Trucks being built at the General Motors plant in Pontiac, Michigan, 1957Republican Virtue, Interrupted: A Conversation with Frank Buckley
Peace Monument, erected in 1877, Capitol Hill. Vote Loony, The Time Is Now
As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to give the Let’s-Make-It-Up Clause a full workout, let’s talk about something completely different: the upcoming elections. Not ours, eighteen-plus months hence—the Brits’. The campaign over there has been under way, in a serious fashion, for six weeks or so; it’ll be over in less than another fortnight.
The rather more compressed time frame of elections over there suggests (to anyone except campaign consultants and “democracy” enthusiasts) that Britain’s parliamentary system is superior to our presidential-plus-primary system, at least on this margin. The question whether parliamentary government is generally better has been the staple of a vast body of literature—including, recently, my colleague Francis H. Buckley’s emphatic defense of his native Canada’s parliamentary system.
Introducing May Guest Blogger Frank Buckley
It's my pleasure to introduce Frank Buckley, Foundation Professor at George Mason School of Law, as our guest blogger for the month of May. You might recall his previous work on this site on the rise of executive power and the decline of liberty in America and the recent podcast we did on his latest book The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America published by Encounter Books last month. I look forward to his posts on the administrative state, executive power, and other issues.
