[Frondo]

You know what, though? This isn't their world any more, it's ours.

One of the mistakes they made that we're all still suffering from was in how difficult it is in practice to amend the US constitution. Even the late great Antonin Scalia felt this way--in some interview he gave somewhere, he said that, if given a magic wand and the ability to change the constitution, he'd simply make it easier to amend.

Happily, there are people working on the electoral college problem, e.g. http://nationalpopularvote.com.

(I am, by the way, one of those coastal liberals who's pretty frustrated at how much less my vote matters than the vote of some dude in Wyoming.)

[maratd]

> One of the mistakes they made that we're all still suffering from was in how difficult it is in practice to amend the US constitution.

Completely disagree. It keeps us from screwing it up. Don't mess with something that isn't broken. And no, it isn't broken.

There's a reason the US government is one of the oldest in the world. They got quite a few things right from the start.

[Frondo]

For a lot of folks, citizens, mind you, the status quo is screwed up, is broken. That those citizens live out their lives with effectively no way to seek redress, due to a design decision made centuries ago, seems unjust to me.

After all, it's a legal document, not a religious text.

There's also dodgy and ambiguous language that keeps causing arguments and problems, in part because it wasn't written super clearly to begin with, and in part because centuries have passed since the people wrote it.

(Some of my big ones: clarifying the 2nd amendment one way or the other, addressing abortion rights directly, and adding something to strengthen every citizen's access to voting, e.g. national voting holiday, felon enfranchisement, whatever.)

I'd make it easier to amend, and trust in my fellow citizens to do the right thing.

[maratd]

> and trust in my fellow citizens to do the right thing

And there is your mistake. Our republic has endured precisely because full trust wasn't placed in the hands of the people, but rather the people were simply another check on the power of the government that was subdivided, distributed, and balanced.

There is a path for amending the constitution and it requires overwhelming consent, as it should.

[Frondo]

I don't believe that I am mistaken in trusting my fellow citizens with the democratic principle of self-governance.

For lots of people, they're not happy, the system doesn't work for them and they have no redress. Telling them it's for their own good? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

[maratd]

> For lots of people, they're not happy, the system doesn't work for them and they have no redress.

There are always people who are unhappy. There is no system which will make everyone happy all of the time.

However, if you give the keys to the populace at large with unlimited power, you'll have tyranny of the majority and then you'll have bigger problems to chew on.

Do I really need to cite the most recent election as evidence? Democracy will always lean towards populism. Its only use is as a check on government.

[matt4077]

That was actually the answer Scalia gave me when I asked him a question – must have been about 7 years ago.

(he had given a talk mostly criticizing the idea of enshrining rights in the constitution as an attempt to remove certain ideas from democracy)