Treasury printing presses funding government now. One way to halt or slow things would be to stop or seriously delay tax payments to the Beltway. Put the money in escrow instead of the hands of the despots. There are ways to do this, and are less intensive than taking more direct action.

That would create a crisis, and threaten the despots, who would be outraged. Oh well!

MORE LATER

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6929604.ece

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2921527420080302?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&sp=true

Here by the way is Condolezza Rice on Iraq pre 9/11:-
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Condoleezza_Rice

If we cannot fix representative democracy, then the rule of a monarch that strives for the common good would be preferable. At least for a time. Also to be preferred would be an anarchy of citizens that realize that their fortune is inherently tied to the fortunes of their neighbors. At least for a time.

We need to realize that any institution will drift from its stated values through the passage of time. This is true for any form of government, any religion, any organization, and any ruling class. Some of these institutions are robust and drift more slowly than others. Some may have a method of self-correction that enhances tolerance. The longest lived have both traits. The well documented and spectacular failures of a small ruling elite that ignores the common good indicates that oligarchies are neither robust or failure tolerant.

John, I really enjoyed the essay, and that picture makes my mouth water. Thanks.

And what makes you think that the political machines were particularly “corrupt?” Because some mugwump textbook says so? Millions of rural European immigrants were brought quite seamlessly into constitutional government by their “corruption.” If you want to lift the race card, try being a Sicilian Catholic in Boston in1905. Would you have written up a national Civil Rights for Italians Act?

It was a political machine gone wacko, the one in South Chicago, funded by the feds largely through the inheritance of the New Deal and the CRA, that gave us our current administration. If you’re happy with that, then I guess you should be surprised and outraged by John’s perfectly reasonable comment.

I don’t know, when I walk past a mellow and buff building in the Cotswolds, admiring its Bath Stone or drink in the remarkable Tuscan countryside or eat a fine French meal in Paris prepared quixotically by an Aussie ex-pat on Avenue Felix Faure, I don’t wonder about their government, I wonder about the people and wish for them the continuing wisdom, health, and artfulness they express…along with only that government sufficient to encourage it.

I can’t bring myself to believe that you’re seriously making the argument that the corruption that characterized Boss Tweed’s New York is an improvement over the federal Civil Rights Act. The idea is simply incomprehensible to me. If that really is what you’re saying, you’re going to have to explain yourself, because that’s not anyone should be willing to accept just because you wave your hand.

If the mandate for efficacy — or more particularly legitimacy — of exercising power is America’s fiduciary affairs, ie the custodial duty of the financial services sector of our economy to preserve from harm the treasure entrusted to them, then we’re already off the cliff in free fall. America’s property rights became ungovernable way back in 1913 when central banking came into mode. The high time preference of a warfaring public purse soon made the Fed an indispensable tool to the secret expropriation of the citizenry during two global conflicts. Traditional (of both the popular and artistocratic variety) low time preferences of savers, producers and contractors have been denied their due — the discount in value accrued over time from prudential non-disruptive creative industry, a tithe of which customarily has been applied to support non-productive exertion of a spiritual or charitable nature.

The fear of dislocation in the social fabric from challenging deeply-cherished political assumptions (American dollars are safely held by our bankers) is actually worse than the thing feared – the social fabric is unravelling around us faster than we can pick up the stitches! Instead of yanking at loose ends, we need to stop the guys who are pulling the carpet from under us – the monetary policy makers behind closed doors.

Only he who controls his property can exercise his free will democratically. We cannot speak of voluntary goodwill towards the commonwealth (ie the free consent of the governed) if the very constitutive wealth necessary is being expropriated by stealth by the governing class. The corruption begins with the currency my friends, and as Arnold Schwarznegger says “Kahlifawnia can’t print money, only the Feds can.” As bad as local schenanigans may seem, the truely egregious graft is instead the centralized theft of the very purchasing power of the defenseless dollars in your wallet, being diluted by pre-meditated inflation by our “betters” the Titans in Treasury, led by Redistributor in Chief Mr Bernanke.

Audit — ney end — the Fed.

John,
Don’t be so defensive of Tammany Hall! It produced Al Smith. Its enemies produced FDR.

1. The very triviality of comments that councils get is proportional to the triviality of their powers. Cities have little control over their detinies, and so arguing about trivialities is all that is left.

2. Yes Tammeny was corrupt, but it was itself a response to a different kind of corruption. It was a way of spreading the wealth to a largely hated and disenfranchised people. Problems, yes, but context also. It was better to handle the prejudice at this level that what happened after the civil rights movement became a national issue.

I like Europe, John. (So do Patrick and Rod Dreher, though they may deny it under pressure.)

To give a short reply, “Is America Ungovernable?”—yes. And the examples John gives are all valid and true. Every serious man since Aristotle has known that size matters. There is simply size and complexity beyond which the capacity and the virtue of human beings cannot go. How hard is it to “govern” a family? One dumb-ass during WWII said that “one can learn a lot about a national economy by having to run one.” Listening to our current emperor drone on in his utterly contentless speeches, and pondering that anyone–ANYONE–understands a 2000 page “law” should be enough to cut off the inevitable progressive babble about better and better planning. Walter Lippmann said it in 1938, for goodness sake, and he was hardly a reactionary.

In search of a better life there is only one way we can go, and that’s small(er). The other way is toward Europe, and I think that one thing that may unite Porchers is that Europe is not the way to go.

By the way, this was never intended to be a democracy. Like “liberal,” it’s a word we should rarely use.

What I meant is that it seems contradictory to advocate for limited government… by having said government pass more laws, regardless of their content.

What bugs me about the aristocratic trends I see here is that the old rallying cry that those in power should not have it is all too often simply a backhanded way of saying that the agitators are the ones that should have it. I get that vibe a lot around here: “Things would be so much better of only people like me ran the show!” You’ll forgive me for finding that ridiculously self-serving, not to mention condescending. And examples in front-page posts are far too common to enumerate. There’s an attachment to a particular expression of the Good Life which, the argument goes, can only be enjoyed under a particular material organization of society. Arguments for “virtue” can all too easily appear to be arguments for “doing things my way because I’m better,” and keeping those two consciously distinct is challenging, to put it mildly.

Which is more than a little off-putting, I have to say. The fact that the speakers frequently don’t usually manifest any special insight into how things actually work or how we got where we are doesn’t help much.