If we in the #USA manage to get our country back from the current #dictatorship, and we still think government is a good idea (I'm not trying to resolve the question of #anarchism right now), we need to recognize first of all that we can't go back to the prior status quo. Certain core aspects of that system got us into this mess, and will require fundamental change.

(1) Our #voting system needs overhaul. The right to vote needs to be recognized explicitly as a RIGHT, not a privilege for each state to regulate largely as it pleases. In particular, no criminal conviction should ever be able to impair the right to vote; racist abuse of the criminal law has been used to accomplish widespread disenfranchisement of minorities. Also, we need to recognize that winner-take-all voting systems are utterly incompatible with genuine democracy. If you ever have to ask whether you can afford to vote for who you really want, as opposed to voting for the lesser evil, you do not live in a democracy. Something like proportional representation, ranked-choice voting, or instant-runoff voting is not a luxury; some such system is a minimum requirement for authentic democracy.

(2) To hell with "#SeparationOfPowers". Any protection it supposedly offered us has been purely illusory. Indeed, it was never intended to safeguard the people. It was designed by an elite who deeply distrusted the people, in order to safeguard their wealth and power FROM the people. A legislature answerable to the people is the best safeguard for their rights that any government can hope to offer. Autonomy for the judicial and executive functions of government, as separate "branches" outside the control of the legislature, has brought nothing good. Throughout most of its history, an autonomous Supreme Court has consistently defended the most depraved policies of private power against legislative efforts to control them; and now it has aided and abetted the autonomous Presidency in fulfilling its inherent tendency to degenerate into a #dictatorship. Put the courts and all executive functions under full legislative control, to be granted only such limited and conditional autonomy as the legislature sees fit to offer them.

(3) We will need to overhaul our understanding of what the right of #FreeSpeech consists in. I do not like the unclear slogan "money is not speech"; but the right of INDIVIDUALS to speak freely is what must be safeguarded, and if that is to be accomplished, we cannot allow private capital to monopolize control over the media of communication, much less recognize an inviolable right for private capital to buy such control. Also, we may need to place severe restrictions — as #Germany has done — on organized promotion of certain ideas that involve a systematic attempt to suppress the very existence, let alone the free expression, of others. A #fascist march has more in common with a brandished weapon than with a discussion of fascist ideas in, say, a university classroom or a private home.

These changes (1)–(3) will not, of course, be sufficient by themselves. I have not addressed issues as fundamental as who will own the means of #production, whether people should be guaranteed an unconditional #BasicIncome (#UBI), or how (and whether) #policing should be done. But (1)–(3) will still be needed, no matter how a host of other basic questions are to be resolved.