Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years
apnews.com309 points by divbzero 5 days ago
309 points by divbzero 5 days ago
When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte,
As every child can tell,
The House of Peers, throughout the war,
Did nothing in particular,
And did it very well;
Yet Britain set the world ablaze
In good King George's glorious days!
Gather a group of the most powerful people in the land; give them ermine robes and manifold privileges; require of them nothing other than that they meet regularly to converse and debate in a prestigious and historical chamber. Allow them only the power to veto or delay legislation.
Gilbert and Sullivan were satirising but I think their point stands. It is possible to do nothing and to do it very well. While they're busy doing nothing they're not interfering or messing everything else up, even though they probably could outside the chamber.
The fact that heriditary peers are being ejected means nothing beyond the fact that these nobles have lost their inherent power.
To play devil's advocate:
Some people argue that the difficulty of passing laws in the United States is "a feature not a bug" b/c it prevents the US from creating laws too quickly.
You could argue the House of Lords did the same: by vetoing bills, it acted as a "speed bump" to laws that might cause too much change too quickly.
It doesn't really help the United States create good law. You could argue that it worsen the quality of laws by forcing kludges to be built on top of kludges.
A sortition panel collecting random people from all walks of life to give feedback on law would probably improve the quality of law more than any amount of procedure and paperwork ever will.
We mistaken paperwork with deliberation and quality control.
I’d go further. To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up. Now trump is using executive orders even MORE expansively, to do things that are patently undemocratic and unconstitutional (federalizing who can vote, ilegal tariffs). The kludges and hacks are causing a crumbling of democracy, not just mediocre law.
> To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up.
While I agree - this has been an issue long before Obama.
Any reasonable country should be able to decide on the legality of abortion through the normal political process - the public deliberates, they elect representatives, the representatives hammer out the fine print and pass legislation.
But in the American system, the legality of abortion is decided at random, based on the deaths of a handful of lawyers born in the 1930s. If that person dies between ages 68-75, 84-87 or 91-95 abortion is illegal, if they die aged 76-83, or 88-91 it's legal.
Why doesn't America deal with political questions using their political process?
> Why doesn't America deal with political questions using their political process?
Since 2022 we do. But it’s through the political process of the States. This has made a lot of people very angry because a bunch of States have got it all wrong, and the exact way they got it wrong depends on your point of view on the subject, but no matter which side of the debate you’re on, some on your side most assuredly want to preempt all the States that got it all wrong with Federal law.
That Congress hasn’t come to a political consensus is the Federal political consensus.
> Since 2022 we do. But it’s through the political process of the States.
Which is exactly as it should be. There's nothing in the Constitution which gives the federal government power to act on this issue, therefore it should be decided on a state by state basis. Government works best when it is done based on the values and needs of the local population, not one solution for an entire heterogeneous nation.
I might take this argument seriously, if not for the fact that the party of “state’s rights” are pushing for a national ban on abortion. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-kn...
Exactly! What the Constitution /says/ and how it is interpreted... The Tenth Amendment is written (IMO) incredibly short to underscore its importance AND breadth:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
But I've very seldom heard the phrase "states rights" uttered by anyone who isn't pro-gun and anti-abortion. I doubt they'd feel any freer if their state came down like a ton of politically-angered bricks on unfettered gun ownerships and anti-abortionists.