Constitutional Liberalism and Direct Democracy:

SP will discuss the reformation of the architecture of constitutional liberalism in America. This ongoing thread will occur over several posts and relate directly to the impacts on systematic and successful democratic governance. Embedded in the title to this post is a link for readers to purchase one of the formative works on modern freedom, "The Future of Freedom" by Fareed Zakaria.

The outright assault on American constitutional checks and balances represents a powerful, negative and lingering legacy of #43's administration of our country. Under #43's presidency, the extended and expansive powers of the Executive Branch, the veritable ineffectiveness of the Legislative to balance the Executive, and the perversion/politicization of the Federal Judiciary all represent serious threats to American policy production and allocation of power in governance.

To clarify a point here: Liberalism (liberal) is meant according to the 19th Century use of the terminology, and in the above context, does not mean the left of the American political spectrum. Rather, the term (in SP's ongoing usage during this subject discussion) refers to the individual right to economic, political, and religious liberty formerly know as classical liberalism. Constitutional Liberalism refers to the Constitutional/legal protections afforded the "Liberalism" of this context.

To clarify a second point: Democracy does not guarantee Constitutional protections or Liberalism. (Refer to Mr. Zakaria's book mentioned above for greater details on this point.) Constitutional Liberalism is the framework that protects the political process of Democracy from it's own ability to subvert the Liberty of any of it's citizens and is necessary for democratically elected governments to continue to function successfully.

We have, over the last 25 years or so, seen assaults on our Democracy (horrendous media, congressional lobbying, poor education, census manipulation, poor jurisprudence, growing income inequality, etc. etc.), and more recently, we've been confronted with severe and thorough attacks on our Constitutional safeguards which protect our rights (this has happened before in our government, but never with such boldness). SP will never hesitate to address these issues, and encourage action to rectify them, as our ongoing conversation will demonstrate.