Part of what I see with 50501/Hands Off protests is that they have a theme of “defending the Constitution” from Trump. This is really a somewhat conservative position and doesn’t have much historical rigor to it.
Prof. Aziz Rana of Boston College Law School is having a moment on Jacobin Radio right now. His basic thesis is that the Constitutional order is so deeply antidemocratic that the left argued with itself and the liberals over whether to focus efforts on challenging it in the early 20th Century. In the broad sweep of history since then, Americans have come to view the Constitution as a sacred text, but in fact, that order is part of what gives the Republicans and the far right their advantages despite losing the popular vote.
The shorter interview: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S250424 (April 24, 2025)
The 4-part long interview: https://thedigradio.com/archive/ (see the Aziz Rana episodes starting in April 2025) - Part 4 isn’t up yet.
So why should we venerate the Constitution, when it holds us back from real, direct democracy? I think part of what our liberal friends and family hold onto is a trust in the Constitution and the framers. They weren’t geniuses, they were landowners worried about kings taking their property. Use these interviews, or Prof. Rana’s book, to handle those arguments.
Why are these things anti democratic? If you want to go down this path you first need to establish a clear definition for what is and isn’t anti democratic. Is a doctor anti democratic because he wasn’t elected by popular vote? The supreme court is appointed by the current sitting (democratically elected) president. Should every government position require a nation wide popular vote? Is that really the only way to have a democracy?
You and I can disagree about our minimum level of democracy, but how will we actually change society if we don’t change how the decisions are made in society?
For me, the most possible democracy is when the people affected by a given decision (and only those people) are the ones who make the decision in a way they consider fair (however fair is defined) and are empowered to do what they decided on.
If the same group of people instead choose, via 1 person = 1 vote, one or more among them to make the decision, it’s less democratic in my view, but at least they each had an equal vote.
If the same group of people instead choose, via any voting system that changes 1 person = 1 vote (e.g. x amount of votes for each parcel of land), one or more among them to make the decision, it is even less democratic, because they did not all have an equal vote due to variations in how many people live in each parcel of land.
The current US Constitutional system has us here, between the above example and the below one, because land parcels in large part determine relative voting power and then the electeds make appointments of further decision makers, such as the Supreme Court.
Zero democracy is when the person/people making the decisions are not chosen by the people affected by the decision and the people affected by it have zero say in the decision.
I’ll preface by stating that I’m not an American.
I think society is too interconnected and any decision in any area could be argued to have an effect on the entire population. I also think it’s good to have competent people in positions of leadership. I don’t think that most people are capable of choosing who is well suited for a given task. In that sense I somewhat agree with what you said here “people affected by a given decision (and only those people) are the ones who make the decision” though I believe I’m arriving at this conclusion from a different perspective than you. I would also point out that in both cases it is inherently less democratic than the current us government (as in less people are given more power) though I think this is partially desirable since a true perfect democracy won’t select who is most capable, but who is more popular.
Just to clarify, do you mean that you just don’t think most people are informed enough as to every person who is an expert in something, or are you meaning that people are not intelligent enough?