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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5217 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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And now for something completely different.

Ever feel like democracy's got you down? Ever read enough of Plato's Republic (or listened to people who claim they have ready Plato's Republic) to realize that Democracy always leads to a Tyranny? Afraid that you might be in a Tyranny right now?

You may be entitled to... course correcting your constitution via the process the founders prepared for us! Seriously, the US has gone a freakishly long time since our last amendment. It seems like the process is broken somewhere. Maybe a lot of somewhere.

But when many people propose a constitutional amendment they run into the trap of trying to enshrine their political cause of the day into the constitution, which is never going to work. What we need are structural adjustments that do not favor either side but rather incentivize more deliberative, rational, non-polarized decision making. And what better way to do it than updating the Senate!.

The Senate was never meant to be Democratic. It was meant to be the mirror to the House of Lords in it's day, just not hereditary. It was meant to check, correct, and slow down the work of the more populist House. The Senate was meant to be filled with the wisest and best of each State who serve the public interest without being beholden to popular opinion.

Originally each U.S. senator was elected directly by the legislature of their home state. This changed because state elections started to become proxies for Senate elections, so we passed the 17th amendment and now they are elected separately (though with how common it is to vote all of one party on a ballot, the effect of this change is minimal.)

This turned the US Senate from the original deliberative body to a highly polarized mess that is just like the US House but less representative. It solved one problem, but failed us in many ways.

What if we returned to the spirit of the 17th, with some tweaks to prevent the State Senate elections from turning into proxies for the US Senate again?

DeCivitate (who was featured in ACX a while ago) has been proposing some Constitutional Amendments that try to address the more structural issues with the government, without falling into the trap of "What can I enshrine in the Constitution that makes my side win forever?"

For the Senate, he has proposed a few possibilities:

First, no matter what, let's reduce the number of US Senators down to qty 1 per State. 100 is too many to have a close group of people deliberating together.

Second, let's change the way Senators are selected. Let's require that a senator needs to be a member of their State Senate (defined as the least numerous branch of the state legislature thereof, being composed of at least ten members, and whose concurrence is necessary for any act of the state legislature to become law. so no gaming that!)

From there, we have a couple options:

  1. Use a FORTRAN algorithm that determines based on past votes who are the most moderate members of the State Senate and then allows the State Senate to pick from them. Plus: almost impossible to game. Minus: Requires putting a specific computer algorithm into the US Constitution, which might be a plus to some people but might also come with its own vulnerabilities.

  2. Have the Senate vote based on a Condorcet method plus a group veto power to help steer a more normal-looking nomination practice into a moderate candidate.

The articles for each algorithm are worth reading, as each shows a strong consideration for all the nuances for each method and a focus on understanding why we got to this point and avoiding the pitfalls that steered us towards where we are now.

The goal is to have Senators who are serious people who solve problems instead of clapping back on social media. The goal is to have a Senate comprised of people representative of the median of each State, opposed to partisans of the majority party in each state. I think people of both major parties plus people of the minor parties would prefer this to what we have going on now. So... Let's have a Constitutional Convention!

I can't help but notice his proposal would, under current state legislature distribution, enshrine his preferred political party's dominance in the Senate. Even more than it already is! There are currently 30 states whose upper chambers (or only chamber, in Nebraska's case) are majority Republican. This has been true for the last ~decade if you go back through the data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. "I just happen to come up with a scheme where my preferred party has a 3/5 majority in perpetuity, but that's not why I chose it I swear!"

Well, for one, he does not prefer the Republicans to the Democrats and has not for a while now.

He is trying to make less polarized candidates, not candidates of a specific brand. Surely 30 Republican-leaning centrist and 20 Democrat-leaning centrist Senators would be better than what we have now?

Can you link me to his other writings? Because this is a quote from the article you linked:

Now, I am, by temperament, a hardcore partisan. I often respect principled adversaries on the other side, but moderates tend to strike me as slippery customers who can’t commit. I instinctively disdain them, especially those on my own “team.” I spent years daydreaming about Susan Collins being run out of my party, ideally on a rail, no matter how tactically stupid it would have been.

He goes on to say the Senate is meant to counter that temperament but this hardly looks like the writing of someone who does not prefer Republicans!

He is trying to make less polarized candidates, not candidates of a specific brand. Surely 30 Republican-leaning centrist and 20 Democrat-leaning centrist Senators would be better than what we have now?

I am not at all sure of that. I see little evidence that "moderates" in the Senate have done much to stand up to what I perceive to be Trump's abuses of power. Why would I want them to be more powerful, given that perception?

He calls Trump "Mr. Trump" and calls him the "de-facto president" because he believes Trump is illegitimate. On another post he writes, "When all is said and done, I’ll have spent 12 years in the political wilderness… " indicating he doesn't see himself aligned to the Republicans for 12 years now.

I appreciate the links. I think they convince me the author is a Never-Trump style Republican.

This is true, with the important caveat that the Republican party he supported 13+ years ago is gone and dead. He's not a Democrat, but it is unlikely the Republicans will ever field candidates he likes either.

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