I'm not convinced that more direct democracy is the solution. In fact, I think democracy is the weapon wielded by powerful industry and individuals. When you control the primary sources of information, how difficult is it to convince the people to vote your way? (Not that I know what the solution is...)

The California proposition system reveals, IMO, both the strengths and the weaknesses in direct democracy. On the one hand, when representatives are not doing their jobs, the people can perform an end-run around them and pass any legislation they want.

On the other hand, it's easily manipulated.

Imagine I'm a lawnmower manufacturer. My bought and paid for representatives are concerned, because their constituents are very concerned about the safety of squirrels and want their representatives to pass a law requiring a new type of (more expensive, less efficient) lawn mower. They can't not act, or they won't get re-elected, but they also know they have to do what I want or they won't get my contributions. What to do?

We write a bad law and have someone submit as a proposition. We wage a campaign against it (while our representatives speak out in favor of squirrels), pointing out the very flaws we had put into it and some sob stories about lawn mower factory employees losing jobs and how much more expensive it will be to cut your grass. If it passes, no big deal; we've put enough weaknesses into it to make it largely ineffective. If it doesn't, great! The people have spoken: they don't care about squirrels; and it's not the representatives fault. We probably don't have to worry about it again.

I'm the last person to ignore or undervalue the power of propaganda, yet I believe it is necessary for people to be active citizens who think for themselves. By outsourcing our entire political thought process to representatives (who are more in need of wealthy donors than individual voters) we deny ourselves the chance to think for ourselves.

Besides, even Edward Bernays, the founder of public relations, understood the ambiguous relationship between those who craft public perception, and those who are affected by it.

I agree that we need a thoughtful and active citizenry, but I am skeptical that even the most thoughtful and active citizenry can keep abreast of all developments which may affect their lives and remain un-fooled 100% of the time.

In contrast, I think a thoughtful and active citizenry can elect an intelligent, honest, and dedicated individual to office once every 2-6 years to represent their interests and to evaluate the job that individual has done during that term; even if they do not necessarily know or keep abreast of every issue which may affect them personally or collectively.

It is worth noting that the particular bit of federal tyranny the constitution was designed to prevent was ensuring slavery never got abolished. It was the top priority for half the states ratifying it.

That's not too far off the survellience state. Americans want America to be the best in the world at everything, and that takes money and power. Slave owners had plenty of both.

The reprehensible institution that it was, I cannot fathom a way our country could have grown so quickly and so successfully without coerced labor, and, for the native Americans, theft of land. We were in a lot of debt following the revolutionary war. It would have been crushing to pay back otherwise.

No, direct democracy is a tyranny of the majority. What we need is to return to our idealogical roots of our actual governmental system: constitutional republic, or, in better words, constitutional representative democratic republic.

The power of true American exceptionalism lies in the fact that individualism and individual sovereignty is our foundational principle.

As Christopher Hitchens said: "The American Revolution, the one that says, build your public on individual rights, not group rights, have a bill of rights that inscribes these and makes theme legible to everybody, separate the church from the state, separate the executive from the judicial, and the political branch. Do all these things; It doesn't sound like much but it's really a very revolutionary idea. There is hardly a country in the world that wouldn't benefit from adopting those principles. I think that gives the United States a really good claim to be a revolutionary country as well as of course, paradoxically a very conservative one."

"Of course, objectively as well as subjectively, the American revolution is now the only revolution with a fighting chance of survival and success: the idea that you could create a multicultural democracy over a vast expanse of the earth's surface that could possibly be emulated by other people."

What I think is that in allowing the separation of powers and checks and balances functions to erode, particularly giving power to the executive under the banner of war, we have strayed from the fundamental principles of our Constitution, and a return to this model is where the true future of America lies. Of course I don't like saying "a return to" because our history has been filled with issues in this regard, so I want to avoid giving any pretence of a panacea of the past, but the beauty of our system was supposed to be that it would continually, if gradually and slowly, be improved. I no longer thing we are improving in a constitutional sense, and supranational global governance is all but openly accepted on the hill. Borderline treasonous if you ask me.

In an oath the Constitution, one swears to protect and defend it from enemies foreign and domestic. I tell you now, with full conviction, that our Constitution has more numerous and more engrained and powerful domestic enemies than foreign ones.(or domestic enemies backed by foreign ones) The thing is though, our true foreign enemies, the ones who are actually a constitutional threat, don't wear a thwab... they wear business suits and ties.

In my many years of trying to understand the larger geopolitical chessboard since I got out of the military, my conclusion is that all roads of corruption in America lead to DC and to Wallstreet, but that most roads of corruption from there lead to the City of London and to the various hidden vestiges of European monarchy and oligarchy, including the papacy. (and this is giving you the sanitised version so as not to explode your head with conspiracy theory.)

Until this is understood, we will be unable to truly defend our country and it's constitution.

You have a great response and it deserves a clarification of what I mean by direct democracy.

For the most part, the system set up by our founding fathers is a good one, for the most part. There is simply too much to governance that should be left to common folk to sort out.

However, it is clear that the average citizen is completely powerless to have any effect on the system. The system is run by representatives who are owned by special interests. We are often given the choice between a red Lego and a blue Lego with no discernible difference between them once they get to Washington and spend half their time fundraising for the next election.

That is why we should have direct democracy: not as the foundation for policy, but a citizen check on the tendency for concentrated power to corrupt. We should have the right to publicly challenge resolutions by referendum to keep congress from controlling all they see fit with no real consequence.

Voting for representatives is not enough to hold them accountable. It is no different from exchanging one dirty diaper for another.

Thank you for the clarification, I think I understand your position, so let me attempt to restate it and add to my previous response.

You are saying that because congress isn't properly accountable for their current actions, and that we should have a more direct democracy, with the ability to challenge proposed legislation by referendum as one potential vehicle for that?

I think I could potentially get behind that, but I would want to hear more about proposition for nation wide referendum systems, especially since some states already have such a thing, but not all, to implement it nation-wide would require a constitutional amendment.

One alternative idea I would propose is an increase in the amount of representatives. Give them smaller districts and they would be more accountable and less able to use the two party system as a manipulatory vehicle. Issues abound back at the hill for such a thing, but I think it might be a good start.

Gerrymandering has to be controlled and eliminated as well.

Campaign finance reform is a must as well.

Overall I think I understand a bit better, I would just urge caution that in trying to fix broken parts of the system that we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak. As long as propositions conform with the constitution, I'm ok with it.

I will admit though, with the corruption as pervasive as it is now, a constitutional convention scares the hell out of me, as it could too easily be hijacked into something horrible.