10 - Democracy Evolving

Summary

This chapter briefly reviews the books main arguments and offers limited reforms to improve the Framers design. The deepest challenges involve the characteristically 21st Century debates over COVID, global warming, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Given that even the experts disagree, neither side is likely to persuade the other any time soon. The challenge for the Constitution is to manage the debate for years and even decades. Here the best option is to promote a pragmatic politics that encourages politicians to try different solutions, and just as promptly discard them when they fail. Obvious reforms include safeguards to ensure that key research is never blocked to defend political arguments, and sunset laws that automatically eliminate statutes that fail to show results.