I ask this because reading some of the ridiculous conspiracy theories online, it seems that a lot of Americans want this to happen. They want to disband the most powerful country in the world and replace it with 50 independent states, most of which are pathetically small in terms of economy and population. Is this what they really want?
With the exception of Texas, perhaps, the states where the majority of such people live (the states where, as you say, “a lot of Americans want this to happen”) would be utterly, completely useless and helpless as independent territories. Alabama? South Carolina? Arkansas? Kentucky? South Dakota? These places are NOTHING without their association with the broader United States. Their rampant anti-federalism is totally ironic in that way.
Were your scenario to actually happen, it wouldn’t actually be 50 small, weak states, however - certain states would be able to remain solid, viable territories - California most notably, but certainly about 10-15 others (mostly blue states, again, with the possible exception of Texas): For example - Massachusetts, New York, etc . . .
I’m about as conservative as they come, and read some pretty far-right shit, and I haven’t seen or heard even one person suggest anything remotely like this. If you mean to ask “Should the States have power over their own destiny in the way described in the U.S Constitution”, then the answer is “Of-fucking-course”.
I make it more like eight territorial units. Let’s hope they have amicable relations and porous borders, because a lot of people will want to - and many will need to, and some will be forced to - relocate to a more amenable culture. Once stabilized, the nodding-acquaintance territories will probably work better than the (dis)united states.
The economics don’t reflect this. California is at last count the seventh biggest economy in the world, including all other countries China, France, US/ Russia, etc. So it can never become a small weak State. That is for starters, and many other states, though not as strong, share similar statistics.
No, that would be retarded
The U.N. and NWO has North America divided up into corporate/financial regions, not little states (designed back in the 50’s).
A few of the states would be viable, California most notably, some others too. Most wouldn’t be, though. As the small states in Europe found, they can never retain their independence with big bullies like Germany around.
Why is the constitution so sacrosanct? It contains within itself a mechanism to be altered, after all.
Maia, the Constitution is sacrosanct to the degree, that, yes, it can be altered, but it can never be modified in toto, as to overturn it.
Not all documents and processes were assured such an fool proof guaranty, the Divine Right of Kings being an exception. The Constitution served as the legal foundation for guaranteeing the union, and it served the basis to insure that the Southern States not ceceed during the U.S. Civil War.
What a terrible straight jacket.
The UK has no Constitution (with a capital C) and parliament can undo any law it has previously made. This allows for flexibility and evolution.
As I understand it, the USA existed for a decade or so without the Constitution. Or perhaps it had a different one before, the Articles of Confederation. What happened to that, is it still legally in force? Or, as is possible with any piece of paper, has everyone just decided to ignore it?
Actually, it was replaced by the Constitution. The Articles were drawn up pretty much by the same people, and they changed their mind on certain essential and peripheral points. According to Wikopedia, the differences ended up to be emphatic then the similaities.
The essential difference was states rights over the federal government. It would be noteworthy to search for why the shift , giving more importance to the federal govenment over states, and this would be interesting ,in view of the topic of this discussion.
I guess the philosophical argment may rest on recent American cesession from the domain of the British Empire, where originally , maybe , it was felt that giving too much cntrol to a central authority, would endanger the idea of peripheral, qua :democratic freedom of the populace.
The few years it took to go from that to the feeling that perhaps giving too ittle power to a union, by fiat, would reduce the amount of adhesion/control, that differing states would probably take advsntage of for self serving interest.
In the few years between the Articles, and the Consitution, the substantiality of the word ‘constitution’ desribed in detail what the Articles merely spelled out. In practice, content became the focal point, wherein a mere road map proved to be unenforcable. It was merely a guie, a map, and it was thought, I(probably) to be unenforcable. The ten years interim proved that, by various issues which arose in consitutional vis states powers and rights.
Yeah, that would be like, say, the UK dropping out of the EU.
The British Empire was not a centralised, unitary state. The American colonies had far more autonomy than they ended up having under the US Constitution. It’s also not true that they had no representation in parliament. Each colony paid retainers to MPs to speak and vote for them in exactly the same way that corporations and firms still do today.
There’s going to be a referendum in the UK on that very issue. But the UK is not a small state with no infratructure.
Moreno, Is there more similarity of the US Constitution with that of the EU?-to consider such an analogy? (Similarity in terms of the tension existing between the three power ceinter of governance((executive, legislative, judicial)). Or, maybe, even the thought, that the EU organization has been adopted along the lines of the US Constitution.
If , there is such a correspondence, then, the analogy stands. Or, is the EU a more lax organization, with individual states’ retaining much mre of their individual processes (legislative, executive, judicial)?
If the latter, then the UK should have even less reason to leave than states from the US. I have no idea what she thinks of hte issue, though somewhere I got the impression she had problems with the EU, so I am curious about the answer.
As far as my own thoughts, the further away the government the less democratic. The EU is just starting to flex its muscles.