We came close to a train wreck to our economy with the debate over raising the debt ceiling. This is a minor artifice compared with the Constitutional requirement of the Electoral College. The Democrats have twice lost Presidential elections in spite of millions more popular votes. The College was set up in fear of the underclasses and how some demagogue would inflame the masses. With Trump, the exact opposite was the result. A deranged man used the media to get a few thousand votes in five states that were enough to get him elected.

Those who claim to be strict “Constructionists” of the Constitution seem to think that we’re still living in the same rural society of 1781. While the framework is still solid, a couple more amendments may be needed to bring us into the 21st Century. In addition to doing away with the Electoral College we need to set term limits for Congress. It’s just a tradition, but the filibuster is an archaic rule of the U.S. Senate that was used for decades to block Civil Rights Legislation. Now just the threat of a filibuster is all that’s needed to doom progressive legislation.

With our current status of divided Government, the result is that nothing gets done. We struggle to even come up with a budget to operate the Government and fund programs that have been mandated by the Congress. We’ve let the fringe elements on both sides derail any meaningful effort at Immigration Reform. In a time when millions of migrants are fleeing wars, climate change, failed states, and dictators, we still have a broken system to process immigrants. The border states are in turmoil. The President has limited powers to address the issue.

We have seen in the past decade the increased use of Presidential Executive Orders to patch crises. Congress is supposed to respond to the public will and pass legislation to deal with problems. The Executive Branch is supposed to carry out those directions. Why are we still living with an obsolete War Powers Act after 20 years? Only the Congress has the authority to declare war according to the Constitution. We have had a long series of undeclared wars over the past 50 years.

Franklin Roosevelt failed to stack the Supreme Court, but with several questionable actions of the Senate, Trump was able to do it. Now we have a Court that is overtly political in spite of all declarations of equanimity. The Court’s ruling on Abortion was unique in overturning legal precedence. The Court has reversed itself before, but with the exception of 1954, rarely so abruptly.

We have a popular dissatisfaction with the government simply because it doesn’t work anymore. We have a party in theory that opposes big government that is in fact extending the reach of government in more private and personal affairs of life than ever before. They’re banning books and telling teachers what they can and cannot teach. Here in North Carolina, they’re even interfering in the appointment of professors and curriculum. The predictions of the novel Nineteen Eighty Four have come to fruition even though it was published in 1949.

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