For a democracy to remain healthy every now and then you got to round up all the fascist and hang them. It’s like pruning.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed, from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
-Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson also thought the constitution should be rewritten every 20 years so that each generation would not live under the tyranny of the previous.
Which is pretty dope. And mildly terrifying.
It sounds like he just threw out his best idea for it. Not a bad thought but could you imagine what would be shoved in there nowadays?
More interesting I think is what it would have been at other points in history and whether this type of renewal would have been able to prevent the current shitshow. 20y might be a bit short as well, something more like 40y could make sense though.
And rather than wipe it out and start, maybe adjust a percent of it.
However constitution law would be overridden more. The less stable, the less decided, current scotus aside.
Maybe if we focused a little less on corporal punishment and more on education, we’d have a hell of a lot less pruning to do.
Both sound good. Let’s just do both.
