Exchange of ideas, if you’re not growing you’re dead, etc. It’s all good.

Thanks for offering the soapbox!

I apologize for not replying sooner. Life happens sometimes.

If the “stuff” you mean is “representative democracy”, well, then I don’t think it “works” — except for the country’s big monied interests. The very same interests whose effective editorial lock on the mass media keep innovative/dissenting voices like Sanford Levinson and Daniel Lazare out on the margins.

By ‘stuff that works’ I mean the system of government that we’ve got generally works as set out in the charter

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

They did write long wordy sentences in those days. Any good writing teacher would toss that out in a heartbeat.

I do believe that in general it works as designed. America has problems but in general we have a great deal of prosperity and freedom. The system is flexible, allows change but not at too great a clip.

That last bit is what I fear; not change, I know that is inevitable. More, it’s an important part of who we are and drives our growth.

But what worries me is change for change sake without thinking through the consequences.

If the “stuff” you mean is “representative democracy”, well, then I don’t think it “works” — except for the country’s big monied interests. The very same interests whose effective editorial lock on the mass media keep innovative/dissenting voices like Sanford Levinson and Daniel Lazare out on the margins.

I’m sick of it.

Thank you though for applying a kind adjective like ‘keen’ to my persistently futile request for a ROS coversation on whether the 21st century USA has outgrown our eighteenth century Constitution. (Pssst! I think it has — like, maybe as far back as 1861, when a northern majority used force-of-arms to compel a rebellious southern minority to give up their immoral use of slaves. We haven’t had autonomous ‘states’ since 1865, have we? Then why keep this dysfunctional, no-longer-democratic, archaic, and consistently loggerheaded government? We should America have to settle for THIS???)

Please note that I’ve never been close to combat. I was quoting a friend’s daughter who has been.

That sentence alone should give one pause – times they have changed.

Why can’t we please begin to think for ourselves, instead of relying on the thinking of long dead men of the eighteenth century?

On ROS???

Sounds keen to me.

Of course you don’t toss stuff aside that works without considering the long term consequences of your actions.

“…perhaps this could be the theme of a show — when the national interest collides with a state or regional interest.”

Agreed – and nicely analyzed.

But the problem is systemic: a symptom of a government-as-constituted more than two centuries ago, when “The States” were genuinely states, and not merely partially-autonomous provinces of a larger, much more cohesive nation-state.

Sanford Levinson writes about this at length in his Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It). Why this sort of innovative thinking can’t catch on is beyond me.

Einstein reputedly said, “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them.”

Why can’t we please begin to think for ourselves, instead of relying on the thinking of long dead men of the eighteenth century?

Why can’t this be discussed in public? On public radio?

On ROS???