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Should the US switch to a parliamentary system?

Should the US switch to a parliamentary system?

  • Total voters
    32
Antiwar said:
Get real.
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Great counter argument.

I will just chalk up a "W" now since I doubt you will post anything better in response.
 
Felis Leo said:
Parliamentary systems are perfectly fine for long-standing unitary states. Such a system would be terrible for a country that is, at its core, made up of fifty separate countries with extraordinary regional differences that in other situations might have led to complete national break-ups à la the Balkans. Our system allows for stability and peace at the cost of efficiency and ease of governance at the national level.
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To be fair, Canada is a federation, not a unitary state and it has a parliamentary system.
 
Bodhisattva said:
Great counter argument.

I will just chalk up a "W" now since I doubt you will post anything better in response.
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Have a few more: WWW.
 
Antiwar said:
Have a few more: WWW.
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And you did not disappoint. Can I expect better posts from you in the future or is this the best that you can debate?
 
grip said:
Twisting in the wind does not excuse your misconception.
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It is a massive philosophical difference.
And this is also not the proper use of the idiom “twisting in the wind”
 
EMNofSeattle said:
The problem with America is that the left doesn’t always win, therefore whenever the left loses they openly talk about changing the system.
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Says the guy who advocates turning America into a dictatorship to enforce his unpopular social conservative agenda.
 
Bodhisattva said:
And you did not disappoint. Can I expect better posts from you in the future or is this the best that you can debate?
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Give me something decent to work with. WWWW.
 
Questerr said:
Says the guy who advocates turning America into a dictatorship to enforce his unpopular social conservative agenda.
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It would be super popular once enacted.
 
Antiwar said:
Give me something decent to work with. WWWW.
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Nice cop out... why not just start with what I said and explain why you thought it was incorrect.

m'kay?
 
EMNofSeattle said:
It is a massive philosophical difference.
And this is also not the proper use of the idiom “twisting in the wind”
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How do you know I didn't mean it literally? Your ass spinning in the air seems apropos.
 
ecofarm said:
Political compromise creating political alliance and thus ruling coalition is accomplished by the elites within the Parliamentary system. Joe voter has no influence, whatsoever, in what parties his party chooses to align with. Joe voter might find himself in a coalition that he never had any interest in supporting. His vote can basically be usurped by the elites in their wheeling and dealing and scheming. It's a top-down system.

Political compromise in the US system is accomplished by the voter. An individual looks at two platforms, considers priorities and personal values and comes to a decision about what party they will support. That doesn't change later. Elites don't change the party I voted for into a coalition of people I'd never have anything to do with. In the US system, the voter controls the compromise. It's a bottom-up system.
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In the US, there are only two parties with realistic chances to enter the legislation. So, the American elites with their party system of sponsoring and economic support have already imposed compromises on the American voter by limiting his realistic choices. You either vote for D or R in the vast majority of cases.

In Europe, even parties which are not very popular have realistic chances to enter the Parliament (in my county, if they overall get about 4% of the national vote, they will gain seats). That is why you see in European Parliaments a much wider spectrum of political opinions spanning from communist representatives on the left to monarchists on the right. And it is this diversity which often creates a need for coalitions. Still, even in such environment, the election law is important, and some countries prefer an election system where the first party can still gain relatively easy autonomy in controlling the Parliament (and thus the executive branch) at the expense of some form of compromising the proportionality of representation at the expense of the other parties.
 
Bodhisattva said:
Except you got it wrong... the voter still has the power and can vote out the party in charge if they make alliances that were not wanted just as in America the voters can oust a party or President that does dumb shit that the voters do not agree with while they are in power.
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What a moronic misunderstanding of the topic.
 
RetiredUSN said:
I wouldn't want my senators hand picked by members of congress.
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No, it does not work that way,

The way it works is that whoever wins his party's nomination becomes "president" if his party wins the majority of the House seats.
 
Bodhisattva said:
But the executive in a Parliamentary system is not nearly as powerful as the President in the USA.

It works here quite nicely.
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You're missing the point. There is executive power in a Parliamentary system, it's all just a question of who has it. For many such systems, it's in the hands of the Prime Minister. IMO, that is too great a concentration of authority, and I greatly prefer a system like ours that has a clear separation of powers. Trump as a PM would have both legislative and executive authority, and who would want that?
 
NatMorton said:
You're missing the point. There is executive power in a Parliamentary system, it's all just a question of who has it. For many such systems, it's in the hands of the Prime Minister. IMO, that is too great a concentration of authority, and I greatly prefer a system like ours that has a clear separation of powers. Trump as a PM would have both legislative and executive authority, and who would want that?
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As an American, you show a good knowledge of the parliamentary system's functions.

Yes, it is a matter of opinion if you want stronger or weaker executive branch. As it usually happens, in the last 4 years Trump supporters wanted a stronger executive branch, and I suspect that in the next 4 years Biden supporters will want the same. So, in short, one can say that a parliamentary system is more prone to wilder changes of policies as different parties come to power. Each winnning party has more flexibility in executing his political agenda,

The US system can work fine PROVIDED that the society is willing to have a political field where compromises are accepted. The problem is that in at least the last 2 decades, we see a gradual polarization where people who wantto compromise are seen as "RINOs" or sell-outs. and if this mentality persists, I am ot sure if the US polticial system can lead to effective goovernance regardless of who wins the elections.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Ohhhh OKAY, now I get it, this is BoJo's version of "Shower Head Tyranny?"
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Yep, he made his name by reporting on EU from Brussels. Every report was about some horror the EU was imposing upon the UK. Of course it was all bullshit but people ate it up. When Farage and others actually succeeded in getting Brexit passed, in large part it was due to years of Boris reporting bullshit and scaring the ignorant people in the UK. Boris and Trump are birds of a feather, one is just a lot smarter then the other one.
 
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