I want to thank optimates for being one of the few blogs (the only as far as I can tell) to comment on my proposed constitution.
Dan makes a number of comments that I want to respond to. He says that giving the Federal government the power to tax and raise armed forces is unrealistic. Why? I don’t say it is realistic, but why is it not realistic.
Under this constitution the states are all protected in raising their own land forces and the federal government is restricted to a peace time land forces establishment of less than 150,000 men. To have a large peace time ground forces, the federal government must require the states to maintain the forces and the feds can only get control of the state forces without state permission by a declaration of war.
The taxing power I agree should be further limited. That passage obviously comes straight from the U.S. constitution and I neglected to modify it.
On the question of nuclear weapons, if there is to be a true union, even a federal one, I would think that nukes would be under its control.
As for the power of the monarch, I don’t think my proposal is unreasonable, after all she has power to withhold assent now. It is just that with holding assent now would cause a constitutional crisis. The proposal allows for the monarch to withhold assent and sets up a method for that veto to be overridden by the people.
I look forward to hearing more comments on the proposed constitution.
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It's not that I think that a Union of Anglosphere nations wouldn't be great, it's that I think it would fail.
Heck, I thought a Union of the countries of Great Britain was a great idea, and we can't even manage that.
More generally, as a Citizen of the European Union (what joy!) I have developed a hatred of attempts to bind sovereign nation states together like this. Whether it's the EU or the AC.
I take your points about the powers of your new state being realistic powers. Don't get me wrong, if we had to have a state, then I like your arrangements.My problem is that we have to have a new state at all.
We should build on the secure nation states we already have to enhance cooperation between countries with common interests. Building a new super-state over the top seems to be a dramatically dangerous thing to do. Better to model our cooperation on organisations like NATO, one of the few genuinely successful international organisations.
I put mine up.
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