This is an obviously impossible burden to load on someone, and I think you know that. If democracy is legitimately lost in America, it will happen via a series of events that we today cannot conceive of.
It is more useful to think events like the Capitol incident as causing long-lasting damage to democracy, and there is a non-negligible possibility that societal schisms will widen, as opposed to heal. What that will look like in the future is anybody's guess.
> t is more useful to think events like the Capitol incident as causing long-lasting damage to democracy, and there is a non-negligible possibility that societal schisms will widen, as opposed to heal. What that will look like in the future is anybody's guess.
What are you willing to give up politically to heal societal schisms?
I wonder if one of the big issues is that lately control of government is so flip floppy that no one gives up anything because they figure they'll have control soon enough. From the mid 30s to late 70s, Democrats had full control of congress for all but 4 years. The national Republican party had to change A LOT in that time to be relevant. Since HW Bush the longest period has been I dunno, 4 years? 6 years?
How about that one side stops peddling conspiracy theories and following every idiot that promises them what they want to hear in terms of gun rights, abortion and immigration.
Compromise = fact based middle ground between reasonable people. When one side consistently treats politics like winner-takes-all and lies out of their asses to get to power and to stay in power then the burden to compromise would be on them.
So the answer is, you want to win rather than heal political schisms. Which is a perfectly fine answer! But that's the approach the other side has taken also, and well here we are.
Politics isn't about rationality or facts or what one side thinks is "reasonable." Nobody approaches the Israel/Palestine conflict by asking "well who has the more rational argument here?" That would be silly. Politics is about power, and appeasing (or not) different factions.
Politics is all about facts and rationality, if it isn't then it will quickly cause your country of choice to slide down into the gutter of irrelevance. The essence of politics in democratic countries is people trying to self-govern with some kind of optimum outcome for the largest number of people involved.
And the Israel/Palestine conflict would improve lots if people started using facts rather than 'might makes right'.
Politics is only about power in some parts of the world, in other parts of the world people are actually trying to get along with each other.
The parts of the world you’re talking about are mostly ethnostates, tied together by deep cultural, linguistic, and historical bonds. Those things create the basic framework from which people can have rational, fact-based discussions.
The US doesn’t have that. My wife says we’re a “credo country” but it’s not clear to me we share much in the way of credo anymore either. Senator Ed Markey says the constitution, the closest thing we have to a social contract, is “racist, sexist, and homophobic.” What does someone in Kansas have in common with Ed Markey? A superficial consumer and television culture? What binds them together when they disagree intensely on policy?
Where I live is not exactly a country tied together in that way. And yet, we have plenty of immigrants, first and second generation in politics. We also have the backlash against that, roughly equivalent to the position the Republican party in the USA takes.
But that doesn't mean that the USA needs to have a fact-free Republican party, it could easily change if it really wanted to, at the expense of not being in power for a couple of decades. It's the difference between John McCain and Donald Trump, the one a principled politician who believed lots of things that I would not subscribe to but who was fundamentally a decent human being. Trump is not a decent human being, never was and never will be and his legacy has the power to utterly divide and destroy the United States.
Coalition governments are a lot safer in that that respect because they take away the insane power of the small fraction that decides who is king in the USA. There also is a real problem with the president having as much power as they do.
I see the USA - as one of the oldest democracies - as deeply flawed, with a thin critical path to fixing itself. If it doesn't then one day maybe sooner, maybe later, it will fall apart in either two or maybe even three countries (2x coastal, mid). That will cause a lot of grief so better to avoid that fate, which will require some major overhauling of the constitution and some power removed from the states.
Time will tell, for all my friends alive in the USA right now I sincerely hope that this can be postponed long enough that the country can first heal from the last attempt at splitting it.
> But that doesn't mean that the USA needs to have a fact-free Republican party, it could easily change if it really wanted to, at the expense of not being in power for a couple of decades.
If Democrats held power for a couple of decades, the country would be unrecognizable. Take, for example, the issue of religion. Americans are the most religious developed country by far—comparable to Iran. This drives Democrats crazy, and through the period during which they controlled the Supreme Court based on FDR’s appointments, they turned America into one of the most secular countries in the world in terms of the law. European countries far less religious than the US have far more public accommodation for things like religious instruction in schools. Imagine going into Poland or Hungary and declaring that Christianity has to be removed from schools, like in France. It doesn’t matter what you think of these policies. What do you think the societal reaction would be to that?
Or take abortion. Most of Europe’s abortion laws (in most countries, prohibiting abortions after 10-14 weeks absent some exigent circumstance) would be unconstitutional in the US under Roe. (Even Sweden’s 18 week limit would be unconstitutional.) Imagine, again, going into Poland and telling them that they have to have the same abortion laws as the Netherlands. (Even France is too conservative for this hypothetical.) Again, forget what you think of the policy. How would that play out as a matter of social and political dynamics?
> It's the difference between John McCain and Donald Trump, the one a principled politician who believed lots of things that I would not subscribe to but who was fundamentally a decent human being. Trump is not a decent human being, never was and never will be and his legacy has the power to utterly divide and destroy the United States.
I agree that McCain was a decent person and Trump is a very bad person. But apart from that, McCain wasn’t selling what Americans actually wanted. The Republican base is socially conservative, economically moderate, and wants the party to push back in cultural change. (Again, let’s keep in mind that America is conservative like Poland, not liberal like France.) McCain didn’t fight for any of those things. Trump, for all of his faults, was willing to do that. It’s unfortunate that he’s such a bad, undisciplined person, but there is a reason he got the second highest vote total of any President in history.
> Coalition governments are a lot safer in that that respect because they take away the insane power of the small fraction that decides who is king in the USA. There also is a real problem with the president having as much power as they do.
I agree Presidential systems are bad and encourage cults of personality.
> I see the USA - as one of the oldest democracies - as deeply flawed, with a thin critical path to fixing itself. If it doesn't then one day maybe sooner, maybe later, it will fall apart in either two or maybe even three countries (2x coastal, mid). That will cause a lot of grief so better to avoid that fate, which will require some major overhauling of the constitution and some power removed from the states. Time will tell, for all my friends alive in the USA right now I sincerely hope that this can be postponed long enough that the country can first heal from the last attempt at splitting it.
People say they don’t want the US to split, but nobody actually wants to do anything to prevent that. To circle back to my example, imagine your country is half Poland and half France and each side ends up governing about half the time. How would that turn out? Democrats don’t moderate themselves (on social and religious issues—the party self moderates on economic issues to keep its coalition together) because they’re convinced that they’re just one or two elections away from “demographic destiny.” And even if that’s true, France governing Poland by a permanent 53-47 margin isn’t going to lead to a happy unified country.
> If Democrats held power for a couple of decades, the country would be unrecognizable. Take, for example, the issue of religion. Americans are the most religious developed country by far—comparable to Iran. This drives Democrats crazy, and through the period during which they controlled the Supreme Court based on FDR’s appointments, they turned America into one of the most secular countries in the world in terms of the law. European countries far less religious than the US have far more public accommodation for things like religious instruction in schools. Imagine going into Poland or Hungary and declaring that Christianity has to be removed from schools, like in France. It doesn’t matter what you think of these policies. What do you think the societal reaction would be to that?
This isn't factual. Italy for example is more religious than the US. Germany, France and the UK are comparable to the US (each have ~25-28% nonreligious, compared to 25% in the US). Poland, to use your example, is 85% Christian and 8% nonreligious. Hungary is 20% nonreligious, and close to 75% Christian (60% Catholic).
The comparatively religious countries are approximately as secular. The US isn't unique here.
Also, it's worth noting that the constitutions of Poland and Hungary establish national religions. The Polish constitution specifically protects religious education in public schools, and the Hungarian constitution defines life to begin at conception.
The US on the other hand doesn't have that. The establishment clause doesn't have those carve outs. And as to your claim that the FDR court made the US particularly secular, I don't see that. Public funding for religious education had already been well established to be unconstitutional (with the majority of states having banned it explicitly in the 1800s). It's difficult to tell how common religious education in the style of McCollum was during the early 20th century, but I can't find anything to suggest that it was the norm in public schools.
> If Democrats held power for a couple of decades, the country would be unrecognizable.
You haven't described what, in particular, Democrats would do. What anti-religion policy do you suggest democrats would do if they held power for several decades (and, presuming that democrats were able to hold power for several decades, would this be any different than other similarly secular nations?)
The best example I can think of requires conflating Abortion policy as anti-religion policy, which it isn't, in the same way that legalizing gay marriage isn't anti-religious.
Americans are far more ardent practitioners of religion: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/01/with-high-l.... In terms of people who pray daily, the US is over 50%, comparable to Bangladesh (a country where the dominant religion requires praying five times a day!). Germany is around 10%. Even Poland is only at 30%. Think of the laws in Poland. Abortion is mostly illegal. Same sex marriage is illegal. How would Poles react if the European Court of Human Rights overturned abortion laws in Poland?
As to what Democrats would do—we already have examples. FDR-appointed Supreme Courts interpreted the Establishment Clause to create a “wall of separation” prohibiting, for example, things like optional religious instruction in public schools, or public support of religious schools. These things are quite common in Europe.
Abortion is another example. While European countries left abortion to voters (with comparably religious countries like Poland still prohibiting it) the Supreme Court created a constitutional abortion right so broad it rendered illegal many limits and compromises voters even in liberal counties like France have embraced. Voters in France only recently liberalized waiting periods, and those are still required in Germany. In the US, those have been unconstitutional for decades.
Going forward, I would expect major changes to include extremely divisive measures such as mass amnesty (which Biden just stated will be a top priority). Also entrenchment of public unions, and federal bailouts of blue state public pension funds.
On the legal side, I’d expect a war on religious exemptions. Countries like Germany have moved slowly on areas like adoption by same-sex couples. In the US, meanwhile, there is a movement to push out religious-affiliated adoption agencies that cannot, consistent with their faith, place children with same-sex couples. In another example, Democratic activist organizations are pushing the Department of Education to pull accreditation of religious schools that teach traditional views of marriage. By contrast in many European countries, religious schools are eligible to receive tax dollars from school vouchers.
I’d also expect another major battleground to be the discrimination laws. Liberals deem “race blind” approaches like those taken in France to be “racist.” In 2014, to liberal Justices voted to overturn a Michigan law that prohibited schools from giving preferences to certain students based on race. These sorts of preferences are unpopular with the public (including with racial minorities) but championed by progressive educators. I’d expect the Supreme Court’s existing standards on discrimination, which embody traditional “race blind” approaches, to be a target if Democrats ever won a Supreme Court majority.
No, that graph shows that Americans are far more Protestant. Weekly church attendance by Christians in Poland and the US are both 41% (actually another source shows ~55% attendance in Poland), given that Poland has comparatively more Christians, weekly attendance overall is higher too. Catholicism places a greater emphasis on weekly mass as compared to the informal daily prayer more common in protestant, and specifically in US Evangelical, Christianity. I'll admit that Hungary is less, their church attendance is lower.
> As to what Democrats would do—we already have examples. FDR-appointed Supreme Courts interpreted the Establishment Clause to create a “wall of separation” prohibiting, for example, things like optional religious instruction in public schools, or public support of religious schools. These things are quite common in Europe.
I made a major edit to my prior comment, which I'll summarize here: the two nations you cite have constitutional callouts for state sponsorship of religion and state religious education. So this comparison isn't apt. The constitutional axioms in the US and Poland or Hungary are totally different. They aren't secular nations, and the things you describe aren't common in secular nations in Europe.
And there was understanding that the establishment clause banned state support of public schools in the 19th century. McCollumn wasn't a particular leftward shift, it was an enshrinement of longstanding practice.
> Abortion is another example.
What changes would you expect to Abortion policy? I'd expect to see things continue roughly in line with Roe. Again, your contention was changes. I'm asking about changes.
> mass amnesty
Polling suggests that between 80 and 90% of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants in the US. This number has been relatively consistent over the past 10 years. Search "over a period of time" on this page: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx (there's, admittedly, weird effects based on the specific question, but the gist is clear).
> Also entrenchment of public unions
I've seen very limited (and only very particularly targeted) support of public unions from the left. Consider that police unions are not particularly loved at the moment.
> Liberals deem “race blind” approaches like those taken in France to be “racist.”
Only contextually. I'd expect, for example, that a race blind application process in France would be less (or, at least, differently) racially biased than a race blind application process in the US.
> Countries like Germany have moved slowly on areas like adoption by same-sex couples.
This seems to be a matter of it being perfectly legal (with some issues around surrogacy), but bias/conservative sentiment among bureaucrats in charge of administering the process that leads to it being slow. Still bad, but it doesn't appear to prevent a gay couple from adopting. And of course, France and the UK are already well ahead of us.
The crux of this line of argumentation (and your general lines of argumentation when we have similar discussions) seem to be that we should take Poland and Hungary, and other ex-soviet nations as examples of how the US should legislate. I don't get that. Do you think there's anyone in the US, Republican or Democrat, who thinks "yes, our jurisprudence and social norms should be modeled on two ex-Soviet states one of which is so unstable that it had its constitution rewritten a decade ago, and the other had a constitutional crisis in 2015 and has been called a "failed" democracy as a result?"
I don't understand why you keep pointing to those nations as good examples of anything. Like, when you describe things this way, my takeaway is "the us would continue to be socially moderate among western european nations, and more liberal than eastern european ones". That's, well, yes. And sure, there's some particular cases where the US is exceptional: guns (I note you didn't mention these), abortion, church taxes. But so what?
> No, that graph shows that Americans are far more Protestant.
Weekly church attendance in the U.S. is far higher than in Western Europe: https://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment.... The U.S. is at 36%. (That ranges from 21% in Vermont to 53% in Utah.) According to Pew, Germany is at 10%. France is at 12%. The U.S. is much closer to Turkey or Iran in religiosity by that measure than to Western Europe.
> They aren't secular nations, and the things you describe aren't common in secular nations in Europe.
The U.S. isn't a "secular nation" either. The "Establishment Clause" prohibits Congress from establishing a national church, just like Article 137 of the Weimar Constitution in Germany (which is still in effect). At the time the Establishment Clause was written, and for decades after, a number of states, like Massachusetts, had established state churches! Public schools in the U.S. were invented to teach religion, and did so for 150 years until FDR-appointed Justices enshrined a "wall of separation" notion into the constitution.
To use the school example, the enforced secularism in the US is comparable to France, and to the left of the UK, Spain, Germany, or Italy. But the US is vastly more religious than any of those countries. There is a major impedance mismatch between our society and our laws, that was created by the Supreme Court. (57% of Americans still oppose that Supreme Court decision banning school prayer, all of these decades later.)
> And there was understanding that the establishment clause banned state support of public schools in the 19th century. McCollumn wasn't a particular leftward shift, it was an enshrinement of longstanding practice.
McCollum was a dramatic departure. Justice Story made clear in 1830 that the constitution was not understood to prohibit non-preferential government support of religion: https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_re.... What happens in say Germany, where Muslim children can get Islamic instruction in schools, and Catholic children can get Catholic instruction in schools, is squarely within what is allowable under an original understanding of the Establishment Clause.
> Abortion is another example.
What changes would you expect to Abortion policy? I'd expect to see things continue roughly in line with Roe.
Roe is already a significant departure from American and European public opinion (under 30% of people in the U.S. support generally legal abortion in the second trimester and beyond, which is mandatory under Roe, most people support various restrictions and waiting periods which are impermissible under Roe). I would anticipate further efforts to strike down popular restrictions such as parental consent rules, which are not atypical in Europe.
> I've seen very limited (and only very particularly targeted) support of public unions from the left. Consider that police unions are not particularly loved at the moment.
Biden, thanks to Jill Biden, is hugely supportive of teachers unions. Democrats have advocated for shutting down charter schools, which are broadly popular.
> The crux of this line of argumentation (and your general lines of argumentation when we have similar discussions) seem to be that we should take Poland and Hungary, and other ex-soviet nations as examples of how the US should legislate. I don't get that.
No, you miss the point entirely. I'm not talking about how the U.S. should or should not legislate. I'm talking about how Democrats have and want to legislate in the U.S., by comparison to European countries that have similarly high levels of religiosity to the U.S. This isn't a discussion of policy, but of the polarized political dynamics in the U.S. My point is that, particularly due to the Supreme Court taking various decisions on social issues away from the electorate, the laws in the U.S. with respect to churches, abortion, etc., are much further to the left compared to other highly religious countries.
The point is to try and understand how that is driving political polarization in the U.S. Hence the hypothetical about what if we applied French-style secularism to a country as religious as Poland. How would we expect Poles to react? And does that give us any insight into the current situation in the US?
> Weekly church attendance in the U.S. is far higher than in Western Europe
Yes, but we were talking about western Europe, like Poland and Hungary.
> The U.S. isn't a "secular nation" either. The "Establishment Clause" prohibits Congress from establishing a national church, just like Article 137 of the Weimar Constitution in Germany
Yes, but we were talking about Poland and Hungary, not Germany. Poland and Hungary's constitutions establish national religious law. I would consider Germany to be secular, like the US, as opposed to Poland or Hungary, which are not.
> Justice Story made clear in 1830 that the constitution was not understood to prohibit non-preferential government support of religion
However, throughout the later 1800s, a majority of states (and nearly the nation as a whole) passed Blaine amendments, banning the use of public funds for private religious schools. Now this might have been driven in part by anti-catholic sentiment, but no, I don't think you can claim that the court adopting an interpretation that most states already had adopted was a "dramatic departure". Perhaps legally, but not in terms of popular support/understanding.
> particularly due to the Supreme Court taking various decisions on social issues away from the electorate, the laws in the U.S. with respect to churches, abortion, etc.
Right, and this is unambiguously a good thing. Laws shouldn't be based on religious ethics.
> And does that give us any insight into the current situation in the US?
Honestly, I don't see how it does. Trump's brand of populism isn't particularly religious. His appeal to the religious right wasn't much beyond "I'll appoint conservative judges". It's much more nationalist than religious (and I'll grant you that those two things are often intertwined, but that seems to be more because conservatives are often the ones stoking nationalist sentiment, and also they're usually more religious, I don't think religion necessitates nationalism).
> I’m trying to figure out if anyone actually want to heal societal schisms? And the measure of that is what folks are willing to compromise on?
...you reply:
> How about that one side stops peddling conspiracy theories and following every idiot that promises them what they want to hear in terms of gun rights, abortion and immigration.
...which involves no compromise on your part.
> Compromise = fact based middle ground between reasonable people.
> When one side consistently treats politics like winner-takes-all and lies out of their asses to get to power and to stay in power then the burden to compromise would be on them.
Perhaps, if this was an accurate description of reality.
But for the sake of discussion, let's say that this characterization is indeed correct - if you could influence Democratic party strategy, and behavior of their followers, would your recommendation be to stick with the same general approach of the last decade, including generous deployment of misleading rhetoric like:
> How about that one side stops peddling conspiracy theories and following every idiot that promises them what they want to hear in terms of gun rights, abortion and immigration.
(Which also may run afoul of your "[fact based] middle ground between [reasonable people]" statement above.)
I don't agree. Healing societal schisms is about reestablishing a vision of politics where you argue by saying "here's why this is the best policy" or "here's why this is the most ethical policy", rather than "my movement is very strong and you'd better not get in our way". Making compromises is an important part of effective governance, but it won't by itself heal anything.
What do you think we should compromise on? (Asking because curious, and from the long thread that followed this it seemed like you'd actually have an opinion).
I think compromising on immigration would have the biggest effect on defusing tensions.
I think Biden is doing an admirable job keeping a lid on the reprisal/deprogramming talk. The media should follow his lead. Obama's administration fought a bunch of gratuitious fights, like suing nuns. I anticipate Biden will keep people on a tighter leash, just as a longtime legislator who is going to be thinking harder about the fights he wants to pick.
It is more useful to think events like the Capitol incident as causing long-lasting damage to democracy, and there is a non-negligible possibility that societal schisms will widen, as opposed to heal. What that will look like in the future is anybody's guess.