A Response to “A New Constitution”
Contributed by A. D. Tocqueville
There were some things with which I agreed, at least in sentiment, with Lela Ryterski; however, there were also some things with which I greatly disagreed. In response to Ryterski’s call for dialogue at the end of their article, I have sought to compile a response to three of those points with which I disagreed. The first point is on how to solve the division caused by the two-party system. The second point is on the current structure of the government and problems with representation. The third point is on her suggestion for an imitative method of education.
In her article A New Constitution in the Nov. 2025 edition of the People’s Paper, Ryterski made the claim that the government has become plagued by corruption such that it is no longer accomplishing what it ought to be accomplishing. With this I agree. However, part of her solution to the two-party problem (which George Washington himself warned us from) is to give power to a government agency, which she called “The Department of Elections,” to “vet” candidates to decide if they are good enough to be in the top ten to run for office. Further, the politicians campaigning would be mostly limited to government-run media. Perhaps Ryterski only believes that the politicians are corrupt and that government agencies and media would not be tempted to the same lows that our elected officials are. If that belief is correct, then her solution is a marvelous step in the right direction, but if it is wrong, then I only see this method propagating further corruption, and given our recent revelations, I suspect the latter is true, not the former.
The second is formed from a base belief that “people are more important than land,” and that that means that the government needs to be controlled by the greatest number of people (it is the second notion, not the first, that I disagree with). The way this is to function is by a threefold change: eliminate the electoral college, drastically increase the size of the House, and make the number of Senators be based on population, not two per state. This does, as Ryterski admits, give significant power to California specifically and takes power away from places like Alaska. However, we should not be concerned about this proposed shift in power because, according to Ryterski, the voters of California will keep us in mind and vote for what is best for those states that provide them food (even though Alaska does not provide any). This indicates that Ryterski anticipates the power will shift so dramatically that votes outside of California, New York, and Texas will be so diminished in power as to be nearly pointless, such that the Big Three will have to consider other states’ needs when they vote. This does mean that if California wishes to go to war, then Alaska must silently follow, and if New York wants to raise taxes, Louisiana must mutely open its purse. It is unlikely that any state outside those three will experience real representation, so why would they stay? The Revolutionary War was started due to a similar power imbalance; what is to keep the present Nation from fracturing in the proposed model? Maintaining the balance between the different groups of people with different values maintains unity.
Finally, Japan has a society that Ryterski would love to emulate in how polite and civil they are. It is certainly a good desire to want a polite and civil society, it is a desire I share, but Ryterski would revoke (I suspect through ignorance) values that are potentially greater. Japan is a polite and civil society because they are trained in their schools from youth to be Japanese, and if they do not fit within the confines of what they are taught they are un-Japanese; they are not a part of the people but sit outside along with the undesirables. Ideals that support individualism (such as freedom of speech or religion) may be maintained by law, but by societal norms would be abolished within Ryterski’s wish. But the reason I suspect this is from ignorance is that in Ryterski’s article they say in the same breath that we should teach the whole of U.S. history, but the Japanese famously do not teach their own.
It is well known that Japanese history courses avoid their crimes during WWII, such as their military expansion and human experimentation. This avoidance may be orchestrated to create and maintain the culture that leads to Ryterski’s dreamed-of polite society, but that requires more sociological research on my part. The point being Ryterski seems to want to emulate the Japanese in only the ideal ways, without knowing all the aspects of society which fuel that ideal.