Nor does the “constitution” support your view. Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
What you’re calling “democracy” and the “constitution” is neither. It’s Wilsonianism, an idea invented by a eugenicist who hated the constitution as well as democracy: https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-c...
I was not defining democracy. I was describing the common real-world usage of the term, which has a more specific meaning than simple majority rule. It is commonly used as a shorthand for "liberal democracy". Some Americans use "republic" for the same concept, but that's misleading in other ways. Partly because some countries that are commonly understood to be liberal democracies are constitutional monarchies. And partly because some actual republics (such as North Korea or the member states of the former USSR) do not match the concept particularly well.
I was also not talking about any specific constitution, but constitutions in general. They all come with implicit and explicit assumptions that must hold, or the system will not work as intended. If some entities are supposed to function as checks and balances to each other, they are expected to remain independent. If they choose to collude instead, nobody is capable of stopping them if they decide to twist the constitution beyond recognition or outright break it.
I said that a constitution on its own is worthless. That means a constitution cannot enforce itself. There must be some people who are capable and willing to enforce it. But if they are capable of enforcing the constitution, they are also capable of breaking it. Which means there must be other people capable and willing to act as checks and balances. And so on. The system may work as long as those people act within the expectations, complying with both the spirit and the letter of the constitution. But if they reject the expectations and start looking for loopholes to take advantage of, they may find some. If that becomes too common, the constitution becomes worthless, because the people who are supposed to enforce it no longer believe in it.
I do agree with the general gist of the point you are making however. The Constitution itself holds no special power, it is the State's monopoly on violence that does.
Of course unrestrained majority decisions lead to terrible outcomes. This is well understood, and has been demonstrated over and over recently (think Brexit.)
Democracy is objectively a flawed system for this reason. It has never promised to deliver the best, or even good, government. It is what it is.
I agree, this is a literal interpretation of democracy. It is "the will of the people". I'm not sure that anything else could still be even called a democracy.
That is a matter of opinion. Most of what is terrible about Brexit is "the media hate it". Economic outcomes have been in line with comparable EU countries so the promised "project fear" disaster (e.g. the Treasury prediction of a collapse of the economy in the wake of a vote for Brexit - not even on implementation) did not happen.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80772140f0b...
Attempting to run a democracy in a non-literal way seems like a recipe for disaster.
That seems to imply that citizens get to cast a vote and have their voice heard...unless those in charge decide the citizens don't know what is best for them.
As a country we picked Trump. For better or worse we made that bed and we now have to lie in it.
What is not tenable today, or ever, is firing the people with these skills every four years and re-hiring replacements, to the extent that this happens at all, based on ideological tests.
This was a huge problem in the first Trump administration: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-burea.... Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now? If that’s genuinely the case, then there’s a place for the idea of a neutral civil service. But I don’t believe that’s the case, and that’s an unacceptable state of affairs.
This is precisely what lawyers do. They try to make the best argument for their client's case. If they do not want to make that argument, they let their client find a new lawyer (resign, if they work for the government). They don't make a shitty case because they think their client is wrong. (That being said, they cannot lie without professional repercussions.)
P.S. There were no mass immigration policies under Biden. You have been misinformed.
And yes, Biden enacted mass immigration policies. Revoking Trump’s EOs was one of the first things he did: https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_biden-signs-executive-orders-r.... He also granted TPS to hundreds of thousands of immigrants, created the CBP One app to facilitate illegal immigration, etc.
This isn’t even really disputed. Border crossings are already down 60%: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-era-southern-border-s.... Migrant shelters are being shut down, migrant caravans are being turned around, etc.
Yes - every lawyer I’ve met considers it their professional obligation to work on their client’s behalf, even if it’s behaviour they personally disapprove of. This is especially true in government where the merit-based civil service is centered on following laws and policy.
Biden didn’t have those scary-sounding “mass immigration policies” - he asked Congress to pass much-needed reform but limited his actions to what was authorized under existing law.
Reversing Trump’s immigration policies is one of the first things Biden did: https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_biden-signs-executive-orders-r...
Your second link supports my point: there were changes between administrations but many of the people who worked for Trump also worked for Biden, and they followed the policies given by the current president. That’s the role you accept in that job, trying to interpret those policy directives under the various applicable laws, and everyone who applies to be a civil servant knows that this can mean big changes from administration to administration.
I'd be worried about the Chesterton's Fence problem when removing bureaucracy simply because we don't like that it gets in our way.
It’s also incorrect to assume that the bureaucracy averages out to the same place as the public. Public support for increasing immigration, for example, peaked at 35%. It’s never been popular. But we have been getting more of it for decades: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...
They design a federal government that was purposely hamstrung by the states. It was poorly funded, had no standing military, only briefly had a federal bank, and had very limited purview of authority that didn't fall down to the state level.
If we want to remove bureaucracy while also rolling back many of the federal powers created over the last century or so I'd be all for it.
Removing one without the other either seems pointless (bureaucracy without authority) or risky (authority without bureaucracy) in my opinion.
That makes it more, not less, important for that expansive government to be highly responsive to elections.
For what reasons should the government be expected to shift dramatically every election?
Personally my argument would be that the government's authority should be limited enough that it doesn't have to change very much every election.
I don't know that I've ever actually heard someone talk about the "deep state" to refer to career bureaucrats just doing their jobs in large government orgs / a messy system.
Sarcasm aside, I'm seeing a lot of wackiness on both sides of the political spectrum lately. The Constitution is fine and provides provisions for changing it via amendments. You guys aren't involved in the political process at all, I caucused and was a delegate so I can tell you the system is fine and working as intended. Don't complain about it if you aren't even involved in the process. That just makes you look silly.
* Drop the electoral collage * Proportional and/or preferential voting * Term limits/retirement ages * An independent electoral organisation with real teeth to prevent gerrymandering (and verify the election) * Free and easy voter IDs (if ID are ever required) * All election days are public holidays, with requirements to allow workers on the day to vote * Compulsory voting (works in AU) * Minimum number of polling booths per X people * Absentee voting * Changing to a parliamentary system where the president is a figurehead
But there is no such thing as an “independent electoral organization.” The Framers never credited the idea of an “independent” body that could be trusted to be somehow “above politics.” That’s why the constitutional government is like a game of rock paper scissors. Everything can be checked by everything else.
The credentialed elites are the Ivy League graduates who go work for government and do things like have the SBA make loans to minorities that white people aren’t eligible for: https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/court-rules-biden-admin-di.... They’re the ones who see, for example, immigration and affirmative action as moral causes—even though most voters oppose both—and have injected those ideas into all our government programs, corporate HR, etc.
What happened is that a plurality of voters decided that they’d rather have billionaire industrialists in charge than the Ivy League pencil pushers.
Also, Elon Musk is the richest elite in the world so it seems we already are at the bottom of the problem.
From Gallup [0]—top issues among all registered voters:
The economy
Democracy in the U.S.
Terrorism and national security
Types of Supreme Court justices candidates would pick
Immigration
Education
Healthcare
Gun policy
Abortion
^^Taxes
Crime
Distribution of income and wealth in the U.S.
^^The federal budget deficit
Foreign affairs
Situation in Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians
Energy policy
Relations with Russia
Race relations
Relations with China
Trade with other nations
Climate change
Transgender rights
^^Items under which "firing all federal workers" could conceivably fit, and that's a massive stretch. Still, even with that generosity granted, they're 10th and 13th on the list.
[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/651719/economy-important-issue-...
And I think this is -- at least for now -- actually a good thing. Because if we could rewrite the constitution, I suspect it would be rewritten by the same kind of people who wrote the Project 2025 playbook.
Democracy had a bad reputation in the ancient world, because unconstrained majority decisions often led to terrible outcomes. In the modern world, democracy usually means liberal democracy, which includes things like the rule of law and constitutional protections. As a rough approximation, a constitution exists to prevent the government from doing what the voters want.
A constitution in itself a worthless document, and the checks and balances have no power. The power comes from conventions. Conventions on how the constitution should be interpreted and how the people in power should act within the constitutional framework. If too many people ignore the conventions and interpret the laws and regulations literally to their advantage, democracy will die. It died in the Roman Republic, and it has died in many modern republics. Plenty of authoritarian states maintain nominally democratic institutions. And many of them became like that in a way that was at least nominally legal.