It may come as a surprise for average citizens, but it should not be difficult for critical thinkers to understand; the United States State Department is unable to provide a reliable government charter for developing societies. This is a problem and is why authoritarianism remains an easier solution.
The American form of government is a product of its evolution of ad hoc adjustments, and cannot be replicated. And, we do not have to look very far to recognize that Americans play a game of contradiction when it comes to the reliability of the government. Supreme Court Justice Thomas recently described the government as, “a car with only three wheels.” An awkward analogy for the old man on the Bench, but nonetheless, the audience enjoyed a laugh. There was no murmur of blasphemy, and no congress member called for impeachment the following week.
As it is, there are numerous recent opinions published suggesting that Americans are on the verge of civil war. Some may disagree, but ultimately, our partisan chaos trickles down causing the social disorder we endure. Personal frustration, social disagreements, political protests, riots, workplace violence, and general crime, are not all unrelated to the government system’s failed approach to Domestic Tranquility.
How is this for a theory?
The Three-part Separation Theory is incomplete, it does not define the subdivision of the three parts. Some, if not all, of the founders, were aware of the incompleteness of the Three-part Separation Theory, but there was not much they could do about it. The founders had to improvise everything beyond the concept of three parts. Remember the Connecticut Compromise was about balancing state representation that was unique only to the situation of the “several states.” Just because the founders did it that way does not mean that it is correct and just.
The simple deployment of the Three-part Separation Theory only prevents any one person from ascending to a dictatorship. Except, of course, in the situation of Donald Trump with his amazing abilities and ceaseless ambition to rule the world more than Madonna ever dreamed of.
The simple deployment of the Three-part Separation Theory does not prevent the partisan quest for control of the three parts. In political science it is called an, “oligarchy,” and it should have been very easy for political scientists to detect this phenomenon and its cause. James Madison recognized the probable solution and described it in Federalist Paper 51. The passage is often quoted, but comprehending it and pursuing it has obviously been ignored by the most brilliant Constitutional scholars.
The necessary information had yet to be revealed, and the composition manipulation technology had yet to be invented. Even if the founders had the list of executive security departments, congressional committees, and demarcation of courts, that we have now to figure out the proper subdivision of the three parts, they still would have lacked the hierarchy notation technology necessary for organizing the directive systems that are necessary to compose the sophisticated integration of the increased number of separated entities. They needed that kind of technology just to deploy the three parts properly, but they did not have it, and they did not get it right, and the skewed approach to domestic tranquility that we endure is the result of that deficiency.
So the solution is to find a theory for subdividing the three parts - any ideas out there?
Nowhere in history has any government been reliable, unless you want to count China being reliable concerning cracking down on it’s people for everything.
Only if you’re China.
Actually, ancient Greece was a democracy and like the U.S. free men controlled the government, voted, and created laws. Don’t say that’s not the U.S. Abigail Adams asked her husband in a letter to remember ladies, but sadly the other men didn’t care about women or even wanted them in government or having rights. They were a rung above the slaves, which brings us to the slaves who had no rights. Back to Greece and only free men, which wasn’t much different.
Not too good. The fact of the matter is, we have all the social disagreements, personal frustration, political protests, riots (though I’ve not seen any), etc etc due to the inequality I mentioned before. For a democracy to be a real democracy, everyone really should be equal.
However, we do not and never did have a democracy. Some say we have a Republic. Whatever it is, it’s not true democracy. The Native Americans came closer to a true democracy, before the White man came and forced them to be “white”.
IMHO, we’d do better with the Democratic Socialistic form of government the Native Americans had and do have on their reservations.
Only the citizens participated and could vote. They were a minority in ancient Athens. The metics, free non citizens inhabiting the city, had no political rights and the vast majority of the population was made of slaves. Furthermore, many citizens could not come to the assembly for many reasons.
And reading Livy history of the Roman republic shows that democracy is very relative in an ancient city. Political and class struggles dominate the civic life.
I advise you to read Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (1992)
The author shows that any form of government must use reason, tempered by common sense and morality.
But reason is not the cold reason of the technocracy.
Does he explain how to do that, or are those just ideas that are described?
I am very confident he does not explain how to do it, otherwise, it would be incorporated into a government, just as Montesquee’s twenty-year-old theory was incorporated into the almighty United States Constitution; and therefore I have no reason to waste my time reading it. The ideals are already in my silly little brain by virtue of the sophisticated society that refers to those abstract values in many instances, most notably when criticizing politicians as lacking.
What I am getting at is that we are being provided the altruistic ideals, but we are not trying to organize practical means to approach those ideals. We just laugh about the misgivings of the government, and like both of you, carry the crap of the history of erroneous government as reason enough to avoid trying to find a better solution. Like I described in the opening, the three-part separation theory only defines the three parts. It does not define how to subdivide those three parts, and that is where the practical means to achieve the ideals lies.
Although you are one of the most brilliant people I have encountered, it obviously, will not be you who figures it out.
Now, even if some one finds the " ideal form of government ", I am sure that it will not be implemented as it would destroy the advantages of powerful people.
In fact, for me, the problem is not the true matter,; the matter is the capitalist system.
Nowadays, the function of the state is to protect the capitalist class powers and position. any form of government will be imperfect.
In my opinion, you are hunting phantom wild goose.
WAMPUM BELT DEPICTING THE FIVE NATIONS OF THE GREAT LAW OF PEACE.
Much has been said about the inspiration of the ancient Iroquois “Great League of Peace” in planting the seeds that led to the formation of the United States of America and its representative democracy.
The Iroquois Confederacy, founded by the Great Peacemaker in 11421, is the oldest living participatory democracy on earth2.
In 1988, the U.S. Senate paid tribute with a resolution3 that said, “The confederation of the original 13 colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy, as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the constitution itself.”
The peoples of the Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Six Nations, refer to themselves as the Haudenosaunee, (pronounced “hoo-dee-noh-SHAW-nee”). It means “peoples of the longhouse,” and refers to their lengthy bark-covered longhouses that housed many families. Theirs was a sophisticated and thriving society of well over 5,000 people when the first European explorers encountered them in the early seventeenth century.
Graphic depiction longhouses in Haudenosaunee settlement. From Native America, Episode Two titled Nature to Nations.
The Iroquois Confederacy originally consisted of five separate nations – the Mohawks, who call themselves Kanienkehaka, or "people of the flint country,” the Onondaga, “people of the hills,” the Cayuga, “where they land the boats,” the Oneida, “people of the standing stone,” and the Seneca, “thepeople of the big hill” living in the northeast region of North America. The Tuscarora nation, “people of the shirt,” migrated into Iroquois country in 1722.
“The Great Peacemaker4 brought peace to the five nations,” explains Oren Lyons in a 1991 interview with Bill Moyers. Lyons is the faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nations, and a member of both the Onondaga and Seneca nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.
At that time, the nations of the Iroquois had been enmeshed in continuous inter-tribal conflicts. The cost of war was high and had weakened their societies. The Great Peacemaker and the wise Hiawatha, chief of the Onondaga tribe, contemplated how best to bring peace between the nations. They traveled to each of the five nations to share their ideas for peace.
A council meeting was called, and Hiawatha presented the Great Law of Peace. It united the five nations into a League of Nations, or the Iroquois Confederacy, and became the basis for the Iroquois Confederacy Constitution5.
“Each nation maintained its own leadership, but they all agreed that common causes would be decided in the Grand Council of Chiefs,” Lyons said6. “The concept was based on peace and consensus rather than fighting."
Their constitution, recorded and kept alive on a two row wampum belt7, held many concepts familiar to United States citizens today.
Iroquois Confederacy and the Great Law of Peace
United States Constitution
Restricts members from holding more than one office in the Confederacy.
Article I, Section 6, Clause 2 , also known as the Ineligibility Clause or the Emoluments Clause bars members of serving members of Congress from holding offices established by the federal government, while also baring members of the executive branch or judicial branch from serving in the U.S. House or Senate.
Outlines processes to remove leaders within the Confederacy
Article II, Section 4 reads “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and the conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Designates two branches of legislature with procedures for passing laws
Article I, Section 1 , or the Vesting Clauses , read “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” It goes on to outline their legislative powers.
Delineates who has the power to declare war
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 , also known as the War Powers Clause , gives Congress the power, “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;”
Creates a balance of power between the Iroquois Confederacy and individual tribes
The differing duties assigned to the three branches of the U.S. Government: Legislative (Congress), Executive (President), and Judicial (Supreme Court) act to balance and separate power in government.
In 1744, the Onondaga leader Canassatego gave a speech urging the contentious 13 colonies to unite, as the Iroquois had at the signing of the Treaty of Lancaster. This cultural exchange inspired the English colonist Benjamin Franklin to print Canassatego’s speech.
“We heartily recommend Union and a good Agreement between you our Brethren,” Canassatego had said. “Never disagree, but preserve a strict Friendship for one another, and thereby you, as well as we, will become the stronger. Our wise Forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations; this has made us formidable; this has given us great Weight and Authority with our neighboring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy; and, by your observing the same Methods our wise Forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh Strength and Power; therefore whatever befalls you, never fall out one with another.”
He used a metaphor that many arrows cannot be broken as easily as one. This inspired the bundle of 13 arrows held by an eagle in the Great Seal of the United States.
The Great Seal of the United States ca. 1917 - 1919
Franklin referenced the Iroquois model as he presented his Plan of Union8 at the Albany Congress in 1754, attended by representatives of the Iroquois and the seven colonies. He invited the Great Council members of the Iroquois to address the Continental Congress in 1776.
The Native American model of governance that is fair and will always meet the needs of the seventh generation to come is taken from the Iroquois Confederacy. The seventh generation principle dictates that decisions that are made today should lead to sustainability for seven generations into the future. And Indigenous nations in North America were and are for the most part organized by democratic principles that focus on the creation of strong kinship bonds that promote leadership in which honor is not earned by material gain but by service to others.
In the plains, there was great honor in giving your horses to the poorest members of the tribe. The potlatch still practiced in the Pacific Northwest is another example of voluntarily redistributing wealth to those who have the least.
And the Iroquois? They continue to live under their own constitution and government. Their example sparked the spread of democratic institutions across the world, as explored in “Nature to Nations,” episode Two of this PBS series Native America.
We are very good at that. We kill Islamists and then adopt Sharia laws that rob women from choices in pregnancy and we outlaw all expressions of homosexuality or transgender identification. When we see something we like in other people we kill the people and adopt the thing we liked.
