Ike omitted the Congressional portion of the equation.
It's taken the collusion of both mainstream political parties, in concert with the military-industrial establishment, to bring us to the current juncture.
It would be so incredibly helpful for America's democracy if it had a multi-party system, where a new party could "easily" rise up to become the major one after 2 or so elections.
Having a 2 party system (for decades or centuries at a time) only guarantees that there will be a lot of things both parties will agree on, and there's nothing the citizens can do about it (other than massive protests, which don't seem to be happening in America anymore, or if they do happen they get mocked by the media, and then by the brainwashed masses who watch said media).
I think approval voting would change things dramatically, but even using the voting systems of other countries (such as having 2 voting tours) would help a lot:
>Democracy is a rather crap form of government, with several failure modes (of which the tendency to converge on an oligarchy is but one), but it has one huge advantage over other forms of government: it provides a mechanism for peacefully transferring power when a governing clique has outlived its popularity
First, I'd like to point out that by "democracy" he's referring to what we all understand by democracy right now - a democratic republic.
Now, I think the way most democratic republics work has failed. I think we need a lot more direct democracy elements implemented in the democratic republic system. He says there that even the democratic republics were formed so the transfer of power is done without bloodshed.
But what do you do when even in such a system, the people feel compelled to create massive protests, possibly even violent ones (most revolutions)? I think the answer is an even more democratic republic. And I think you can achieve that with more direct democracy elements, such as more citizen-made laws, referendums, citizen vetos of bills, and so on (some of these exist in some countries like Germany or Switzerland, but not a lot of them, and there need to be more to become "more democratic").
This way, when the citizens are really frustrated about something, they can just fight to change the laws themselves, instead of waiting for the corrupt government to do it, and instead of having to gather in the millions to protest the government in the streets.
Note: I'm not saying we should completely discard the democratic republic system, and do away with "representatives". That's what most people (mistakenly) think when they hear this type of suggestion.
What I'm saying is far from it. I just want the republics to become more democratic, and for more ways to exist to bypass the representatives in certain situations (explicitly defined in the law), when there is big frustration about something. But of course a balance must be kept, and the representatives should still handle 95%-99% of the policies.
An idea I find promising is delagate system. Every voter starts with one vote, which they can delagate to someone else (who can delagate to someone else, etc...). Additionally, you can reclaim or redelagate your vote at any time, or for a specific issue.
This system preserves the main benifits of a republic, while allowing direct democracy.
As an added bonus, it solves the problem of rebublics like the US where a party could have 5% support and 0% representation.
The UK is an interesting case study as for large chunks of its existence the publicly unacknowledged surveillance state, and legally unregulated surveillance state, policed itself on some very hard and fast rules.
MI5 (the internal security service) held very firmly to only gathering intelligence on political movements seeking to overthrow democracy rather than conforming to the wishes of the ruling party at the time. Successive left wing politicians on becoming Prime Minister feared there were large files on them or that the service wouldn't help. Instead they received briefings on the members of their party who were actually members of Militant Tendency, working for Russia or otherwise seeking to undermine democracy in the UK.
Compared to the FBI during the same period they were paragons of virtue. MI5 wasn't, and isn't perfect, but replacing a system of internal morality with outside laws and placement can easily corrupt.
