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Re:How the Hell Do You Govern in a Complex World by tomrod on Sunday February 14, 2021 @11:13PM (#26139000)
You might be interested in reading on many of the other democracies out there that update their constitutions frequently.
Re:How the Hell Do You Govern in a Complex World by dang on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @07:12PM (#26160726)
Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic or ideological flamewar, or any flamewar. We're trying for something else here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:How the Hell Do You Govern in a Complex World by bpodgursky on Sunday February 14, 2021 @11:16PM (#26139022)
There are no other democracies out there that have the almost-unfettered rights to assembly and speech that the US has. This is important to me.

And FWIW, there are (by most measures) no other democracies out there which have gone as long under peaceful rule of law as the US. Every other democracy (save by some measures the UK) has fallen to coup or revolution in less than this duration.

Their latest constitutions may work to keep them stable as long as the US has managed. Or they may not. Time will tell.

Re:How the Hell Do You Govern in a Complex World by Clewza313 on Sunday February 14, 2021 @11:44PM (#26139188)
Freedom of assembly and speech are table stakes in most democracies, and the US doesn't even rank particularly highly (#45) in the World Press Freedom index:

https://rsf.org/en/ranking

The real outlier in the US is gun rights.

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Re:How the Hell Do You Govern in a Complex World by bpodgursky on Monday February 15, 2021 @01:21PM (#26145457)
My young country didn't gas 12 million of its own citizens, so I'd say we're doing comparatively better.
Re:How the Hell Do You Govern in a Complex World by dang on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @07:12PM (#26160735)
Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? This is over the top.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:How the Hell Do You Govern in a Complex World by crumbshot on Sunday February 14, 2021 @11:32PM (#26139122)
> there are (by most measures) no other democracies out there which have gone as long under peaceful rule of law as the US.

Are you taking the end of the US civil war as the starting point? If so, then Switzerland has a longer duration of peaceful rule of law.

Re:How the Hell Do You Govern in a Complex World by bpodgursky on Sunday February 14, 2021 @11:40PM (#26139172)
I don't see that as necessary, given that most of the US remained under continuous democratic governance. The rest... got there eventually.

Even if you do count from the end of the civil war, I would not consider my central thesis destroyed by the small and frankly uniquely weird country of Switzerland. Switzerland is a country that has done very well for its people, but the lessons which have kept it stable and safe over the past two centuries (have a lot of mountains, and don't be worth invading) are not ones which extrapolate out.

And let's be honest -- Switzerland was not functionally independent in WWII. It wasn't necessary to invade, because they did whatever the Third Reich wanted with their stolen gold and borders. This is not the stability I am looking for.

Re:How the Hell Do You Govern in a Complex World by joubert on Monday February 15, 2021 @12:49AM (#26139525)
> Switzerland is a country that has done very well for its people, but the lessons which have kept it stable and safe over the past two centuries (have a lot of mountains, and don't be worth invading) are not ones which extrapolate out.

Would you say that Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political thought has been valuable and influential in the world?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau

Re:How the Hell Do You Govern in a Complex World by crumbshot on Monday February 15, 2021 @12:51AM (#26139534)
> Even if you do count from the end of the civil war, I would not consider my central thesis destroyed by the small and frankly uniquely weird country of Switzerland.

What exactly is your central thesis? It sounds like you're presenting an argument of American exceptionalism, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point here.