• Awkwardly_Frank@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Bare in mind that the Constitution is just a piece of paper. It only has power when the government and the will of the people give it power.

    There’s a scene from The West Wing that really impressed upon me the great challenge of holding even the seemingly most stable democracies together. Toby Ziegler was working with representatives of a newly forming government and a constitutional scholar played by Christopher Lloyd to craft a constitution. Toby takes issue with the amount of power they are considering vesting in their executive branch, preferring instead a parliamentary system. Christopher Lloyd’s character responds to him with almost this exact point, telling him that their work just then was to instill a democratic spirit in those leaders and through them the broader populace of their country.