Given the Supreme Court's dismissal of Texas v Pennsylvania, it looks like the Cathedral is poised to take back full control, and the Constitution is just an interesting relic on some paper.
That in mind, I figure it's high time I started to share around something I've been working on for a while: I wrote and annotated a significant re-write of the US Constitution.
Here's the plan I propose: All the states that supported the Texas complaint should stop recognizing the DC Establishment as any sort of legitimate government, and should form a new government of the US under this updated constitution. Let any part of one of the other states set up a replacement government and rejoin as states, but leave the cancer cities like Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, and Los Angeles out of the deal. Leave them behind to collapse in their own failure, but save as much of America as we can from their mistakes, and preserve as much of the military and economic power as we can, so that China and its allies don't get a chance to take over.
It's a hard road, and there are a lot of people to convince that it's better to leave the Washington establishment behind, but balkanization has major risks to national security, as well as economic costs. This path preserves that security and many of the healthy sectors of the US economy, leaves behind the absurd government overreach that the Cathedral has built up, and maintains the American identity that many people consider to be core to their life.
Hoping to get feedback on this plan, and the changes to the Constitution, from you guys here first, before I start spreading it around to more official channels.
I haven't read the whole thing, but I did see that you placed a population cap of 100,000 per Representative with the understanding that it would significantly increase the size of the House.
I think a more realistic option would be to build additional layers of hierarchy between a State and the Federal government. Something like an interstate district that itself had some degree of legislative ability. It is very rare in large scale human organizations for them to be so flat; generally as they grow we add layers of hierarchy to keep them manageable.
Another thing you tend to see in large organizations is: policy is defined at the higher levels and administered at the lower levels. Here I'm speaking of executive branch organizations like the FDA, USDA, FAA, FBI, etc... The administration and execution of things like food and drug safety, agricultural regulations, aircraft safety, investigation of crime, and so on can easily be performed by state-level agencies subject to Federal standards (which should be kept more general and high-level). Inasmuch as the Federal agency needed to exist it should simply have the authority to audit the state-level agency for compliance with the Federal policy.
The way I might formalize this is: The Federal government has authority over the State governments but not necessarily the citizens of those States (except in instances of insurrection or rebellion). Under some enumerated circumstances it may have the ability to compel the State government to exert some authority over people in its jurisdiction but it does not have the ability to do so directly.
That would effectively eliminate the FBI, DEA, and ATF and limit organizations like the USDA, FDA, and FAA to ensuring the state bodies charged with administering those regulations were competently doing so.
State non-compliance should be considered evidence of insurrection or rebellion and treated as such. This would eliminate "sanctuary states".
I think that with many more members of the House, we'd end up with more informal hierarchies, since right now there are already party leaders, whips, deputy leaders and whips, etc. Ideally, there would be more factions within the house, and so more hierarchies like that. I don't like the prospect of adding more layers because that would be one more layer between people and national legislation.
A lot of the stuff like the FDA, USDA, CDC, etc. would be impossible under this constitution, because it was unconstitutional to begin with (it's all justified under Interstate Commerce via Wickard v Filburn, which I explicitly kill). The States or Localities would be the right place for this, and then states could form treaties of common standards via I.7.3 (as opposed to I.7.2 national legislation).
I actually want states to be able to engage in non-compliance, but the other states have the ability to kick them out of the union if the non-compliance is over something the rest of the country thinks is ridiculous.
Thanks for the feedback!
What's wrong with more layers? With respect, I want it to be really hard for New York to tell my state how to conduct its affairs. My neighbors have more interest in my affairs than my county, than my state, than the surrounding states, than my nation. Why shouldn't the structure of the government reflect that?
Things like medication manufactured in one state and sold in another would still under your Constitution fall under cross-border commerce subject to Federal authority. The FDA for example predates Wickard v Filburn by 5 years, and prior to its creation the USDA regulated interstate trade of medications for 30 years. The USDA could still exist for the same reason: because most food production is in a handful of states and results in cross-border commerce.
More layers means that it's harder for your own opinions to filter up to a debate that's already happening on the national stage. I'm not super opposed to the idea, I'm just concerned that the tradeoff isn't worth it.
I absolutely agree that some New Yorkers have no business running your life; I'm hoping the 2/3 majority required for national bills would keep that at bay, but you might be right that more layers would make it meaningfully more difficult.
Fair point on the Interstate drug sales. I can see good value in adding a regional layer and putting that sort of administration at that level. There would still be inter-regional trade, but maybe since there'd be less of it, there'd be a weaker case for regulation on it.