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The End of the First American Republic. The Rise of the Second. Part 1. [1]
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Date: 2025-03-09
The end of a constitutional order is no small thing. No matter how bad things have been, they can always get worse, and usually do after the existing system has fallen. Talented people often flee, the economy takes a nosedive, debt piles up, and the new regime, even if popularly-based, often imposes harsh measures to maintain order. Nor does changing the legal framework under which society operates solve the problems that lead to the end of a constitutional order: typically, bad faith, contempt for the citizenry, and terrible economic conditions. So, this diary does not advocate for a change of constitutional order, nor does it predict that one will happen. And yet the accumulating damage to the US Constitution is becoming so severe that that major changes are inevitable. As Josh Marshall has said, we are in an “interregnum in which we are grappling with a renegade, corrupt court operating outside the constitutional order as well as a renegade and lawless president”[1].
The right, of course, envisions a return to a golden past in which, depending on which of them one listens to the law is biblically based (generally implying second-class status for women), northern European ethnicity is privileged over all others, there’s little to no regulation of corporations with the burden of taxation falling on the general population, and American military and economic force is used to create an endless frontier of expansion. On to Mars!
Many of these visions are mutually exclusive. None of them are stable, no matter the level of repression employed, for one simple reason: they are economically inefficient. China and India have large, more or less ethnically and religiously homogeneous populations from which to draw the talent that produces economic growth. By contrast, the US relies on heterogeneous sources of talent. This has created the stable yet dynamic economy we have enjoyed because—at least when executed properly—the strategy of attracting immigrants draws both low-wage and high-skill labor from other economies, creating a balance of necessary skills. Bringing women into the workforce doubled the talent pool. The same efficiency gain applies to the end of Jim Crow and other forms of discrimination. Setting political loyalty tests, as the Trump Administration is doing, shrinks the sources of talent and reduces the breadth of ideas considered. Shifting the burden of taxation downward weakens growth and the dynamic retail marketplace we have. And democracy has reduced the number of big, destructive conflicts that waste resources in favor of less destructive quarrels. In short, democracy and pluralism have gradually—though not unidirectionally-- displaced authoritarianism because they make better decisions and use resources more efficiently.
So, two things are certain: the authoritarians will fail and they will leave an enormous mess. Two important things, however, are in our hands: first, how many of our fellow-Americans will be harmed? And second, will we be ready to rise to the opportunity that will open up, an opportunity to fulfill the promise of equality, security, lawfulness, and opportunity that the Founders, in greater or lesser measure, envisioned?
I want to suggest that we need to drop all of the specific remedies by which we thought to repair the First Republic, and focus on the broader question on why it failed. Some are obvious:
Income inequality is at an historical extreme
Our principal arbiters of truth—journalism, the academy, and the courts—are under attack and underperforming
Our economic efficiency relative to competitors is declining
Our sense of national community has been sacrificed for partisan gain
These categories have a great deal to do with why our country is divided, mistrustful, anxious, and violent. the decline of democracy and the emergence of militias, the rise of the national debt, the end to the commitment to racial and gender equality, the weakness of the educational system, the benefits and problems of immigration—all of these stem from underlying causes.
The good news is that this means that we can probably persuade to join us at least some people who oppose reform because of specific grievances they have. Every fewer footsoldier the right has and every additional organizer that we have will mean that when the crisis comes, we are prepared, ready to enact a program that ends the crisis we are headed for and benefits us all. This must be our aim: not to destroy or silence the opposition as they seek to do to us, but to find solutions that make most people happy. Otherwise, why should they join us?
This series of diaries is intended to be a conversation—I certainly don’t have all the answers-- so I look forward to your ideas and comments as we try to find them. Let’s try to let go of our favorite remedies and build our new Republic from scratch, taking the elements of the old Republic that seemed to more-or-less work, such as the division of powers between the branches and between federal and state government. Let’s also identify the features that have been most pernicious, such as the patchwork, easy-to-subvert regulatory pattern for corporations and the campaign finance system. Only then does it make sense to present specific solutions.
The next section will begin, as all good analysis must, from the history.
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