Happy (?) birthday America! - the Constitution and Authoritarianism
At 250 years old, the birth year of the United States of America also marked the important ratification of the US Constitution, a pillar so crucial for the persistence of a governance system already two centuries old. Yet, like a single woman entering her thirties, something more sinister looms in the background: the cementing of an administration unashamed of its publicized authoritarian ambitions. At the crossroads of two significant turns in American history, it is perhaps critical to examine their relationship, and possibly how one has 'laid the groundwork,' so to speak, for the other. To say it straightforwardly, the US Constitution and its federal branches of government have intrinsic antidemocratic dispositions that, other than being incapable of reining in the demagogic thirst of a president, buttress this overreach of executive power. Washington Crossing Delaware (1851) . From Wikipedia The antidemocratic flaws of the Constitution, firstly, are linked to the antidemoc...