No matter the outcome of the November elections, it is urgent that there be a widespread recognition that American democracy is in danger and that reforms are essential. No form of government lasts forever, and it would be foolhardy to believe that the United States cannot fall prey to the forces that have ended democracies in many other countries.

Although the causes are complex, many of today’s problems can be traced back to choices made in drafting the Constitution, choices that are increasingly haunting us. After 200 years, it is time to begin thinking of drafting a new Constitution to create a more effective, more democratic government.

Signs abound that American democracy is in serious trouble. Confidence in the institutions of American government is at an all-time low. The Pew Research Center has been tracking public trust in government since 1958. It has gone from a high-water mark of 77% in 1964 to our contemporary 20%.* A poll in September 2023 indicated that only 4% of U.S. adults said the American political system worked “extremely or very well.” A recent Gallup poll had only 16% of Americans expressing approval for how Congress is performing its job.

Especially individuals in their 20s and 30s are losing faith in democracy. A Brookings Institution study found that 29% of “young Americans say that democracy is not always preferable to other political forms.”

*These people never ask fundamental questions like: why is trust in government at an all-time low? Nothing is different about this guy’s analysis; he simply chalks it up to some vague failings of “democracy” without legitimizing the mistrust, which isn’t fit to be printed in the self-anointed guardians of Democracy™ like the Los Angeles Times.

**Here I feel compelled to offer the obligatory but necessary caveat that we don’t actually have a pure democracy. In generic terms, “democracy” means rule by the people. In practice, pure democracy is merely mob rule, which is not and has never been a foundation of Western civilization excepts for brief stints of upheaval like the French Revolution — and we saw how that story ended.

Continuing:

There is an alternative to a spate of separate amendments: starting fresh by passing a new Constitution. It does not take much reflection to see the absurdity of using a document written for a small, poor and relatively inconsequential nation in the late 18th century to govern a large country of immense wealth in the technological world of the 21st century.

It may seem strange and frightening to suggest thinking of a new Constitution at a time of great partisan division. But that existed in 1787; in many of the states, the Constitution was just barely ratified.