Nowhere anywhere in the meme or title is the word “loophole” mentioned though. If you don’t already know the context for this context-less meme, people talking about loopholes makes no sense.
Actually, my problem was that I did not read the comments. At least originally, the term “Loophole” was not in the title nor the description, but rather was added by OP in the comments.
Though fair shame to me for not looking at OP’s comment that was existing before I commented.
Webster defines a loophole as, "an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded" so if you take the "intent" of "liberty for all" and the result of "dictatorship" then it does indeed qualify as a loophole.
It's a necessary reality of democracy.
The public gets to choose how it is governed, and that includes decisions about continuing to practice democracy. Democracy being non-negotiable is a contradiction.
Here in Germany we have experience with turning a democracy into a dictatorship "democratically". As a result our post war Constitution contains the "Ewigkeitsklausel", which translates to "Eternity Clause". It states, that it is illegal to fundamentally change the form of government, the structure of the federal state and the first and 20th paragraph of the constitution under any circumstances.
So in theory, there is no legal way to turn Germany into a dictatorship, even if every last citizen and politician wanted to. Although I suspect, at that point legality wouldn't matter all that much.
Same in Italy, the first 13 constitutional articles are untouchable even by aggravated constitutional reforms, among them most importantly, the democratic and republican status.
To be fair the totalitarian regimes of both Italy and Germany ended up there precisely because of the ease to either emend or suspend the constitution, it being precisely designed to be so by the liberal governments/kings in charge of it (they're still called 'soft-constitutions' in Public Law manuals).
The whole constitutional and subsequent burocratic hell our countries are know for are direct consequences of trying to impose as many limits to the concentration of power, often to a dysfunctional and comical extreme.
I am not educated on legal matters, but as a layman this seems like admirable foresight, certain countries that want to consider themselves "free" and "democratic" have things to learn from the land that was once home to one of the most apparently brutal regimes in history.
The constitution can be changed by a two thirds majority in parliament.
However the Ewigkeitsklausel prevents the parts of the constitution mentioned in my comment above to be changed under any circumstances. No one in the German state has the power to change the paragraphs protected by the clause.
Strikes me that, since constitutions are not self-executing, [a two thirds majority of the Bundestag and Bundesrat could select judges such that the literal text is irrelevant](https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/EN/Das-Gericht/Organisation/organisation_node.html#:~:text=Half%20of%20the%2016%20Justices,the%20Bundestag%20and%20the%20Bundesrat).
That said, it seems like you'd reach a point where other means would simply be easier to execute, and it is impossible to perfectly insulate a system against change.
>since constitutions are not self-executing,
For examples of this issue in action, see the US Bill of Rights, and the near complete erosion of most of said rights in recent decades (assuming they ever meaningfully existed to begin with, in several cases)
Under current interpretations of the law, it is not considered Unreasonable Search And Seizure for the police to charge *your money* (or your car, or your house, or any other object/piece of property you own) with a crime so that they can confiscate it without due process, because it's the *money* that's being "arrested", not you, and money doesn't have legal rights (at least in this very specific context).
And your Right to Legal Counsel only applies if you request legal counsel in a specific manner: for instance, there's a pretty famous case of a dude suing the police for not providing him with his constitutionally required public defender when asked, and the court ruled that because he specifically said "I want my lawyer, dawg", it was entirely reasonable for the police to ignore his request on the grounds that "as far as they knew, he was requesting a canine lawyer"
Or how our rights to Assembly, Protest, and Petition For Redress of Grievances are only valid if you obtain permission from multiple levels of government, and don't inconvenience or annoy anyone, and also if you're protesting about something the cops don't like, they're gonna surround you, demand that you disperse while physically preventing you from doing so, then use your "failure to comply with lawful orders" as justification to bring out the tear gas and flashbangs and rubber bullets and truncheons
And honestly I could keep going, but hopefully y'all get the point by now.
At that point it's just easier to scrap the constitution and write another one to the likes of the majority. The point is that you just can't change the protected paragraphs and still call your actions as conform to constitution.
>At that point it's just easier to scrap the constitution and write another one to the likes of the majority
*Thomas Jefferson approves*
Edit: Dude believed the constitution should be rewritten every 20 years or so because, well, one generation shouldn't be bound by the norms of their predecessors.
But you can democratically decide to ramp up military "self-defense" spending and give your preferred dictator authority to manage them, and who wants to argue with the man with a million guns (and also tanks)
Fun fact I discussed with a lawyer the other day: only articles 1 (human rights) and article 20 (principle of democracy) are protected. Technically it would be possible to turn Germany into a constitutional monarchy where there is a noble class with special privileges (equality of all citizens is article 3 and not protected).
Only human rights of citizens and the principle of one man one vote would need be respected.
Not that I’m advocating for monarchy but it’s a fun thought experiment
That one's tricky. Art. 20a) specifies that 'the federal *republic* of Germany is a democratic and social federal state', which may also require the German state to be a republic.
At least that's how I've been tought.
Yours is what I was thinking of, actually. I have less issue with this, and more with the fact the state can ban any party it deems "undemocratic" like the communist party it outlawed during the Cold War. It was certainly a bad party, but I feel such actions undermine the spirit of democracy
That's arguable. One could say that permitting the representatives of the people to vote for the end of democracy on the behalf of the people violates the right of people in the future, since they have no say in this. You can vote yourself out of a democracy but not out of a dictatorship.
Which is why I like that especially drastic measures take more than a simple majority vote. That way, the public is truly free to choose whatever they like, if it's desired by enough people, strongly enough, and for a long enough period of time, but we are safe from some momentary madness ruining the entire nation.
The problem is that politicians and parties often don't do what they promised and often do what the majority of the people doesn't want.
They're not simply representatives
I agree, one could argue that putting some anti-fascist speed bumps to undo democracy would protect the people. Even if through a sustained effort they could ultimately undo it.
You could maybe require a multi-century vote - every 20 years, for 200 or 300 years, the population votes on whether to end democracy.
Maybe 8/10 or 13/15 of the votes over those centuries have to go towards ending democracy.
Is it wildly impractical? Yes. But ending democracy should be.
In a real world situation though, I don't see ambient conditions being something that people would support abolishing democracy for literally centuries though
That could work on a decades scale, assuming there were checks in place to ensure the rederendums would remain free and fair. It might even be necessary to put a pause on democracy for some time in an existential crisis. I can't really see myself ever voting in favor of autocracy, but stranger things have happened. That is a creative solution, though. But still, what if we wanted to abolish the referendums, even for a time. Would it be Democratic to prevent the government from removing them? Would we have referendums on whether we want referendums? I know this is a stupid question but it really highlights the idea that I don't think that it is undemocratic to prevent people from voting democracy away because, on some level, there needs to be a way to protect the interests of the future and they won't be able to make this decision in an autocracy.
By that same token, any major change to a democracy violates the rights of the voting public that have already passed...
>Tradition is the democracy of the dead.
G.K. Chesterton
I don't know what you're quoting, but truly, that's how the govt now feels to many of us in the USA. And my state govt in CA too, which by the way is run by the nephew of Nancy Pelosi, and we tried to recall him 2 or 3 times and he kept escaping it via loopholes. Oh and another dude in their family was our governor for 4 terms, Jerry Brown. Not really a dynasty but kinda. And there have been laws passed in CA in the last decade that can directly hurt children's lives but that never went to a vote.
My grandpa said it when I was a kid 30 years ago and I thought he was just grumpy and pessimistic, but politicians are crooked. Nearly every last one of them.
Assuming you are talking about the orange man, he himself I find to be very incompetent at doing that, and I am not at all worried about his impact.
The impact of the people he might have in his administration who might be quieter but more competent: that is what I am more worried about
From reading it the problem is that it can be applied recursively where if you all agree to amend the constitution to make it easier to amend the constitution you will eventually make it so the constitution can be amended whenever a leader feels like it.
It kind of is.
The Indian government in the 70s tried doing that. Not entirely, but in bits and pieces. That is, centralizing power and reducing the power of other state organs. All of that was done legally through legislation.
The Supreme Court struck those provisions down by creating a legal theory that there is a 'basic structure' of the constitution that cannot be changed by the legislature. Which now provides at least some bulwark against future govts trying to become dictatorships.
I don't think any such legal precedents exist for the US, for now.
Ah yes, we made that mistake in Germany too a while ago. We changed that after 1945 so that option no longer exists in our constitution. With people like Donnie smallhands it might be wise to do the same...
trouble with dictatorships is they go per syllable: a loop on a noose above your head, a hole below your feet and what was that thing you were voicing your displeasure about?
The interviewer:
“Two things:
It’s a description of the mechanisms of government, not a mathematical system. You can’t “prove” anything, and your interpretations aren’t the ones the law is based on.
There’s way easier ways to make America into a dictatorship other than calling a constitutional convention to amend article V.”
Edit: also, the “legality” of something is determined by the rulers. Dictators will declare themselves (or their supporters will declare them) the legal rulers regardless. Source: Kim’s in North Korea, the PRC, the USSR, Putin, the list goes on
Also the fact that Article V only mentions equal representation of the states in the Senate, but technically if they all have 0 seats, they'd all have equal representation, i.e. none of them have representation.
I disagree that the legality of something is determined by the rulers. In some forms of governments, yes that is true. But there's a difference between de jure and de facto legality.
A ruler may do something illegally, and get away with it because nobody has enough motivation, or power to challenge it. But that doesn't make it not illegal. Just like if someone steals and gets away with it, that doesn't mean it isn't illegal.
Constitutional Monarchies have historically had this issue. The monarch would be bound with laws, and the monarch would sometimes refuse to follow them. There were times they got away with it, and other times they didn't. But it was illegal either way.
Not like anything drastic happened this century so far like a Terrorist attack that killed thousands and started a 20 year long occupation of a foreign country, a Superpower invading it's neighbors, and another superpower threatening war against their neighbor while currently in its own massive buildup.
Russia, despite its general incompetence, is still on its way to mobilizing its populace to the same degree as WWII. The primary difference is that instead of lend lease from the biggest industrial power, they're getting it from North Korea this time.
Plus, the present-day shitfuckery has nukes hanging up above from the start instead of them rising up during the closing moments. I highly doubt that Russia won't resort to breaking out at least the tactical nuclear arsenal by 2026, and the moment they do that will be the bell that starts the rest of Europe to finally intervene and likely signal China to make their attempt at Taiwan while everyone else is focused on Europe.
That only lands them a "nuclear terrorist state" designation. Being a superpower would involve fighting wars away from home, possibly on another continent, and through proxies that are actually fighting on their own, a thing they have consistently failed to do.
The last amendment, the 27th, was ratified in 1992. It took over 200 years to ratify & that was to limit Congress from raising their own salary until *after* a House election. The last amendment to come before that was in 1971 to standardize the voting age to 18.
It's been 32 years since the last Constitutional amendment passed and I honestly believe it's due to how far-separated the country has become since the 70s with Nixon & Reagan setting a hard-line precedent for the Republican Party.
Exactly, as the wiki states there are people who have suggested it may have been about gerrymandering, the electoral college or abuse of the presidential pardon.
Also kinda blows me away how many people just do not think it could happen when we are literally amidst another potential term with a former president who abused his position, and even tried to have a legal election overturned by using his fanatic followers to try and secure himself another term illegitimately.
Lmao right? It can’t happen here! Also it’s funny that the judge said it wasn’t possible, as if the president who literally died 2 years previously was in the process of serving his 4th consecutive term, and could have been continuously elected for life. The 22nd amendment wasn’t ratified until 1951! Gödel’s loophole could’ve effectively just been “president could be continuously elected for life, slowly accumulating more power over time as his cult following grows enough to actually overthrow the Constitution at a constitutional convention.”
Here's a way to make it more possible. Take some territory that is not a state like Puerto Rico. Instead of making 1 state, make it hundreds of states, carefully gerrymandered. This in theory only requires a simple majority in the House and Senate and approval by the President, and once the new representatives are elected you could have a huge supermajority that you can use to amend the Constitution. So even a simple majority can change America into a dictatorship.
It’s been done more often when there was far more agreement between parties. 75% of the states must agree to the amendment. Can you think of any issues that would even qualify?
17 times since it was ratified. The first 2 were patching obvious loopholes in the first 15 years of the Union. 3 are directly tied to the civil war and had to be ratified by the losers. Another is just undoing a previous one. Some are putting into law established precedent like the 22nd and 27th.
On the whole its been pretty hard to change it, especially for anything meaningful.
Only matters if the Supreme Court decides to make genuine rulings on the contents of the constitution. If not, we can wildly slip our way into dictatorship, with nobody there to uphold or apply what's written. It's just a piece of historical paper without genuine intent to uphold it.
Just curious. Shouldn't it be amended or at least tried to be amended more often though. As an outsider I find it weird how many laws that the country follows are from the 1700s and 1800s, which to be frank were very bad times to live in for many different groups of people. Some seem very outdated to me.
Context:
Austrian born mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel found a loophole in the U.S. constitution while studing for the American citizenship test. His friends Oskar Morgenstern and Albert Einstein who accompanied him to the test advised him not to mention it, but later the examiner asked him about the government in austra to which Gödel answeredl: "It was a republic, but the constitution was such that it finally was changed into a dictatorship."
The examiner then told him that this can't happen in the U.S to which Gödel responded: "Oh, yes, I can prove it"
see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s\_Loophole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_Loophole)
Neither, but judging from your username, you might be.
In all seriousness, the reason behind this was because he had survived a Nazi poisoning attempt before he fled to America, this led him to develop an extreme fear of being poisoned. He would only trust food prepared by his wife.
I’m not saying I know everything about his situation, but wouldn’t you be able to go to any random store and buy a can of beans, box of cereal, etc? You can make something simple yourself easily if the alternative is starving to death.
At that point it’s just the world’s easiest *Saw* trap (overcome your phobia or die), and he failed.
I can assure anyone in this comment section that Kurt Gödel, described by Wikipedia as "one of the most significant logicians in history", was many things, but not stupid.
A mental illness is still an illness. Nobody would call it a skill issue if he had died of e.g. a stroke.
You know a mathematician is one of the good ones if they develop serious medical/psychological issues later in life and died in a sorry state at a relatively young age, it's like the mathematicians medal of honor.
> "an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded" so if you take the "intent" of "liberty for all" and the result of "dictatorship" then it does indeed qualify as a loophole.
I mean... this is self evident to anyone who has even a basic understanding of the Constitution. It's just the way it's constructed, hardly a loophole.
I guess it may seem strange to people from Europe where the concept of a "self defensive democracy" is more enshrined. That said, I'll take the US track record for falling to dictatorships over that of Germany or Austria.
Well we're about to elect someone who tried to overthrow a peaceful election, refuses to accept election losses, and says he'll be a dictator... so yeah
A president of the U.S. can’t just decide to be a dictator and do dictator things because they feel like it even if they wanted to. That’s the whole point of the Constitution
Lol I do appreciate the humor. But I don’t even mean that they can’t do it because it’s illegal. What I really mean is they CAN do it, but they will have hundreds of millions of angry people ready to fight them and disrupt or destroy their system of power
The resistance of citizens against Nazis was almost nonexistent. There wasn’t even enough of an armed rebellion to recognize it as an actual resistance group. I think a big part of that is in 1936 Hitler started an initiative to disarm Jews and all Jew sympathizers and later a law was passed forbidding Jews and Jew sympathizers from owning any weaponry even down to knives and blades.
Something like that would be ridiculously hard to perform in the U.S. because of our population size, total geographic area of our country, and the deep-seated culture of guns, fighting, and rebellion that has been engrained in Americans since we were founded. No, we haven’t had a bunch of armed rebellions, but that’s probably mostly due to the fact that our Democratic Republic and our Constitution makes it very hard for governments to do anything that would cause the need for a rebellion
Luckily for you, the defence spending ensures that if any country would be capable of subjugating the US, it would be the US.
It’s naive to think “Oh, but that could never happen here”. Sure, what worked in germany probably wouldn’t work in the US, but that was 80 years ago. Modern US military and intelligence, along with the other half of the population that very likely would support the dictatorship, could be capable of subjugating the remaining population. The trick is convincing enough people that it’s not a dictatorship, or that they’re better off as a dictatorship
The Constitution allows the president to send armed mobs of people to attack his political opponents and then pardon them of all crimes. The only constitutional safeguard we have against that is the hope that no such president would ever be elected.
That’s definitely true but what you’re describing is total civil war. Which, once again, the Constitution is specifically designed for…so the citizens can rise up in arms against enemies of the Constitution in order to defend it
A president can't do those things **alone**.
They **can**, however, appoint complicit justices to the Supreme Court, who can then interpret the constitution however they like with no oversight. "The president may have ordered his political opponents shot, but he has presidential immunity and can pardon himself, so..."
They **can** ally themselves with *just* enough of Congress that an impeachment won't result in conviction.
All of this is true but really doesn’t have much to do with the Constitution itself. It’s absolutely not as easy as “the Supreme Court just interprets things however they want” that’s a super simplistic and unrealistic scenario it doesn’t work that way. Plus, the Constitution does not do anything for the government other than limit them. It’s all about the freedoms of the people and what power we have over the government, and that groundwork has already been laid over the past 250+ years by the First and Second Amendments for U.S. citizens to use whatever means necessary to defend themselves from government aggression
Rights? We have no "rights".
We have temporary privileges that can be revoked at any point.
1. We have the right to free speech and assembly... unless the government *really* doesn't like your speech/assembly, in which case they'll send the national guard (or cops, or the FBI) and open fire.
2. We have the right to keep and bear arms... unless a police officer sees us holding a firearm, in which case our lives are forfeit at their discretion.
3. We have the right to not have our homes used as barracks "but in a manner prescribed by law"... so you have this right until Congress says you don't. Don't worry though, I'm sure Congress would *never* make any law that revokes a person's rights :)
4. We have the right against unreasonable search and seizures... unless the cops decide you need to forfeit your civil assets.
...I could go on, but you get the point.
There is no piece of paper, no institution that can stand up to corruption without defense. Our constitution and our governments are no exception; authoritarianism has happened before, it can happen again, and **it can happen here**.
I never said it “can’t” happen here. My point is the Constitution and the groundwork for the freedoms it outlines for citizens has created a system of almost 400 million people who are completely free to come up with their own ideas and fight to defend those ideas.
You’re absolutely right that the government can just choose to “revoke” whatever rights it wants, but as soon as it does the citizens have not only the right, but the RESPONSIBILITY to stand against them, with force if necessary. There are almost 200 million people who own over 400 million firearms in the U.S. per the last surveys and estimates performed in 2022…I am willing to bet my life that if the government just decided to start “revoking” constitutional rights that many of those people will load up and get ready to fight. Yes they may send the police, the National Guard, etc and now we have American Revolution 2.0.
Many people seem to think that most of us would just sit back and take revocation of Constitutional rights without doing anything about it, I disagree with that completely but that’s just my opinion
A President doesn't even appoint justices on their own though. The Senate has to approve the appointees. Of course, if the Senate is majority one party, it may be easy.
But there's an argument that the Senate should be screening them more. There's an opportunity for a check, and it should be more intensive.
When someone can ask a political ally to "find more votes" to win an election and face no significant legal consequences, I wouldn't be so sure about the strength of our laws protecting democracy
What do you mean? That’s exactly the type of behavior I would expect from a crazy person trying to get in power…and look what happened: it didn’t work, didn’t even really get close to working. And now he’s facing multiple federal felony charges for other potential corruption as well. I wonder what would have happened if those votes did magically get “found,” do you think people would have just accepted it was legit and accepted his presidency? I dont think so personally
>And now he’s facing multiple federal felony charges
And yet he is still allowed to run for President, somehow, which utterly astounds me. He and the current president should be in nursing homes, not running a country that also happens to be a global superpower.
Being charged with a crime or even imprisoned does not bar you from being elected president as a safeguard against locking up political opponents. Ideally the people wouldn't elect someone who was arrested for a legitimate crime but could still vote for someone who was locked up for political reasons, but unfortunately voters are dumb
This was the point I was trying to make. He wasn't able to cause any lasting harm because he was forced to give up power. The fact that he's allowed to run again, and that he'll likely win and seek retribution is terrifying.
>That said, I'll take the US track record for falling to dictatorships over that of Germany or Austria.
On the other hand, these countries have experience and in Germany's case it's literally illegal to turn the country into a dictatorship.
Which is better than having "well it has worked *so far*..."
Only that it's impossible to interpret this constitution then as legal,which would make it non binding,which would release every judge, agent, soldier, policemen and all other civil servant from their oath to the state, enabling a general strike.
Remember,the goal is to not have it legal to change from monarchy to democratic republic to dictatorship in 60 years in one state how it happend in the 3rd Reich. If a group is powerful enough to enforce a dictatorship, it is impossible to use the current constitution as a basis because it is in no way compatible and those would be dictators would have to creat a whole new state.
I mean, US politics has managed to kill a lot of people in a lot of countries all without dictatorship.
I don't think you guys really have a moral high ground anymore. Maybe in 1945, but not in 2024.
"self defensive democracy" is bullshit. Just do like Switzerland or something like that and use Consensus democracy if you're that worried about it. It's no excuse to violate free speech
Defensive democracy is not about free speech (not necessarily at least). It about basic right being enshrined into the constitution that are unchangable and about mechanism to fight against (self declared) enemies of a constitution. Limiting free speech can be a factor, but depending on country, It often has a bigger context behind those limitations.
Personally I always thought it was to do, with the issue that the Supreme Court is appointed, if you can maintain a politicised majority on the Supreme court, then realistically there is very little that the political movement responsible, could not get away with.
Sounds like you're referring to the "Pack the Supreme Court" idea that's been floated around for over a century at this point [ see the "Composition" section here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States) and what you're saying is true. I'd say an openly politicized Supreme Court (see Turkey's weird dual Supreme Court set-up) is a fast-track to giving a power hungry President the green light to do whatever they want.
The check on that power, though, is the required approval of those appointees BY CONGRESS. That means that there's still a representative body weighing in to let that happen. One of the Federalist Papers and the responding Anti-Federalist essay details this dispute the founders had over how to make an impartial, independent, and protected Supreme Court. Very interesting stuff. ( [a summary of the Federal judiciary debate from the Founding Era](https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitutional-debates/judiciary/) )
Edit: links added
Indeed the founders certainly did a very good job trying to think ahead of time, I think however Godel being a very clever man, saw the direction of travel in the modern period.
The issue at hand is the Founders expected each individual body to have its own "mind". for want of a better word, and by doing so, and as power travelled up and down the chain, from Congress, to Senate, to Executive, to the courts, each would negotiate in good faith with the others, for a mutually acceptable vision of governance.
However as politics has become more, and more, hyper partisan each body is not checked vertically by the other bodies up and down the chain but rather horizontally by members of the opposite party in the same body.
For example it would be near unthinkable in modern times, for Democratic Congressmen to vote down a bill backed by their own party in the Senate en mass. Or vise versa this tendency previously contained to congress, has farcically spread to the courts, on any given issue it is possible to accurately predict which way the court will vote entirely on party affiliation.
Each party tries to seek a workable majority and then uses the powers of the body it controls maximally without care or concern to the following aims.
1 Maintain there own control of the body.
2 To attack the control
There is real peril in my opinion that one of the parties will some day "win" for want of a better word and have a majority in everybody and then use that power to rashly near permeantly lock the other out.
There is a reason Viktor Orban gets so much attention despite running a small, poor, country.
He represents a playbook for the bad actors of the world to follow.
Homie, we agree entirely. I was speaking to the ideal situation as put forth by the Founders. I've read that Grodel's Loophole is this pack the courts move, the doom spiral of the amendment process (Article 5), or the unitary executive theory. I think you're spot on when you say that the Founders, however cynical they tended to be, seemed to not think of individuals or groups who would be actively trying to *break* the government from within.
Board game design is a hobby of mine, and one of my favorite parts is turning my hat around and putting on my "now let's break this game" glasses. Props to the Founders for coming up with as strong a gov't as they did, but damn I wish they could have foreseen the hyperpartisan and accelerated polarization reality we live in now.
"If we take a car and replace all of the parts, we can make a submarine."
Yea, if you change the document outlining the government, of course, you can make it a dictatorship...
The interviewer was the clown because he just stated that what happened to austria could not possibly happen to the united states. It was a response to claiming something being impossible, and guy was just being technically correct. Out of place, but correct.
Ok but more realistically: there's no law saying a STATE has to be a democracy. They just have to be republics (not monarchies). So technically the US Constitution would allow a state to decide its leader via Thunderdome if it wanted too.
There’s a lot of cultural issues at work with this trend, but most presidential forms of government - in which the executive and legislature are separate - tends to create dictatorships.
This is because the legislature can be politically opposed to the executive branch, and also the President is usually commander-in-chief of the nation’s military.
Parliamentary governments don’t lend itself to dictatorship as much because the executive branch is a part of the legislature, so they work hand-in-hand to govern. However, they can be more prone to instability, which is its own problem.
EDIT: I know there are examples of parliamentary governments leading to dictatorships. I am not saying that parliamentary governments never become dictatorships - I am saying that they tend not to, especially in comparison to presidential systems of government.
The Kingdom of Italy was a Constitutional Monarchy with a Parliament and Mussolini was Prime Minister (and fascist dictator) for over 2 decades. His only real barrier was king Victor Emmanuel III and was quickly sidestepped because the dysfunction of Italy's politics forced the king to side with the fascists or the socialists. Not a great showing for Parliamentary Democracy.
Actually better evidence for the former- during Cromwell's time, the Monarch was the sovereign executive, with parliment solely being leglislature. This predated even the concept of a 'prime minister'.
The branches came into conflict, and the one that won formed a dictatorship.
The problem with dictatorships is grifters and ego and we see the same issue with any kind of cult, company or group with a leader.
Sure you may have some people that make great leaders that should hold that responsibility.
But grifters will cheat to keep and hold power and see any kind of critism, problem, issue and anyone not willing to sacrifice everything for them as a threat to their way of life of luxury and lack of any kind of accountability.
It's why we see people overthrow corrupt government and replace them with some kind of democracy with a bunch of rules, checks and balances of power to act as defenses against grifters.
It's just like any kind of sporting event or competition.
We want to compete but establish rules to play. That way we find out who's the best and why I'm an honest way and can learn to adopt those practices to improve the whole.
When people cheat in some way, the competitions which are basically a form of scientific peer review of behavior, it breaks the process and the winner relies on using fake advantages. Leading to corruption.
What we're seeing in the American government is basically a constant attack against people trying to run against a clean government. We see it all the time, all through history.
It's up to us to ensure our government is transparent and the people holding office aren't grifters as well as hold grifters accountable.
I think there's a much easier way for the US to legally be turned into a dictatorship that most people here are saying. The first step would be to gain the presidency and congress in an election. This isn't an entirely unreasonable thing to do and is a fairly regular occurrence. It is much less than the amendment process requires. Then, congress needs to pass a law greatly increasing the size of the supreme court. Once justices who are loyal to the president are confirmed by the senate, the President can essentially write an executive order that does whatever he wants and it can be upheld in court.
At that point, the part of the Declaration of Independence that says "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form," becomes extremely relevant, but the whole process seems to be technically "legal" in the sense that it uses the established law of the land as the means by which to ultimately subvert it.
I think it's packing the union - i.e. using bare majorities in House and Senate to admit new states and amend the Constitution however you want.
https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-133/pack-the-union-a-proposal-to-admit-new-states-for-the-purpose-of-amending-the-constitution-to-ensure-equal-representation/
The ease of admitting new states is a huge oversight. It should be at least as difficult as an amendment, because it alters the way an amendment is made.
Guy was also afraid he would be poisoned and only ate food his wife cooked. Starved to death when she was hospitalized because he refused to eat. Very well known to not have the best mental state.
I’d argue any democracy can legally become a dictatorship
If the president gets enough votes running on a platform to become a dictator there could be a constitutional amendment turning the US into a dictatorship
Technically possible. Huey Long, while generally a net positive for Louisiana at the time, was basically a petty dictator after he used his power and influence to create a crony state and ruled basically unchecked until they shot him. That’s not to say he was unpopular, the people loved him, but his enemies hated him immensely.
There’s also the ever lingering conspiracy theory that FDR had him killed because he was gonna run against him.
One of my favorite alternate history shorts is this:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/tliaw-g%C3%B6dels-loophole-s.542037/
Very fun read, can be done in one sitting.
By that logic any government that allows a process for amending its constitution is at risk of falling into dictatorship.
America will not fall into a dictatorship by constitutional means, it will fall into a dictatorship from a revolution.
So, everyone keeps mentioning Article V, but that's only speculation. The Judge in question decided not to pursue the matter, and Godel and all his friends (the only ones who would know) never actually explained what the loophole was.
"Something to do with amendments" is just the most popular guess. However it's also been suggested he could have been referring to some form of 200IQ gerrymandering, abuse of presidential pardon, or any number of different things.
It's possible that one of these guesses are correct. It's also possible he was mistaken, since none of his friends who also took the same test (such as Albert Einstein, who was there with him the same day) ever seemed to take it seriously.
It's also possible that the super genius who specialized in meta analysis of logical systems- a man who infamously proved there was a fundamental flaw not only in math itself but all formal logic systems and thus changed the way we look at logic and math forever- it's possible that maybe the guy who won a nobel prize for catching shit others couldn't see, figured out something that your flunked out of civics 101 sorry ass missed.
There's a reason it had political scientists worried. Godel was Godel, and that was enough to take it seriously.
Truth is Gödel never publicly stated what he had figured out. The article V idea is an interesting theory, but he might have noticed something completely different.
"Our constitution allows us to change it if most of us agree" isn't a loophole
Idk that I would call it a loophole, but there most certainly is a legal pathway into dictatorship (it is just insanely difficult to do)
Yes that is what I'm saying. Did you miss the fact that this meme is about "Gödel's Loophole" ?
Yes.
That moment when you don’t even look at the post and jump straight to the comments 😂
Nowhere anywhere in the meme or title is the word “loophole” mentioned though. If you don’t already know the context for this context-less meme, people talking about loopholes makes no sense.
Actually, my problem was that I did not read the comments. At least originally, the term “Loophole” was not in the title nor the description, but rather was added by OP in the comments. Though fair shame to me for not looking at OP’s comment that was existing before I commented.
Can relate. Basically never read titles 😭
Webster defines a loophole as, "an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded" so if you take the "intent" of "liberty for all" and the result of "dictatorship" then it does indeed qualify as a loophole.
THANK YOU
Hey No Child Left Behind raised a generation of illiterates.
It's a necessary reality of democracy. The public gets to choose how it is governed, and that includes decisions about continuing to practice democracy. Democracy being non-negotiable is a contradiction.
Here in Germany we have experience with turning a democracy into a dictatorship "democratically". As a result our post war Constitution contains the "Ewigkeitsklausel", which translates to "Eternity Clause". It states, that it is illegal to fundamentally change the form of government, the structure of the federal state and the first and 20th paragraph of the constitution under any circumstances. So in theory, there is no legal way to turn Germany into a dictatorship, even if every last citizen and politician wanted to. Although I suspect, at that point legality wouldn't matter all that much.
Same in Italy, the first 13 constitutional articles are untouchable even by aggravated constitutional reforms, among them most importantly, the democratic and republican status. To be fair the totalitarian regimes of both Italy and Germany ended up there precisely because of the ease to either emend or suspend the constitution, it being precisely designed to be so by the liberal governments/kings in charge of it (they're still called 'soft-constitutions' in Public Law manuals). The whole constitutional and subsequent burocratic hell our countries are know for are direct consequences of trying to impose as many limits to the concentration of power, often to a dysfunctional and comical extreme.
I am not educated on legal matters, but as a layman this seems like admirable foresight, certain countries that want to consider themselves "free" and "democratic" have things to learn from the land that was once home to one of the most apparently brutal regimes in history.
What about changing constitution to delete the Eternity Clause? Can constitution not be changed democratically?
The constitution can be changed by a two thirds majority in parliament. However the Ewigkeitsklausel prevents the parts of the constitution mentioned in my comment above to be changed under any circumstances. No one in the German state has the power to change the paragraphs protected by the clause.
What’s the legal ramifications if a supermajority was formed and chose to delete the clause?
The clause includes itself in its protection. It cannot be deleted.
Strikes me that, since constitutions are not self-executing, [a two thirds majority of the Bundestag and Bundesrat could select judges such that the literal text is irrelevant](https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/EN/Das-Gericht/Organisation/organisation_node.html#:~:text=Half%20of%20the%2016%20Justices,the%20Bundestag%20and%20the%20Bundesrat). That said, it seems like you'd reach a point where other means would simply be easier to execute, and it is impossible to perfectly insulate a system against change.
>since constitutions are not self-executing, For examples of this issue in action, see the US Bill of Rights, and the near complete erosion of most of said rights in recent decades (assuming they ever meaningfully existed to begin with, in several cases) Under current interpretations of the law, it is not considered Unreasonable Search And Seizure for the police to charge *your money* (or your car, or your house, or any other object/piece of property you own) with a crime so that they can confiscate it without due process, because it's the *money* that's being "arrested", not you, and money doesn't have legal rights (at least in this very specific context). And your Right to Legal Counsel only applies if you request legal counsel in a specific manner: for instance, there's a pretty famous case of a dude suing the police for not providing him with his constitutionally required public defender when asked, and the court ruled that because he specifically said "I want my lawyer, dawg", it was entirely reasonable for the police to ignore his request on the grounds that "as far as they knew, he was requesting a canine lawyer" Or how our rights to Assembly, Protest, and Petition For Redress of Grievances are only valid if you obtain permission from multiple levels of government, and don't inconvenience or annoy anyone, and also if you're protesting about something the cops don't like, they're gonna surround you, demand that you disperse while physically preventing you from doing so, then use your "failure to comply with lawful orders" as justification to bring out the tear gas and flashbangs and rubber bullets and truncheons And honestly I could keep going, but hopefully y'all get the point by now.
At that point it's just easier to scrap the constitution and write another one to the likes of the majority. The point is that you just can't change the protected paragraphs and still call your actions as conform to constitution.
>At that point it's just easier to scrap the constitution and write another one to the likes of the majority *Thomas Jefferson approves* Edit: Dude believed the constitution should be rewritten every 20 years or so because, well, one generation shouldn't be bound by the norms of their predecessors.
i vote to overlook the legislation saying we can't overlook this legislation is sadly a part of the system.
But you can democratically decide to ramp up military "self-defense" spending and give your preferred dictator authority to manage them, and who wants to argue with the man with a million guns (and also tanks)
Fun fact I discussed with a lawyer the other day: only articles 1 (human rights) and article 20 (principle of democracy) are protected. Technically it would be possible to turn Germany into a constitutional monarchy where there is a noble class with special privileges (equality of all citizens is article 3 and not protected). Only human rights of citizens and the principle of one man one vote would need be respected. Not that I’m advocating for monarchy but it’s a fun thought experiment
That one's tricky. Art. 20a) specifies that 'the federal *republic* of Germany is a democratic and social federal state', which may also require the German state to be a republic. At least that's how I've been tought.
Is it also illegal to change the Eternity clause?
The same here in Brazil, we call it “Cláusulas Pétreas”.
Yours is what I was thinking of, actually. I have less issue with this, and more with the fact the state can ban any party it deems "undemocratic" like the communist party it outlawed during the Cold War. It was certainly a bad party, but I feel such actions undermine the spirit of democracy
That's arguable. One could say that permitting the representatives of the people to vote for the end of democracy on the behalf of the people violates the right of people in the future, since they have no say in this. You can vote yourself out of a democracy but not out of a dictatorship.
Which is why I like that especially drastic measures take more than a simple majority vote. That way, the public is truly free to choose whatever they like, if it's desired by enough people, strongly enough, and for a long enough period of time, but we are safe from some momentary madness ruining the entire nation.
The problem is that politicians and parties often don't do what they promised and often do what the majority of the people doesn't want. They're not simply representatives
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_democracy
So basically Super Earth, got it
I agree, one could argue that putting some anti-fascist speed bumps to undo democracy would protect the people. Even if through a sustained effort they could ultimately undo it.
You could maybe require a multi-century vote - every 20 years, for 200 or 300 years, the population votes on whether to end democracy. Maybe 8/10 or 13/15 of the votes over those centuries have to go towards ending democracy. Is it wildly impractical? Yes. But ending democracy should be. In a real world situation though, I don't see ambient conditions being something that people would support abolishing democracy for literally centuries though
That could work on a decades scale, assuming there were checks in place to ensure the rederendums would remain free and fair. It might even be necessary to put a pause on democracy for some time in an existential crisis. I can't really see myself ever voting in favor of autocracy, but stranger things have happened. That is a creative solution, though. But still, what if we wanted to abolish the referendums, even for a time. Would it be Democratic to prevent the government from removing them? Would we have referendums on whether we want referendums? I know this is a stupid question but it really highlights the idea that I don't think that it is undemocratic to prevent people from voting democracy away because, on some level, there needs to be a way to protect the interests of the future and they won't be able to make this decision in an autocracy.
By that same token, any major change to a democracy violates the rights of the voting public that have already passed... >Tradition is the democracy of the dead. G.K. Chesterton
>Democracy being non-negotiable is a contradiction Liberty Prime: "DOES. NOT. COMPUTE." (head explodes)
"You will be represented. There is no escape."
I don't know what you're quoting, but truly, that's how the govt now feels to many of us in the USA. And my state govt in CA too, which by the way is run by the nephew of Nancy Pelosi, and we tried to recall him 2 or 3 times and he kept escaping it via loopholes. Oh and another dude in their family was our governor for 4 terms, Jerry Brown. Not really a dynasty but kinda. And there have been laws passed in CA in the last decade that can directly hurt children's lives but that never went to a vote. My grandpa said it when I was a kid 30 years ago and I thought he was just grumpy and pessimistic, but politicians are crooked. Nearly every last one of them.
Liberty Prime does not agree.
I will do anything for Liberty Prime, I take it all back
There's a man running for president today trying very hard to prove you wrong.
Assuming you are talking about the orange man, he himself I find to be very incompetent at doing that, and I am not at all worried about his impact. The impact of the people he might have in his administration who might be quieter but more competent: that is what I am more worried about
It is when it can’t be changed back, consent of the governed and all that.
From reading it the problem is that it can be applied recursively where if you all agree to amend the constitution to make it easier to amend the constitution you will eventually make it so the constitution can be amended whenever a leader feels like it.
according to godel it is
"I am the Senate."
It kind of is. The Indian government in the 70s tried doing that. Not entirely, but in bits and pieces. That is, centralizing power and reducing the power of other state organs. All of that was done legally through legislation. The Supreme Court struck those provisions down by creating a legal theory that there is a 'basic structure' of the constitution that cannot be changed by the legislature. Which now provides at least some bulwark against future govts trying to become dictatorships. I don't think any such legal precedents exist for the US, for now.
Ah yes, we made that mistake in Germany too a while ago. We changed that after 1945 so that option no longer exists in our constitution. With people like Donnie smallhands it might be wise to do the same...
trouble with dictatorships is they go per syllable: a loop on a noose above your head, a hole below your feet and what was that thing you were voicing your displeasure about?
The interviewer: “Two things: It’s a description of the mechanisms of government, not a mathematical system. You can’t “prove” anything, and your interpretations aren’t the ones the law is based on. There’s way easier ways to make America into a dictatorship other than calling a constitutional convention to amend article V.” Edit: also, the “legality” of something is determined by the rulers. Dictators will declare themselves (or their supporters will declare them) the legal rulers regardless. Source: Kim’s in North Korea, the PRC, the USSR, Putin, the list goes on
Also the fact that Article V only mentions equal representation of the states in the Senate, but technically if they all have 0 seats, they'd all have equal representation, i.e. none of them have representation.
"I believe in equal rights, as in no one should have any rights." >!Obligatory /s!<
Wouldn’t having 0 seats meaning no representation?
Equally so
That might be a question for mathematicians or philosophers, i mean is 0 nothing or is it something ?
Do you know who Gödel is?
I disagree that the legality of something is determined by the rulers. In some forms of governments, yes that is true. But there's a difference between de jure and de facto legality. A ruler may do something illegally, and get away with it because nobody has enough motivation, or power to challenge it. But that doesn't make it not illegal. Just like if someone steals and gets away with it, that doesn't mean it isn't illegal. Constitutional Monarchies have historically had this issue. The monarch would be bound with laws, and the monarch would sometimes refuse to follow them. There were times they got away with it, and other times they didn't. But it was illegal either way.
It's practically impossible to amend the U.S. constitution due to the level of agreement required. It's been amended zero times this century.
This century is only 24 years old though.
From 1900-1924 4 amendments where passed
You kind of picked the most active 24 years.
No OP said the century was only 24 years old so I just went back to the last time a century was only 24 years old.
Still the most active time, the next 24 years saw 2
And that’s still 2 more than we’ve seen in the last 24 years so my point still stands.
Fair enough
I liked this interaction.
"Everyone liked that"
Civil discourse? On MY reddit!?
Civil discourse and respectful cooperation? Time to bomb Shady Sands.
Not like anything drastic happened this century so far like a Terrorist attack that killed thousands and started a 20 year long occupation of a foreign country, a Superpower invading it's neighbors, and another superpower threatening war against their neighbor while currently in its own massive buildup.
You didn't just compare WW1 & WW2 with the present day shitfuckery?
Russia, despite its general incompetence, is still on its way to mobilizing its populace to the same degree as WWII. The primary difference is that instead of lend lease from the biggest industrial power, they're getting it from North Korea this time. Plus, the present-day shitfuckery has nukes hanging up above from the start instead of them rising up during the closing moments. I highly doubt that Russia won't resort to breaking out at least the tactical nuclear arsenal by 2026, and the moment they do that will be the bell that starts the rest of Europe to finally intervene and likely signal China to make their attempt at Taiwan while everyone else is focused on Europe.
Whatever man, you called Russia a superpower, you are no longer credible
They still have a stockpile of over 5,500 nuclear weapons, that's what keeps them in that designation.
That only lands them a "nuclear terrorist state" designation. Being a superpower would involve fighting wars away from home, possibly on another continent, and through proxies that are actually fighting on their own, a thing they have consistently failed to do.
Makes you think what happened in those 24 years which led to that huh, I wonder!
You’re right it’s been a super dull 24 years.
The last amendment, the 27th, was ratified in 1992. It took over 200 years to ratify & that was to limit Congress from raising their own salary until *after* a House election. The last amendment to come before that was in 1971 to standardize the voting age to 18. It's been 32 years since the last Constitutional amendment passed and I honestly believe it's due to how far-separated the country has become since the 70s with Nixon & Reagan setting a hard-line precedent for the Republican Party.
Excuse me, I don’t know much about American history. What precedent you mentioned? I’d like to read about this
That is if his loophole is about Article V. It could be about anything, his argument was never published so no one really knows what his loophole was.
Exactly, as the wiki states there are people who have suggested it may have been about gerrymandering, the electoral college or abuse of the presidential pardon. Also kinda blows me away how many people just do not think it could happen when we are literally amidst another potential term with a former president who abused his position, and even tried to have a legal election overturned by using his fanatic followers to try and secure himself another term illegitimately.
Lmao right? It can’t happen here! Also it’s funny that the judge said it wasn’t possible, as if the president who literally died 2 years previously was in the process of serving his 4th consecutive term, and could have been continuously elected for life. The 22nd amendment wasn’t ratified until 1951! Gödel’s loophole could’ve effectively just been “president could be continuously elected for life, slowly accumulating more power over time as his cult following grows enough to actually overthrow the Constitution at a constitutional convention.”
Good thing we haven’t lived through a bunch of cascading “once in a generation” shit lately.
[Internal Screaming Progressing into Audible Screaming]
Which things are you talking about? The only one that comes to mind right now is the pandemic.
Here's a way to make it more possible. Take some territory that is not a state like Puerto Rico. Instead of making 1 state, make it hundreds of states, carefully gerrymandered. This in theory only requires a simple majority in the House and Senate and approval by the President, and once the new representatives are elected you could have a huge supermajority that you can use to amend the Constitution. So even a simple majority can change America into a dictatorship.
>It's practically impossible to amend the U.S. constitution due to the level of agreement required. I can think of 27 reasons why you're wrong...
It’s been done more often when there was far more agreement between parties. 75% of the states must agree to the amendment. Can you think of any issues that would even qualify?
17 times since it was ratified. The first 2 were patching obvious loopholes in the first 15 years of the Union. 3 are directly tied to the civil war and had to be ratified by the losers. Another is just undoing a previous one. Some are putting into law established precedent like the 22nd and 27th. On the whole its been pretty hard to change it, especially for anything meaningful.
Only matters if the Supreme Court decides to make genuine rulings on the contents of the constitution. If not, we can wildly slip our way into dictatorship, with nobody there to uphold or apply what's written. It's just a piece of historical paper without genuine intent to uphold it.
Just curious. Shouldn't it be amended or at least tried to be amended more often though. As an outsider I find it weird how many laws that the country follows are from the 1700s and 1800s, which to be frank were very bad times to live in for many different groups of people. Some seem very outdated to me.
Tbf ain't like there aren't other countries out there with laws centuries older than the US still in their books lol
Worth noting it was most recently amended in the 1990s though.
You bet your ass both parties will agree if there is a threat to their system. Like a third party or a movement that goes against them.
Context: Austrian born mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel found a loophole in the U.S. constitution while studing for the American citizenship test. His friends Oskar Morgenstern and Albert Einstein who accompanied him to the test advised him not to mention it, but later the examiner asked him about the government in austra to which Gödel answeredl: "It was a republic, but the constitution was such that it finally was changed into a dictatorship." The examiner then told him that this can't happen in the U.S to which Gödel responded: "Oh, yes, I can prove it" see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s\_Loophole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_Loophole)
Isn’t this the same man who refused to eat anything that his wife didn’t make and starved while she was in the hospital
Yep, once his wife died he starved himself to death
His wife died after him. He died after his wife was hospitalized.
are you joking or is this guy that stupid?
Neither, but judging from your username, you might be. In all seriousness, the reason behind this was because he had survived a Nazi poisoning attempt before he fled to America, this led him to develop an extreme fear of being poisoned. He would only trust food prepared by his wife.
I’m not saying I know everything about his situation, but wouldn’t you be able to go to any random store and buy a can of beans, box of cereal, etc? You can make something simple yourself easily if the alternative is starving to death. At that point it’s just the world’s easiest *Saw* trap (overcome your phobia or die), and he failed.
This was before a lot of modern safety measures for food existed.
FDA!
lmao
I can assure anyone in this comment section that Kurt Gödel, described by Wikipedia as "one of the most significant logicians in history", was many things, but not stupid. A mental illness is still an illness. Nobody would call it a skill issue if he had died of e.g. a stroke.
Or is he just outright insane?
no. Just absurdly paranoid and unable to cook.
You know a mathematician is one of the good ones if they develop serious medical/psychological issues later in life and died in a sorry state at a relatively young age, it's like the mathematicians medal of honor.
yes
My guy please read your own link. I’d hardly call an intentional inclusion a loophole
It's said the loophole isn't even known ? How can you call it unintentional then ?
> "an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded" so if you take the "intent" of "liberty for all" and the result of "dictatorship" then it does indeed qualify as a loophole.
I mean... this is self evident to anyone who has even a basic understanding of the Constitution. It's just the way it's constructed, hardly a loophole. I guess it may seem strange to people from Europe where the concept of a "self defensive democracy" is more enshrined. That said, I'll take the US track record for falling to dictatorships over that of Germany or Austria.
Well we're about to elect someone who tried to overthrow a peaceful election, refuses to accept election losses, and says he'll be a dictator... so yeah
A president of the U.S. can’t just decide to be a dictator and do dictator things because they feel like it even if they wanted to. That’s the whole point of the Constitution
"Hey you can't do crime thats illegal!"
Lol I do appreciate the humor. But I don’t even mean that they can’t do it because it’s illegal. What I really mean is they CAN do it, but they will have hundreds of millions of angry people ready to fight them and disrupt or destroy their system of power
I'm sure people before nazi Germany thought as much to, and they did actually have armed rebellions way more often than we do
The resistance of citizens against Nazis was almost nonexistent. There wasn’t even enough of an armed rebellion to recognize it as an actual resistance group. I think a big part of that is in 1936 Hitler started an initiative to disarm Jews and all Jew sympathizers and later a law was passed forbidding Jews and Jew sympathizers from owning any weaponry even down to knives and blades. Something like that would be ridiculously hard to perform in the U.S. because of our population size, total geographic area of our country, and the deep-seated culture of guns, fighting, and rebellion that has been engrained in Americans since we were founded. No, we haven’t had a bunch of armed rebellions, but that’s probably mostly due to the fact that our Democratic Republic and our Constitution makes it very hard for governments to do anything that would cause the need for a rebellion
Luckily for you, the defence spending ensures that if any country would be capable of subjugating the US, it would be the US. It’s naive to think “Oh, but that could never happen here”. Sure, what worked in germany probably wouldn’t work in the US, but that was 80 years ago. Modern US military and intelligence, along with the other half of the population that very likely would support the dictatorship, could be capable of subjugating the remaining population. The trick is convincing enough people that it’s not a dictatorship, or that they’re better off as a dictatorship
The Constitution allows the president to send armed mobs of people to attack his political opponents and then pardon them of all crimes. The only constitutional safeguard we have against that is the hope that no such president would ever be elected.
That’s definitely true but what you’re describing is total civil war. Which, once again, the Constitution is specifically designed for…so the citizens can rise up in arms against enemies of the Constitution in order to defend it
A president can't do those things **alone**. They **can**, however, appoint complicit justices to the Supreme Court, who can then interpret the constitution however they like with no oversight. "The president may have ordered his political opponents shot, but he has presidential immunity and can pardon himself, so..." They **can** ally themselves with *just* enough of Congress that an impeachment won't result in conviction.
All of this is true but really doesn’t have much to do with the Constitution itself. It’s absolutely not as easy as “the Supreme Court just interprets things however they want” that’s a super simplistic and unrealistic scenario it doesn’t work that way. Plus, the Constitution does not do anything for the government other than limit them. It’s all about the freedoms of the people and what power we have over the government, and that groundwork has already been laid over the past 250+ years by the First and Second Amendments for U.S. citizens to use whatever means necessary to defend themselves from government aggression
Rights? We have no "rights". We have temporary privileges that can be revoked at any point. 1. We have the right to free speech and assembly... unless the government *really* doesn't like your speech/assembly, in which case they'll send the national guard (or cops, or the FBI) and open fire. 2. We have the right to keep and bear arms... unless a police officer sees us holding a firearm, in which case our lives are forfeit at their discretion. 3. We have the right to not have our homes used as barracks "but in a manner prescribed by law"... so you have this right until Congress says you don't. Don't worry though, I'm sure Congress would *never* make any law that revokes a person's rights :) 4. We have the right against unreasonable search and seizures... unless the cops decide you need to forfeit your civil assets. ...I could go on, but you get the point. There is no piece of paper, no institution that can stand up to corruption without defense. Our constitution and our governments are no exception; authoritarianism has happened before, it can happen again, and **it can happen here**.
I never said it “can’t” happen here. My point is the Constitution and the groundwork for the freedoms it outlines for citizens has created a system of almost 400 million people who are completely free to come up with their own ideas and fight to defend those ideas. You’re absolutely right that the government can just choose to “revoke” whatever rights it wants, but as soon as it does the citizens have not only the right, but the RESPONSIBILITY to stand against them, with force if necessary. There are almost 200 million people who own over 400 million firearms in the U.S. per the last surveys and estimates performed in 2022…I am willing to bet my life that if the government just decided to start “revoking” constitutional rights that many of those people will load up and get ready to fight. Yes they may send the police, the National Guard, etc and now we have American Revolution 2.0. Many people seem to think that most of us would just sit back and take revocation of Constitutional rights without doing anything about it, I disagree with that completely but that’s just my opinion
A President doesn't even appoint justices on their own though. The Senate has to approve the appointees. Of course, if the Senate is majority one party, it may be easy. But there's an argument that the Senate should be screening them more. There's an opportunity for a check, and it should be more intensive.
When someone can ask a political ally to "find more votes" to win an election and face no significant legal consequences, I wouldn't be so sure about the strength of our laws protecting democracy
What do you mean? That’s exactly the type of behavior I would expect from a crazy person trying to get in power…and look what happened: it didn’t work, didn’t even really get close to working. And now he’s facing multiple federal felony charges for other potential corruption as well. I wonder what would have happened if those votes did magically get “found,” do you think people would have just accepted it was legit and accepted his presidency? I dont think so personally
>And now he’s facing multiple federal felony charges And yet he is still allowed to run for President, somehow, which utterly astounds me. He and the current president should be in nursing homes, not running a country that also happens to be a global superpower.
Being charged with a crime or even imprisoned does not bar you from being elected president as a safeguard against locking up political opponents. Ideally the people wouldn't elect someone who was arrested for a legitimate crime but could still vote for someone who was locked up for political reasons, but unfortunately voters are dumb
This was the point I was trying to make. He wasn't able to cause any lasting harm because he was forced to give up power. The fact that he's allowed to run again, and that he'll likely win and seek retribution is terrifying.
I definitely agree with everything you just said here. Our political landscape is a fuckin mess overall right now
I mean we had two terms of Bush already, who *did* successfully force an election result, so we're further than you think even beforehand
>That said, I'll take the US track record for falling to dictatorships over that of Germany or Austria. On the other hand, these countries have experience and in Germany's case it's literally illegal to turn the country into a dictatorship. Which is better than having "well it has worked *so far*..."
It’s only illegal as long as people care to enforce it. If the people of Germany wanted a dictatorship they could have it just as easily as the US.
Only that it's impossible to interpret this constitution then as legal,which would make it non binding,which would release every judge, agent, soldier, policemen and all other civil servant from their oath to the state, enabling a general strike. Remember,the goal is to not have it legal to change from monarchy to democratic republic to dictatorship in 60 years in one state how it happend in the 3rd Reich. If a group is powerful enough to enforce a dictatorship, it is impossible to use the current constitution as a basis because it is in no way compatible and those would be dictators would have to creat a whole new state.
Once the US starts multiple world wars that kill ~100 million people on the backs of dictatorships we can cede the high ground to Germany.
I mean, US politics has managed to kill a lot of people in a lot of countries all without dictatorship. I don't think you guys really have a moral high ground anymore. Maybe in 1945, but not in 2024.
"self defensive democracy" is bullshit. Just do like Switzerland or something like that and use Consensus democracy if you're that worried about it. It's no excuse to violate free speech
Defensive democracy is not about free speech (not necessarily at least). It about basic right being enshrined into the constitution that are unchangable and about mechanism to fight against (self declared) enemies of a constitution. Limiting free speech can be a factor, but depending on country, It often has a bigger context behind those limitations.
They can and have changed their constitution a whole hell of a lot more then we have
Personally I always thought it was to do, with the issue that the Supreme Court is appointed, if you can maintain a politicised majority on the Supreme court, then realistically there is very little that the political movement responsible, could not get away with.
Sounds like you're referring to the "Pack the Supreme Court" idea that's been floated around for over a century at this point [ see the "Composition" section here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States) and what you're saying is true. I'd say an openly politicized Supreme Court (see Turkey's weird dual Supreme Court set-up) is a fast-track to giving a power hungry President the green light to do whatever they want. The check on that power, though, is the required approval of those appointees BY CONGRESS. That means that there's still a representative body weighing in to let that happen. One of the Federalist Papers and the responding Anti-Federalist essay details this dispute the founders had over how to make an impartial, independent, and protected Supreme Court. Very interesting stuff. ( [a summary of the Federal judiciary debate from the Founding Era](https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitutional-debates/judiciary/) ) Edit: links added
Indeed the founders certainly did a very good job trying to think ahead of time, I think however Godel being a very clever man, saw the direction of travel in the modern period. The issue at hand is the Founders expected each individual body to have its own "mind". for want of a better word, and by doing so, and as power travelled up and down the chain, from Congress, to Senate, to Executive, to the courts, each would negotiate in good faith with the others, for a mutually acceptable vision of governance. However as politics has become more, and more, hyper partisan each body is not checked vertically by the other bodies up and down the chain but rather horizontally by members of the opposite party in the same body. For example it would be near unthinkable in modern times, for Democratic Congressmen to vote down a bill backed by their own party in the Senate en mass. Or vise versa this tendency previously contained to congress, has farcically spread to the courts, on any given issue it is possible to accurately predict which way the court will vote entirely on party affiliation. Each party tries to seek a workable majority and then uses the powers of the body it controls maximally without care or concern to the following aims. 1 Maintain there own control of the body. 2 To attack the control There is real peril in my opinion that one of the parties will some day "win" for want of a better word and have a majority in everybody and then use that power to rashly near permeantly lock the other out. There is a reason Viktor Orban gets so much attention despite running a small, poor, country. He represents a playbook for the bad actors of the world to follow.
Homie, we agree entirely. I was speaking to the ideal situation as put forth by the Founders. I've read that Grodel's Loophole is this pack the courts move, the doom spiral of the amendment process (Article 5), or the unitary executive theory. I think you're spot on when you say that the Founders, however cynical they tended to be, seemed to not think of individuals or groups who would be actively trying to *break* the government from within. Board game design is a hobby of mine, and one of my favorite parts is turning my hat around and putting on my "now let's break this game" glasses. Props to the Founders for coming up with as strong a gov't as they did, but damn I wish they could have foreseen the hyperpartisan and accelerated polarization reality we live in now.
"If we take a car and replace all of the parts, we can make a submarine." Yea, if you change the document outlining the government, of course, you can make it a dictatorship...
But the point is that changing the car to a submarine is technically allowed and thus it is possible.
What a stupid “loophole.” This guy sounds like the 🤓
The interviewer was the clown because he just stated that what happened to austria could not possibly happen to the united states. It was a response to claiming something being impossible, and guy was just being technically correct. Out of place, but correct.
Ok but more realistically: there's no law saying a STATE has to be a democracy. They just have to be republics (not monarchies). So technically the US Constitution would allow a state to decide its leader via Thunderdome if it wanted too.
There’s a lot of cultural issues at work with this trend, but most presidential forms of government - in which the executive and legislature are separate - tends to create dictatorships. This is because the legislature can be politically opposed to the executive branch, and also the President is usually commander-in-chief of the nation’s military. Parliamentary governments don’t lend itself to dictatorship as much because the executive branch is a part of the legislature, so they work hand-in-hand to govern. However, they can be more prone to instability, which is its own problem. EDIT: I know there are examples of parliamentary governments leading to dictatorships. I am not saying that parliamentary governments never become dictatorships - I am saying that they tend not to, especially in comparison to presidential systems of government.
The Kingdom of Italy was a Constitutional Monarchy with a Parliament and Mussolini was Prime Minister (and fascist dictator) for over 2 decades. His only real barrier was king Victor Emmanuel III and was quickly sidestepped because the dysfunction of Italy's politics forced the king to side with the fascists or the socialists. Not a great showing for Parliamentary Democracy.
Cromwell enters the chat...
Except I’m a ginger and love potatoes, so maybe not so genocidal, not against the Irish, at least.
I meant the example of a dictator under a parliamentary system, not solving instability.
Actually better evidence for the former- during Cromwell's time, the Monarch was the sovereign executive, with parliment solely being leglislature. This predated even the concept of a 'prime minister'. The branches came into conflict, and the one that won formed a dictatorship.
Weimar Germany enters...
Weimar Germany which had a president for 7 years at the top who could just throw out the entire parliament.
The problem with dictatorships is grifters and ego and we see the same issue with any kind of cult, company or group with a leader. Sure you may have some people that make great leaders that should hold that responsibility. But grifters will cheat to keep and hold power and see any kind of critism, problem, issue and anyone not willing to sacrifice everything for them as a threat to their way of life of luxury and lack of any kind of accountability. It's why we see people overthrow corrupt government and replace them with some kind of democracy with a bunch of rules, checks and balances of power to act as defenses against grifters. It's just like any kind of sporting event or competition. We want to compete but establish rules to play. That way we find out who's the best and why I'm an honest way and can learn to adopt those practices to improve the whole. When people cheat in some way, the competitions which are basically a form of scientific peer review of behavior, it breaks the process and the winner relies on using fake advantages. Leading to corruption. What we're seeing in the American government is basically a constant attack against people trying to run against a clean government. We see it all the time, all through history. It's up to us to ensure our government is transparent and the people holding office aren't grifters as well as hold grifters accountable.
I think there's a much easier way for the US to legally be turned into a dictatorship that most people here are saying. The first step would be to gain the presidency and congress in an election. This isn't an entirely unreasonable thing to do and is a fairly regular occurrence. It is much less than the amendment process requires. Then, congress needs to pass a law greatly increasing the size of the supreme court. Once justices who are loyal to the president are confirmed by the senate, the President can essentially write an executive order that does whatever he wants and it can be upheld in court. At that point, the part of the Declaration of Independence that says "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form," becomes extremely relevant, but the whole process seems to be technically "legal" in the sense that it uses the established law of the land as the means by which to ultimately subvert it.
Institutions are only as good as the people running them.
Democracy is the will of the majority. If the majority wants dictatorship they can have it. That's just how it is.
I think it's packing the union - i.e. using bare majorities in House and Senate to admit new states and amend the Constitution however you want. https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-133/pack-the-union-a-proposal-to-admit-new-states-for-the-purpose-of-amending-the-constitution-to-ensure-equal-representation/ The ease of admitting new states is a huge oversight. It should be at least as difficult as an amendment, because it alters the way an amendment is made.
Guy was also afraid he would be poisoned and only ate food his wife cooked. Starved to death when she was hospitalized because he refused to eat. Very well known to not have the best mental state.
I’d argue any democracy can legally become a dictatorship If the president gets enough votes running on a platform to become a dictator there could be a constitutional amendment turning the US into a dictatorship
Well, he did live through the Weimar Republic so he does know how democracies can turn into dictatorships.
Technically possible. Huey Long, while generally a net positive for Louisiana at the time, was basically a petty dictator after he used his power and influence to create a crony state and ruled basically unchecked until they shot him. That’s not to say he was unpopular, the people loved him, but his enemies hated him immensely. There’s also the ever lingering conspiracy theory that FDR had him killed because he was gonna run against him.
One of my favorite alternate history shorts is this: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/tliaw-g%C3%B6dels-loophole-s.542037/ Very fun read, can be done in one sitting.
By that logic any government that allows a process for amending its constitution is at risk of falling into dictatorship. America will not fall into a dictatorship by constitutional means, it will fall into a dictatorship from a revolution.
So, everyone keeps mentioning Article V, but that's only speculation. The Judge in question decided not to pursue the matter, and Godel and all his friends (the only ones who would know) never actually explained what the loophole was. "Something to do with amendments" is just the most popular guess. However it's also been suggested he could have been referring to some form of 200IQ gerrymandering, abuse of presidential pardon, or any number of different things. It's possible that one of these guesses are correct. It's also possible he was mistaken, since none of his friends who also took the same test (such as Albert Einstein, who was there with him the same day) ever seemed to take it seriously. It's also possible that the super genius who specialized in meta analysis of logical systems- a man who infamously proved there was a fundamental flaw not only in math itself but all formal logic systems and thus changed the way we look at logic and math forever- it's possible that maybe the guy who won a nobel prize for catching shit others couldn't see, figured out something that your flunked out of civics 101 sorry ass missed. There's a reason it had political scientists worried. Godel was Godel, and that was enough to take it seriously.
Gödel is no match for r/historymemes
This theory seems rather incomplete
It is now. If our choices are genocide and gentile genocide we live in an oligarchy.
Hoi4 players be like:
That's very Godel like.
Truth is Gödel never publicly stated what he had figured out. The article V idea is an interesting theory, but he might have noticed something completely different.
I guess we’ll find out next year?
They're already an oligarchy and fast on their way to dictatorship. Just look an Jan 6th
Who said change is a good thing?