Decentralized Government

[brother_dour]

A friend of mine is, like me, a pretty big politico. Before gaming each week we usually end up talking about U.S. politics, world events, or history while the GM gets ready.  Earlier this week, I gave a classmate of mine from India who I am working on a project with a 45 minute crash course on U.S. government, because she didn't understand how the

Comments

[karcy]

Just wanted to say that I read your post.

I think that it's not really meaningful to talk anything about the Constitution to someone who is non-American, so Part Four and Five is what I find the most striking. Every country that I know of refers to their own respective Constitutions as important. But that doesn't really translate to a de-centralized government, so Four and Five is where it's at.

[brother_dour]

Well, there's constitutions and then there's constitutions. And there's checks and balances and then there's checks and balances. No two are created equally- and I would argue that the U.S. has one of the most ironclad systems of checks and balances in the world. Yes, that means nothing gets done without a lot of (usually partisan or at least legalistic) bickering, and yes that means nothing gets done quickly. But I believe that the trade-off is worth it to ensure that the U.S. never ends up like, say, Venezuela...

But, yeah- #4 is what Praj's 45-minute crash course in U.S. government were all about. She did look slightly stunned when I was finished. And #5 was quite a revelation to me, too, when I realized that is exactly why our government is the way it is.