@Nisse_Hult No, that's not where the problem started - you're conflating the three-fifths compromise with the electoral college. The 3/5ths thing was to get the southern states on board with the Constitution, and the electoral college system was to get the lower population states on board. Some of those states were one and the same, and some were not - Virginia was a slave state, but was also the most populous state. Rhode Island was a (almost) slave-free state, but also had a tiny population.
It took a lot of compromises, not all of which were pretty, to form the country. Building a modern nation-state from scratch is a difficult process, particularly when it had for all intents and purposes never been done before anywhere. Look at all the backroom deals and kickbacks it has taken to form the EU...which isn't even a country and is already falling apart. What we did here was a miracle.
And as for demands for change...are you aware that the rural areas of this country used to be almost entirely Democratic? The Democratic party chose to abandon the people of those areas, and are now paying the price. Any time they'd like to regain power there, all they have to do is stop being lunatics. It's funny...now that I think about it, it is almost as though it is a self-correcting system; as the Democrats have gotten crazier and more urban, their breadth of support has shrunk and their ability to gain the presidency has been cut back. Gee but those 18th century guys sure were smart!
If we do end up with another civil war here (which I view as increasingly likely, BTW), it's not going to be North vs South...it's going to be us normal people against the urban enclaves. I don't know what will kick it off...maybe the nutters try to do a gun grab, as they keep fantasizing about, but at the end of it the cities will be burned to the ground and we'll have to spend the next generation rebuilding. It's sure nothing to look forward to.
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@Nisse_Hult No, that's not where the problem started - you're conflating the three-fifths compromise with the electoral college. The 3/5ths thing was to get the southern states on board with the Constitution, and the electoral college system was to get the lower population states on board. Some of those states were one and the same, and some were not - Virginia was a slave state, but was also the most populous state. Rhode Island was a (almost) slave-free state, but also had a tiny population.
It took a lot of compromises, not all of which were pretty, to form the country. Building a modern nation-state from scratch is a difficult process, particularly when it had for all intents and purposes never been done before anywhere. Look at all the backroom deals and kickbacks it has taken to form the EU...which isn't even a country and is already falling apart. What we did here was a miracle.
And as for demands for change...are you aware that the rural areas of this country used to be almost entirely Democratic? The Democratic party chose to abandon the people of those areas, and are now paying the price. Any time they'd like to regain power there, all they have to do is stop being lunatics. It's funny...now that I think about it, it is almost as though it is a self-correcting system; as the Democrats have gotten crazier and more urban, their breadth of support has shrunk and their ability to gain the presidency has been cut back. Gee but those 18th century guys sure were smart!
If we do end up with another civil war here (which I view as increasingly likely, BTW), it's not going to be North vs South...it's going to be us normal people against the urban enclaves. I don't know what will kick it off...maybe the nutters try to do a gun grab, as they keep fantasizing about, but at the end of it the cities will be burned to the ground and we'll have to spend the next generation rebuilding. It's sure nothing to look forward to.