There was plenty of focus, most states and people from Day 1 were against slavery. The initial compromise was made to allow the continuation of the United States. There was then ongoing pressure against the minority of slave states, outlawing the importation of more slaves. Then a huge civil war focused on unwillingness to allow the slave states to escape the pressure. The slave states looked towards Europe to come to their aid and they did, unsuccessfully. Then 100 more years of pressure. Some things do take a while but the Constitution was with very little exception consistent and correct in reflecting the values of the country and the understanding of societal risk – which is relevant to this thread without the need for sarcastic tangents that invariably reflect badly on those starting them.
Rather than make a sarcastic comment I’ll say it plainly: the USA does not seem to have a political system to aspire to at the moment.
Whatever the failings of European states, their citizens have the ability to vote their prime ministers or presidents out of office and have new administrations move in to replace the old, should they so wish. That provides a safeguard against over-reach by those in power. Without that freedom, all argument about whether pandemics were forseen when constitutions were written is academic.
kwlf wrote:
Rather than make a sarcastic comment I’ll say it plainly: the USA does not seem to have a political system to aspire to at the moment
Have you ever been to the United States? I think it might be helpful in understanding the basic principles in play.
kwlf wrote:
Whatever the failings of European states, their citizens have the ability to vote their prime ministers or presidents out of office and have new administrations move in to replace the old, should they so wish. That provides a safeguard against over-reach by those in power.
If there is overreach at the moment, and I think there is in some states, it has nothing to do with the Federal government which is continuing to show itself to be pleasantly powerless. The only issue there is that one might like the Feds to come down a bit harder on state level overreach, but I think on the balance I like it better as-is as long as the Feds control the airports so there’s no question of a GA lock down 
The ‘lame duck’ period is a standard part of the regular US Federal election process in any case, for good reasons which include preventing illegitimate transition of power in all Federal offices, not just the one that captures the attention of a star struck European press.
Silvaire: I’ve been to the states, but only to conferences and only to Florida, so you’ll have to spell it out for me.
You believe the federal government should do more to suppress the excesses of the state governments, so presumably you might like to make your views known by the process of voting for someone who best represents your views at a federal level. Yet currently your country doesn’t seem able to recognise the outcomes of elections either because 1) it doesn’t recognise the results of the recent election or 2) it is incapable of running a free and fair election. This doesn’t matter because..?
I realise that the game is still in play, but from the outside it is not a good look.
I’ll spell it out for you: the Federal government has limited and awkward power over the states, and most US law is state law. Accordingly the states independently collect their own tax revenues. Federal lawmaking is Constitutionally limited in scope and will NEVER affect state law much regardless of my tongue in cheek comment that I’d like it to do so in the current circumstance. On occasion it is true that the Feds shut down some crazy state law, and likewise it is true that on occasion the states will not implement or enforce Federal law – it is a balance of power and one that is debated, but not a very dynamic one because the Constitution defines the proper roles fairly clearly.
The period between November and January is intentional, nothing needs to be in any particular hurry because hurry is what causes problems.
The US system works very well to diffuse power and leave people relatively free from arbitrary government. The Federal Government has substantial checks and balances within its own process and limited domestic power, most power is with the states and while they have more direct power over individuals if you don’t like one state you move to another. That is the objective, not a fault.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Sorry, but some of that reasoning sounds like a pilot in a deep stall after he lost control in an all engine failure situation saying “I have no facts yet that this situation is any dangerous. In fact the last 30 seconds of my descent have proven that it doesn’t do more harm than the 2 hrs of straight and level cruise flight before…”
Well, you don’t know that you are in a deep stall. You don’t know that you are in a stall at all. All you know is that a passenger in the back is screaming.
Silvaire wrote:
It was a principal underlying issue in the formation US Constitution, which was debated extensively during the period between 1776 and 1787 when the Constitution was ratified
The fathers of the US constitution had no idea of such a pandemic situation. They constructed the rules of the constitution thinking about risks from indigenous population, Britain, France and other superpowers of that time, starvation, etc. but not a global pandemic.
Therefore it might be that by chance the constitutional rules fit for the current situation but it is absolutely surely not by design. You simply have no idea what the fathers of the constitution would have said about this situation if they had thought about it.
Historically it wasn’t before the Spanish Flu in 1918/1919 when the US government really thought about the consequences of a broad and long term pandemic. And it took until the mid 40ies that the house finally came to the conclusion that there is need for regulation even in the land of the free and passed the public health services act (42CFR70). This act has been contested several times since – but it has always confirmed to be in full compliance with the 10th amendment (which btw. was not ratified with the constitution but 3 years later – so much to "debated extensively…).
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Very true. One of the things I really had to come to understand was that the word “liberal” means something TOTALLY different in the US then it does in Europe. Liberal in as I understood it in Swiss politics means free thought, open mindedness and market economy oriented politics as opposed to restrictive, overregulation and all that. In the US, liberal is a synonym with socialist or communist. When I first started talking to hard core Republicans on a regular basis it took quite some time until I understood that. In my world view, it was the Republicans who were “liberal” in the Swiss sense, that is for free market economy, for less regulation, less state. The idea that liberal in their view meant socialist was quite a thing to swallow.
Exactly. Simply put, the Americans and nowadays also the British just use the word “liberal” wrong. They being by and large monolingual countries, they seem unaware of the Latin roots of this word, which translates more or less as “free” and thus the polar opposite of “socialist”. Unlike with “soccer”, a word which at least has a logical etymology (coming from “a_socc_iation football”), they have no excuse for this mangling of language.
The most liberal person on this forum is probably Silvaire.
MedEwok wrote:
Exactly. Simply put, the Americans and nowadays also the British just use the word “liberal” wrong. They being by and large monolingual countries, they seem unaware of the Latin roots of this word, which translates more or less as “free” and thus the polar opposite of “socialist”.
Polar opposite In economic terms, maybe. Not in other meanings of the word “liberal”.
MedEwok wrote:
and nowadays also the British just use the word “liberal” wrong.
Not so the British I’m afraid. The word liberal does not, for us, have the left-wing connotations it has in the US.
The way the term liberal is used in the US is one of a number of interesting nuances about views relating to ‘freedom’. When we talk about ‘freedom-loving’ Americans who on that basis, with our European use of the word, we might describe as liberal, we perhaps forget that they tend to correlate with strong conservative social views. Your average flag-waving Republican is not so liberal after all when it comes to views on things like religion, abortion, family, etc.
The inconsistency would be irrelevant if they were just views, but there is also a correlation with a wish to impose those strong conservative social views on others.
