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The End of the First American Republic: The Rise of the Republic of Happiness. [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-09-07

Summary: Our constitutional system—the source of our prosperity, our national peace, and our liberty—has been broken by Trumpism. A break in the constitutional order is similar to a heart attack: it has to be addressed with a clear and swift plan of action or it may never be recovered. The source of this disorder, like the cause of the Civil War, is the betrayal of our pledge to human equality in the Declaration of Independence. Without reasonable equality, laws are mere hypocrisy, truth cannot find a level playing field, and a society cannot establish the trust that is essential to any enterprise. This diary details exactly what must be repaired if we are again to be a nation, not a house divided.

And if it all seems too complicated—and it is complicated—this is the fundamental principle: any successful organization relies on trust, trust comes from empathy, and empathy can only arise when there is reasonable equality between people and a decent regard for the truth. This is what guided the original Founders; where they failed were in the lies that made possible the inequality of slavery, of gender inequality, and of preferential treatment of the wealthy.

Having established that at the end of the MAGA era the nation is likely to be in a bad way, vulnerable to another brand of authoritarian takeover from within and to external pressure from China or other rival powers, this entry recommends specific legislative actions that are popular, procedurally relatively easy, and cost-conscious to help build public support and a revival of national strength. Some desirable things require constitutional amendments, large amounts of money, or the assent of the courts, all of which may take time we won’t have. Some desirable things don’t produce beneficial changes in people’s lives, so they don’t mobilize public opinion. Other things create undesirable changes to people’s lives, undercutting support. Our first actions have to be procedurally easy, inexpensive, and popular. Restoring goodwill by implementing the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is the first step to reviving our economy and our politics from the paralysis and catatonia Trump into which Trump is sending it.

Kamala Harris: The System is Broken

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We also need to consider what we cannot tolerate going forward. As described by the second diary, the primary root of our crisis is failing to live up to the pledge of universal equality enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. We have a system of unequal justice, unequal power in the workplace, unequal electoral power, unequal education, unequal access to information, and grotesque economic inequality. For decades, the Executive branch has concentrated power, so it is no surprise that the other branches have withered and become ineffectual as they have become unequal. The abuses of Trump, as others have noted [1, 2], closely parallel the abuses described in the Declaration of Independence. We cannot tolerate:

• Excessive Executive power as witnessed by the Trump-era abuses, especially in using the office for the enrichment of himself and his cronies, imposing arbitrary taxes, ignoring the courts and the acts of Congress, pardoning dangerous criminals, prosecuting the innocent, using foreign prisons to evade American law, and using the military for law enforcement

• Excessive power of reactionaries running the courts, especially the USSC or wealthy parties using the courts to delay justice or to crush weaker parties

• Excessive electoral power of rural states es exemplified by the Electoral College and the filibuster

• Excessive power of employers as exemplified by at-will employment

• Abuse of ownership of news media to confuse, not inform, the public

• Grossly disparate education, denying equality of opportunity

• Grossly disparate healthcare, denying equality in the right to pursue life

But let us be clear. New laws alone will not save us. The failure to live up to the promise of equality stems not from imperfections in the law, but from the malice, greed, and narcissism of those who are better off, and from the failure of the weaker to live up to the demands of citizenship, especially the demands to be informed, to be actively involved in one’s community, and to vote. Government can help to make it easier to do these things, but when citizens concoct and spread ridiculous conspiracy theories to deny climate change, the benefits of modern medicine, racial equality, and the desirability of fair wages and working conditions, they do so from morally evil impulses. No agreement or relationship—much less a constitutional and legal system—can hold without mutual sincerity, manifested as a respect for the truth.

Accordingly, we need a revolution in our morals as much as we need a change in laws. Trumpism is distinguished by its contempt for truth. That’s why it attacks those institutions that are entrusted with discovering the truth and preserving memory: universities, science, investigative journalism, libraries, and the courts. To guarantee that reform will be lasting, we need to confront the single largest institution that claims to be based on truth—the Christian Church—with its complicity. The lies of the anti-abortion movement, which motivate the six Catholic Justices in their scorched earth defense of Donald Trump, are at the heart of the corruption of the Supreme Court. Lies about the poor, which the right popularized beginning with Ronald Reagan and are now used to justify the recent cuts to SNAP (food assistance) and Medicaid, were never confronted by the Church as the vicious slanders that they are. The idolatry of wealth that permeates the right-wing evangelical/fundamentalist movement is a grotesque lie about the gospels. This Church of lies has to be brought down and the Church that supported abolition, suffrage, economic rights, and civil rights has to be raised up. Together, these churches constitute almost two-thirds of the American public [3] Legal and constitutional reforms cannot take root unless there is a reckoning.

Let’s also be clear that there are no magic means to raise incomes and governmental revenues, especially at times of crisis. Trumpism is on track to radically increase the deficit, keep interest rates and inflation high, and severely damage the underlying economic productivity of the nation. Meanwhile, we have to address the shortfalls in pensions(both public and private), the declining quality of medical care in the US reflected in a lagging life expectancy [4], the need to significantly improve education especially for the lowest-achieving cohort, the fraying of social peace due to inequity, the economic damage caused by global warming, aggressive expansionism by Russia and China, and the elevated interest rates and higher inflation that Trumpism is inflicting on us.

Borrowing, taxation of the rich, military procurement reform, and health insurance reform only go so far. The US is already so heavily burdened by debt that it should only borrow to the extent that efficiencies from borrowing pay for the costs of borrowing. One can only tax to the point that it results in capital flight (for which, by the way, crypto is an exceptionally useful tool). Health insurance reform can save perhaps as much as, say, 40% of total medical spending, but much of the savings need to be invested in expanding and improving healthcare quality and quantity. The claim that prescription drug costs can be reduced to the levels of the rest of the world is unrealistic. World drug development has been driven by the goldmine of the American market; close the mine and the rate of development will decline abruptly. We need to radically expand renewables, but there’s a bottleneck in materials to produce them, one that will require time and research into refining rare earths from coal ash, among other issues. And unless we can do all these things and deliver improving quality of life, support for reform will run out of steam fast.

With this understanding—that the very core of reform has to be about addressing inequality and truthfulness while maintaining and improving the quality of life—it is possible to suggest specific measures by which to proceed. Some steps, like Constitutional amendments, are difficult. Others, like legislation, risk facing delay in our corrupted courts. All of them will face resistance from the people who caused the crisis—unless they can be shamed into joining the cause of reform.

The temptation for political revolutionaries is to use force to make change. That usually fails, because lasting change comes from consensus. It will be far preferable to preserve the constitutional order and use it to generate a new one. But to do so, the crisis of Trumpism has to be treated like the constitutional heart attack it is. We must act with our hearts united while the opportunity to save our liberties remains. What follows are my suggestions, offered for debate, in the hope that others will propagate debate elsewhere about what our future should hold.

Preparing the Battlefield.

Remedies Immediately Available to the People.

The power of shame. Shame is an incredibly powerful force, one underutilized in American politics. Morale is a critical element to the success of any person or organization. If we believe that what we are doing is right, we can endure hardship and privation. If we lose that belief, we are weakened. Just as the Christian Church needs to be confronted with its failure, the wealthy need to be confronted with theirs. They’re the ones—and this includes not just the US oligarchy, but Russia’s and to some degree China’s and Europe’s—who are responsible for plunging the US into its constitutional crisis and the world into the meltdown of global warming. They have a lot about which to be ashamed.

And this crisis did not come about just by malign action, but also because many wealthy people shirked their responsibility. Elon Musk was able to fund Donald Trump’s campaign with about $260M [5]. Where were the moderate billionaires? Only Bill Gates made the top 10 list on the Democratic side, with $50M for Kamala [6]. The wealthy have led us into this catastrophe, both by their action in supporting Trump or in their inaction in failing to support Harris. They need ridicule.

The Christian Church, likewise, needs to be confronted with its failure. True, the more mainstream churches have been an important part of the resistance to the amorality and immorality of wealth and privilege, work for which they are not given enough credit. Roughly half of Democrats are Christians who are part of the resistance to Trumpism, something that the more strident voices among self-proclaimed progressives forget. Even some conservative churches have resisted the demonization of the poor and urged prison reform. But all one needs to do is to ask those who are calling for the US to become a Christian nation whether Jesus would approve of the enormous concentration of wealth, the frequent wars, the masses of ill and elderly isolated from compassionate care, the enormous prison population, the children denied food and those in pain denied medical care, and a psychopathic liar—for whom a majority of people calling themselves Christians voted for—presiding over it all. We need to attack the real enemy—greed and callousness—rather than the entire institution, which is half good and half rotten.

Finally, the Democratic Party needs to be confronted with its failures, the principal one of which is careerism: putting re-election or the quest for higher office or personal wealth above the duties of public service. While there are specific legislative and constitutional remedies that can help elected officials put the good of the nation before the personal gratification of office holders, nothing can replace the internal sense that elected officials carry on their shoulders the sufferings and aspirations of those they represent.

If all else fails, the People have the right to non-cooperation: to engage in a general strike or to resist in other ways, such as refusing to participate in a corrupted justice system or to aid those who use coercive force to enforce what they call “the law.” Resisting an authoritarian system is, without question, difficult, but when the alternative is to become the slave of an autocracy, the materialist life does not seem so sweet nor suffering for justice so painful.

The Power of Community. Authoritarian states maintain their power through the acquiescence of the population. If enough of the population refuses to go along or even resist, the State becomes vulnerable to competing States. Populations reach the decision to collectively refuse through the network of human relations we call community. Authoritarian states try to destroy community through many means, but especially by setting groups of people against one another. The current authoritarian state is using “technology” to try to create a system of perfect control.

This clip shows how Peter Thiel intends to impose autocracy.

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As scary as this sounds—and is—it’s not really new. Both the Soviet Union and communist China have created systems of mass surveillance, which are used to reward compliance and punish resistance. With properly-functioning AI, authoritarians would be able to replace large proportion of the workforce, making it possible to marginalize opponents. Again, this is not new. the USSR denied opponents work and then accused them of parasitism. Going a step further, outright killing of a large portion of the population would be a way to deal with the scarcity that global warming will produce—the same “solution” to scarcity that the USSR used in the Holodomor and Mao used in the Great Leap Forward.

The only effective means of defeating these strategies is to form large and strong communities that treat an attack on one as an attack on all. That means pausing the internal warfare between the more progressive and the more conservative wings of the Democratic Party as long as the real enemy controls the government. It also means accepting help from independents and even conservatives who are willing to join the alliance. One doesn’t have to like people to work with them.

The power of contesting elections. Republicans would like to convince us that we cannot win. They have intimidated the major media, are changing the rules to make it more difficult for Democrats to win, and have the majority of big money donors. Elections, like demonstrations, are a moment when ordinary people can engage with people who they ordinarily would not speak to. They are a moment to debunk the myths created by major media with unmissably large groups of people. The polls tell us that most Americans are unhappy with what the Republicans are doing. All we need to do to win the larger battle is show up and talk to people we might otherwise pass by.

Remedies

Since I have no specialized expertise in law or government, I invite corrections from readers for what follows. Some resources that I have relied on include Reclamation of the US Congress [7], Structural Reforms to the Federal Judiciary, [8] and Inspectors General Reform. Considering Proposals for Greater Independence [9].

Still, we have to recognize that Trumpism and the abandonment of democracy by so many Americans is the consequence not of poorly written laws or unclear rules or even an outdated Constitution, even though these made following the path downward so easy. Our predicament arises from an unhealthy obsession with money over truth; from a tolerance of incompetence in the service of partisanship over honor; from malice toward people of color and toward foreigners and toward the disabled and the poor; and from an acceptance of violence and coercion as a means to get what we want—all of which are forms of nihilism. No wonder Armageddon obsesses Americans. Recovering our democracy means recovering a sense of the worth of every individual and of the meaning of our individual lives. It means replacing nihilism with a lasting sense of national purpose. It means fulfilling our national promises of achieving equality and genuine freedom.

Administrative Procedures

Many of the problems of our system don’t involve legislation or constitutional amendments. Congress has become such a pathetic body because it has dissipated its powers through its own administrative procedures. Congress could immediately do away with the Senate filibuster, stop members from spending time on trading stocks by having member brokerage accounts administered by professionals, limit the ability of lobbyists to influence members, set a minimum for the number of legislative days, and structure the schedule to reduce the number of district travel days (travel is a real hardship for western representatives).

Congress has also made seniority rather than merit the basis for committee assignments. Positions on committees should require demonstrated expertise, and existing members should be required to take continuing education.

Congress devotes a disproportionate amount of time to the budget. This could be simplified by setting up a baseline budget that covers the basic functions of government, and does not require annual approval. Social Security and other pensions should be included in that baseline budget so that any shortfall in receipts is the problem of the tax committees, not of pensioners. This would largely end government shutdowns.

Surreptitious alterations of bill drafts, an increasingly frequent vehicle for inserting earmarks and unpopular measures, could be prohibited (it is, at root, fraud, which is a criminal act), and a suitable period imposed for review of major bills to detect violations. The threshold for discharge petitions in the House should be lowered, and the time frame shortened, to prevent the majority from abusing its authority to block popular measures.

Congressional ethics procedures should be accelerated. It took five months from when the New York Times published evidence that he had fabricated his resume for prosecutors to indict George Santos. The House Ethics Committee took another seven months to conclude he was unfit to serve. It took over three years for the Ethics Committee to decide that Matt Gaetz was unfit to serve. Congress should probably hire retired judges to chair the Committee to end partisan stalling of investigations and break deadlocks.

Congress should develop a procedure to simplify and clarify the federal Code. The recent invocations of the 1873 Comstock Act to prohibit distribution of mifepristone [10] and the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 [11] to fabricate an immigration emergency are symptoms of an overgrown federal code, in which thicket the weeds of preferential or arbitrary treatment shelter. While the actual Code revisions will require legislation, launching a process to identify where the Code needs revision does not.

Most of the problems of the Executive and Judicial branches can’t be fixed without legislation or even constitutional amendments. The Supreme Court should bind itself to the same ethics code that it requires of the lower courts, but the toleration by John Roberts of the open financial corruption of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito illustrates how ethics codes are very loose fetters for criminals in judicial robes; the same goes for impeachment as a remedy.

Likewise, the Executive Branch should immediately repudiate the Office of Legal Counsel memoranda [12] that have enabled Trump to avoid indictment during his time in the presidency since, when the president is a psychopath, a promise not to immediately indict is an invitation to embark on a crime spree. Ethics laws have also proven inadequate to deal with even garden variety Executive Branch corruption like that of Ryan Zinke [13], much less the leering misconduct of an Emil Bove [14].

Legislation

Judicial Reform

Thanks to the Supreme Court decisions in Buckley v. Valeo [15] and Citizens United [16], our electoral system is dominated by wealth. Basic protections against discrimination in voting have been undermined by Shelby County v. Holder [17]. In a hallmark authoritarian power grab, the rightists on the Supreme Court used their positions to multiply their numbers, most notably in Bush v. Gore [18], but also though redistricting cases such as North Carolina’s Rucho v. Common Cause [19].

To these have been added the spectacle of Supreme Court Justices accepting huge gifts, calling them “gratuities” while denying that these are bribes. Indeed, the Roberts Court has a history of legalizing bribery, dating back to McDonnell v. US [20]. These perversions of the law violate the most basic principle of justice, namely that we must be equal before the bar. And is there a greater abomination to the institution of the law than the use of perjury to become a judge? It is widely believed that several of the justices rather clearly have done. Just to do its job, the Court must, like Caesar’s wife, be above reproach.

There are simple legislative remedies to the Supreme Court’s ailment. For over 50 years, Republican majorities have controlled the Supreme Court. A sense of impunity, derived from excessive inbreeding and a disproportionate sense of self-importance, inherently disorders an institution. The Supreme Court has the same number of members that it has had since 1869, when the population was roughly a tenth the size of the modern US. Simply to allow a reasonable fraction of appellate cases to be heard, the Supreme Court should be at least tripled in size, with smaller panels handling individual cases and the so-called “shadow docket” [21] eliminated. This would reduce the mystique of The Nine and make it clearer to them that they are not quite as special as those in the Roberts wing of the Court apparently think they are.

To accelerate the pace at which cases move through the courts, the lower courts should be expanded as well. Administrative judges [22] and especially immigration courts (brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/immigration-court-system-explained) need to be regularized as ordinary Article III courts, the former to enable the creation of specialty circuits to handle complex scientific, medical, and financial issues, and the latter to bring the standards of justice applied to immigrants brought up to those applied to citizens. This is an important principle. Our Constitution is a declaration of universal human rights. Knowing that all people deserve these rights, we should not deny them to foreigners… though we may, of course, regulate which foreigners we allow in and eject any who violate our laws.

The Supreme Court has made itself contemptible by basing its judgments on contempt for science [23] or even fake science, and the falsification of history through what it calls “originalism” [24]. Scientists, not judges, should be the arbiters of science, doctors the arbiters of medicine, historians the arbiters of history, certified financial accountants the arbiters of financial fraud, and experts in human rights the arbiters of what counts as a reasonable fear of persecution for any given immigrant. By giving science, medicine, finance, and immigration Circuits of their own, they become the triers of fact to whom the Court will be compelled to listen. As for history, the problem is very simply that conservatives have created a false history of the United States [25] and—this is no exaggeration— propagating a portion of it devised by the Daughters of the Confederacy through the history curricula of many schools [26]. The remedy for lying is telling the truth. Historians should be involved in vetting evidence for the courts, and in flagging the use of tainted history in court opinions. Justices might not be so keen in using fake history if they knew that their opinions would be supplemented by a panel of independent historians correcting their lies. It goes without saying that we need national standards for textbooks.

The composition of the courts needs to change as well. Judges on higher courts should have experience at the lower court level, and Supreme Court judges should be dispatched on sabbaticals to the lower courts to reacquaint themselves with the problems faced by the rest of society. There are too few lawyers with a background in criminal defense and family law on the bench…or perhaps there are too many with corporate law backgrounds. In selecting candidates for the judiciary, preference needs to be given to candidates who can best represent the society they are to judge, as well as to candidates with specialized experience in science, medicine, and prosecuting complex financial crimes. Writing legislation to codify these needs will be difficult, and may need a constitutional amendment to serve as an anchor.

Also, the gross disparities that wealthy and indigent defendants face need to be addressed. Wealthy people use their resources to delay or frustrate justice, while the poor often receive inadequate representation. The vast resources of the Department of Justice intimidate people into pleading out even when they have reasonable defenses. We need to establish the principle in law that the resources available to the plaintiff and defendant be reasonably proportionate, with wealthy, corporate, and governmental plaintiffs paying user fees to fund the defense of defendants with lesser resources. While giving people a fair trial is inherent in the “due process” provision of the Fifth Amendment, apparently it hasn’t been spelled out plainly enough on the Supreme Court’s façade for them to fulfill our society’s promise of “Equal Justice Under Law.” The Fifth Amendment needs to be revised to specify reasonable equality of resources between the parties in cases. A particular example where disparities in legal power need to be addressed is the employment relationship. For a century, we have relied on unions to balance the power of employers, leaving the majority of workers on their own. Even union members are often unable to halt shameful abuses, such as the spraying of farmworkers with pesticides, terrible work safety in the meatpacking industry, and denial of time to go to the bathroom at Amazon. A constitutional amendment defining as a right a living wage for those able to work and subsistence for those unable to work would probably be required as an anchor for legislation.

Legislatively, it should be possible to apply contract law to all employment relationships. In other words, every job should have clearly defined responsibilities and rewards, such that employers cannot dismiss employees for no cause or cause morally wrong, cannot arbitrarily reduce or withhold wages, and cannot subject employees to grossly unsafe conditions without consent. Plenty of room has to be left for employers to discipline or fire workers who don’t hold up their end of the bargain, but once employees feel that they are treated fairly, most of their abuses should decline.

Presidential immunity and qualified immunity [27] are judicial fictions which can be easily shown to be susceptible of delivering ridiculous results. If a president decided that his impeachment was not in the national interest, and chose to order Special Forces to assassinate any Senator or Congressman who wanted to proceed with impeachment, that would clearly invalidate Article II, Section 4…but it would be perfectly fine according to the Supreme Court. Similarly, qualified immunity has made legal obviously criminal actions by police officers. A better approach would be to make exercise of sovereign power a defense to an accusation. If a CIA officer decides that torturing a terrorist is necessary to save American lives from a ticking nuclear time bomb [28], he should do it and then, if necessary, make that argument as a defense in court. American juries are generally reasonable. We should trust them. Shouldn’t we rather expect that anyone entrusted with a position of responsibility should be willing to face an inquiry into their actions—and punishment if the inquiry shows harm inflicted on others was not warranted?

Finally, the law has become obsessed with procedure over fairness. We do want people to be treated equally, and routinizing procedure seems like a means to do that. And yet, in the procedural “perfection” of the Roberts Court, grotesque injustices fester and corrupt our system of law. What can one call Clarence Thomas’ declaration in Jones v. Hendrix that a legally innocent person cannot be freed [29] … and, going further in the Glossip case, that an innocent person can even be executed [30]? The idea that a person known to be innocent can be murdered by the state should disgust and trouble us all. Our law needs to be founded on the principle that its purpose is justice, with regularity of procedure simply a means to judge whether due process has been fulfilled. This will require a constitutional amendment and enabling legislation.

The Court has also undermined civil service protections, undercut independent and quasi-independent agencies and vitiated contract law by ignoring irreversible harms involved in cancellations of government grants and firings of civil servants. It has let the Executive kill the hungry and the ill by engaging in impoundments of funds meant to succor them, and it has otherwise concentrated power in the “unitary Executive,” i.e., the king they have crowned. Many irreversible harms have involved procedural games by the Court as well as the Department of Justice, with long delays for appeals from cases the Administration wins in the lower courts—cf. Trump’s classified documents case—and emergency stays that allow the Administration to keep on committing wrongs when it loses [31]. This reversal of almost two centuries of reform has to be countered by legislation to protect these attempts to rein in the Executive.

Reform of the Executive

Donald Trump has shown exactly why the Founders were determined to keep the Executive relatively weak. Much of the bad behavior of government has originated in the Executive Branch. Abuses of the war powers and of the investigative and prosecutorial powers probably account for most of the worst. The Executive selects candidates to be judges and other officials, so the damage that bad presidents do lives on long after them. And the Executive acts as the primary voice of the nation, so he (or, someday, she) has not only the power to unite and lead Americans, but also extraordinary power to mislead and divide them.

The primary remedy for such abuses is to take the power to commit them away from the Executive and distribute them by statute to the civil service, independent agencies, Congress, and the states and localities. The term “emergency” needs a much clearer legal definition, one that cannot be stretched to cover disliking the presence of homeless people or foreigners. Presidents should be barred from committing American troops anywhere, much less in American cities, without the explicit consent of Congress. The Department of Justice and other law enforcement bodies need to be formally split off from the Executive, such that presidents only decide resources and priorities in consultation with Congress, while Congress polices the behavior by the Department of Justice and other enforcement authorities. The use of poorly-trained, violence-prone paramilitary forces for law enforcement should be made a felony.

The Pentagon, because it represents the single largest source of expenditures aside from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, needs an independent board of governors to conduct financial audits and stop conflicts of interest. Defense contractors, through their web of human relations, have far too much control over the budget. The Department of Defense needs an independent research facility along the lines of the Skunk Works [32] to identify changes in weaponry ahead of time, recommend new designs, and kill projects that waste money.

An additional check on presidential power could be through the establishment of a permanent Office of Independent Counsel overseen by the Judiciary, whose role would be to supplement the role of the Inspectors General to investigate whistleblower complaints, enforce the Hatch Act, determine whether civil service firings are justified, and perform preliminary investigations of abuses of power by the Executive to determine whether a full investigation is predicated. Many of these functions are supposed to be conducted by the Inspectors General [33] and, while the I.G. offices have in general done good work, executive control over their leadership and the time frame, often long, of their investigations has undermined their effectiveness.

The time has come to start calling most “conflicts of interest” honest services fraud. [34]. In Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, the Constitution recognizes, even if the Supreme Court does not, that a president cannot honestly perform his duties if he receives a gift, no matter how small, or a title from a foreign government. Article II, Section 4 recognizes bribery as the basis for removal if any officer of the United States from his or her post. All government employees should be held to a similar standard. Let them, while holding office, exchange their portfolio of holdings, public and private, for an index of stocks and bonds and then, after their term of office, buy back their holdings without paying capital gains on the exchanges. As part of ensuring there will be no conflicts of interest, all senior government officials, in both all three branches of government, should release five years of income tax returns prior to assuming office, and returns for each year in office.

Reform of Congress

The Founders expected Congress to defend its prerogatives against a too-powerful Executive. Instead, it has surrendered. And this did not begin with Trump. The struggle over War Powers, for example, dates back to the Vietnam era [35], and the rise of the national security state dates back to Truman. The causes of congressional failure are many, but these are some of the most important:

• The composition of Congress has been tainted by gerrymandering and discriminatory voting laws

• The Congress is not representative of the People, with median congressional wealth being far above that of the nation. Running for Congress is overly dependent on access to money, making even less-wealthy congressmen subservient to donors, and advantaging wealthy candidates

• Congressional members are also is far older than the nation. While there are significant advantages to having members with long experience, a little bit of the wisdom of age goes a long way. Too much of the wisdom of age leads to inflexibility and blindness.

• Membership in Congress attracts attempts to influence votes. Whether or not these efforts cross over into what is legally called “bribery,” the offer of any benefit distorts legislation from its purpose. These need to be sharply limited.

• Advancement in Congress depends far too much on party loyalty rather than on loyalty to constituents and the Constitution

Many of these could be cured by public funding of elections, and that is where to begin. Likewise, gerrymandering could be ended by statute, though a Constitutional amendment would probably be required in the longer run. Apparently, the Equal Protection Clause (“nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws") [36] isn’t clear enough for the blind members of the Supreme Court, making it possible for a small majority of voters to pack the state legislature and the congressional delegation—diluting the votes of their opponents—as has happened in places like Wisconsin and North Carolina.

However, there are some other points to consider. Congressmen who lose elections or retire should be given a transitional stipend. They should also be barred from working in or for industries they regulated for a period of five years. The bribery laws clearly need to be made clearer so that the Courts can’t legalize the unconscionable.

Federal power should be devolved whenever possible to simplify Congress’ job, though it must never be done when it sacrifices rights. Devolution of the EPA to the states has been a decidedly mixed bag, leading to uneven enforcement of laws, and opening up possibilities for business interests to corrupt the regulatory process [37]. On the other hand, excessive centralization facilitates national regulatory capture. A better solution is devolution to genuinely independent federal agencies, run by experts nominated by their peers. Physicians really should run the CDC free from outside meddling. Scientists really should run the EPA. And so on. If there’s a need to deregulate or otherwise correct an agency’s actions, then it should require a supermajority vote by the Congress. Some functions that waste congressional time could be devolved to the states. The naming of federal buildings, for example, could be performed by the states, subject to congressional veto.

Electoral Reform

A constitutional amendment will be required to make voting a universal right for adult citizens, abolish the Electoral College, eliminate gerrymandering, and possibly increase the Senatorial delegations of large states. However, it might be possible in the interim to draft legislation based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to end gerrymandering, grant voting rights to felons, and register every citizen to vote.

Reform of the Military

America adopted an all-volunteer military force because of public resistance to the draft. While this has improved military performance, it has downsides. Members of the military are far more conservative than the nation [38]. This gives an authoritarian like Trump an advantage in consolidating power. This conservative lean is also self-perpetuating, with conservative news sources being given preference on military bases. Since Trump’s return, extremist outlets like OAN are replacing nominally centrist outlets like CNN [39].

It would be far better to give all citizens basic training, to include intensive education in civics, the laws of war, and history to make sure that those to whom we are handing arms will never use them against us. Extremists should be identified and excluded from further military service, subject to later review. After basic training, citizens should be offered a choice of additional advanced military training, or civilian service.

The services should encourage the advancement of enlisted men into the roles of officers. As has been ably argued [40] there are significant disadvantages to a professional military nominally under civilian control, since a professional military is more politically adept than one in which there is more rapid turnover. As with the Supreme Court, a sense of permanence breeds a sense of impunity. The most dangerous outcomes are military coups, either overt or silent. But the systematic waste in the Pentagon’s weapons system is a symptom of an entrenched command. To retain the benefits of professionalism without sacrificing the neutrality of the military, a better solution would be to have a better mix of backgrounds in the officer corps. If the demographics of the military were similar to those of the general population, whatever political actions they engaged in would at least be consistent with the popular will.

Reform of the Information System: Media, social media, libraries, and universities

It’s not so much that authoritarians lie, though they lie all the time. As Orwell illustrated in 1984, authoritarian systems make the concept of unchanging truth difficult to even imagine: truth is whatever the Leader says it is at any given moment. Democracies guard against authoritarianism by ensuring highly competitive information systems. Universities and libraries are perhaps the most important element of these, since they act as a kind of immune system. Journalism works on the front lines, gathering assertions and ideas, doing a first cut of authenticity and creating a preliminary record. Universities test ideas and assertions to decide which are authentic. Libraries keep a record of the academic testing process. Social media allow for rapid dissemination and discussion—but not for distinguishing truth from falsity. Authoritarians are to truth like AIDS to the immune system, corrupting the process of gathering, testing, recording, and disseminating ideas. Protecting our system of information requires a constitutional amendment and enabling legislation.

The amendment would specify that access to accurate information is essential to making informed choices, notably in elections, but also in public policy. It is therefore a right, just as essential as speech or assembly, and that right must be protected through a series of legislative measures. Every citizen should have subsidies to access

• news media, including media libraries

• education, including higher and continuing education

• public libraries, including electronic libraries of scientific and historical research

The Amendment’s text might read something like, A requirement of a free society being an electorate informed by accurate information, citizens shall receive a subsidy sufficient to engage with institutions that report, analyze, and disseminate information such as newspapers, universities, libraries, and electronic media, subject only to the institution enforcing reasonable levels of accuracy for information not clearly labeled as opinion and abstaining from the dissemination of maliciously false information.

While such an amendment would encourage diversity of viewpoints by replacing advertising revenue with subscriber revenue, media has become far too concentrated. A number of important viewpoints, notably those of unions, educators, scientists, people of color, and historians are only represented at the fringes. If there are 500 channels, surely a dozen can be reserved for these as free educational channels, with funding determined by viewer interest. Anti-trust law should be applied to ensure diversity in viewpoints; that will require separate legislation.

Regulation of social media is problematic on First Amendment grounds. Similar considerations apply to talk radio. Scandal and uproar have always been monetizable. Social media and radio or podcast shock jocks are not so different from the Yellow Press of the late 19th and early 20th century [41]. Perhaps social media should be regulated as utilities, to provide a service for a fee. On social media, true journalism, evidenced by a degree in journalism and some record of employment by a newspaper or broadcast channel, could be paid by subsidy. Educational services, like plumbers explaining how to change a shower cartridge or car experts advising one on buying a car could get paid through subscriber fees. Entertainment and political fora should get no subsidy.

Reform of Business

The downfall of most democracies is financial corruption: money becomes the highest value, so decisions are not based on truth or the good of the nation, but only on who makes money on the deal. And, while there’s some reason to focus on government corruption, most corruption of any kind—including the corruption of government—is conducted on behalf of business. They have the money, after all.

Deliberate corporate lawlessness in the form of blitzscaling [42] has been brought to a high art by tech entrepreneurs, who use the slow speed of government response and ambiguity in regulation to rapidly—and unsafely—scale up enterprises, at which point they become so powerful that it takes far more effort by the government to stop them. Part of the problem is timid government leadership; after all, identifying the misclassification of employees as independent contractors, as happens in blitzscaling, is a game the IRS knows how to play.

Government leadership must match the aggressiveness of corporate players. To get that, agency independence, commitment, and executive talent has to be first rate. In some cases, this might be accomplished in the Joe Kennedy-at-the-SEC model [43] of setting a crook to catch a crook. Alternatively, independent academic panels could identify suitable candidates, screening out persons who are corrupt, conflicted, or hostile to the agency task. Then the president could choose from among suitable candidates, to be appointed with congressional approval.

The terms of agency executives should be lengthened and their removal done only through Article III courts. Agency budgeting should be long-term, treated as a baseline function of government.

One of the most powerful tools for fighting excessive business power has been the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. There are significant advantages to corporate concentration, advantages that the nation cannot afford to lose. However, with the advantages come dangers. The courts, unfortunately, have largely limited anti-trust considerations [44] to price, rather than looking more broadly at signs that a market is not acting as a free market should. Excessive concentration has other effects: the unavailability of groceries in poor neighborhoods, for example, or the stagnation in quality improvements in non-competitive markets. Oligopolies can operate locally, as has happened in the housing market to drive prices far above and supply far below what a free market would offer [45].

A possible solution could be found in encouraging consortia at the research level [46] to use US scientific and engineering resources efficiently. In addition, providing consumers with better information on quality and lifetime costs of ownership would assist in enhancing competition, which consortia may slightly diminish.

Additional Reforms

Immigration reform. Immigration is not an unmixed blessing. Business loves immigration because it increases wage competition. If immigrants are present unlawfully, business has an additional lever of personal control. And, of course, while unlawful migrants are disproportionately law-abiding, the exceptions to the rule pose a national security risk.

Immigration is also a sign of problems abroad, problems often caused by American meddling. Migration from Mexico was in large part driven by a farm crisis very similar to the one that affected the US in the 1980s. The Mexican side of the crisis was driven in large part by US dumpling of subsidized corn [47].

Similarly, the drug war and obsessive American anti-communism have combined to undermine the rule of law in Latin America. We should start by ending the practice of overthrowing or undermining foreign governments and by making addictive drugs available to addicts under controlled medical conditions, as has been pioneered by Switzerland [48]. Decriminalization of non-addictive drugs to the degree that it is consistent with public safety should be pursued.

Finally, the US should encourage the near-shoring of manufacturing to help build Latin American economies. Many things currently made in China, Vietnam, and other Asian countries could be made in this hemisphere, and would reduce the environmental damage of shipping. These steps, coupled with ending the drug wars, would help to reduce unlawful migration.

Debt relief. Debt issued to miners at the company store or sharecroppers was used to keep workers in line. It still works, if not done as crudely, by making it difficult for workers to quit a bad employer without having another lined up. Corporate raiders use debt to keep companies in line as they enrich themselves. And the wealthy use debt to control government. Above a certain level, debt weakens the country: functionally, since measures which might improve productivity are reined in by interest rates, and morally, because people and institutions in debt are not free to do the right thing. We should make it a national objective to reduce the debt level, first on individuals, next on corporations, and finally on government.

Individual debt relief is a complex problem. There’s student debt, for which current debtors can be assisted. But college education is far too expensive. We need to return to the system of subsidized higher education that prevailed in the middle of the 20th century. Beyond student debt, there’s medical debt. This should be addressed through healthcare reform.

Housing debt is driven in part by monopolies in the housing industry. Still, part of the problem is the American taste for private, single-unit homes. It might be possible to design multi-unit housing that provides the combination of privacy and access to green space that single-unit dwellings do, but that is beyond the scope of this analysis. Finally, America has a gambling and drug problem. Two hundred billion dollars is spent on gambling [49], about twice what the federal government spends on SNAP [50]. Another 1% of GDP goes for illegal drugs [51], down from much higher levels in the 1980s, but still a significant drain on incomes.

Equity in education and opportunity. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the United States may never be able to pay proper reparations to the descendants of slaves and to Native Americans and others mistreated by the American empire. Neglecting the mule [52], even forty acres at an average cost of $18,000, multiplied over 48 million African Americans and up to 10 million Native Americans is over 40 trillion dollars.

The promise of racial justice, however, must be fulfilled if we are to build the Second Republic on a sound foundation. We can, and must provide equity in education and opportunity for all subsequent generations. There isn’t equal opportunity if kids have to study under streetlights because they’ve been evicted, or if they’re suffering untreated PTSD because of an abusive parent. School districts need to be funded at whatever level is necessary to provide a genuinely equal opportunity to every child.

Criminal justice reform is obviously a necessary corollary. Many prisons are more schools for crime than institutions for reform. If rich and poor have to share the same facilities, it might help create the impetus for making our jails places for people to get a real second chance, including through mental health and drug treatment.

Tax reform. First, we need tax simplification, since complexity is what actually drives anti-tax sentiment [53]. All forms of income should be made equal, with the exception of indexing capital gains taxes for inflation and perhaps allowing some degree of tax averaging for capital gains. The reason for this exception is that other forms of income are received in the present, but capital gains occur over many years, which means that the basis being used for taxation should be corrected for inflation. Also, if realized in a single year, gains may be taxed at a higher rate than if received gradually.

Tax simplification would also help to catch cheaters. We need better enforcement of tax collection. A wealth tax, though desirable, would require a constitutional amendment and will carry risks of cheating and capital flight.

Decentralizing federal power. The centralization of government became necessary because corporate power became so great. It proved valuable in winning the Civil War and the World Wars. It was also necessary to enforce civil rights in the face of massive resistance. The Trump era has shown how dangerous concentration of federal power in the hands of Washington can be. It has been the states and cities that have used their power to check Trump’s. So, to the degree that corporate power can be moderated through other means, and civil rights maintained through other means, governmental power should be distributed to independent agencies, states, localities, and individuals.

CONCLUSION. As complicated as these reforms seem, they are based on some simple principles:

The failures of the First American Republic were due to inequality. White supremacy led directly to the Civil War. Preferences for the wealthy led to the financial panics of the 19th century, and the corruption of the Gilded Age, as well as the Great Depression, and finally the corruption of elections that enthroned Trumpism. The nation was consistently hampered in its development by abuses and discrimination against ethnic minorities, immigrants, and women. Inequality between the branches of the federal government enabled the abuses of the Nixon Administration, the corruption of the Supreme Court, and ultimately the consolidation of all federal power in Trump’s hands. Police abuses go uncorrected only because of the inequality created by qualified immunity. To restore the national peace, we need to fulfill the oath of our ancestors enshrined in the Declaration of Independence: “all [humans] are created equal.”

Our national purpose is happiness. In the Preamble of our Constitution, we further pledged that our national purpose was to promote a “more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.” Those promises have been replaced by a feral capitalism elevated now to the highest levels of government, one that pits groups against one another, makes justice a commodity to be purchased, thrives on uproar, reserves security for the wealthy, sacrifices the general welfare to the enrichment of a few, and is gradually enslaving the nation. Capitalism, when regulated, is a great system for producing wealth, but if allowed to go feral, it will destroy the very legal and social framework that enables us to prosper. In enacting reforms, we should ask if they will make the nation happier.

In order to find our way, we need to restore a basic respect for truthfulness. Totalitarian systems destroy a sense that truth is knowable. For a democratic republic to exist, there must be a decent respect for truth in public life. In biblical times, they may have relied on prophets to correct the lies of rulers. But scientists, judges, and journalists are our prophets, the people who show us whether we are advancing or regressing, whether a politician is making us really better off or just borrowing from the future to fund his political career. We need to treasure them and support everyone who tries to tell the truth.

We cannot nor should we recover the America that was. But we need to, if possible, use the framework it provided to construct a new nation, since actually breaking a constitutional order tends to be irreversible. Let us build from the rubble to which Trumpism is reducing our country a new nation which makes us and the whole world happier, safer, wiser, freer, and more loving.

We do not have the time or resources to fight amongst ourselves. We have to know what we want to achieve in detail, because when the moment comes when we can change things, we will have very little time and no excess resources to do it.

The rest, as Hillel might have said, is commentary—so, go study

PREVIOUS DIARIES IN THIS SERIES

Part 1. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/9/2308931/-The-End-of-the-First-American-Republic-The-Rise-of-the-Second-Part-1

Part 2. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/18/2310959/-The-End-of-the-First-American-Republic-The-Rise-of-the-Second-Part-2

Part 3. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/31/2325206/-The-End-of-the-First-American-Republic-The-Rise-of-the-Second-Part-3 ____________________________________________________________________________________

VIDEO LINKS

Kamala Harris says the American system is broken: https://www.youtube.com/embed/JTEHG6rKSpc

Peter Thiel’s plan to install autocracy: https://www.youtube.com/embed/s-BQhXdCs8Y REFERENCES

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