On this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer welcomes Maxwell L. Stearns, a constitutional lawyer and professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, to discuss his book, “Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy.”
Stearns argues that the U.S. two party system is broken and the country suffers from a “constitutional crisis” that pales in comparison to the parliamentary systems that exist in almost every other country that claims to be democratic. The problem, Stearns argues, ultimately lies with the way the system was shaped by the Constitutional framers:
“What the framers got wrong was thinking that the games were going to be among the branches of government and between the levels of government, but what they got right was the concern about permanent entrenchment of what they call factions and we call parties. They just didn't create the mechanisms to prevent it.”
Scheer agrees but also believes the power of money will always reign regardless of the amount of parties that exist within a system. Bringing up the question of empire, continuous war waging and fervent profit seeking, Scheer asks, “The people who have the monopoly power are, with very rare exceptions, good at increasing it, is that not the real big issue?”