'[S]uperb presidential qualifications, whatever those qualifications might be.'
That's the problem. It's difficult to know what it is that makes an elite leader at any given time. For example, somebody with very high intelligence may not make a good leader, similar to gifted sports people who fail to make it as coaches.
Thank you for giving a shout out to Maine! I actually didn't know Nebraska had discovered the joys of ranked-choice, too. Nice! Now we just need another 48 or so states to get with the program. You'd think voters would support measures that actually puts some power back in their hands.
An IEC would be nice, too. But we'll be lucky to even have some semblance of the so-called democracy we've got in four more years. Pretty sad when you dream today how lovely it would be to have the dysfunctional system of 40 years ago.
"How, by the way, did prohibition ever get through?" It's amazing. I just read the other day on Jeff Maurer's Substack that a good part of it was the anti-Catholic bias of the Protestant majority. Never had heard that before.
Catholics really got under the Protestants' skin. The base fear was that Catholics would show more allegiance to that foreign Pope than the country they were living in, which might have been valid in the 1500s and 1600s, but should have been gone by 1800.
The increased immigration of Irish and Italians, and probably Poles and Bavarians and Austrians and Greeks and others to some extent, triggered all sorts of political stupidity. It led to some of the first anti-abortion laws, for instance, so the Catholics wouldn't outbreed the Protestants. It was part of the motivation for publicly-funded and mandatory schools, and several states banned private schools (those dirty Catholics!) and schools in any language but English (those dirty Lutherans!).
Prohibition is, I believe, the origin of the phrase "Baptists and bootleggers", meaning parties with different interests who join for a common cause.
A good idea, says this American. But it probably should be enshrined in a constitutional amendment, otherwise just a few states changing their mind would put the kibosh on it.
Somewhat on topic regarding winner-takes-all elections, in my fantasy Chartertopia, each district elects three representatives, and when they vote in the legislature, they proxy all the votes they won. In addition, all voters can drop a name in the ballot box and one is chosen at random to proxy all the remaining votes (called the amateur).
It makes fraud almost useless, since if you stuff ten ballots to move from 2nd to 1st place, all you've done is get ten more votes in the legislature, out of, say, 50,000. Fraud to rise from 4th to 3rd is more significant, but also adds to the amateur's proxy.
It eliminates the fiction that the winner represents everybody, even those who voted against him.
The amateur really upsets the professionals' apple carts.
It makes predictions difficult for pundits and legislators trading votes.
It eliminates the need for the census to guide redrawing district boundaries to equalize them.
If a district boundary crosses your land, or runs along your parcel's border, you can move it. It leaves district definitions to land owners, not politicians.
Each district sets their own election date, to align with seasons, hurricanes, planting and harvests, and so on, which means total proxies can change weekly or daily, really upsetting pundit predictions.
Germany almost hast that system. Secret ballot for Chancellor but not 2/3 majority. Wonder if locking them up until they get 2/3 majority would lead to better outcomes?
Sorry, just because you tried to preempt this pushback doesn't mean we Americans need to keep putting up with all this kibitzing from the other side of the pond, especially from Brits. Being a small country that feels itself impacted by the larger ones is no excuse.
You'd get more yield focusing your big brain on keeping the European NATO allies from breaking apart, even given Brexit. It's been a positive to see the key leaders over there finally reducing their dependency on US. Lean into that development.
Our Constitution is a bag of kludges that's almost a quarter of a millennium old at this point. I can't think of anyone, including its authors, who thinks it's a thing of beauty. I would personally be happy to endorse a committee of sincere experts and statespeople from the liberal democratic republics from around the horseshoe minus the extremes that share our values and could propose an alternative.
That's not going to happen.
In the meantime, let's have less Rome in the USA, not more. And, yeah, it's bad manners to butt into your neighbors messy marital problems, metaphorically speaking.
2. Ever heard the phrase "don't shoot the messenger"? That's all you did. In other words, you admitted his proposal had some merit and you had no argument against it. You shot yourself in the foot. You hoisted yourself on your own petard. You scored an own goal.
Richard Dawkins is a full grown man who can defend himself.
Substack is a place for serious people, it's not just for trolling. Take your juvenile insults back to the Elmoverse.
Got any other bot-sounding cliches you'd like to throw around?
I thought his proposal was both unhelpful and bad manners. At no point did I commend its merits. In fact I closed by dismissing modeling anything in the US Constitution on Rome's various ones.
You really sound like one of those AI arguments bots. Don't even read the things you're critiquing.
If a British oncologist said to me “I think I might have a cure for your wife’s illness” I don’t see why I should tell him or her to “fuck off and mind their own business.”
S/he perhaps has a wealth of experience that I would be grateful to receive. Their proposal might not work, might not be suitable, but their offer of a trial/experiment/novel approach/access to wisdom is something I would welcome, given the severity of the situation.
If we close our minds to solutions because of someone’s identity, nationality, political leanings etc. we really are limiting the possibility of enlightenment and maybe saving someone or something.
From someone who is very grateful for the unsolicited wisdom of an Australian oncologist. Geez, an Australian of all people…
I addressed the substantive point you raise in the thread with André below.
It's simply a matter of volume. As much as I admire Dawkins, I disagree with him on this particular point and don't find his kibitzing to be useful to the present American debate. To use your analogy, it's a quack prescription, wildly impractical.
There are way too many outsiders here on Substack who have plenty of issues to deal with in their own homes who spend their energy meddling in our American affairs.
When the commentary is supposed to be helping the opposition, it actually hurts because it reinforces the red PoV that Liberal Globalization/Internationalization is to blame for the loss of American Greatness and most of their personal woes.
Dawkins should focus on fixing Brexit, shoring up the European wing of NATO, supporting Ukraine and more generally containing Russian imperial expansion. His energy and intellect would have higher yield if he aimed it at Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.
I’m not sure where to go with your comment. I agree, I don’t agree… if anything your positioning doesn’t seem in one lane, that makes for an interesting discussion. I genuinely understand why you feel he should “butt out” and I even agree the intro qualifier doesn’t extricate him from opposition, but I do feel he was sincere and had great points. Britain is in far more economic and populational decline than the US (though the world, in general, is struggling) but that doesn’t mean an outsider can’t bring something to the table. It’s how I feel about the Identitarian/Intersectional movement requiring color, culture, ethnicity or gender of the subject in discussion be the same. As no one else can empathize or bring meritorious ideas. This is narrow. It also can be a bit of an obfuscation from addressing the point. Although I do genuinely understand your instinct, I still find it unconvincing. Do I feel it’s likely unable to be pulled off, do I think believing there’s solid constitutions of merit out there to decide for us, no… so I agree. Do I think his firewalls he proposed are pretty darn good, yes. Lastly, calling our Constitution “a bag of kludges” seems flippant and dismissive. As imperfect as it is, in all of human history has there been a better attempt at application of democracy? It’s not jingoistic to believe the experiment of America is pretty brilliant compared to all else prior and the world benefitted from our model. It’s deeply imperfect as all humanity is, but it’s still an amazing achievement.
Why do you think the authors were so unhappy with it?
“Less Rome in the US” brilliant statement… chuckled at that one.
You make several points. Let me try to address them in order.
(1) Outsiders bringing something to the table. I agree that can be valuable. Maybe it's the Substack algo and what I see in the Notes feed isn't representative of the whole platform, but I see too many non-Americans (especially Europeans) who spend all their energy analyzing and commenting on our affairs rather than their own.
I understand the British Invasion phenomenon ... if you can make it here you can make it anywhere. Bigger, richer market, more eyeballs/audience. It's a little much, though, when their opinions are as superficial as most of them are, without any deep understanding of our history or the complexity of our present body politic.
(2) The USC as a "bag of kludges" ... that's just 2025speak for "bundle of compromises", which the Founders themselves conceded, not intended to be any more dismissive than they were: a) representation in Congress, literally called the Great/Connecticut Compromise; the SF Bay Area where I live has a larger population than the total of the nine smallest states: where are my 18 Senators (in 1788, the population of the largest state, VA, was just under 13 times that of the smallest, DE; now in 2025, CA's is 67 times larger than WY's)? b) that knocks on to how we elect the President; c) Federal vs State powers; d) who gets to say what the law "is". its authors, Congress, or the courts? e) individual rights ... what does the Xth Amendment actually mean? e) slavery, another explicit Compromise, the 3/5ths one; f) the perimeters of free speech, press and religion. I could go on.
(3) Why "the authors were unhappy with it" ... anyone with a sense of architecture, with how designs can be both functional and elegant, can take one look at (2) and hold their nose ... Jefferson, and actual building architect, famously thought laws and the constitution itself should sunset after twenty years so that each generation gets a chance to remodel, so to speak.
(4) "has there been a better attempt at application of democracy?" This is worthy of an entire separate post, but my short answer is "several", including Switzerland's and Germany's ... and there are probably others designed with the benefit of the additional 250 years of history which have shown more and more failure modes of different systems (see "remodel" above).
(5) Glad you liked the Rome line, since that was, after all this commentary, the heart of my critique of Dawkins's post.
'[S]uperb presidential qualifications, whatever those qualifications might be.'
That's the problem. It's difficult to know what it is that makes an elite leader at any given time. For example, somebody with very high intelligence may not make a good leader, similar to gifted sports people who fail to make it as coaches.
https://wwcorrigan.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-trouble-with-democracy.html
Thank you for giving a shout out to Maine! I actually didn't know Nebraska had discovered the joys of ranked-choice, too. Nice! Now we just need another 48 or so states to get with the program. You'd think voters would support measures that actually puts some power back in their hands.
An IEC would be nice, too. But we'll be lucky to even have some semblance of the so-called democracy we've got in four more years. Pretty sad when you dream today how lovely it would be to have the dysfunctional system of 40 years ago.
When prohibition was passed they were all drunk. Just saying.
"How, by the way, did prohibition ever get through?" It's amazing. I just read the other day on Jeff Maurer's Substack that a good part of it was the anti-Catholic bias of the Protestant majority. Never had heard that before.
https://www.imightbewrong.org/p/americas-long-march-to-grudging-acceptance
Catholics really got under the Protestants' skin. The base fear was that Catholics would show more allegiance to that foreign Pope than the country they were living in, which might have been valid in the 1500s and 1600s, but should have been gone by 1800.
The increased immigration of Irish and Italians, and probably Poles and Bavarians and Austrians and Greeks and others to some extent, triggered all sorts of political stupidity. It led to some of the first anti-abortion laws, for instance, so the Catholics wouldn't outbreed the Protestants. It was part of the motivation for publicly-funded and mandatory schools, and several states banned private schools (those dirty Catholics!) and schools in any language but English (those dirty Lutherans!).
Prohibition is, I believe, the origin of the phrase "Baptists and bootleggers", meaning parties with different interests who join for a common cause.
Thoughtful and interesting. Thanks.
A good idea, says this American. But it probably should be enshrined in a constitutional amendment, otherwise just a few states changing their mind would put the kibosh on it.
Somewhat on topic regarding winner-takes-all elections, in my fantasy Chartertopia, each district elects three representatives, and when they vote in the legislature, they proxy all the votes they won. In addition, all voters can drop a name in the ballot box and one is chosen at random to proxy all the remaining votes (called the amateur).
It makes fraud almost useless, since if you stuff ten ballots to move from 2nd to 1st place, all you've done is get ten more votes in the legislature, out of, say, 50,000. Fraud to rise from 4th to 3rd is more significant, but also adds to the amateur's proxy.
It eliminates the fiction that the winner represents everybody, even those who voted against him.
The amateur really upsets the professionals' apple carts.
It makes predictions difficult for pundits and legislators trading votes.
It eliminates the need for the census to guide redrawing district boundaries to equalize them.
If a district boundary crosses your land, or runs along your parcel's border, you can move it. It leaves district definitions to land owners, not politicians.
Each district sets their own election date, to align with seasons, hurricanes, planting and harvests, and so on, which means total proxies can change weekly or daily, really upsetting pundit predictions.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=GcVJO0bOCj8&si=7pYa-XE-cH8PfuAu
Germany almost hast that system. Secret ballot for Chancellor but not 2/3 majority. Wonder if locking them up until they get 2/3 majority would lead to better outcomes?
Love this! We really are anti-intellectual.
Sorry, just because you tried to preempt this pushback doesn't mean we Americans need to keep putting up with all this kibitzing from the other side of the pond, especially from Brits. Being a small country that feels itself impacted by the larger ones is no excuse.
You'd get more yield focusing your big brain on keeping the European NATO allies from breaking apart, even given Brexit. It's been a positive to see the key leaders over there finally reducing their dependency on US. Lean into that development.
Our Constitution is a bag of kludges that's almost a quarter of a millennium old at this point. I can't think of anyone, including its authors, who thinks it's a thing of beauty. I would personally be happy to endorse a committee of sincere experts and statespeople from the liberal democratic republics from around the horseshoe minus the extremes that share our values and could propose an alternative.
That's not going to happen.
In the meantime, let's have less Rome in the USA, not more. And, yeah, it's bad manners to butt into your neighbors messy marital problems, metaphorically speaking.
Next time try addressing the post itself, not the messenger. 5 paragraphs of whining doesn't make you look smart and him look stupid.
Are you some sort of troll or bot? My comment was on Dawkins's post.
You wrote a comment on Dawkin's post which amounted to "butt out I don't want furriners telling muricans what to do". That's what I responded to.
That's your troll snark paraphrase. Yes, I told His Majesty's Subject to butt out. What's the problem with that?
1. It took you five paragraphs to be a jerk.
2. Ever heard the phrase "don't shoot the messenger"? That's all you did. In other words, you admitted his proposal had some merit and you had no argument against it. You shot yourself in the foot. You hoisted yourself on your own petard. You scored an own goal.
Oh, don't start Twitspamming.
Richard Dawkins is a full grown man who can defend himself.
Substack is a place for serious people, it's not just for trolling. Take your juvenile insults back to the Elmoverse.
Got any other bot-sounding cliches you'd like to throw around?
I thought his proposal was both unhelpful and bad manners. At no point did I commend its merits. In fact I closed by dismissing modeling anything in the US Constitution on Rome's various ones.
You really sound like one of those AI arguments bots. Don't even read the things you're critiquing.
Indeed, there is an awful lot to fix, politically, in Europe. Let’s hope he also uses any influence and intellect to address those issues too.
We need all the critical thinkers we can get our hands on at the moment!
It’s a comms battle, not mostly about ideas. Nutty, impractical ones from big brain outsiders do more harm than good.
Perhaps an analogy might help here.
If a British oncologist said to me “I think I might have a cure for your wife’s illness” I don’t see why I should tell him or her to “fuck off and mind their own business.”
S/he perhaps has a wealth of experience that I would be grateful to receive. Their proposal might not work, might not be suitable, but their offer of a trial/experiment/novel approach/access to wisdom is something I would welcome, given the severity of the situation.
If we close our minds to solutions because of someone’s identity, nationality, political leanings etc. we really are limiting the possibility of enlightenment and maybe saving someone or something.
From someone who is very grateful for the unsolicited wisdom of an Australian oncologist. Geez, an Australian of all people…
I addressed the substantive point you raise in the thread with André below.
It's simply a matter of volume. As much as I admire Dawkins, I disagree with him on this particular point and don't find his kibitzing to be useful to the present American debate. To use your analogy, it's a quack prescription, wildly impractical.
There are way too many outsiders here on Substack who have plenty of issues to deal with in their own homes who spend their energy meddling in our American affairs.
When the commentary is supposed to be helping the opposition, it actually hurts because it reinforces the red PoV that Liberal Globalization/Internationalization is to blame for the loss of American Greatness and most of their personal woes.
Dawkins should focus on fixing Brexit, shoring up the European wing of NATO, supporting Ukraine and more generally containing Russian imperial expansion. His energy and intellect would have higher yield if he aimed it at Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.
I’m not sure where to go with your comment. I agree, I don’t agree… if anything your positioning doesn’t seem in one lane, that makes for an interesting discussion. I genuinely understand why you feel he should “butt out” and I even agree the intro qualifier doesn’t extricate him from opposition, but I do feel he was sincere and had great points. Britain is in far more economic and populational decline than the US (though the world, in general, is struggling) but that doesn’t mean an outsider can’t bring something to the table. It’s how I feel about the Identitarian/Intersectional movement requiring color, culture, ethnicity or gender of the subject in discussion be the same. As no one else can empathize or bring meritorious ideas. This is narrow. It also can be a bit of an obfuscation from addressing the point. Although I do genuinely understand your instinct, I still find it unconvincing. Do I feel it’s likely unable to be pulled off, do I think believing there’s solid constitutions of merit out there to decide for us, no… so I agree. Do I think his firewalls he proposed are pretty darn good, yes. Lastly, calling our Constitution “a bag of kludges” seems flippant and dismissive. As imperfect as it is, in all of human history has there been a better attempt at application of democracy? It’s not jingoistic to believe the experiment of America is pretty brilliant compared to all else prior and the world benefitted from our model. It’s deeply imperfect as all humanity is, but it’s still an amazing achievement.
Why do you think the authors were so unhappy with it?
“Less Rome in the US” brilliant statement… chuckled at that one.
You make several points. Let me try to address them in order.
(1) Outsiders bringing something to the table. I agree that can be valuable. Maybe it's the Substack algo and what I see in the Notes feed isn't representative of the whole platform, but I see too many non-Americans (especially Europeans) who spend all their energy analyzing and commenting on our affairs rather than their own.
I understand the British Invasion phenomenon ... if you can make it here you can make it anywhere. Bigger, richer market, more eyeballs/audience. It's a little much, though, when their opinions are as superficial as most of them are, without any deep understanding of our history or the complexity of our present body politic.
(2) The USC as a "bag of kludges" ... that's just 2025speak for "bundle of compromises", which the Founders themselves conceded, not intended to be any more dismissive than they were: a) representation in Congress, literally called the Great/Connecticut Compromise; the SF Bay Area where I live has a larger population than the total of the nine smallest states: where are my 18 Senators (in 1788, the population of the largest state, VA, was just under 13 times that of the smallest, DE; now in 2025, CA's is 67 times larger than WY's)? b) that knocks on to how we elect the President; c) Federal vs State powers; d) who gets to say what the law "is". its authors, Congress, or the courts? e) individual rights ... what does the Xth Amendment actually mean? e) slavery, another explicit Compromise, the 3/5ths one; f) the perimeters of free speech, press and religion. I could go on.
(3) Why "the authors were unhappy with it" ... anyone with a sense of architecture, with how designs can be both functional and elegant, can take one look at (2) and hold their nose ... Jefferson, and actual building architect, famously thought laws and the constitution itself should sunset after twenty years so that each generation gets a chance to remodel, so to speak.
(4) "has there been a better attempt at application of democracy?" This is worthy of an entire separate post, but my short answer is "several", including Switzerland's and Germany's ... and there are probably others designed with the benefit of the additional 250 years of history which have shown more and more failure modes of different systems (see "remodel" above).
(5) Glad you liked the Rome line, since that was, after all this commentary, the heart of my critique of Dawkins's post.