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A Deeply Fractured US

Sure, but rather than be glib, try acknowledging that many of them had a good grasp of history and political structures going all the way back to classical times, and the government they designed shows it.
are we referring to Madison and Hamilton or Macdonald and Cartier? 😀
 
Sure, but rather than be glib, try acknowledging that many of them had a good grasp of history and political structures going all the way back to classical times, and the government they designed shows it.
I'm not being glib. Sure, they did a pretty good job for the time and place they were doing it in. Nonetheless, that time and place means that the US has to contend with a constitution that was deeply entrenched based on values and fact sets that have changed markedly over time. Their ownership of slaves is simply a helpful proxy for highlighting the likelihood that there will be some painful anachronisms. The Fourteenth amendment was a major update to some of this, of course, but as we're seeing, a whole lot can hing on who wins the electoral college in the few years before a couple SCOTUS justices retire or die - or even, who holds the senate and can hold up a nomination while waiting for their guy to win the presidency.

We have a country to our south where many tens of millions of women have now been hit with the news that their constitution doesn't protect them or their autonomy the way they thought and desperately hoped it did. Lots of men are 100% on side with them too. When half the country gets super pissed off at once, this is still, objectively, a major problem- even if it is, strictly, constitutional. The US Constitutional Amendment formula makes it exceeding unlikely that there will be a statutory fix to this, and the Republicans own SCOTUS for a while yet absent an increase in the size of the bench. So, what will be the release valve for that pressure?
 
Sure, but rather than be glib, try acknowledging that many of them had a good grasp of history and political structures going all the way back to classical times, and the government they designed shows it.
How is his response "glib" (per Oxford; "fluent and voluble but insincere and shallow.")? I don't accept that the US Framers were selfless statesmen; highly educated and steeped in classical history, while ours were merely self-interested, power hungry political hacks. Perhaps the imbalance lay in the fact that we only know about the US Framers through history, while many of us have first hand memory of the players and processes involved in our patriation. All nations, peoples and generations create myths. The US are some of the best at it.
 
I think 200 years is a stretch. There's very little "regulation" of abortion before the mid 19th century and even then was mostly focussed on quickening. So really more like a 100 year stretch in the human continuum. IMO abortion is preferable to infanticide and contraception to abortion but the world is not an ideal place. In the US over 50% of abortions are likely pharmaceutical today and most third trimester abortions are medical emergencies numbering in around a 1000 a year. Realistically this shouldn't be near as big an issue as it is made out to be
Manufactured issue. "We want to keep our tax exemption AND keep the blacks out of our lucrative private schools" isnt exactly a galvanizing rallying cry to voters

 
. When half the country gets super pissed off at once, this is still, objectively, a major problem- even if it is, strictly, constitutional. The US Constitutional Amendment formula makes it exceeding unlikely that there will be a statutory fix to this, and the Republicans own SCOTUS for a while yet absent an increase in the size of the bench. So, what will be the release valve for that pressure?
Well half the population has been "pissed off" for 49 years......country didn't fall apart.
 
Geez you guys spend a lot of time worrying about our issues, must be nice to live in that Glass house up north….

Lots of us spend more than enough time professionally immersed in our country's problems and like having a break from same. Antics in the US can be a welcome diversion, as well as, sometimes, a reminder that we don't have it so bad.

Well half the population has been "pissed off" for 49 years......country didn't fall apart.

For sure. Some issues are more polarizing than others, and more likely to motivate people to action. This is probably farther along that spectrum than many other things. I'm not saying the US will fall apart or that the American experiment will fail. It's just be very turbulent for a while.
 
Lots of us spend more than enough time professionally immersed in our country's problems and like having a break from same. Antics in the US can be a welcome diversion, as well as, sometimes, a reminder that we don't have it so bad.
Beauty in the eye of the beholder, I’m much happier here with our issues, than I was in Canada with its issues.
For sure. Some issues are more polarizing than others, and more likely to motivate people to action. This is probably farther along that spectrum than many other things. I'm not saying the US will fall apart or that the American experiment will fail. It's just be very turbulent for a while.

It will be interesting for sure.
I don’t think Roe v Wade was a good ruling, the same way I don’t think US v Miller was a good ruling either from a constitutional law aspect.

I’m not sure that there will be massive fallout from the overturning. Plan B or other medicinal method of abortion will still be available - albeit by mail from states that don’t have laws banning it - and no one is going to violate the USPS to search for mail shipments.

What will occur to late trimester health related cases in some states will be interesting to see.

I would like to see all states do a little more towards reproduction eduction, contraceptives, and supporting low income mothers and mother to be.
 
When half the country gets super pissed off at once, this is still, objectively, a major problem- even if it is, strictly, constitutional.

Saw this about that,

Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and take away the federal protections of abortion rights, according to a new CBS News/YouGov reaction poll. Among women polled, 67% disapprove.

 
Saw this about that,

Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and take away the federal protections of abortion rights, according to a new CBS News/YouGov reaction poll. Among women polled, 67% disapprove.


That's an interesting number- both figures necessarily cross party lines by a fair margin, particularly given that not all democrats, nor all women will oppose the decision.

Obviously the 'popular vote' is even more meaningless in the context of judicial decisions. But it will probably be electorally significant in the midterms.
 
Beauty in the eye of the beholder, I’m much happier here with our issues, than I was in Canada with its issues.


It will be interesting for sure.
I don’t think Roe v Wade was a good ruling, the same way I don’t think US v Miller was a good ruling either from a constitutional law aspect.

I’m not sure that there will be massive fallout from the overturning. Plan B or other medicinal method of abortion will still be available - albeit by mail from states that don’t have laws banning it - and no one is going to violate the USPS to search for mail shipments.

What will occur to late trimester health related cases in some states will be interesting to see.

I would like to see all states do a little more towards reproduction eduction, contraceptives, and supporting low income mothers and mother to be.
The Biden government has already said it will fight any attempt by states to interfer with pharmaceuticals and technically Plan B is not an abortifacient it does not work after implantation
Hard to see a wholesale ban on abortion not being a violation of due process, whether this SC would see it that way or not?
Late term third trimester abortions are almost exclusively medical emergencies to save the womans life if these were banned and instead of 1000 abortions you have 1000 dead women. That to me would be a problem for the medical community. I sure wouldn't want to be a OB/GYN or pay their insurance in those situations

This Miller

or this Miller
 
Saw this about that,

Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and take away the federal protections of abortion rights, according to a new CBS News/YouGov reaction poll. Among women polled, 67% disapprove.



the difference is that pro abortionists aren't forcing people to have abortions
 
How is his response "glib" (per Oxford; "fluent and voluble but insincere and shallow.")

The criticism was shallow.

We couldn't even manage to get a major province on board.
 
So, what will be the release valve for that pressure?

Win elections, and learn to behave. Constitutional provisions are designed to be hard to change, because constitutions are meant to put limits on governments. All the bullsh!t about the sanctity of elections and democratic institutions and tut-tutting over imaginary insurrections is meaningless if playing by the rules is situational to a third or more of the country.
 
The biggest division seems to be between the more, and less, knowledgeable:

America’s left and right are less divided than you might expect​

A new poll links partisanship to knowledge, not politics​


What do Americans know about current affairs? Surprisingly little. A recent survey by the Pew Research Centre finds that only around half of adults know the name of the current secretary of state or the capital of Afghanistan. The survey also highlights an interesting divide: between the beliefs of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, on the one hand, and everyone else on the other.

According to Pew, these ideological groups are more likely to correctly answer questions, such as identifying Kim Jong Un as the leader of North Korea or Boris Johnson as prime minister of Britain. Some 83% of liberal Democrats and 80% of conservative Republicans know Roman Catholicism is the main religion in South America, compared with 70% and 67% of their more moderate counterparts.

What explains this? The dominant theory in political science is that a person who is aware of current events is also more likely to know which party best represents their preferences. That enables them to pick the right partisan label. Knowledge, then, is not a product of partisanship and ideology, but a cause of it.

Pew’s study also finds that Americans with “high” knowledge of international affairs (those who answered at least nine of the 12 questions correctly) have different opinions on foreign countries and international organisations from those who are less knowledgeable. Americans with high knowledge are 17 percentage points more likely to have a favourable view of the eu than those with low knowledge (those who answered four or fewer questions correctly) regardless of their political affiliation. Well-informed Democrats and Republicans are also 30 points more likely to see tensions between China and Taiwan as a “very serious problem” for America, and are 16 points more likely to answer that China’s policies on human rights are a threat. At least on some issues, the well-informed on the left and right are more united than you might expect.

 
Geez you guys spend a lot of time worrying about our issues, must be nice to live in that Glass house up north….

I'm pretty sure a former Canadian PM explained why:

Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.

Also, as I said in another thread - this affects Canada.
 
Geez you guys spend a lot of time worrying about our issues, must be nice to live in that Glass house up north…

  1. It's our national pastime.
  2. As Dimsum quoted, it's the elephant/mouse relationship. The imbalance between our two countries, in just about every way imaginable, can't be ignored. If nothing else, our exposure to and the dominance of US media is significant. We become immersed in US issues. In comparison, should Canada burst into flames, the only US citizens who would likely know about it probably live within 25 miles of the border.
  3. There is a growing concurrence between the jurisprudence of the two countries. It's not uncommon for senior Canadian courts to consider case law in other countries, particularly the US. In spite of fundamental differences, there are similarities between the provisions of our Charter and the US Bill of Rights. Since SCOTUS has been at it a whole lot longer, there is a lot of precedent law down there that the SCOC may find worth of consideration. Every copper in Canada grew up learning about 'reasonable and probable grounds'. Now the term 'probable cause' seems to be sneaking in.
  4. We view the US as a cautionary tale.

 
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