The US is not the only country with a seriously flawed system of government

One of our greatest flaws as Americans is that we have a tendency to focus to the point of obsessiveness on our own history, which we don't even bother to learn, and then have the temerity to project our perceptions of ourselves onto the rest of the world, which we also ignore. <br><br><br>One of the biggest examples of the foolishness of this outlook is our collective tendency to obsess over the flaws in our system of government, while ignoring major structural flaws in the systems of government in other countries, including some of those that we're told are supposedly so much better than ours. <br><br><br>I think the best proof of this can be found if you go to a typical American "liberal" website like Chambers, and look at the political posts. <br><br><br>Most of the posts there will be about the US, and how everything here is so messed up and in need of fixing, while a small minority of the posts may also talk about other countries, and even then, it will mostly be about how the US inspired some of this dysfunctionality in those other countries. <br><br><br>It's all the US, all the time. <br><br><br>But the truth is that most countries have serious flaws in their system of government that need to be addressed. <br><br><br>To take one very good example, consider Germany. <br><br><br>Germany is widely considered one of the most successful and well-run countries in the world. <br><br><br>The Germans are an extremely hard working and productive people, their economy is incredibly strong, their country is very well run, and they have a reputation for being so hyper-competent and obsessive about the details that it's become a meme. <br><br><br>But there is one major problem in Germany that needs to be addressed, and it's something that pretty much no one talks about. <br><br><br>Namely, they don't have a normal, functioning system of government. <br><br><br>Germans are so obsessed with not being nationalistic in any way, shape, or form that they've sucked the legitimacy out of their government. <br><br><br>They don't even have a proper President, for crying out loud. <br><br><br>They just have some ceremonial figurehead whose powers are so weak that they really can't even do anything about a problem even if they want to. <br><br><br>Their Chancellor, which is what they call their head of government, does have quite a bit of power, but it's not really a normal office either, since it's not directly elected by the people. <br><br><br>You have to get elected to their parliament first, and then you have to win the vote of your party so that the majority coalition names you Chancellor, and if your coalition loses its majority in parliament, then you lose your job immediately. <br><br><br>It's an incredibly weak and fragile system of government. <br><br><br>And this system of government is also the direct result of the Germans' well-documented historical obsession with undermining the legitimacy of their government in the name of "democracy." <br><br><br>So what we have in Germany is an incredibly hyper-competent and productive people that have been blessed with a system of government that is so weak and ineffective that it's a complete mismatch for the capabilities of their people. <br><br><br>And I'm sure you can probably think of plenty of other examples like this from other countries. <br><br><br>Like Israel comes to mind. <br><br><br>Israel has a functioning executive in their Prime Minister, but their parliament is completely out of control and ungovernable because they have no threshold for getting into parliament. <br><br><br>One of their parties is a group of Arabs whose stated goal is the abolition of Israel. <br><br><br>They're just allowed to run openly and get elected without any restrictions whatsoever. <br><br><br>This is utterly insane. <br><br><br>And then there's Poland. <br><br><br>Their government is completely out of control because they have no separation of powers whatsoever. <br><br><br>Their parliament has nearly all the power, and their President has no ability whatsoever to block the passage of a law. <br><br><br>He can try to veto it, but then all parliament has to do is pass it again, and it becomes law. <br><br><br>So they have no checks on the power of their government. <br><br><br>And then of course there's the UK. <br><br><br>You can make a pretty good case that their system of government is actually the worst in the developed world. <br><br><br>They're the only developed country that doesn't have a written constitution, and they're one of the only developed countries that doesn't have a codified set of laws and principles to govern society. <br><br><br>All they have is precedent, so they have no clarity or predictability in the functioning of their government or legal system. <br><br><br>And then their system of government was set up for an hereditary monarch, not an elected President. <br><br><br>So they have a ceremonial head of state with no powers, and they don't have a separation of powers like the US, because they have a system that was set up for a monarch that was supposed to have all the powers. <br><br><br>So they have a system of government that was tailor-made for King George III, but is completely unsuitable for a modern democracy. <br><br><br>And that's just off the top of my head. <br><br><br>I'm sure there are plenty of other countries with major structural flaws in their system of government, and we need to stop ignoring this fact, and pretending as if we're the only ones who have problems that need to be fixed.