You’d think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it’s key ideology.
Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.
Except most of the Anti Federalists weren’t arguing against the specifics of the model, they were arguing against a centralized government at all. Which had literally just failed.
Next you’re gonna tell me a constitutional monarchy isn’t a centralized government.
It is though?
Correct.
I think they’re implying you’re making a distinction without difference. OP states the Anti-Federalists opposed the adoption of the Constitution, which was largely modelled after the constitutional monarcy of England. You clarified that they didn’t object based on the system’s model, but rather on the basis of all centralized government being bad. Their response is basically saying, yeah man, the Anti-Federalists were against centralized government , that’s what I said.
I am inferring that OP believes that they had the right of it in the first go, no centralized government is preferable to any centralized government, specifically because of how centralized governance encourages the consolidation of political power into parties.
I’m not nearly well versed in this time period to dissect that argument in detail, but I believe your rebuttal that their plan had been tried under the Articles of Confederation and found wanting, hence the whole debate about the Constitution to begin with, is a fairly succinct counterargument to the position I am sketching out on their behalf (read as: the strawman I have set up).
All of which is to say, I’ve expended entirely too much mental bandwidth on this interaction and need to go touch some grass for a bit.
That’s where I am too. That’s why I’m confused. The Articles of Confederation failed horribly.