International What can the world learn from the US?

Belaya Smert said:
Not to watch Michael Moore propaganda is one thing i learned in my time here.
I would probably say preservation of natural wonders. The National Park System and rural living.
Click to expand...
Lol anyone that watch his films and gives it thoughts… many years ago I watched one and was like wow that’s crazy then I did research a lot of half truths mixed with his political propaganda
 
jx820 said:
Our constitution is a remarkable document. In point of fact the whole world did learn from the US on this front and many if not most nations have looked to it in setting up their governments.

One of the things I think the average person fails to see the brilliance of is that it was devised in a way where it can be changed as times change, but it's VERY difficult to do, so it can't be done flippantly.
Click to expand...
Having a constitution (aka your laws written down) is good. Making it almost impossible to change no matter how dysfunctional or silly is bad, hence most countries didn't bother copying the U.S. constitution as a whole.
 
Belaya Smert said:
Not to watch Michael Moore propaganda is one thing i learned in my time here.
I would probably say preservation of natural wonders. The National Park System and rural living.
Click to expand...

EVERYTHING is propaganda... so not watching it basically means you're sticking your head in the sand.

IMO the best tact is to watch everything from every side and form your own opinion.. avoiding one set of opinions is what the propagandist want.

Moore has a strong political opinion and is just doing his best to support his side, factually he's pretty responsible, unlike D'souza and others which seem to just make crap up... I'd put Moore in the same category as walsh, but far a better filmmaker.
 
They can learn to not lose the reigns of, or even institute in the first place, an intelligence agency with absolutely zero civilian or military oversight.
 
avenue94 said:
Having a constitution (aka your laws written down) is good. Making it almost impossible to change no matter how dysfunctional or silly is bad, hence most countries didn't bother copying the U.S. constitution as a whole.
Click to expand...

It's not "almost impossible to change no matter how dysfunctional". It's been ammended 27 times. Almost impossible things don't happen 27 times in 201 years.

It IS almost impossible to change without significant support for that change. That's a good thing. It obliges us to take foundational change seriously.
 
avenue94 said:
Having a constitution (aka your laws written down) is good. Making it almost impossible to change no matter how dysfunctional or silly is bad, hence most countries didn't bother copying the U.S. constitution as a whole.
Click to expand...
The UK system of an unwritten in one single document constitution has also been doing fine.
In fact, I think a lot of the mythology surrounding US democracy is just that, mythology.
They were Englishmen and the UK was already a democracy by the standards of the time. The US as created was less democratic than England at the time, with slavery and what not.
If the US had the Westminster system it would do just fine.
 
jx820 said:
It's not "almost impossible to change no matter how dysfunctional". It's been ammended 27 times. Almost impossible things don't happen 27 times in 201 years.

It IS almost impossible to change without significant support for that change. That's a good thing. It obliges us to take foundational change seriously.
Click to expand...
There hasn't been a substantive amendment in over 50 years, that's pretty bad, unless you think the constitution has been great since then.

And that's the problem, tying one of the amending routes to states, regardless of population, is a terrible idea from a pure functional perspective.
 
Cuauhtemoc said:
The UK system of an unwritten in one single document constitution has also been doing fine.
Click to expand...
I seem to recall it causing a near institutional crisis a few years ago when Boris wanted to prorogue Parliament? At any rate, I don't think there is any real advantage to not writing down your constitution.
Cuauhtemoc said:
In fact, I think a lot of the mythology surrounding US democracy is just that, mythology.
Click to expand...
No disagreements with me, it's pretty bad how it's taught in schools.
Cuauhtemoc said:
If the US had the Westminster system it would do just fine.
Click to expand...
I dunno about that but there isn't any reason the Westminster system isn't a valid or better fit for many countries.
Cuauhtemoc said:
The US as created was less democratic than England at the time, with slavery and what not.
Click to expand...
In some way yes, in some ways no. Universal white male suffrage in the U.S. was actually far earlier than in the UK, for whatever that is worth.
 
Cuauhtemoc said:
The UK system of an unwritten in one single document constitution has also been doing fine.
In fact, I think a lot of the mythology surrounding US democracy is just that, mythology.
They were Englishmen and the UK was already a democracy by the standards of the time. The US as created was less democratic than England at the time, with slavery and what not.
If the US had the Westminster system it would do just fine.
Click to expand...
Thing is I think that system only works with monarchy as its sustained by certain social norms and traditions which coalesce around the royal family.

You're right that the democratic nature of the American Revolution is overstated though. When they wrote "all men were created equal" it was mainly a statement against aristocratic privilege. But in general America is a conservative republic and only become more inclusive within the last hundred years.

A lot of what makes the US great can't really be emulated since its due to geography. We're loaded with strategic resources, arable land, navigable waterways, and we have massive coastlines on both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. That alone would make any country strong if it can remain in tact.

As far as what other countries can learn from us, I think our less centralized constitutional structure could be a good model for ethnically/linguistically/religiously diverse post-colonial states. Lots of them struggle with the fact that while being diverse, they have a centralized state structure that can be captured by one group to the detriment of the rest. If only a few people in the capital control all the guns in the country its easier to create a dictatorship.

Funny thing is when the US invades countries like that(Iraq, Afghanistan) it tends to want to impose a very centralized state structure as those are easier to control as a puppet state.
 
The right to bear arms.
 
avenue94 said:
There hasn't been a substantive amendment in over 50 years, that's pretty bad, unless you think the constitution has been great since then.

And that's the problem, tying one of the amending routes to states, regardless of population, is a terrible idea from a pure functional perspective.
Click to expand...

I genuinely think it's been pretty great.

I can think of things I'd like to see added, but I don't know that they need to be added.

For example, I'd personally like gay rights to be writen into the constitution. Specifically protections for gay marriage. However, in Obergefell vs Hodges, the US Supreme Court determined that those protections already exist in the constitution. Why add something that's already in there? But just in case we ever get 5 religious crazies on the bench who would overturn an established precedent, the Senaate is planning a vote to codify it into law as an additional protection. So again. It's not looking like it's needed.

The counter point to that is that 20 years ago a bunch of crazies (not the least of which being President George W. Bush) wanted to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage. If we had foolishly designed our constitution to be easily ammended we would have used the foundational law of our entire government to take people's rights away.

This is the brilliance of making change possible, but extremely challenging. The same way you shouldn't casually modify the foundation of your house, the way you might modify an upstairs closet. You don't fuck with the foundation of a government they way you might a local zoming ordinance.
 
Prutfis said:
Living in Denmark we could definently learn something from Americans friendliness and being more open.. Other than that? Nothing really. Everything is better here.
Click to expand...
Sounds pretty racist tbh.
 
avenue94 said:
I seem to recall it causing a near institutional crisis a few years ago when Boris wanted to prorogue Parliament? At any rate, I don't think there is any real advantage to not writing down your constitution.

No disagreements with me, it's pretty bad how it's taught in schools.

I dunno about that but there isn't any reason the Westminster system isn't a valid or better fit for many countries.

In some way yes, in some ways no. Universal white male suffrage in the U.S. was actually far earlier than in the UK, for whatever that is worth.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure, I've read some poor whites couldn't vote before 1965 too, but I guess these were few. I've read white britons could vote since 1791, although I guess some minority groups couldn't vote. But I think in the whole it was mostly a continuation of what you had in the UK.
A superficial read of the American Revolution would make some people think the Americans were fighting against an absolutist king ruling over a group of medieval serfs.
Compared to most of Europe the English had a more developed democracy that they brought to America and it developed somewhat differently but mostly in parallel. Americans kept slavery while the UK abolished it because it was important to American society while the UK kept advantages for the nobility because it was part of their society.
 
HARRISON_3 said:
Chicago deep dish pizza
Giordano_s.0.jpeg
Click to expand...
Also... this.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

G
International CECOT documentary pulled hours before scheduled airing in the US - see the recording from Canada here
3 4 5
Replies
99
Views
2K
Sinister
Sinister

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
1,280,677
Messages
58,311,120
Members
175,997
Latest member
joshvegas

Share this page

Back
Top