This for me always been one of the most frightening aspects of the parliamentary model. There aren't checks and balances, instead the party in power, as long as they have enough power can rule with absolute authority.
You fail to understand that the US constitution was not created to provide for an efficient government it was designed to protect individual rights.
The much bigger problem in my mind is that we only have 435 representatives and so each congressman represents far too many people, which allows the loudest and craziest vocies to dominate. Instead if we doubled or tripled the size of congress we'd have quite a bit more nuance and the government would be more representative.
In fact, I'd argue that a parliamentary government has a greater chance to fall into dysfunction in some cases. Just look at the Israeli Knesset before the war.
Before that, your governor would choose who the senator was via whatever the process the state had for this. It had a knockoff effect of people caring a lot more about their state and local politics and keeping some governing power in the states leadership. Both I sincerely believe were worthwhile goals, as many people get caught up in federal politics and there is far less population participation in state / local politics as a result.
I do believe quite strongly that we need a bigger House of Representatives too. I 100% agree on that. I don’t think the founders foresaw a world with 300 million people living in the US
Take your BS condescending tone elsewhere. I don't "fail to understand" anything. There are plenty of other nations with parliamentary systems that protect individual rights just fine, arguably much better than the US does.
> There aren't checks and balances, instead the party in power, as long as they have enough power can rule with absolute authority.
Except, again, plenty of functioning governments with parliamentary systems show that if a government overreaches, they are still responsible to the will of the voters, who can (and do) kick them out at the next election. I think it's much better to say "OK party X, we'll try your ideas for the next few years, and if you f it up you're gone." rather than have nothing get done for years, where each side can blame the problems on the other for why they couldn't achieve their agenda.
Try telling that to Belgium, which took just short of a year to even form a government, or to Liz Truss in the UK, if we're going to compare it with another country with a FPTP election system.
It actually tends to result in the opposite of that, the executive is relatively neutered, because they know they can be dismissed at the pleasure and whims of parliament.
The American executive gets to be comparatively authoritarian, as once you elect a president they're guaranteed to be able to enact their executive agenda for the next 4 years (the theoretical threat of impeachment being a non-issue in practice).
Exactly. A far greater proportion of countries that elect a President based on the American democratic model have devolved into dictatorships, than have countries with parliamentary systems.
Can you name another nation where people have as strong a right to free speech as the US, let alone as much of a right to bear arms?
it just means government didn't manage to overreach far enough. Countries like Russia and China also have parliaments, its just happen that ruling party obtain monopoly on violence which they apply on any possible competitor.
I really wonder how long this can go on. Our system of checks-and-balances only works when rational actors believe that compromise is necessary to get things done. When you have actors that believe that shutting things down completely is a benefit because it gets them more media time and rabid followers, the whole thing breaks down. Perhaps at some point we'll be able to move more towards a Westminster parliamentary model, where the party in power at any particular time basically controls both the executive and legislative branches simultaneously.