Among the last things the radical -- and very industrious -- Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow accomplished before recently passing into "the breath of Yahh"# at 92 was to draw up a proposal for a U.S. Constitution that he considered absolutely necessary given the many existential challenges currently facing the country. He provides numerous reasons for thinking a new fundamental law is now necessary, including "the needs of a multiracial, multigender, multireligious society" and the fact that we live on a planet "on the dangerous verge of self-destruction."
Never one for false modesty, Waskow considers some of his proposals "startlingly inventive." And it can't be denied that his proposals for limiting Senatorial duties to blowing up a handful of laws each year (pursuant to "actual debates") and for creating a counsel of 21 "Earth Commissioners" between the ages of 18 and 29 who by a three-fifths vote can "cancel" laws they consider harmful to the "web of life" seem like they grew out of one or another Star Trek plot.
Nevertheless, most of the suggestions here are likely to be cheered on by progressives. A national popular vote is substituted for the crazy system we now have, taxes are increased dramatically on the rich and a (fairly harsh) redistribution scheme is put in place, Executive war-making powers are severely diminished, ranked choice vote and proportional representation are required everywhere, immigration and naturalization are made quicker and simpler, SCOTUS members are given term limits, fossil fuel burning is ended forever, voting is declared both a right and a duty, etc., etc., etc. One could easily pen a new "My Favorite Things" out of his plan without much help from either Rogers or Hammerstein.
I won't deny that I would like to see a number of similar proposals enacted myself, but that's really beside the point. The question that should be asked is which of the many proposals here should be put in a foundational document. Waskow obviously wants all of them included because he recognizes that most of them haven't the slightest chance of ever being passed, given our current scheme for enacting laws. The thing is, authentic democrats will not want Rabbi Waskow making public policy just because he considers it absolutely necessary to "having a country any more" than they want Trump doing precisely the same thing.
It may be objected that if I make suggestions for any constitutional provisions myself, indeed, if anybody does, the same thing will have to be done. That's actually the trick to constitution-writing, however. If one wants to live in a democratic society, one has to ensure that only truly majoritarian provisions are implanted in any foundational law. In fact, such principles should be largely unamendable, since significant alteration would mean that democracy is no more in that jurisdiction. This means that, to the extent that anything finds its way into a constitution involving taxes or fossil fuels, the authors will have substituted their judgment for choices that really must be made by the people if a polity is to be considered democratic.
Getting this stuff right is extremely difficult, and I spend a good deal of time and space whacking away at these issues in my book on democratic theory. No doubt, some of it was beyond me. The late Rabbi included a vivid (to me, even kind of scary) description of an acid trip in his autobiography. Perhaps that experience is why he takes the (entirely understandable) position that the goal of living in an authentically democratic polity ought to be put below things like saving the earth from utter destruction, preventing every penny from ending up in the hands of a few oligarchs, and ensuring that America accepts the wretched from abroad who are yearning to breathe free.🗡
I absolutely get the point of demoting democracy from the top tier in such situations, but if one is to do so, I doubt there's much point in having a constitution at all. After all, Hitler simply ditched the Weimar version when he got the chance. And we can see from the current GOP platform and the sorts of mischief the current administration in DC gets into every single day that Trump is not terribly interested in revising the Madison version.
The moral is that there are an awful lot of people around who feel they should be allowed to be the last word on policy picking. Naturally, they can be found both on the left as well as the right. Those who put democracy first will resist all of them -- wherever they happen to fall on the political spectrum themselves.
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#Pictured here between Channing Phillips and Topper Carew at the first "Freedom Seder" in 1969. That was when Waskow could first be seen wearing a yarmulke. I believe this choice was based partly on his empathy for people, from Birmingham to Saigon, whom he took to be receiving the same sort of treatment he believed had been received by Jews for millenia. I discuss Waskow's autobiography in Waskow I.
🗡In fact, however, there are several provisions in Waskow's draft that I would consider explicitly anti-democratic, partly from what seem like random choices of numbers. These include requiring seven years of residence before naturalization, a voting age of 18, and various super- and sub-majorities required for this or that sort of enactment or veto. Such choices don't always seem to have been inserted in order to prevent imminent catastrophes. Some of them just seem capricious. He's also left alone a significant number of existing provisions that are poor, even arguably silly.
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