Let's Not Have a Constitutional Convention
not for a while: maybe not ever
Our DSA friends want to rip up the Constitution — “Workers Deserve More” — and replace the three branches of government with a single legislature that runs the show.
The key proposals include eliminating the U.S. Senate, abolishing the Electoral College, and making the executive and judiciary subordinate to a single legislative chamber.
Then there in E. Donald Elliott, former Yale law professor that writes “Our Worst Problem? Our Antiquated Constitution.” He cites a number of problems:
The deficit/debt.
Supreme Court under attack.
Presidential war powers.
Guns, violence.
Central banking.
Use of “lawfare” on the opposition.
Policy flip-flops from one administration to the next.
Rigged elections.
I would say that right now is absolutely the wrong time to have a constitutional convention to solve all our problems. We are in the middle of a soft civil war, with the DSA on one side and MAGA on the other, and each side is using the current political system to steal a march on the other side.
The time to have a constitutional convention would be after the current war has ended in victory for our side.
And, more important, the constitutional convention should take place after our side has decided what kind of a state we want and how we think it could work. And that means a political culture that has achieved agreement on the Big Political Issues raised by Donald Elliott.
Taxes and spending. How to we get away from the current situation where, as Milton Friedman said, “History shows that over a long period of time government will spend whatever the tax system raises plus as much more as it can get away with.”
Supreme Court. It wouldn’t be a problem after the current regime had been replaced.
War Powers. I haven’t seen any serious discussion of where we want to be.
Central Banking. Right now, nobody has a clue about central banking and its glorious product, inflation.
Lawfare, Flip-flops, Rigged Elections. These are all a feature of the current 50-50 politics, where everyone cheats to get a momentary advantage.
Let’s review Milton Friedman’s quote. He says that governments spend and tax as much as they can get away with. As far as I know, it was ever thus. The basic theme of history is its wars and its governments running out of other peoples’ money.
But Lee Kuan Yew brought the government spending of Singapore down to about 15% of GDP. How did he do it? In 1965 constant GDP per capita was $4,125, versus US at $22,526. Today it’s $70,384, versus US at $67,946. All numbers in 2010 dollars.
How do we even start to figure out how to do all that, never mind encode it in the Constitution?
Then there’s central banking. The Dutch invented it to finance their war of independence against Spain, or Eighty Years War from 1568 to 1648. I call it Dutch Finance. Then the Dutch took it to Britland in 1688 and the Brits founded the Bank of England in 1692. That’s when the British Empire really got going.
In the US, our central bank is the Federal Reserve System that was set up in 1913 just in time for World War I and World War II a generation later. Central banks operate by inflating the currency — debasing the monetary assets of citizens — and using the proceeds to fight wars.
How we would be able to end the Federal Reserve, end inflation, and return to a stable currency is beyond me. And everyone else.
So, first of all we need experts to figure out how to end the Inflation Epoch, and then successfully refigure the Federal Reserve System without causing a major depression. And then we have to figure out how to encode it in the Constitution.
And hovering above all this hopeful thought is the brute fact of the political distinction, as made Real Simple by two expert philosophers:
Curtis Yarvin: There is no politics without an enemy.
Christopher Chantrill: There is no politics without a handout.
Whatever regime we have in the United States, it is still a political regime, and it still needs an enemy. And it still needs to reward its supporters.
Go figure.